(In)Visibility and the Display of Gendered Desire: Masculinity in Mainstream Soft‐ and Hardcore Pornography

Abstract

This article discusses different features of heterosexual soft‐ and hardcore pornography from the perspective of heterosexual masculinity and (in)visibility. It examines the embodiment of sexuality through the female body in lads' softcore magazines and the position of the phallus and the male body in some hardcore magazines and films. The article takes its startingpoint from notions of the problematic relationship between the depiction of the male body and desire, arguing that different visual techniques are used in sexual settings in order to maintain the status of the male (primarily white) body and the penis as being particular and distinct from other bodies.

Notes

1. For a discussion on how the eroticized young male body is presented in a “dual marketing” way in advertising, attracting both heterosexual and homosexual male consumers, see Bordo 1999b and Rohlinger 2002.

2. What is discussed in the article is heterosexual pornography only.

3. The national context of pornography is rather to be found on a discursive level; that is, in questions of how it is discussed, problematized, and/or legally restricted.

4. Traditionally it has been white women's duty to foster white men into individualism while denying it for themselves. The reproduction of white femininity allows them to signify and practise whiteness without really having the subject position reserved for white men (cf. Dyer 1997).

5. Since 2003 the term has gained political ground in Sweden not least in regard to questions of advertising and gender representation.

6. Although it is hard to specify the precise year when this became a convention, in Deep Throat from 1972, the first hardcore porn film to play to sold‐out mainstream theatres, male ejaculation is the high point of the narrative and since the 1990s this is a well established pattern both in films and magazines (Hirdman 2002).

7. When googling on the term “black men” pornographic images are the first to appear, with references to their penis size (as the site “PenisBot”). The term “white men”, in contrast contains statements from famous white politicians (and the film by director Michael Moore).

8. The male hero is not a new phenomenon but since the 1980s he has become more corporeal, and the battle he fights is more likely to take place on his body.