ABSTRACT
Concepts of gender, sexuality, the public/private dichotomy, and average community standards are imbued with mythic essentialist traits, supposedly reflecting the norms of the American public as a whole. Fear of the “other” compels this society, governed by God-fearing and biologically dutiful heterosexuals, to react in racist, sexist, homophobic ways. The production and proliferation of gay male porn, gaining its momentum from the 1969 Stonewall riots, is just one of the many paths the gay liberation movement took. Most social movements appropriate and recodify the languages of the existing dominant social order they wish to change. The chapter suggests that although this genre of pornography is indeed about gay male sex and desire and the hidden history of homosexuality, it is also about much more than that. It looks at gay male porn as an attempt by gays to rewrite themselves into American history.
