Another Voice

Matthew Parris

Wednesday, 27th August 2008

Notes towards an explanation of why straight men like watching lesbians

For some years now I’ve been asking straight male friends to delve into their own feelings and discern what it is about lesbian sex that titillates and intrigues them. They furrow their brow for a while, then (sometimes) say they just don’t know. Others, after such pondering, reply that the viewer enjoys imagining that one of the couple might be him, rather than the woman. Others have said that anything involving naked women is interesting. Commonest, though, has been the answer that the respondent would like to imagine himself part of the action – turning the twosome into a threesome. When I reply that in that case, surely, he’d prefer to watch such a threesome, his response is that this would be less thrilling, because the man would not be him.

This makes some sense, but would make more sense if so many men who call themselves straight did not enjoy pornography that does involve both sexes. But they do; and some of the stuff I watched for the BSC was of just this kind, and aimed, equally, at a male audience. In fact almost all the pornography I’ve reviewed has been aimed at men, straight or gay. Many, perhaps most, women seem to dislike the whole idea of pornography quite intensely; they don’t just pretend to be disgusted (as men often do), but are genuinely disgusted; they are not a big market for it.

All this leads me to propose — tentatively — what could be a few elements in the answer to the riddle of the peddling of lesbian sex not to gay women but to straight men. First: women, of whatever sexuality, are simply less interested in watching other people than are men. There are few peeping Thomasinas.

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David Watkins

August 28th, 2008 3:15pm Report this comment

This is nonsense! Of course women enjoy titillating entertainment, probably as much as men do, but what titillates them is "romance", not raw, unprocessed sex. And many, I should guess most, heterosexual women are fascinated by male homosexuals, and spend much time fantasising about their love-lives. Type in the words "slash fanfiction" on google, and you will find hundreds of thousands of amateur stories, invariably written by women, inventing sexual encounters between Kirk and Spock (from "Star Trek"), Spike and Xander (from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Harry and Malfoy (from "Harry Potter"), and countless other improbable male couples. It's totally unsurprising that the film "Brokeback Mountain" was based on a story written by a woman - Annie Proulx.

Venturer

August 29th, 2008 5:10pm Report this comment

It would seem that female small weevils from Florida "Diaprepes abbreviatus" engage in apparent lesbian sex because it attracts the boy weevils.

Apparently they find it quite hard to work out who are the boys and who are girls, so the lesbian coupling helps because (a) they assume one of the couple is female and may barge in or (b) mistake it for a larger than average weevil - the female weevils being larger than the males.

I am not sure how easily this could be applied to humans though.

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/481394.stm

John

September 1st, 2008 1:04pm Report this comment

I only once ever had a threesome with two girls, one of whom gave some 'lesbian action' to the other, and it was the most exciting sexual experience I have ever had.

Because Mr Parris is gay, he just wouldn't be able to understand.

Not Paul Reiser

September 2nd, 2008 6:31am Report this comment

For the heterosexual male, it's quite simple. To quote the American comedian Paul Reiser:

"It's naked, it's fun, and I agree with both of them."

Tom Carter

September 3rd, 2008 6:56pm Report this comment

I've spoken to plenty of women who find two homosexual men having sex to be very arousing. As David Watkins said, the concept of 'romance' is what tends to excite women more than purely carnal lust, and I think that to many women the idea of two men effectively breaking a taboo (irrespective of one's attidudes to homosexuality, I think it is undeniable that it's still a taboo to an awful lot of people) suggests passion and overwhelming love. This idyll is very much accentuated in slash fiction online with the theme of forbidden love being extremely prominent.

I think also that lesbian pornography tends to be gentler and appeals more to the sensibilities of someone such as myself who's not always interested in watching a woman being dominated to the extent of quasi-rape (this is of course a small percentage of heterosexual pornography but if the internet isn't the place for hyperbole and logical fallacies then what is?!) and I would argue that this is perhaps a less stereotypically heterosexual thing and one might suppose that attraction to lesbian sex might actually be a sign one being further away from 100% heterosexuality for this reason.

I could carry on but the irony of intellectually masturbating on the subject of pornography might become unbearable!

Clemence de Roch

September 8th, 2008 6:09am Report this comment

Dear Matthew Parris, you seem to have led an unjustly sheltered life. Women indeed enjoy homosexual pornography, in writing, in pictures and in films. The wide world of slash fiction contains hundreds of thousand of original or fan-derivative works, some - perhaps only 5%, but isn't that the case with almost anything? - of outstanding quality; and I would say that more than half of the entire production has superior standards to commercially-written stuff. Sir Ian McKellen, among others, has confessed to liking to read slash on the Internet. I suggest an exploration, and another story for the Speccie to tell us of your research?

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