![A naked man lays on a bed next to a video camera. One of his wrists is handcuffed to the headboard while his free hand holds the base of his erect penis.
When this photoblog started, it quickly became apparent that women were a large percentage of the readership. That didn’t surprise me. After all, there is an obvious dearth of good media that features men’s appearance and that sexualizes men’s bodies. That being said, there is no lack of penis imagery in media designed to titillate men. A vast array of mainstream pornography?porn expressly created for a male consumer?includes pictures of men’s erect penises. The same can be said for gay pornographic content, which not only includes but features erections, and which women often say they prefer over pornography designed for a heterosexual male customer.
So it’s no surprise, as Kristina Lloyd and Mathilde Madden report in The Guardian, that Filament Magazine, a fledgling UK-based publication “giving�you gorgeous boys the way you like to see them”:
[R]esponding to reader feedback, [the magazine] had planned to include a photo set of an aroused man in their second (September) issue. [?]�Its printers, however, refused, citing potential objections from “the women’s/religious sectors”. [?]
It’s the second major hurdle for Filament, which has already been turned down by numerous UK distributors refusing to handle a women’s magazine with a man on the cover. When set against the plethora of men’s lifestyle and top-shelf magazines featuring scantily clad and open-legged women, the struggles faced by Filament highlight a deeply entrenched sexism: men can look at women but women cannot look at men.
Despite clear and present business demand for it, the male-dominated publishing industry refuses to provide a supply of what women viewers want. Laura Woodhouse aptly observes that “straight women are bizarrely assumed to be uninterested in looking at the object of their desires.” Figleaf offers this satirical explanation:
I could see how printers might balk if they and their employees just felt uncomfortable with the notion of checking color registration with a 6x printer’s loupe. No doubt some feel similar qualms about checking myriad lady parts and yet they somehow manage to soldier on. [? S]uddenly waiving hypothetically offended women’s groups about sounds like something between projection and cowardice.
The good news is that Filament Magazine has made enough revenue to produce a second issue with a new printer. Quoting from Filament’s FAQ:
The common explanation for why women have sometimes seemed disinterested in images supposedly intended for them ? the idea that “women are less visual” ? has now been largely disproven.
I think Filament’s success, along with the response to sites like this one that acknowledge a female gaze, are stepping stones to more than just access to quality erotica for women, but also to a healthier and happier sexual self-expression for men.
-maymay
(via pornotumble)](https://web.archive.org/web/20160313125410/http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/fleshbot_gay/2009/07/brutos13836.jpg)
A naked man lays on a bed next to a video camera. One of his wrists is handcuffed to the headboard while his free hand holds the base of his erect penis.
When this photoblog started, it quickly became apparent that women were a large percentage of the readership. That didn’t surprise me. After all, there is an obvious dearth of good media that features men’s appearance and that sexualizes men’s bodies. That being said, there is no lack of penis imagery in media designed to titillate men. A vast array of mainstream pornography—porn expressly created for a male consumer—includes pictures of men’s erect penises. The same can be said for gay pornographic content, which not only includes but features erections, and which women often say they prefer over pornography designed for a heterosexual male customer.
So it’s no surprise, as Kristina Lloyd and Mathilde Madden report in The Guardian, that Filament Magazine, a fledgling UK-based publication “giving you gorgeous boys the way you like to see them”:
[R]esponding to reader feedback, [the magazine] had planned to include a photo set of an aroused man in their second (September) issue. […] Its printers, however, refused, citing potential objections from “the women’s/religious sectors”. […]
It’s the second major hurdle for Filament, which has already been turned down by numerous UK distributors refusing to handle a women’s magazine with a man on the cover. When set against the plethora of men’s lifestyle and top-shelf magazines featuring scantily clad and open-legged women, the struggles faced by Filament highlight a deeply entrenched sexism: men can look at women but women cannot look at men.
Despite clear and present business demand for it, the male-dominated publishing industry refuses to provide a supply of what women viewers want. Laura Woodhouse aptly observes that “straight women are bizarrely assumed to be uninterested in looking at the object of their desires.” Figleaf offers this satirical explanation:
I could see how printers might balk if they and their employees just felt uncomfortable with the notion of checking color registration with a 6x printer’s loupe. No doubt some feel similar qualms about checking myriad lady parts and yet they somehow manage to soldier on. [… S]uddenly waiving hypothetically offended women’s groups about sounds like something between projection and cowardice.
The good news is that Filament Magazine has made enough revenue to produce a second issue with a new printer. Quoting from Filament’s FAQ:
The common explanation for why women have sometimes seemed disinterested in images supposedly intended for them – the idea that “women are less visual” – has now been largely disproven.
I think Filament’s success, along with the response to sites like this one that acknowledge a female gaze, are stepping stones to more than just access to quality erotica for women, but also to a healthier and happier sexual self-expression for men.
(via pornotumble)