Gay for pay? Are straight men playing queer on OnlyFans?
Sometimes trimming the lawn or moving boxes just doesn’t cut it when it comes to making some extra income. Through the use of X-rated content platform OnlyFans, some have gravitated towards marketing their bodies – including heterosexual men making soft porn accounts for gay audiences.
Gay for pay is a term that describes porn featuring straight men who perform gay sex in exchange for money. This porn sensation has been around for the last two decades thanks to platforms like OnlyFans that made this phenomenon prevalent.
Money is money
According to an interview conducted by Dazed, 26-year-old Ryan Yule created an OnlyFans account that charges users $15 a month for access to sexual pictures and videos of him. When asked why he created an OnlyFans account he responded, “I used to have a wank and wouldn’t get paid for it, and now, I get paid for it.”
Ryan is just one of the many heterosexual men who upload sexual content for their subscribers – whom he estimated to be around 97% men. To gain subscribers, social media handles like Twitter & Instagram are used to entice gay men via sexy photos to subscribe to their OnlyFans account.
Although Ryan’s family & friends follow him on social media, he isn’t worried about how they may perceive his revealing photos. “If someone’s going to get on at me and say ‘that’s gay . . .’, what are you doing? I don’t care, it’s done.” Just like Ryan, many of these men don’t care if they are perceived as gay because they are comfortable with their sexuality and, in the end, money is the ultimate goal.
It’s all an act after all
Most of the men that upload sexual content on OnlyFans are so comfortable with their sexuality that they don’t see a sexual dynamic between themselves & their subscribers; whereas, someone looking at the interactions between each man & his subscriber might interpret it differently. The men view their interactions as scripted performances much like actors in a theatre.
According to OnlyFans uploader Aaron Mccleod, he wouldn’t mind if his friends saw his conversation history between these men because he approaches his page like a business and to him they are just “customers”.
Although the OnlyFans accounts of these heterosexual men feature their own bodies, sometimes they include collaborations with other men who also identify as heterosexual. Some have argued that men allowing themselves to experiment with other men for money breaks the rigid conventions around masculinity.
An evolving future
According to Dazed journalist Josh Schot, the men performing gay for pay sex “are proof that there are innumerable expressions of heterosexuality,” adding that, they are “contributing to a rupture in the expectations that are placed on heterosexual men.”
Our ever-evolving society has gradually become more accepting of gender & sexuality which can be seen via OnlyFans as heterosexual men are allowing themselves to engage in gay porn.
What do you think? Are these men really breaking the rigid conventions around masculinity?
