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Gay-for-pay describes male or female actors, pornographic stars, orsex workers who identify asheterosexual but who are paid to act or perform ashomosexual professionally. The term has also applied to other professions and even companies trying to appeal to a gay demographic.[1][2] The stigma of being gay or labeled as such has steadily eroded since theStonewall riots began the modern Americangay rights movement in 1969. Through the 1990s, mainstream movie and television actors have been more willing to portray homosexuality, as the threat of any backlash against their careers has lessened and society's acceptance of gay and lesbian people has increased.[3]
In thegay pornography industry, that uses amateurs as well as professional actors, the termgay-for-pay refers to actors who identify as straight but who engage in same-sexsexual activities for money or sexual gain. Some actors who are actually gay orbisexual will be marketed as straight to appeal to the "allure of the unattainable," because straight men (or those newlycoming out) arevirgins tosex with other men; scholarCamille Paglia declared that "Seduction of straight studs is a highly erotic motif in gay porn."[4]
Because somegay men consider heterosexual men to be objects of fantasy, some gay porn producers have almost certainly described some actors as heterosexual to increase sales and publicity for their product.[5] Moreover, many gay or bisexual men who star in gay porn films may wish to be identified publicly as heterosexual for personal or professional reasons.[6]
Some straight actors have started acting in gay porn only to be accused of being gay while others' first step was to strictly do solo masturbation or muscle exhibition scenes.[7] The higher pay scale and profile within a production often leads to group scenes where a straight actor only "tops." A "top" actor will often be sought as a bottom and the debut is often treated as a notable event or even its own release.[8]
BluMedia Inc, created a made-for-TV docu-series called Broke Straight Boys. The show "Broke Straight Boys" is a reality-based docu-series that explores the world of "Gay for Pay", a term used to describe when straight men do gay porn for money. The show explores the dynamic relationships between the owner of BluMedia, Mark Erickson, his business staff, and the young men who choose to do gay porn to supplement their income by performing for adult websites.[9]
In thesex worker industry, the term may also be applied to straight people of either gender (including "male escorts") who have sexual contact or scenes with a client or another sex worker of the same gender. Although sexual contact is often involved, sex scenes or solo scenes (like masturbating to climax) or even aBDSM scene for the client's stimulation can take place. Sexual arousal without direct sexual contact may also occur in such niche trade asmuscle worship. As in porn work, a gay identity is not necessary to make money from gay clients and consumers.
Go-go dancing originated in the 1960s. It was eventually appropriated byburlesque andstriptease establishments, which became known as "go-go bars". Manygay clubs had male go-go dancers, calledgo-go boys during the period 1965–1968. After that, few gay clubs had go-go dancers until a resurgence in the late 1980s, when go-go dancing again became fashionable, and has remained so ever since.
"Go-go dancers" who perform at night clubs, special parties,circuit parties orrave dances wearing colorful bright costumes (which may include battery operated lights, fire sticks, or a snake) can also be calledperformance art dancers orbox dancers. Largecircuit parties and gay clubs often have very attractive go-go boys of all sexualities who will allow patrons to touch and rub them but only fortips. This is typical in Thai venues, such as inSunee Plaza, Pattaya.[10] Some criticize the practice of employing straight dancers to perform erotically for gay audiences when gay performers are available.[11]
In film and television, the term "pinkface" is the use of straight actors to play LGB roles or characters. Anna King ofTime Out likens "pinkface" toblackface.[12] Pinkface differs fromstraightwashing, which is the erasure of gay characters and themes from stories in film and television.
Parts of the gay community have expressed concerns about the use of straight actors to play gay characters, a practice that has also been nicknamed "gay for pay" in the acting industry. This occurs in films and shows such asCall Me By Your Name (straight actorsArmie Hammer andTimothée Chalamet),Brokeback Mountain (Heath Ledger andJake Gyllenhaal),Modern Family (starringEric Stonestreet),Brooklyn Nine-Nine (starringAndre Braugher),Will & Grace (starringEric McCormack),Philadelphia (starringTom Hanks),Capote (starringPhilip Seymour Hoffman) andMilk (withSean Penn as gay rights activist-political leaderHarvey Milk).[13]
Controversy has arisen from this practice due to nominations and wins of awards from these roles, particularly for gay men. For example, since Hanks' win forPhiladelphia in 1993, only two openly gay actors have been nominated for eitherBest Actor orBest Supporting Actor at theAcademy Awards:Nigel Hawthorne in 1994, andIan McKellen in 1998 and 2001. Neither man won, nor has an openly gay man been nominated since.[14] Meanwhile, sixteen straight actors have been nominated for gay roles, with five winning.[15] The same has also applied to television, whereJim Parsons remains the only openly gay actor to be nominated for or win an Emmy Award in thelead acting categories; meanwhile, the heterosexual Eric McCormack was nominated and won for his portrayal of Will Truman onWill & Grace, which remains the only nomination for a gay male character in these categories.
The LGBT community has also raised concerns about when actors in pinkface have used negative or harmful stereotypes in their portrayals of gay characters. Dennis Lim states that the depictions of gays in mainstream film typically include the "gay joke", in which LGBT people are depicted to create humor; depicting gay men pejoratively as a "daisy, a fairy, a nonce, a pansy, a swish" or showing lesbian woman as "butch"; and to create ahomosexual panic that plays on heterosexual people's fears of experiencing sexual advances from LGBT people.[16]
The 1980 filmCruising created controversy due to its plot of a straight cop, played by straight actorAl Pacino, going undercover to infiltrate a gay nightclub, and its negative depictions of gay men that seem to justify a gay panic defense from Pacino's character.[16] Straight actorSacha Baron Cohen's portrayal of a gay man in the filmBrüno also created controversy, being described as an attempt to "...mak[e] fun of the queer community."[16][17]
Pinkface in television advertising has also been compared to blackface; similar to the way 19th-century blackface performances created and affirmed a hierarchical system that presented certain identities as "preferred and privileged", with pinkface ads, LGBT people are portrayed to create "humorous stigmatization" which is "insidious," as "like blackface, pinkface advertisements create a culture that posits the identities of GLBT persons [to a mainly non-GLBT audience] as inferior, inappropriate and ludicrous."[18] One source called pinkface ads the "most destructive genre of queer commercials," as they manipulate queer identities to create stigmatization at gay people's expense and strengthenheteronormative standards.[19]
Some pinkface TV ads depict hairy bearded men in drag (wearing dresses), with the intent of making fun of and devaluingtrans women and present a "campy, stigmatized" depiction of trans people.[20] Bud Light's 2003 beer commercial "Clown" depicts gay men as perverse by showing a man in a clown costume who appears to be walking on his hands, so that his mouth is positioned at the location of his costume's "bottom," thus making his drinking of beer look like the bottle is going into his anus, as the "bar patrons look at...in disgust," showing that the gay reference is derogatory.[21]
In the 2007 Snickers chocolate bar ad "Chest hair," two men eat the same chocolate bar and then accidentally end up kissing when they eat the entire bar, causing them to scream and rip out their chest hair, which implies that if two men kiss, they must prove their masculinity with pain-causing "hypermasculine behavior," which implies it is "preferable to physically harm one's self than to be identified as gay."[18]
Gary Nunn ofThe Guardian, noting that he grew up as a closeted and confused boy, said that while he understands gay people wanting to "redress the balance" of "gay actors hav[ing] been told by Hollywood to stay in the closet if they ever want to play a straight role" and straight white men having more power and influence and access to better jobs than other people, "to demand that only gay actors play gay roles is not the way to correct an inequality." He believes that "in a world where gay actors are still denied straight roles, it'll just lead to typecasting of gay actors - the very thing they're wanting to escape. Gay actors want a diversity of roles just like straight actors do."[22]
A term that is derivative of "gay-for-pay" is the partly tongue-in-cheek term "straight-for-pay," which describes gay men who have sex with women for pay. The term was coined to describe the filmShifting Gears: A Bisexual Transmission, due to gay porn stars Cameron Marshall and Blake Riley being featured in heterosexual scenes. Other notable examples of gay porn stars going "straight-for-pay" are Steven Daigle[23] and Arpad Miklos, the latter of whom received a great deal of criticism for his scene on the site Straight Guys for Gay Eyes (SG4GE). SG4GE's company principal Jake Cruise defended the scene, stating that it was a "winning idea" to portray a "masculine gay man exploring straight sex" because "I've always loved to push boundaries and press buttons with my work."[24][25]
In August 2018, the gay male pornographic websiteMen.com released its first scene featuringMMF bisexual porn titled "The Challenge."Arad Winwin, the star of the scene and a self-identified gay man, faced backlash from fans for acting in the scene, with some fans accusing him of beingstraight or of having "converted" to heterosexual or bisexual. Winwin told the gay websiteStr8UpGayPorn that "I'm a gay man...This was only a job, and it was nothing more. Nothing personal. I was working, and it was like any other scene I've done."[26][27][28]
Brno—in which a straight Sacha Baron Cohen plays a flamingly gay Austrian fashion reporter—is the latest film to be accused of making fun of the queer community, drawing the accusation of being pinkface. The epithet is a recent addition to the cinematic lexicon: simply put, it's a riff on the term blackface. It carries the same pejorative connotations but applies to straight actors taking on gay roles. Blackface has long gone the way of anti-miscegenation laws, yet Prop 8 is still with us. Is being gay the new black?
One need not look far to see that Hollywood often fails to provide both representation of, and employment to, members of marginalized communities. Movements like #OscarsSoWhite, and continued pushback against cisgender actors playing trans roles, have been increasingly covered in media the past few years. Yet the Gay for Pay Problem has not had the same attention, at least in the recent past, as other ways that Hollywood is willing to tell stories from marginalized groups without hiring marginalized people
