Gay porn hits different on Twitter

When Grimes’s ex decided to buy Twitter last week, he promised to make that platform a haven for free speech, which always sounds like code for letting white supremacists say whatever they want. Since then, some queer sex workers on Twitter have been scrambling to figure out what Elon Musk’s latest impulse purchase will mean for them. On the one hand, the promise of a less censored platform could guarantee that porn on the site continues to go unregulated; on the other, it could very likely expose LGBTQIA+ sex workers to more trolls.

Twitter has done many good things for sex workers in general. Because most social media platforms’ rules against porn and nudity, sex workers’ accounts are often blocked, heavily censored, or altogether deleted. Not so on Twitter, where on any given day I can scroll past news of the latest clusterfuck in politics followed by a 30-second clip of an actual clusterfuck.

Twitter has allowed people like me to ditch mainstream porn sites to follow individual porn stars instead. I don’t do this solely because I love seeing the same actor in different roles: It’s mostly because mainstream gay porn is incredibly racist.

There’s an entire body of work around how problematic sexual discourse in the LGBTQ+ community can be. Growing up, it was common for people to write “No fats, femmes or Asians” on their Grindr profiles and just two years ago the app got rid of an ethnicity filter that allowed users to choose who they wanted to interact with based on their race.

If straight porn is racist (which it is), then gay porn deserves its own word. Every non-white race is confined to a specific sexual position: Asian men are bottoms, Black men are tops and clip titles such as “Latino man breaks into apartment to release big load” still fly.

In the past decade, academics have come up with the term “sexual racism” to describe this. The phrase pushes back on the notion that we are born with innate sexual preferences and also the idea that racism and sex can separated. “The way in which we get brought up to think about our own desires is that they are sort of mysterious and beyond our control,” Denton Callander, a sex and sexual health researcher at the University of New South Wales, tells me. “But as a scientist, I know that’s not true.” Callander has been analyzing mainstream websites like Pornhub and notes that the algorithm on those sites recommends users videos that further perpetuate their racial biases. Mainstream porn sites didn’t invent these stereotypes, he clarifies, but they definitely further them.

Even if you create your own content on Twitter, being a sex worker of color is still a complicated balancing act.

That’s why as a consumer, gay porn on Twitter can feel so empowering. On this platform, sex workers of color have their own following and don’t have to read off a script someone else wrote. There’s more room for them to reclaim some form of sexual agency; one of the most famous porn stars I follow on Twitter is an Asian man who exclusively tops and, to put it bluntly, has the biggest dick I’ve ever seen.

Francisco, a sex worker from New York who asked to go by their first name to protect their privacy, began filming themselves in 2017. They began posting those videos on Twitter and later OnlyFans, where they were able to build a following and make some money. “DIY content produced outside of porn studios was such a breath of fresh air because it allowed Black and brown people like us to tell our own sexual stories,” they told me.

But even when you create your own content on Twitter, being a sex worker of color is still a complicated balancing act. “You film what you want, show as much or as little as you want, create your own copy, market the content the way you want,” Francisco tells me. But they also point out that you still have to consider what the audience, who all live in the real world, wants. “If that means pandering to and performing racial archetypes, you are left with a very difficult choice. It all comes down to the fantasy you’re selling and how much you’re willing to give in order to receive.”

So even though to the consumer, i.e. me, gay Twitter might seem like a much more liberated space, that doesn’t always ring true for its creators. If they do go against racial stereotypes, there’s a sense that they will also have to be willing to compromise the amount of followers they have and by extension, the type of coin they will receive. “I don't have the sense that websites that allow performers to create their own content really help them resist or combat racist sexual stereotypes. Performers often produce what sells,” says Carolyn West, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington who has examined race dynamics in porn, tells me. “It's kind of a chicken or egg problem.”

Twitter has been instrumental in giving gay sex workers of color more agency, but the problem of sexual racism is a cultural one, not a platform-specific one. Whether or not Elon Musk’s Twitter will significantly impact sex workers of color on that platform, they’ll continue to negotiate a delicate balance between exploiting their identities and reeling in audiences. Sex sells, but white-people sex still sells best.

“There’s a running joke on Twitter that if you’re a white twink or twunk you can post a nude and build a significant following in a matter of hours,” Francisco says. “Black and brown sex workers rarely accumulate as many followers at such a speed.”