Book Review: Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination, by Christopher N. Kendall

In Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination, Christopher Kendall, Dean of Law at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, argues forcefully that much gay male pornography disserves the cause of gay liberation and women's equality by idealizing gender roles that subordinate both women and gay men. Dean Kendall's description of certain types of gay pornography raises troubling questions about its ultimate worth as a vehicle for gay self-expression and identity-formation. Moreover, stories of the performers' lives, as recounted by Kendall, reveal the potential for personal destruction implicit in the commercialization of sex. Kendall marshals these arguments in support of an equality-based rationale for suppressing the types of gay pornography that cause these harms. Still, Gay Male Pornography overstates the argument. Much of the gender-reversal present in gay pornography, in which men play both dominant and submissive roles, destabilizes the connection between biology and gender roles, and thus subtly undermines those roles themselves. This destabilization helps both women and gay men. More generally, gay erotica can play an important role both for adult gay men and for younger gay men coming to acknowledge their sexual orientation. Thus, suppression of such material may cause its own harms, especially given that a market economy may not produce a significant amount of gay erotica of the type Kendall believes to be non-harm producing. Even more fundamentally, equality-based rationales for suppressing gay pornography will inevitably lead to over-suppression. The vagueness of the criteria Kendall uses to distinguish between suppressible pornography and harmless (indeed, useful) gay erotica creates a situation in which homophobic judges and law enforcement officers can suppress much speech that even Kendall might agree is beneficial. Indeed, that vagueness would likely cause over and under-inclusive regulation even by well-meaning government officials. His own critique of particular applications of Canada's equality-based pornography suppression law unwittingly reveals the indeterminacy of the criteria he would use to distinguish between protected and non-protected material. Despite these failings, Gay Male Pornography is a useful addition to the literature. It raises difficult questions about the gay community's embrace and defense of troubling material. Kendall does a service by making the strongest possible argument for government regulation, even if, in the review's opinion, that argument ultimately fails.

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