Source: Adult Industry News
By: Rich Moreland
This opinion piece is based on information from Gamelink.com, a leading company in the adult business. Gamelink has a catalog of over 120,000 adult movies and offers the consumer a variety of porn related items from novelties to adult books, games, and lingerie.
America’s changing demographics has broadened attitudes. Acceptance of differences is greater than ever before, especially among young people. The openness to same-sex marriage is a benchmark of change as is the conversation that surrounds LGBT community.
In the porn universe, transgendered performers have a history long obscured by the hot bodies of gonzo girls. But just as the BDSM fetish is widely appreciated today, transsexual porn, as it is sometimes known, is also growing in popularity.
Let it be known that queer porn (the adult product as it is framed in San Francisco) has been around for a while. Now Gamelink.com reports that some states in our glorious union have consumers who support transgender porn. The genre now makes up 10 percent of the company’s annual revenue, with a 14 percent increase in 2015 alone.
Jeff Dillon, Vice-President of Marketing for eLine.com, Gamelink’s parent company, notes that transgender porn sales indicate that transgendered individuals are gaining acceptance. His remarks can be found in International Business Times, July 29, 2015.
Dillon argues that porn is instrumental in changing in our society. He points out that interracial sex on film began with the Mitchell Brothers’ 1970 film, Behind the Green Door. African-American Johnny Keyes does Marilyn Chambers, breaking the seal, so to speak.
I would add that porn goes a step further and becomes a trend setter of sorts. Needless to say, Marilyn became an adult legend from that movie alone. From then on, adult entertainment’s acceptance in broader society grew and IR porn set its place at the industry table.
Attitudes changed slowly and now interracial is a viable porn genre. Also trending upward is gay porn and it is a no-brainer to believe that what the industry calls trannie or shemale porn is not far behind.
Not surprising, California ranks first in transgender porn sales with 17 percent of the product’s total, Gamelink reports, followed by New York at 7.3 and Texas at 5. Also among the top ten leaders are Arizona, Florida, and Maryland.
Of interest is this. Only California, New York, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey have laws that protect transgendered persons. States with a conservative heritage like Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Virginia do not.
If we can take a lesson from history, what Americans want to see when it comes to the bedroom may always not match their political views, or their collective sense of morality. Didn’t we once legally ban interracial marriage while getting off on black/white sex?
In case you didn’t know, the Supreme Court overturned state laws against IR marriages in 1967 and Alabama was the last state to ditch such laws in 2000. Now interracial couples are often seen on TV.
Somehow, I’d like to think that Johnny Keyes and Marilyn Chambers helped those changes along and I’m willing to bet the same will happen for transgendered persons. This is why the Gamelink report is so important.
The social media age with its iPhones and tablets allows for a flood of change and porn will be there to open doors to everyone. Yesterday interracial, today transgender, tomorrow, who knows?
As feminist filmmaker Candida Royalle once told me, taboo is delicious.
