Male spankees and the female gaze

Reading that spanking story by Richard Windsor got me thinking again about a topic which has been on my mind a lot lately. Namely, why there isn't more focus on male models in spanking porn, and why there doesn't seem to be much F/m porn intended for a female audience.

I'm not into spanking cute boys myself, but I know a lot of kinky women who are, and I've barely seen any spanking porn which caters to the desires of female spankers. Besides which I daresay I'm not the only female spankee who likes to imagine herself being punished as a boy, and would enjoy seeing more young, interesting male characters being disciplined in photos and films.

The F/m material that I've seen has tended to be produced for an exclusively male audience. The star of the show is the domme, who is usually a strong, glamorous, character, and the focus of most of the photography. Very rarely is any emphasis placed on the male sub or spankee, who is often faceless, voiceless or nameless - or all three. The result is male models that are to all extents and purposes anonymous, and who certainly don't attract the same attention as their female counterparts (a point made very well recently by Spanked Hortic).

I know of four male spanking models by name. There's Peter, the director of Full Force Productions, who sometimes plays the sub in his own F/m films. Then there's Tom of Punished Butts and Thebes of Well Spanked Man, both of whom produce their own material. Finally, there's Razor of Shadow Lane, a studio with a reputation for treating their male models well. But that's it. By comparison, I couldn't even count the number of female spanking models whose work I'm familiar with. Is this woeful ignorance on my part, or is there a serious dearth of male spankees who have made a name for themselves? (If you know of others, tell me about them! Do they have their own sites? Do they blog? Do they have an online presence, is there any way of getting in touch with them?)

I can understand that some male models would prefer to remain anonymous. But this shouldn't be a reason for enforced anonymity to be the norm. Female models aren't allowed to work for most spanking sites if they aren't happy showing their face, and anyone can use a pseudonym - women are just as much at risk of scandal as men are. And if willing male models are so thick on the ground that most studios can get away without paying them for the work they do, surely studios should be able to take their pick, and select models who aren't ashamed of what they do? Or are these studios so intent on cutting costs that they'll only use men who are willing to work for free (or, shockingly, men who are willing to pay to be included in the film), at the expense of quality?

I don't mean to insult any man who has worked for free - I can understand why people do it, and I've done unpaid shoots myself before, with trusted photographers. But as a female spanking model, I have the luxury of being able to choose, and I firmly believe in the advantages of an industry standard that is maintained by both the models and the producers. You can't expect professional quality without treating someone like a professional. The onus is on the studios to change their attitude and facilitate an increased professionalism in the expectations surrounding male characters and male models in spanking porn.

One excuse I've heard for the exclusive focus on the female characters in F/m and M/f porn is that male heterosexual viewers don't want to be distracted by a strong male presence in the scene. They want to be able to imagine themselves as the male character, and the male character therefore needs to be as generic and anonymous as possible. But I can't believe that all men feel this way. What about bisexual men who are into spanking - where is the porn that caters to them? And surely not all heterosexual men are so insecure or so lacking in imagination that they can't cope with the emphasis in a spanking scene being on the male actor?

I'm queer, and I like watching girls wriggle. But the main reason I enjoy watching girls being punished is because I can identify with them. The more developed the girl's character, the more easily I can imagine myself into the scene and enjoy a little mental roleplay. I'm pretty sure that many heterosexual female spankees enjoy watching girls being spanked for the same reason.

Do male spankees not do this as well? I would have thought that any spankee watching spanking porn would tend to imagine themselves as the victim, but I could be wrong. Do other people imagine themselves watching the scene, not participating in it? I'm genuinely curious about this and would appreciate hearing what my male readers think. As a spanker or spankee, how do you respond to porn? Which characters do you identify with and why? If you're a male spankee who watches F/m porn, how do you feel about the anonymity of the male characters - would you like to see more focus on the male models?

Because I'm certain the ladies would. In the words of my friend Ophelia, the top half of a happy F/m relationship:

If I'm looking at F/m I'm wanting to identify with the women and drool over the pretty suffering (but loving it) boys.

I'd much rather see (eg) a lovely nurse or female doctor take a strong but vulnerable, boyishly pretty male patient on a journey he's never even imagined before, than some beefcake who's barely even in shot lick the boots of a busty blonde while electrodes are passed through his genitals. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter (far from it, and the men usually look very happy about it indeed in the post-session shots!), but it just ain't my kink.

The "easy" answer to this question is that visual porn always has catered to men, always will cater to men, and men want the focus of their porn to be on women, end of story. I say bollocks to that. Female-produced porn designed for female viewers has already started to revolutionise mainstream porn, with many indie studios such as Lust Films focussing more on plot and characterisation, on female pleasure and male bodies as objects of female desire. The internet has facilitated the beginnings of a huge shift in the variety available in porn, and it's only going to increase.

Spanking porn has already turned around in the last couple of decades to cater more to women - from the first edition of Februs to female-run sites like Northern Spanking and Bars and Stripes, which cater explicitly to the fantasies of female spankees and submissives.

What about the fantasies of female spankers and female dominants? Where are the F/m and F/f sites designed to appeal to female spankers? Where are the videos that focus on the personalities and cute butts of male spankees? Am I looking in all the wrong places? Is this kind of spanking porn out there, and if so, where?