Oh No! There’s A Negro In My Wife!

The Structures of Racism and Seduction in Interracial Pornography

By Emily Rousse

Portland State University

The purpose of this research was to uncover the sexualization of explicitly racist and masculinizing stereotypes about black men—that they have extremely large penises and great sexual prowess—and to examine the tense relationship between white hegemonic masculinities and perceptions of black men. The question had two parts. First, how does the sexual conquest of white women by the denigrated group become seductive to threatened white masculinities? Second, what does this mean within the larger context of societal racism and the performance of white hegemonic masculinity? The methodology of the study was as follows: from within the “interracial” porn category, several examples of racist pornography focused on the conquest of white women by black men were chosen based on objective criteria including the use of certain terms and common images of black male sexuality. There were 3 films in all. These films were subsequently viewed and analyzed for racist themes and interracial interaction. Online “weblogs” and websites provided the rest of the data, as researchers located comments and scenarios in 4 randomly sampled websites involving interracial pornography that revealed the responses of white men to these sexual constructs.

Introduction

Historically, attempts to integrate pornography into the larger context of social discourse have not gone particularly well. Early opponents of pornography isolated its supposedly evil, degenerate participants and acolytes from the society at large and assumed that their attraction to the genre was rooted in personal amorality or mental flaw (Ellis, 1980, p. 26). Feminist scholars were the first to analyze pornography as a symptom of a diseased culture, approaching the subject with the belief, largely supported through research, that pornography is sexist in nature (Cowan & Campbell, 1994, p. 326). Many feminists have additionally argued that pornography is damaging to women because of its social stigma and male-dominated production, and because it normalizes/sexualizes violence against women (Dworkin, 1989, p. 38). Other parties interested in pornography have asserted that it has a negative impact on families and can become an crippling addiction for the viewer himself. Porn studies taking as their premise the notion that porn is bad have dramatically limited our understanding of the seductive aspects of pornography, and how it appeals to different groups in society.

“The differences between pornography and other forms of culture are less meaningful than their similarities. Pornography is a form of cultural expression, and though it’s transgressive, disruptive, and hits below the belt—in more ways than one—it’s an essential form of contemporary national culture. It’s also a genre devoted to fantasy, and its fantasies traverse a range of motifs beyond the strictly sexual. Sex is pornography’s vehicle, and also its mode of distraction, but coursing through pornography’s dimly lit corridors are far larger issues” (Kipnis, 1999, p. viii).

This research attempts to address the seductive constructs of a specific subset of interracial pornography, which is itself a subgenre of pornography. In order to examine the seductive qualities of a particular fetish niche in the world of porn, it is necessary to understand a little about how porn functions to create exciting, “sexy” scenarios. Pornography as a medium relies on stereotypes to instantly create narratives and context for interaction.

“Strategies to elicit identification with a character are necessarily rudimentary because there is virtually no time and no context within which to construct such a figure…Narrative is reduced to a minimum and becomes a barely motivated procedure for the juxtaposition of fantasy scenes whose combinatory logic is more that of a catalogue than that of narration” (Willemen, 1980, p. 53).

Racism, according to research conducted by Cowen and Campbell, is prevalent in pornography. Typically the use of racist stereotypes is intended to denigrate and demoralize a minority group, or to somehow decrease their political power by labeling them unfit or transgressive. However, the use of racist stereotypes in pornography has a much more complicated meaning. Here the heterosexual white male majority employs racism in order to seduce itself—racist stereotypes provide readily accessible narratives that are “sexy.” This becomes even more interesting when stereotypes about black men are considered—that they have enormous penises and great sexual prowess, that they are animalistic and dominating. To make the researchers’ position perfectly clear, the belief that black men have especially large penises is a pervasive cultural fiction. There exists absolutely no evidence to suggest that black men are biologically predisposed to have larger genitalia than white men. This stereotype arose out of the majority culture’s desire to animalize black men by relating their biology, and especially their sexual biology, to that of animals. The idea that black men have exceptionally large penises is an implicitly damaging figment of the cultural imagination. But these racist stereotypes about black male genitalia, while they render black men predatory and dangerous when employed on a societal level, here mean something quite different. Within the context of pornography, where male virility and seductive capacity is a direct function of penis size and where sexual domination of women is the ultimate display of masculinity, black male porn stars enjoy a kind of masculine supremacy. This supremacy does not correspond to any measurable differences in penis size even between black porn stars and white porn stars. Pornography, because it relies on shock value and hyper-masculine imagery for its appeal, tends to select only the most bizarre and extreme genitals to put on display. Women with DDD breasts are paired with men with 14 inch penises. The racist stereotypes about black male sexuality implies that the largest penises in porn must belong to black men—this is demonstrably untrue. Nevertheless, the stereotype has dramatically influenced perception of black male masculinity in porn and in the larger culture. The cultural assumptions, based on racist animalizing stereotypes, about black male sexuality and biology are brought to staggering life in pornography by the “monster cock.” The idea that they possess extremely large sexual organs serves to masculinize them in comparison to supposedly smaller white men. Suddenly the imagined threatening behavior and physicality of black men is constructed as sexual superiority. And because, in interracial pornography at least, these black men are granted unlimited access to white women, their fictionalized sexual superiority becomes de facto masculine superiority. As Thomas Dipiero asserts in his book White Men Aren’t, “black men forbidden access to the white woman lacked the means to express the only culturally approved outlet for masculine desire, and hence fell short of the male ideal. Thus, the white woman endowed the full form of masculine distinction on the white man” (Dipiero, 2002, p. 194). If black men are allowed to possess white women (those objects of desire capable of conferring on their possessor true masculinity), and their stereotyped sexual characteristics within the confines of the pornographic world are symbols of extreme virility, black men in interracial pornography can be seen as the ultimate men.

While the question of how this seductive construct appeals to black men (and to some extent, women) is indeed an interesting one, the main focus of this study is analyzing how the masculinizing stereotypes about black men, and especially their interactions with white women, are titillating to white men. For white male desires and perceptions underlie all assumptions in pornography—while certain scenarios may be appealing to a more diverse audience, it is white male masculinity that defines the social landscape of porn.

“All virtual turns lead to the white male at the joystick of pleasure. In other words, these sites are not for Asian men and women seeking pornography online. They are not for Latino/as or Native Americans. Although all spectators may or may not enjoy Shemale Nudes and Shemale Sex, or Midget Porn for that matter, the marketing, representation, and story of these ‘freaks’ is the story of race in the service of white fear and fantasy, pain and pleasure, hate and lust” (Bernardi, 2006, p. 239).

While searching for interracial pornography, both on the internet and within video stores, it is impossible to ignore the influence of white men on the genre. White men are behind the cameras directing the participants, they are on the other side of the screen watching the action and writing about how it “turns them on” in their daily weblogs. They play the cuckolded husband and the aroused husband in these scenes between hyper-virile black men and “their own” white women. Outside of the studio or their own bedrooms, white men often react violently to the threat of black male sexuality. But in private, there appears to be a different story.

Prior Literature On Racism, Masculinity, And Pornography

While there has been much discussion among scholars about the racist and sexist nature of pornography, essentially no research has been done to examine the ways in which racist stereotypes that paint them as cuckolds and lesser masculine bodies are sexually appealing to white men.

The most relevant research to this study was conducted by Cowen and Campbell in 1994. They sought to discover how prevalent racism and sexism were in interracial pornography, and to what extent racism was coupled with sexual violence. To answer this question they employed a content analysis method, training student coders to make note of various aspects of racist interaction within nearly 500 interracial porn films. The coders also measured the amount of aggression present in the films, and identified various forms/levels of intimacy. Cowen and Campbell found that racism and sexism are indeed prevalent in interracial pornography, and that dehumanization and depersonalization are also present. Their coders frequently encountered the stereotype of the well-endowed black male. “The black male is portrayed as embodying the bestial in white male sexuality” (Cowan & Campbell, 1994, p. 335). This study takes Cowen and Campbell’s findings as its premise: pornography is racist and sexist. However, the Cowen and Campbell research was conducted from within the anti-pornography feminist perspective. The researchers frequently quote Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon (two prominent and outspoken anti-porn feminists), and they end their article with an endorsement to women of color to recognize how pornography damages them as well as white women, and a plea to these further marginalized women to take up the anti-porn torch. Unfortunately, this very negative approach to interpreting and analyzing pornography has closed off many avenues of cultural discovery in the past—there are certainly aspects of pornography that are distasteful, but protesting it and attempting to legislate it prevents the development of any real understanding of how commercialized desire functions within our culture. The Cowan and Campbell study, while producing some data which was instrumental in the evolution of this research, nevertheless represents an oppositional and ultimately unenlightening view of the subject of interracial pornography.

Another study of interest to this exploration of pornography was conducted by Monk-Turner and Purcell in 1999. Following in the footsteps of the Cowen and Campbell study, they performed a content analysis on 40 pornographic videocassettes. They recorded the race of the participants (white, black, Asian, or Hispanic) and coded sexual violence theme units (restraint of a female against her will, hair-pulling, hitting, slapping, or kicking). They also looked for instances of extreme sexual deviance, such as urophilia, coprophilia, bestiality, and the rape, torture, and murder of women. What they discovered was that violence against women was present in less that 1/5^th of all the sexual scenes. They only observed one instance of extreme sexual deviance (and this was only in one scene, not multiple scenes in an entire movie). Intimacy was found to be present in far more of the scenes than was violence, and marked status inequality was observed in less than 1/4^th of the scenes (race was only referenced in 8% of the scenes). Interestingly, when black men were paired with white women they discovered the lowest incidence of violence—this finding appears to negate the idea that sex with black men is used to punish disobedient white women. However, interactions between black men and white women exhibited less intimacy than those between white men and white women. The Monk-Turner and Purcell research sets the stage for the current study by establishing that levels of violence and outright degradation are relatively low in pornography as compared to the public and anti-porn feminist conceptions that have been advanced in recent years. It may very well be true that porn is bad for women and bad for the culture. Anecdotal evidence suggests that pornography likely encourages the objectification of women, as well as the violence against women that feeds off of our society’s tolerance of such dehumanization. However, to simply protest pornography is to miss entirely the larger discussion taking place “between the bodies.” The understanding that porn is not immediately harming women and minorities (abusing them on film) allows this research to explore the cultural interplay between white male racism and desire, without necessitating that a stand be taken against some form of active injustice.

Methods

Researchers chose to examine the black man/white woman section of interracial pornography through the use of detailed content analyses of individual films, websites, and weblogs within the genre. These films were selected from a national chain porn shop (Taboo Video) in Portland, Oregon. Searching for these racist films in a shop that boasts a corporate business model of homogenous chain stores serving diverse populations allowed the researchers to evaluate, to the extent possible, the relative availability of interracial pornography in “average” porn shops across the country. Since Portland has notoriously permissive cultural attitudes towards sex-work and sexual fetishism, certain aspects of the study’s validity rested upon establishing a source of interracial pornography that did not reflect specific tastes in Portland, Oregon. In Taboo Video the Interracial pornography section is located next to the Gay & Lesbian/Transsexual section, the Asian section, the Teen section, and the sections fetishizing body parts (big breasts) and specific forms of intercourse (anal, gang bang). All of these collections are fairly small when compared with the run-of-the-mill heterosexual white couples section, which is not in fact a section at all but the entire store. There is some overlap between the various “fetish” sections (white men gang-banging Asian women, transsexuals with big breasts, gay interracial, etc.), but the majority of the videos meeting the criteria for study were found in the Interracial category alone. At least within the walls of Taboo Video, the term “interracial” appears to refer almost completely to black men having sex with white women under various circumstances. The Interracial section of the store was devoted almost entirely to these films, leaving little space for the black women who comprise the only other group obviously included in this category. Most films focusing on black women were instead relegated to body part fetish (“big black ass”). Films involving Asians and Latinas had their own specific sections. “Interracial” in Taboo Video can be interpreted as a loosely defined code word denoting the conquest of white women by black men.

Within the Interracial category, essentially all of the available films exhibited overt racism (see the fried chicken on the cover of the video pictured in Appendix A). Pornography relies on stereotypes, and racial stereotypes about black men are culturally prevalent and provide a readily accessible context for interaction. Black men were related to jungle savages, to bulls and other livestock, and the assumed predatory nature of their desire was over-emphasized. The term “negro” was used in the titles of several films and on multiple box covers. Black men were referred to as “boys.” Large penis size was their defining sexual and personal characteristic. They were “big black cocks,” rather than people—movies starred “monster cock” and black men’s names were never prominently presented on the covers of their films. Although it can be argued that all participants are objectified in pornography, black men and certainly women appear to have special distinction in this arena. White porn stars, both male and female, are frequently named on the covers or even in the titles of their films. Their names may be fictional and often ridiculous (Jonny Cocks, for example), but they are at least given that means of establishing personhood—they have names. Black men are “Blackzilla,” “Mandingo,” “Monster Cock,” or “Nigger.” The last reference comes from a website called “My Daughter Is Fucking A N***A!” On the homepage of this subscription site the word “nigga” is crossed out and “Black Dude” is written beneath it. The banner at the top of the page boasts “so controversial, we had to change our name!”

From the Interracial section, 3 films were randomly selected for viewing and analysis. These films were Oh No, There’s A Negro In My Wife!, My Wife’s 1^st Monster Cock, and I Just Fucked A Black Guy.

All 3 films were produced in 2007. The selection of such recently created films reflects both the pornography industry’s emphasis on “fresh faces” (albeit going through the same old motions), the changing of video formats, and the researchers’ desire to assess contemporary attitudes about the seductive constructs of racist pornography. Taboo Video has a very limited “Classics of Porn” section, including such films as Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door, beyond which they do not carry movies produced before the late 1990s. DVDs and high-definition discs are the only formats available for rental and purchase in this store and others like it—storing VHS tapes is too cumbersome and impractical in the modern DVD age. This format incompatibility has caused many older and less expensively produced films, especially within the “fetish” sections with limited marketability, to be essentially lost to the public. Access to run-of-the-mill interracial porn from the 1970s or 1980s is difficult to obtain and as such, impractical for the common consumer of this type of pornography. Because Taboo Video, as a large national chain, represents the general selection of pornography available to American consumers living in relatively large urban and suburban areas, it can be assumed that the lack of older interracial films presents these consumers with thoroughly modern conceptions of race, sexuality, and gender. It is these modern conceptions and seductive constructs that the researchers set out to evaluate and interpret. This is not to imply that such conceptions within the mainstream market of pornography have changed or evolved a great deal—while the researchers are skeptical of such a claim, the question remains well beyond the scope of this study.

All of the films were produced in California, the state which has long been associated with the pornography industry. Although California is the home of the mainstream porn industry, the videos selected from the interracial category were produced by small independent companies like Hush-Hush Entertainment (in Van Nuys, CA) and Chatsworth Pictures (based out of Chatsworth, CA). This reflects the position of interracial pornography (here referring to black man/white woman films) within the industry: while generally accepted it is considered a fetish, and lacks the broad marketability and revenue potential of more mainstream subjects. Vivid Video, one of the largest pornography studios, almost never makes films specifically for the interracial section. Interracial pornography remains somewhat underground and transgressive, even within the transgressive world of porn.

Once the 3 films were selected, researchers then subjected them to a content analysis of the racist/gendered interaction and themes presented therein. The researchers looked at sexualized or seductive racism: where and how was it present in the films? What were the gender roles of the participants, and in what ways did the various actors in the films conform to their traditional gender roles? In these content analyses, researchers consistently asked themselves: where is the white male in this scene? Great attention was paid to white male desire and how it was expressed and responded to in the films. What is the social position of the white male in the film—is he asserting power and control over the other actors in the film, or is he portrayed as submissive? If he is submissive is he sexually aroused by his position, or is he an unhappy cuckold? In what ways are the masculinizing stereotypes of black men portrayed in the film seductive or titillating to him? Special consideration was given to any comments, especially those made by white women, comparing the sexual prowess of white men and black men. In films where white men were participants, researchers noted the relationship between the white and black men.

The other half of the data for the study was drawn from the internet. Researchers entered the term “interracial porn” into a popular search engine (Google) and looked at the first two pages of sites that appeared (about 40 sites in all). From this sample of 40 websites, researchers excluded from consideration all those that did not specifically pertain to white women having sex with black men. Gang-bang, or group sex, sites were excluded as they provided data somewhat beyond the current scope of study. The internet provided a significant increase in variation in the types of interracial scenarios presented—excluding those sites not dealing with white women and black men, and those advertising group sex, reduced the original sample by more than half. Of the remaining 16 websites and weblogs, the researchers selected every 4^th site. This left the study with a random sample of websites (n=4) of a size that corresponded well with the random sample of films (n=3). The majority of the websites came from amateur porn entrepreneurs and enthusiasts, making videos and taking pictures themselves and “their women” to share on weblogs and hastily-put-together subscription sites. All of the sites found appeared to be run by men and the pornography on those sites was marketed to male desire. The internet porn community, because it is unregulated and user-friendly, is overwhelmingly populated by such do-it-yourselfers, especially in the realms of sexual fetishism where the particular form of interracial porn studied is usually found.

The content on the websites and weblogs was evaluated for the same qualitative data as were the films. The main sources of content on the websites, aside from the videos and pictures posted—most of which were very brief and to-the-point—were the descriptions accompanying each scenario. The sources of these captions and back-stories are somewhat difficult to determine: in the case of the weblogs, they are provided by both the owner of the weblog and those who submitted their stories and pictures to the page. The subscription websites provide no real answer as to who writes the descriptions (in this case, the “advertisements”) for the videos and pictures. For the purposes of this study establishing authorship of the ideas presented in these pages is unnecessary: they are intended to seduce the visitor, and this intent renders them sociologically interesting. What seductive constructs for heterosexual white males are these web designers and entrepreneurs attempting to exploit, and how do these constructs function to make interracial porn “sexy” to the white male consumer? Who, as Kipnis puts it, is this porn “talking to” and what does it have to say?

The websites evaluated in this study were “A Cuckold’s Blog: My Life With A Black Cock Whore,” “Interracial Porn Homemade Weblog,” “How I Got My Wife To Try Black,” and “White Teens Black Cocks.”

Findings

In order to provide a coherent analysis of this broad selection of media, the researchers found it useful to organize the scenes and websites into three seductive constructs. These constructs represent common scenarios and narratives through which interracial sex between black men and white women can be interpreted as “sexy” by white men. The researchers identified these constructs during the process of choosing films and websites to analyze, by making note of which sexual scenarios seemed to attract the most attention on the internet, and in which scenarios white male desire was most prominently displayed. The constructs were elaborated on and examined with each of the films and websites, and through the use of these constructs the researchers were able to categorize the various types of interracial interaction that were seductive to white masculinities.

The first seductive construct involves the white man as a voyeur in what is essentially a sadomasochistic scene. Here the wife is shown expressing her “anger” with her husband or disapproval of his inadequacy by having sex with black men (see Appendix B). The black man in this construct is essentially a prop, employed by the white woman (much in the same way that a whip or nipple clamp would be used) in order to “punish” her husband, often at his behest. The husband is portrayed as the pathetic cuckold, attempting to protest his wife’s behavior while denying the fact of his own sexual arousal. A wife in one of these films or websites is a dominatrix, humiliating her deserving husband by engaging in sexual intercourse with a black man. The black man’s penis is repeatedly compared to the white man’s. Emphasis is placed on how much larger and more sexually exciting the culturally imagined “black male uber-phallus” is to women—especially white women, who are hypothetically deprived of true sexual release because of the supposed puny length and width of the “average” white man’s sexual organs. Black women are never mentioned in these scenes: black male desire appears to be little more than a tool for white women to maintain control over their white husbands. This desire for white women (the ultimate objects of feminine beauty and granters of masculine privilege) is assumed of black men. And their ability to satisfy white women and perform like excessively masculine, animalistic, powerful creatures is also taken for granted. Here the white man is offered a glimpse of the real power dynamics that allegedly underlie race relations in his community. When he’s at work, the hyper-virile black man is pleasuring his wife in a way that he cannot, and enjoying the comforts of his home. The two sources of data which best explain this black-man-as-S&M-prop construct were the film Oh No! There’s A Negro In My Wife! and “A Cuckold’s Blog: My Life With A Black Cock Whore.”

Oh No! There’s A Negro In My Wife!

There are four scenes in this film, each involving different characters and situations. They are all essentially the same, operating under the premise that white men cannot satisfy their lovers and that white women prefer black men (however disembodied). It should be noted here that the researchers’ anecdotal conclusion was that the size of the “superior phalluses” in the film, relative to other porn phalluses, was not overwhelming. This revelation serves to reinforce the idea that the “monster cock” of the black male is entirely insubstantial. It is an fancy, a notion , that appears again and again throughout these racist films. All penises in porn are gigantic, unless they’re specifically presented to inspire ridicule. The bearer of the normally sized phallus should strenuously object to any whiff of comparison between his own biology and that of the “average” porn star, just as the majority of women should and often do reject the notion that supermodel bodies represent them.

In this film white women are shown conforming to traditional expectations of femininity—they stay home while their husbands go out to work, and they devote a great deal of time to their appearance (bleaching their hair, painting their nails, waxing their pubic region). All of the women in this film appear to have breast implants, further accentuating the gender dichotomy. Two of the scenarios involve white men surprised upon their arrival at home by their wives engaged in sex with black men. The other two scenarios have white men encouraging their wives to have sex with black men so that they can watch. In both types of scenario, the white man is portrayed as pathetic and deserving of torture.

The film opens with an average-looking Caucasian man arriving home from work to find his attractive blonde wife having sex with his boss—a black man. He expresses shock and dismay. His wife begins to berate him for not being able to satisfy her sexually, and for having less social power (money, prestige) than the black man. She and the black man continue to have sex. At one point the white man is forced to serve the black man (taking off his shoes, etc.). During sex the woman’s attention is focused almost entirely on her husband—she is disengaged from the sexual act occurring with the black man. He is almost invisible throughout the scene, most often obscured by her body or cut completely from the shot by the camera’s focus (see Appendix D). This serves to reinforce the film’s emphasis on the hostile relationship between white men and their wives, with black male sexuality serving as a means of expressing that hostility. In fact sex, in this film and the others like it that the researchers encountered, is almost entirely beside the point.

The other two scenes, in which the husband encourages his wife to “take the big black cock” (Johnson, 2007), show the husband himself using the black male body as a prosthesis of sorts. He is presumed to be so impotent that only by persuading his wife to have sex with black men while he watches can he actually have sex with his wife.

There was no sexual violence or coercion in the film. All of the women were willing participants (although one required some convincing), and all appeared to find their experience of interracial sex neutral if not enjoyable. Black men in these scenes were not portrayed as especially vicious or unreasonable. In truth, little attention was paid to them beyond unfavorable comparisons between their imagined uber-phalluses and the less impressive ones allegedly possessed by white men. The interesting thing about this film are the pains taken at various points to defeat racist stereotypes about black men in the public sphere. Here, black men were given social power over white men, presumably to accentuate he “humiliation potential” of the sexual scene.

A Cuckold’s Blog: My Life With A Black Cock Whore

The term “cuckold” refers to a man whose wife has sex with other men. According to this and similar websites, the most emotionally—and erotically—charged way for white wives to cuckold their husbands is to have sex with black men. There is a great deal of internet material devoted to the fetishization of “slut wives” and the “cuckold lifestyle.” These frequently revisit the sadomasochistic theme discussed in Oh No! There’s A Negro In My Wife! “A Cuckold’s Blog” is about an older white man (frequently pictured being tortured by his wife) whose wife dictates all the terms of their relationship and constantly expresses her preference for “black cock” as a means of humiliating him.

“There's a real element of humiliation involved in watching your wife readily submit to and be fucked by a dominant man and even more when she tells you how much she loves it and that it's now a way of life. My wife makes it very clear that I could never give her the sexing that a Black Man can and she lets me know in no uncertain terms that she loves the way she gets stretched out and filled with cum by the Black Men that fuck her. Most times after she's been Black fucked she'll tell me that she's thankful that she doesn't have to screw me after they're done with her cause her pussy is so sore and swollen that she couldn't even take my little dick. She now prefers me to go down on her while either I jack off or she roughly kneads my balls, digging her nails into me and telling me exactly where and how to lick her pussy and her clit. She knows that I love it and that this drives me crazy and that I'm aching to screw her and she'll keep me between her legs eating her out until I cum all over myself” (A Cuckold’s Blog, 2007, p.1).

Here the “Black Man” is a concept which is basically interchangeable with the concept of the “dominant man.” He is no particular person—the stereotypes of large penis size and brutish sexuality serve to insert the “Black Man” into this fantasy of sexual domination and degradation, more so than any negative cultural attributes. The cuckold in this blog doesn’t believe that his wife’s is having interracial sex significantly diminishes her social status, as it might were the situation occurring in real life (Penley, 1997, p. 104). Since this is the realm of sexual fantasy, “Black Man” stands in for superior man, for masculine man. Although the stereotypes about black male sexuality are themselves the product of a racist society, there is no special cultural meaning attached to them in this seductive construct.

The relationship between black and white men in the film and the website are fairly cordial. The attention of the white man is focused entirely on his wife, and he appears to harbor no ill will for black men. How could he, after all, resent such men (whose animal phalluses clearly construct them, at least within the realm of pornographic cultural fantasy, as the masculine ideal) for taking liberties with and dominating women? Sexual and political power over women is the privilege of masculinity.

It was humiliating for the white men in these scenes to be compared to black men because whiteness is supposed to guarantee privilege, where in the reality of porn it only makes one less masculine. Humiliation was the primary purpose of the interaction between the various participants, as is typically the case with sadomasochistic fantasies.

The masculinizing stereotypes about black men serve to titillate white men in this Oh No! There’s A Negro In My Wife! and “A Cuckold’s Blog” by providing a unique social context for sexual humiliation. The issue of why sexual humiliation is itself titillating to any person, male or female, black or white, is a much larger question than can be explored within the scope of this research.

The second seductive construct found in interracial pornography is the encouraging husband, the man who finds sexual pleasure in watching his wife being debased by black men. Here the white husband often acknowledges that he is married to a “slut” who has previously or was inevitably going to cheat on him. He takes control of her wildly inappropriate behavior, her immoral and hedonistic nature, by enticing her to have sex with black men for his sexual gratification as well as her own. He orchestrates their meetings with likely candidates, usually black friends or coworkers, and watches them have sex with his willing wife. He is sexually aroused by the black men’s callous treatment of her and by her obvious enjoyment of such treatment.

The white-man-as-facilitator construct appears to be an offshoot of the “swingers” phenomenon, in which groups of primarily older white people in long-term committed relationships get together and switch sexual partners at pool parties and in secretive clubs. The interracial aspect brings out a slightly sadistic element in the narrative. There is a wealth of interracial “slut wife” sites on the internet—they are almost exclusively amateur subscription pages, with white men offering home videos (typically shot in hotel rooms) of “their wives” having sex with one or several “big black cocks.” The websites “Interracial Porn Weblog,” and “How I Got My Wife To Try Black” both fall within this seductive construct. These websites are basically interchangeable. They all present the same themes and many of them are physically linked together, or appear on the same lists of “interracial wife” sites. For this reason they can essentially be examined as one entity.

Interracial Homemade Porn Weblog

This particular site is run by someone calling himself Sam Duran, a white man who is supposedly aroused by the idea of white wives having sex with black men. He finds pornographic photos and videos from within the wild web of amateur “interracial slut wife” sites and shares them with the readers of his blog. He also accepts stories, pictures, and videos from readers and posts them on the blog. Although it is impossible to verify the identities of the “guests” providing material for this site, and while a number of these “guests” obviously run subscription websites of their own and use the posts for advertising purposes, it appears that many of those who submit to Duran’s weblog are genuine consumers of this type of porn.

“My wife did something like this once. We had a interracial swing party with 5 other couples and 2 black guys with biggest black cocks. The couples were all friends, but didn’t know about our lifestyle. Well when my interracial wife got a little drunk I noticed she had disappeared, I went to our bedroom and sure enough she was on her knees sucking one of the black guys. I went back and got the other black guy and all my buddies and went back to the bedroom. She was still on her knees sucking the 1st guys big black cock till I went to the bathroom. I wasn’t gone 5 min but when I went back in she was on all fours with the first guy buried 10″ in her pussy while she suck the other one. It was hot! They traded places and that’s when I noticed the 2nd guys cock he was every bit 12″ and he just sank the whole thing in her tight pussy she started screaming so my buddies helped cover her mouth while he pounded the shit outta her, I have never seen her squirt so much in my life. When they finished with her all my buddies jacked off all over her. It was great interracial swinger party” (Duran, 2008).

This quote makes clear the husband’s control of his wife’s wild sexuality (by bringing her to the party and introducing her to men that he thought she would find attractive, and by allowing his friends to cover her mouth during her orgasm) and the fact that racist stereotypes of black male hyper-sexuality in his eyes construct the most sexually exciting aspect of her debauchery. For him, the scene provides a sense of dominance despite the fact that his wife is having sex with other men. He is not a cuckold because he facilitates her “slutty” behavior. And he is sexually aroused by watching her being defiled by his black friends, in much the same way that he would be aroused watching a woman in a pornographic movie being similarly debased by very masculine, dominant men with whom he identifies.

Accompanying the above quote on “Interracial Homemade Porn Weblog” is a photograph (see Appendix B) of a white woman having sex with a black man. This photograph provides a wealth of sociological information. The woman is young, white, and attractive. She is astride a young, muscular black man who is lying on the floor in what looks like the middle of someone’s living room. A sheet has been stretched out beneath them, giving the impression that they are having sex on a stage. While they engage in what appears to be very satisfying intercourse, several flabby white men look on. They are all holding beers and sitting on the couch with vacant looks on their faces, as though they were simply watching a football game. None of them appear to be particularly arouse—they look like “nerds,” fully dressed at a sex party, wearing sneakers and jeans. Here the sexual interaction between the black man and the white woman has become a public spectacle—one that they can passively watch while drinking beer, one that is culturally non-threatening. The implication of the stories and videos on “Interracial Homemade Porn Weblog” is that even if this woman were one of these men’s wives (which she most likely is not, from the looks of them), her transgressive behavior would not upset them because they have made the crucial transition from cuckold to “amateur porn producer/consumer.” They facilitate the potentially hurtful behavior of their “slutty” wives and in so doing regain control, and they remove any emotional element from the scene by passively watching her as though she were a porn star.

How I Got My Wife To Try Black

This is not a website in the traditional sense—it is a document hosting site, called Scribd, through which members are able to upload their writings directly from their computer onto the web, without having to bother with design templates and html code. The site also allows other members to comment on the uploaded stories, which provided researchers with yet another source of data beyond the stories themselves. How I Got My Wife To Try Black is a tale uploaded by JackBDirty (most members use pen names for their posts), a long-time member of Scribd who primarily uploads erotic stories of various genres. He has written lesbian fiction as well as other “slut wife” and “big black cock” scenarios. In How I Got My Wife To Try Black, “Jack” writes about a man who fantasized about watching his wife having sex with a black friend. He claims to have seen this friend’s large penis in the locker room and become aroused by the idea of it “splitting” his petite blonde wife. His wife is at first reluctant to become involved, but he eventually convinces her by showing her pornographic “interracial” movies and by claiming that he only wants to take nude photographs. He and his friend agree that the friend will have sex with her after they get her “turned on” by taking pictures. When they begin taking photographs she is overcome by her desire and begins to have sex with the friend while her husband watches. He drops the pretense of photography and begins masturbating. His wife is extremely pleased with the experience and thanks him for giving her “the time of her life” (JackBDirty, 2007, p. 1).

Those who commented on this story seemed to find that the protagonist’s desire to give his wife sexual pleasure (through the use of a superior black penis) while achieving his own fantasy represented an almost selfless act of love. The ability to appreciate the sexual fulfillment of their wives without needing to be personally involved in the intercourse itself was seen as a sensitive response to the “obvious” superiority of black male masculinity. The idea of this superiority is assembled through the compilation of various racist stereotypes (about penis size, performance, and brutish attractiveness), and applied by white men to themselves for their own seduction.

“there's notthing hotter than see a black man fuck my wife is the most beautiful thing to see a black cock inside my wife pussy or mouth and full of black cum i love when they cum inside of her more power for the black cock that makes my wife happy all men should let black men fuck their women” (Posted by Anonymous on January 6^th, 2007).

Interestingly, this commenter draws a clear line between the masculine ideal capable of providing the most pleasure to women (black men) and “men.” Within the context of interracial porn, black men are the ultimate men possessing the grandest phalluses, but this does not grant them the larger cultural status of “men.” There are “men,” and then there are “black men.”

Other commenters revealed much less altruistic attitudes regarding sex between “their women” and black men.

“i need a big black guy to fuck my cousin she is 31 years old big tits d cups great legs perfect big round ass nice and firm ass with a cute face she is like 5'5 i need the guy too tape the whole thing maybe even gang bang her ive been wanting to fuck her badly but i cant for family reasons the guy needs to have a really big dick i need someone to seduce to try it out because shes not into black guys so i want her pussy and body flooded with cum if anyone is interested post a comment on the site i want her to be in pain when fucked to someone tuff thankyou” (Posted by Anonymous on December 30^th, 2007).

Here again we find the “superior” black male phallus employed as a stand-in for the less impressive or otherwise encumbered white man. The above commenter believes that it is culturally inappropriate for him to have sex with his cousin, so he seeks a black man to do it for him. He wants “her to be in pain when fucked” in order to punish his cousin for her unavailability to him, and by arranging for and watching her being worked over by this ultimate phallus, he will be able to express his frustration and achieve sexual release.

In addition to the previous analysis, the story How I Got My Wife To Try Black illustrates aspects of the third seductive construct identified by researchers. This is the tale of the innocent white woman (most often a teenager or housewife) lured into pornography and all manner of sexual depravity by the majesty of the black phallus. The wife of the story’s protagonist was not fully won over to the idea of sex with a man who was not her husband until she encountered the superior and arousing black phallus in person. She was overcome, and surrendered to her innate desire for this uber-phallus. The films My Wife’s First Monster Cock and I Just Fucked A Black Guy, as well as the website “White Teens Black Cocks,” can be best understood from within this particular seductive construct.

I Just Fucked A Black Guy

This film returns to the “white man as producer” idea, with a very talkative white man behind the camera directing the action. The women are physically evaluated first by this cameraman, and he frequently teases them that the “big black dick” that is coming might not “fit in there.” The women, many of whom appear bored in this extremely low-budget, amateur film, assure him that they’ve seen “big dicks” before. “Not this big” he tells them. The great black phallus is proclaimed to be radically different in magnitude from any supposedly large white penises that these women may have come into contact with in the past. When the black male lead is introduced, the women predictably express their surprise at his size. In reality, the black man appears to be of fairly average size (about 6-8 inches). This assertion is not meant to diminish the image of his masculinity and sexual power—although it is truly a fools gambit to equate masculinity with excessively large genitalia—but is intended instead to establish once and for all that the spectacular impression that a black male uber-phallus makes on prospective partners is a work of the mind, rather than a work of the eyes or the body. In interracial porn black male bodies are not really seen, they are conceived.

The black man appears to be friends with the white man, but they interact with each other very minimally. The white man comments constantly throughout the film about the black man’s penis and how much the woman must be enjoying intercourse with this superior phallus that he has procured for them.

My Wife’s First Monster Cock

This film follows a black man and his white buddy as they roam the city, locating beautiful, innocent white wives out for the day without their husbands. They flatter these women, and ask them the question that appears again and again in the majestic-black-phallus construct: “what’s the biggest cock you’ve ever had?” The women blush and say “oh, I guess 7 or 8 inches” (the size of the average penis is anecdotally understood to be around 6 inches). At this the two men laugh, and inform the women that they’re in for a real treat. The promise of the great black phallus is enough to lure the women into hotel rooms so that their shock and awe at the sight of this phallus—as well as the subsequent sexual intercourse—can be filmed by the white man.

The relationship between the two men is very friendly and enabling. They could be fraternity brothers, engaging in debauchery over spring break. The white man is the happy voyeur, cheering on his hyper-masculine black friend as they “bag” sexy women and he gives them “the ride of their lives.” The black man appears to be empowered by the sheer size of his genitalia as much as he is by the positive responses he receives from women. He is confident and pushy, choosing the women that they approach and then dominating them sexually to his sidekick’s delight. He encourages them to refer to his “big black nigger dick,” possibly in an unconscious effort to reclaim this politically charged word from a position of power. The sex is rough but never violent or humiliating for the women involved: the point of the film is that they are enjoying themselves. They frequently make comments comparing the black man’s penis to their own husbands’ less impressive organs. Both the black man and his white buddy are excited by the idea of using another man’s wife for their own sexual gratification. Their sensibilities are bawdy—they tell too many crass jokes, are too obviously fixated on sex, and appear congenial but completely tactless and gross. This is nothing unusual in pornography, it relies on jokes and inappropriate comments for its inviting tone (Penley, 1997, p. 100). But it does contribute to the viewers sense that the activities of these two men—even though everyone is having fun and no one is getting hurt—are somehow distasteful.

White Teens Black Cocks

This website presents a slightly more aggressive take on the theme. Here, innocent young girls (many of whom look dangerously like they may actually be under 18) are coerced into sex with a black man. They mention that their parents will never accept an interracial relationship, and claim to be afraid of black men. When the actor is introduced, they cannot believe that he is “so big” and they exclaim that it (his penis) will “never fit inside” their bodies. When the sex begins, the black man is very forceful—he dismisses their objections and cries of pain and continues to penetrate them. Over the course of the scene, these formerly reluctant girls begin to “enjoy” their rape. Their cries of pain become cries of pleasure. At the end of each scene they are shown thanking the actor and asserting that they may be “ruined for white guys” forever.

It is not after all that difficult to imagine what black men might find appealing about this construct. They are able to claim the benefits of society, the good and beautiful things it produces and from which they had heretofore been excluded, represented metonymically by the figure of the pure child-like white woman. At first glance it may appear that the key to the relationship between the black man and the white woman in these scenes is defined by violence, that violence is the point. The black men have their revenge on white men by raping and humiliating their women. Such an interpretation misses the crucial moment however, for just as the rape commences, the woman becomes complicit. The implication at the end of the encounter is always that she has been somehow undermined in her essence. She is addicted, “ruined” for white men and made permanently morally depraved. The black man here attains the ultimate power over her—he conquers her libido, he takes over her desire. The kernel of the fantasy, for the black man, may be that his sexuality gives him power with which to counter and ultimately transcend the socially derived power of the white man.

Of course this also provides us with the key to understanding the pleasure white men feel upon witnessing such scenes. For the white audience, black men represent both the power of the male phallus and the absence of reason, culture, taste, etc. The black man is hyper-virile and unconstrained, animalistic, not so much a person as a totem for male sexuality (like the bull, or the stallion). The woman’s ultimate subjugation by him is, therefore, the greatest possible affirmation of the phallus. It has such powers as to induce women to give up love, standing, class, everything they value in order to attain it. They will willingly give themselves to thugs, enslave themselves to the most vile or socially impotent individuals when its power is upon them.

Conclusions

There are many limitations of this research. It provides no historical comparison to contemporary attitudes because all the media was created within the last 5 years. Similarly, the mode of content analysis may preclude a more thorough investigation of the subject of masculine desires—the content was analyzed primarily by a white female college student. Undoubtedly the social position and gender identification of the researcher may have affected her conclusions. If time and money were no object, a much better way to gain an understanding of the average white man’s reaction to interracial pornography would be to show a very large number such men a few videos and record guided discussions with them on the subject. Surveys could also provide a wealth of useful data, if they were employed on a sufficiently large scale. This study only explored a very limited selection of interracial pornography, excluding many common themes like gang-bangs, sex between white men and black women, sex between black men and Asian women, sex between white men and Latinas, etc. For this reason these findings have fairly limited applicability even to interracial pornography, much less to pornography as a whole. While the researchers suspect that the seductive constructs for white masculinities uncovered in this limited exploration will provide interesting means of interpreting other forms of interracial pornography, a great deal more research must be done before this can be established. Furthermore, this study concerned itself only with the titillation that these seductive constructs may provide for white men. Understanding how these constructs arouse black men (and white women) is vital to grasping their true value in the sociological study of pornography—and by extension, the study of race and gender relations within the larger culture.

In the world of porn, phallus size is equated with masculinity. Extremely large penises are supposed to endow their bearers with all the important features of masculinity, including confidence, dominance over women and lesser men, and sexual allure. White masculinities are threatened in the realm of interracial pornography because they are compared with imagined biologically superior black phalluses. In pornography the threat to white masculinities can only be countered by acceptance and the assertion of control (albeit after the fact of desire) of white women’s access to black men. By providing avenues for their wives to have sex with black men, white men are able to symbolically reclaim that desire and use it for their own sexual gratification. They have sex with these women through the fictional superior phallus of the black man. Or, if their “turn on” is humiliation, they use their wives’ desire for the more masculine black man to self-flagellate. In this context, masculinizing stereotypes about black men provide a readily accessible narrative for sadomasochistic interaction. Finally, white men and black men can both appreciate the sexual attraction of white women to these gigantic penises because they represent the ultimate power of the phallus to overcome female independence and subjectivity.

The threat posed to traditional hegemonic masculinity, the masculinity of the public and political sphere, is not approached in the same way (Donaldson, 1993, p. 652). Threats to white hegemonic masculinity, to white male power in the real world, are responded to with violence—with racist and sexist hate crimes. Hate crimes against black men are intricately tied to white masculine fears about black male sexuality. It is not difficult to locate hundreds of incidents involving the genital mutilation of black male bodies in the commission of hate crime, not to mention the ideals of “protecting white womanhood” presented in classic racist films like the Ku Klux Klan’s Birth of a Nation. Miscegenation, arguably the greatest fear of white racists, has provoked many serious offenses against whites and blacks involved in interracial relationships (Dorr, 2004, p. 86). Hegemonic white masculinity has defined black men as sexual predators in American culture, and this stereotype has fueled fear among women and served to further marginalize black men politically and socially. Interracial pornography is clearly a product of this racist culture—racist stereotypes are elevated in this genre to become the sole source of interpersonal context. But within this type of pornography, stereotypes about black men’s animalistic bodies, their physical clout and great swinging penises, become seductive to threatened white masculinities (Bernardi, 2006, p. 231).

The question then becomes, why is this important? What is socially relevant about masculinities within interracial pornography? In order to answer this question, scholars must accept that pornography cannot be easily classified as “bad for women” or “violent” or “damaging to society.” Pornography can no longer be so readily dismissed as a source of cultural narrative.

“Reading between the bodies, you can also see the way that pornography lends itself as a form, in fairly mobile ways, to local necessities for expression of what’s routinely muzzled from other public forums. Like pornography of the past, from Boccaccio to Rabelais to Sade, it gets appropriated as a form of speech and deployed around subjects and issues that are the most ‘unspeakable,’ the most buried, but also the most politically and culturally significant” (Kipnis, 1999, p. ix).

Understanding how these powerful seductive constructs function to express white masculine fears (that black men desire white women, that white women prefer black men’s supposedly more primitive bodies) and culturally inappropriate desires (to be dominated by women, to relinquish control) may provide insight into how the most threatening aspect of interracial interaction—sexual intercourse between black men and white women, and the resulting miscegenation—can be normalized.

Within the safe space created by this form of interracial pornography, in which racist and sexist stereotypes are mobilized for pleasure and all transgressive desires can be expressed, everyone is in some way minimized but no one gets hurt. Pornography makes no attempts to defeat racism or sexism, but it allows us as a culture to think about these subjects in ways that are otherwise unacceptable. It translates fear into sexual desire, and allows the most heated and potentially violent intersections of racism and masculine fear to be considered in a context in which interracial sex and even miscegenation can be reinterpreted. The existence of such interracial porn, and the breadth of subjects and seductive constructs it employs, may imply that white men are seeking new ways to understand their relationships with white women and black men. Within porn, a white man doesn’t have to be enraged by the idea of a black man having sex with his wife. He can be aroused. He can be indifferent. This is not to imply that sexualizing a threatening group or subject can resolve issues of inequality or hatred—it cannot. In many ways, the sexual objectification of black men by white men, and their subsequent deployment in white masculine fantasies, may render discussions of racism and sexism within the larger culture inert. Sexualizing a threat may be little more than a step towards neutralizing that threat within one’s own mind and dismissing it as irrelevant. But the fact that this dialogue is taking place within the realm of pornography, that this vitally important discussion about race, gender, and masculinity is occurring on such a deep and uncomfortably level within our culture, cannot be denied. Pornography, it its own way, is allowing white men to abandon the posture of traditional hegemonic masculinity, and to extract radically different meaning from previously threatening scenarios.