A current exhibition about porn at Schwules Museum in Berlin (yes, a gay museum) acknowledges porn as a leitmotif of gay culture, if not the leitmotif. It offers an overview over the role porn has played in gay liberation, by offering gay men a sense of identity, community even, especially when the AIDS epidemic brought the party to a tragic and fatal halt and appeared to threaten all the gay civil rights achievements of the preceding decades. Of course, it is now rightly impossible to produce such an exhibition not considering feminist and queer perspectives, and this the Schwules Museum duly did.

Lesbian porn was presented, and the museum gave an overview of the debates taking place at the time. A vociferous anti-porn movement, headed by prominent German feminist Alice Schwarzer, attacked all porn – including gay, lesbian etc. – as unquestioningly adhering to patriarchal power structures and a male and thus objectifying gaze. The exhibition gave the impression that this debate has been handsomely won by the pro-movement, which frames porn as giving a voice to sexual minorities and their sexualities and is therefore empowering and challenging of the heteronormatve and predominantly male perspective.

All of this accompagnied by plenty of evidence in terms of some art work, porn magazine covers, film stills and promotional photos, as well as excerpts from newspapers and political positioning papers. Porn’s relationship to art got a look in with Andy Warhol and a few other cross-over points. All in all, one may conclude, porn was/is an essential part of gay liberation, the assertion of queer sexualities, and generally empowering to sexual minorities. The exhibition as celebration of porn?

And yet, what is missing seems all the more remarkable. A few more questions might have been asked about the economic conditions of porn production, ownership of the production companies and distributors. After all, most porn outfits do not consider themselves charities; they operate for profit. Does it matter if Western porn producers recruit spades of young boys from poorer Eastern European countries to star in films consumed by a Western male audience? Is their experience relevant to an understanding of gay porn? And if not, why not?

Who were/are the porn actors? What became of them? All happy and magnificent individuals like Aidan Shaw, men who have moved on into successful new lives? What is porn’s links to prostitution? Is it relevant that most porn “stars” earn their money as escorts, with porn films serving as their promotional vehicle? An escort who is also a famous porn actor commands higher rates than one who is not.

And astonishing for their absence were the consumers of porn. Who is watching porn? Where? Are all viewers really empowered by it? Is it possible that they may also be disempowered? How do they consume it? What is their motivation? What is the relationship between porn actors and their audience? Hustlaball, for example, is one occasion where they directly interact. What is happening there? The exhibition appeared to mumble something about porn possibly being “normative”, but did not linger on this point. Does porn change people’s sexuality and how? How does it affect our view of our own sexuality, our bodies, our sexual partners?

The pornification of gay sexuality is pervasive. Nearly all images that show gay men’s sexuality are essentially pornographic, clothes off or not; they depict gay men as attractive and falling into one of the stereotypes – butch with body hair and muscles, athletic and clean cut with muscular physique, young twinks, the pervy set into hard core sex with its fetish subsets of rubber, leather, BDSM, fisting or skinhead – and always having a good time, of course. Many gay men’s dating profiles fall into similar categories or at least aspire to them. On the market of the online dating world, the pressure is on to present oneself as sexy, available, ready. A recognisable look, quickly sorted into one of the above categories, helps attract clicks. Collectively, we sell ourselves as best as we can, like escorts, like porn actors, and our pictures reflect that.

In between the scenes lie 20 years: I used to live in St. Pauli in Hamburg, a stone’s throw from Europe’s largest red light district. In a porn cinema down the road, men were stroking their hard-ons (or each other’s) in the flickering light of the screen. The place smelt of stale tobacco, piss, sweat and cum; in the darker corners guys were cruising each other, one eye on the action on the screen. They were TURNED ON, their cocks hard, dripping with cum, their mouths and arses gaping and ready. Last year, I attended a porn film festival. It took place in a large multiplex cinema in the centre of Berlin; the audience was mixed, “arty” and culturally aware. The films were about trans journeys, queer sexuality, identity… very worthy, interesting, artful, varied. But, with one exception, there was no “action”, no immersive erotic experience to be had. Amongst the 400 0r so viewers, no one got their cock out. Was anyone turned on? Hard to tell; it certainly did not show. Porn once was considered a form of sexual experience; this festival event now appeared to have redefined porn as art about sexuality, more so than art as sexuality. And that for me was also the most grievous failing of the exhibition PORN THAT WAY. If porn possesses any political power, it is rooted in its sexual experience, its power to turn on with words and pictures, its subversion of the goal-orientated concept of heteronormative sexuality, in its sheer fucking pleasure, which gets dicks hard and cunts moist. The moment the actors on the screen turn me on they stop being the “other”; we become complicit. Instead, both that film festival and this exhibition presented porn as a didactic discourse on identity and its deconstruction, worthy and diligent, but completely neutering it in the process. An exhibition about porn as tidy and nice as a German allotment. How is that possible?

Towards the end of the exhibition, we arrive at the democratising of porn. The grand days of worldwide porn mega stars like Jeff Stryker are (in his case, thankfully) over, and digital technology and distribution channels free everyone to produce their own and upload it on to channels like xtube or redtube or any of the many others. Queer porn has thus entered the scene as porn production is no longer solely in the hands of a few studios producing for profit; small outfits or individuals on limited budgets are free to make and show porn for very niche tastes, small audiences, or specialist interests. At this point, the aim of porn appears to have changed. Assuming it originally aimed at arousing the viewer, it now appears to aim at arousing the producer. The exhibition’s own emphasis had certainly not been getting the audience hard (or moist or whatever), but meant to frame porn as a vehicle of homo/queer liberation leading up to its role as identity vehicle. “We” make porn to assert our personal sexuality, our identity, to declare ourselves to the world, to be seen and acknowledged and, by a well meaning recipient, to be validated. Is it still a turn on? Does it matter?

So, we invariably ended where we had to, as consumer/producer… or consumer/product. Are we aware of the difference? Pornified, our sexuality has become self-aware, calculating the regard of the other, seeking validation and approval, if not from the world, at least from somebody.

While I am grateful for a group of highly dedicated people at Schwules Museum for putting together this exhibition, I am dismayed at its almost relentlessly celebratory and only superficially critical stance. It largely omits the consideration of the audience of porn, the conditions of its production and, in its worthy attempt at politicising porn and shedding light on its role in queer and sexual liberation, it avoids too many questions and regrettably avoids being sexy.