LIFE WITH DICK AND DICK: RACE AND MALE PORNOGRAPHIC SELF-REPRESENTATION ON REDDIT

Abstract

This paper broadly focuses on the sharing of male pornographic self-representation (PSR) on the Reddit forum, Massive Cock. Our previous study examined how gay-straight relations are recoded on the forum. Drawing on new data currently being collected, we focus on the operation and intersection of racialized masculinities as afforded by hybrid networked technologies, platforms, and screens. Based on preliminary data collection and analysis, we argue that Massive is a space of unmarked whiteness, with a paucity of racialized dick pics. We discuss the ways in which the less than 10 percent of posters of colour mark out their racialized identities, including through the mobilization of the problematic trope of the BBC (“big black cock”), with its roots in interracial pornography. We also examine the ways in which a much smaller number of racialized men, who are not black, mark out their racial/ethnic identity. Finally we look at the few white men who draw attention to their race through appropriation of the BBC discourse as BWC ("big white cock"). Taken together it is clear that Massive is a “fraternity of the [white] cock” (Waugh, 2004) but it is one that is disrupted and unsettled by the presence of racialized PSR.