A couple weeks ago, the gay community was rocked by the news that extremely popular porn star Austin Wolf had been arrested for possession of child pornography. Wolf was one of the biggest stars in gay porn (both physically and in terms of popularity) and in many ways he was the ideal–tall, very muscular, handsome, big dicked, and a moderately dominant top. He was also pretty savvy about the business of porn, and he seemed like a genuinely nice guy.
According to the indictment, he was actively sharing hundreds of files of child pornography with someone who turned out to be an FBI agent. The porn reportedly included videos of pre-pubescent children being raped. A judge has determined he’s a flight risk, so he’s being held in detention. He’s facing 5-20 years in prison if convicted.
I’ve often enjoyed Wolf’s porn work, and I was pretty shocked by the news. I obviously know northing about the facts of the case beyond the media reports, but if the charges are true, he’s participated in appalling crimes simply by receiving and sharing this material and he rightfully deserves to be punished. Producing child porn is despicable and sharing it is nearly as evil because it helps perpetuate the crimes. But, this is America and he’s innocent until proven guilty. Prosecutors often exaggerate the strength of their evidence, so I don’t want to assume he’s guilty until he’s been convicted.
What I’m more interested in is the reaction within the gay community to the news of his arrest. A lot of it was predictable. Performers and studios he worked with rushed to distance themselves from him and pull his work from their sites. That’s understandable–given that porn is already a suspect industry in many ways, no one wants to be stained with association of an suspected child molester (although there’s no accusation that Wolf himself participated in the production of these images).
And it did not surprise me that some people on Twitter brought up older stories that they claimed proved Wolf was a Bad Guy, such as a 2018 incident when a flight attendant accused Wolf of recording a consensual encounter in a plane lavatory without his permission; Wolf eventually claimed the man knew Wolf was recording the encounter (although Wolf’s statement on the incident reads as a rather petulant justification and not an apology). The posters usually took the approach that they had always known Wolf was a Bad Guy and they were right in their suspicions all along. It’s like earning hipster cred because you hated some rock band before they became famous enough for everyone to hate them.
And one major strand of attacks on Wolf focused on a particular facet of his porn work. Wolf frequently recorded with ‘twinks’. For those unfamiliar with gay lingo, twinks are thin, youthful gay men with a boyish look to them. They’re a very popular category of porn performer, with whole studios that specialize in such material. Some twinks actively play into their ‘jailbait’ persona by emphasizing the illusion that they might be underage. In particular, Wolf had recently filmed with Damian Grey, a 24-year old who can plausibly pass for 16 or 17. People claimed that Wolf’s interest in child pornography was obvious because why else would he perform with an adult man who looks like a teenager? The implication here is that anyone who films with or records with twinks must be interested in raping children.
From that point, the attacks branched out to go after a different porn star, Legrande Wolf (presumably unrelated to Austin Wolf since both are performing under noms de porn). Legrande Wolf owns and frequently performs in Carnal Plus studio work. Carnal Plus has multiple lines of films that cater to niche kinks: Masonic Boys purports to show what goes on behind closed doors in a Mormon-like cult; Scout Boys depicts guys having sex in scouting uniforms and situations; BoyforSale shows young guys being auctioned off to wealthy men as sex slaves; Gaycest offers storylines about men having sex with their long-lost sons and brothers and nephews; and so on. One of their early break-out performers was Austin Young, a now-27 year old twink who was able to pass for 16 or even younger at the start of his career half a decade ago. (Full disclosure of my biases–I rather like a lot of what CarnalPlus produces, for a variety of reasons unrelated to their twink performers.) Other sites like Corbin Fisher and Sean Cody, which have a ‘college jock’ focus, have occasionally has performers who looked to be barely college age.
The common thread in most of CarnalPlus’ work is Size Play, a form of play that riffs on the physical difference in size between the top and the bottom. Their line Fun-Size Boys is very explicitly about that kink, with big guys pairing off with twink bottoms, and another line, Twink Top, is about reversing that kink. Almost all of their stuff plays on differences in size, age, or supposed experience in one way or another. And Austin Wolf clearly recognized that there was a niche for Size Play videos as well, although the majority of his scene partners were not twinks (despite some claims to the contrary).
And this gets into the heart of what I really want to talk about. The majority of all porn, gay or straight, trades on fantasies that are in some way socially problematic. Size Play can easily raise the specter of child molestation, and so does incest roleplaying. But a lot of BDSM porn mimics things like kidnapping, rape, physical assault, and other non-consensual activity. Adultery and cheating are standard themes in porns. Police officers, priests, and school teachers often abuse their authority in porn scenes. Pizza delivery people and office workers are sexually harassed by customers and employers. A major component in porn is the idea that the actions depicted are in some way taboo or off-limits, and that’s what makes them so exciting to indulge in. So it’s a mistake to assume that someone performing in such a scene actually has a genuine interest in rape, sexual harassment, incest, or pedophilia. It is simply part of the nature of porn that it offers titillating scenarios that often push into areas society frowns on.
Porn is a very demand-driven industry. Porn studios and performers are always trying to figure out what the market wants to see, so they can get more customers purchasing their material. Twinks are popular in part because they raise the fantasy of hooking up with some cute high school student that you would never pursue in real life, the same way that BDSM porn is popular because it gives you the fantasy of doing non-consensual things that you wouldn’t actually do in real life. So if Austin Wolf was making videos about him fucking the hell out of a guy who looks like he could be 16, I think it’s more because he knew there was a strong market for that sort of porn than that he was playing out his own dark sexual urges right before our eyes.
Attacking Size Play performers because their work looks too much like child pornography is also unfair to twink performers. Damian Grey and Austin Young are popular in large part because they look so youthful. They’re both adults (no studio would even book a performer who couldn’t prove they’re at least 18 at the time of their filming, and most studio work carries a standard age disclaimer), it’s legal for them to make porn, and if they want to play on their ability to inspire high-school fantasies, that’s their right. To say otherwise is basically to say that they don’t have a right to make porn.
Opponents of porn have been arguing since the 70s that porn encourages violence toward women, and a similar argument is being made that consensual Size Play porn must encourage child molestation. The idea here is that exposure to images of men having sex with women (or fictional minors) must stimulate the desire for men to have such sex and encourage them to pursue sex with non-consensual partners.
The facts, however, argue that porn actually reduces the incidence of sexual violence. Since the mid-90s, when the internet made porn much more readily accessible than it had been in the 70s and 80s, the incidence of rape in the US has dropped by nearly 50%, and in states where porn is readily available the rate of sexual assault is notably lower compared to states that make porn harder to access. In country after country, when porn was legalized, the rate of sexual assault dropped noticeably. In the Czech Republic, arrests for child sexual abuse also dropped by about half after porn was legalized after the fall of Communism.
So it appears that, contrary to these claims, access to porn helps reduce non-consensual sex by giving people a healthy outlet for their desires for sexual aggression and fantasy. It is also possible that BDSM porn may help educate people about the importance of consent by encouraging them to find willing sex partners for power exchange rather than violently victimize unwilling targets. Kink.com videos always start with a discussion of safety and consent and usually finish with the sub talking about how much fun they had. To me that’s the gold standard in BDSM porn.
Austin Wolf may very well have been consuming and distributing child pornography. If he did, he deserves to sent to prison and to lose his fan base and be exiled from the porn industry. But the porn he starred in is not ‘child porn lite’ and is unlikely to be a Rorschach blot for his true nature. Size Play and Incest Play porn are not illegal or immoral, and they’re not a training ground for criminal behaviors. Kink-shaming those who enjoy this kind of porn is ultimately dangerous for gays to engage in, because it opens the door for attacking all forms of gay pornography.
Leather-Bound Press 