Men.com is a

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...

pornographic website founded in 2003. It is owned by the Canadian company

Aylo Aylo is a Canadian multinational pornographic conglomerate owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. It is primarily involved in internet pornography, operating a number of video sharing websites (including platforms su ...

(formerly MindGeek), owner of the monopoly on Internet pornography.

History

Men.com LLC purchased the domain in December 2003 from entrepreneur Rick Schwartz for US$1.3 million; Schwartz had acquired it for US$15,000 in 1997. Scenes production began around 2011. The website initially featured videos of actors performing sexual acts with condoms, but it gradually shifted to

bareback Bareback riding is a form of horseback riding without a saddle. It requires skill, balance, and coordination, as the rider does not have any equipment to compensate for errors of balance or skill. Proponents of bareback riding argue that riding ...

content. In an article for ''

Porn Studies ''Porn Studies'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of pornography. It is published by Routledge and was established in 2014. The editors-in-chief are Feona Attwood (Middlesex University), John Mercer (Birmingham Cit ...

'', Craig Tollini analyzed how producers such as Men.com and

CockyBoys CockyBoys is an independent New York City-based producer of gay internet pornography, managed by CEO Jake Jaxson and his two partners, RJ Sebastian and Benny Morecock. The 2012 reality television feature film ''Project GoGo Boy'' is considered ...

"follow the normalization of pornography without condoms", and examined the impact of this transition on both media and audiences. As of 2020, Men.com was the second most-watched gay porn website and it had expanded to nine individual sites.

Actors and directors

Notable pornography actors that have worked for Men.com include

Rocco Reed Joshua Luke Broome, formerly known as Rocco Reed, is an American pastor and former pornographic actor. Early life Broome and his younger brother were raised by their mother, who was divorced from their father. When he was 15, he pursued model ...

, who had worked in over 400 straight porn titles.

Matthew Camp Matthew Camp (born March 15, 1984) is an American gay pornographic film actor and social media personality. Camp came to prominence in 2013 with '' Getting Go: The Go Doc Project''. In 2020, Camp was co-host of the reality television competition ...

starred in a film series inspired on

Tom of Finland Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized erotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "mos ...

. Matt Lambert directed one of these scenes, "Pleasure Park".

Reception

Joseph Brennan was critical of the actors featured on Men.com, describing their performances as "monolithic" and confined to specific top and bottom roles. In his review of the subsite Super Gay Hero, which includes parodies of popular franchises such as ''

Pokémon Go ''Pokémon Go'' (stylized as ''Pokémon GO'') is a 2016 augmented reality (AR) mobile game originally developed and published by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for iOS and Android devices. It uses mobile devic ...

'', ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...

'', ''

Game of Thrones ''Game of Thrones'' is an American Fantasy television, fantasy Drama (film and television), drama television series created by David Benioff and for HBO. It is an adaptation of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of high fantasy novels by ...

'', and ''

Pirates of the Caribbean ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' is a Disney media franchise encompassing numerous theme park rides, a series of films, and spin-off novels, as well as a number of related video games and other media publications. The franchise originated with Wa ...

'', Brennan noted that, like other Men.com productions, the subsite features hypermasculine actors portraying superheroes. He concluded that the microsite "replicates tried-and-tested gay porn conventions, rather than using parody to subvert them". In January 2020, Men.com had a traffic ranking of 31,083 according to

Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. was a web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded as an independent company by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other info ...

Awards

In popular culture

In 2017, a line from a Men.com scene titled "Private Lessons, Part 3" (later renamed "Right in Front of My Salad?") became an

Internet meme An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...

. The scene depicts a woman eating a salad before noticing the cook is having sex with her husband behind the kitchen counter, and exclaiming, "Are you guys fucking? Right in front of my salad?!" The "right in front of my salad" meme is used in response to a post that is disgusting or unseemly.

References

External links

* * {{American pornographic film studios, state=collapsed 2003 establishments in Nevada Aylo American gay pornographic film studios American erotica and pornography websites Bisexual pornography Companies based in the Las Vegas Valley Gay male pornography websites Transgender pornography