PHOTOS: the Victorian grandfathers of gay porn (NSFW)
By Graham Gremore · 20 comments· Updated on September 29, 2023
The poster boy of gay love in the Victorian era, good ol’ Oscar Wilde.
Anyone claiming that the Victorian era lacked excitement clearly hasn’t laid eyes on these snapshots. Behold, the grandfathers of gay porn! Yes, they grappled with cholera and shorter lifespans, but they also ignited a spark in the world of LGBTQ+ expression that continues to blaze brightly today.
We recently stumbled across the Tumblr blog Victorian Gentleman in Love. Devoted to images of gay men caught in loving and, at times, compromising positions, Victorian Gentleman in Love is a heartfelt, and sometimes hot, blog proving that gay love has been around since the beginning.
This led us to investigate more vintage gay porn and — lo and behold — we learned there are tons of websites devoted to it. Who knew? (We knew…folks are into all sorts of things.)
Once we got over the fact that the subjects in these photographs have likely been dead for more than a century, we came to appreciate the pictures for what they were. These men were the original pioneers of homoerotic porn. They give a whole new meaning to the term “the Gay ’90s.”
(Sadly, we had to choose the least NSFW of them. Who’da thunk a group of Victorian men would violate our site’s guidelines? You can see the steamy ones here.)
Scroll down to see some of our favorite pics of the grandfathers of gay porn:
These vintage snapshots offer a glimpse into a time when love dared to defy conventions. Which of these historic guy-on-guy couples is your fave? Let us know in the comments below!
The artist behind the drawings of gay hyper-masculinity remains a mystery to many.
And for a daily dose of LGBTQ+ culture and history that’s as timeless as these photos, make sure you subscribe to the Queerty newsletter. We promise to serve you the juiciest, queerest bits from the past and present!
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2. Victorian men were more comfortable with showing physical affection to and for other men. It was only when “science” started calling homosexuality deviant and a disease that male affection became taboo.
I clicked the link to view the other pictures posted. Interesting indeed, but there were some of the “couple” photos where the “couple” looked an awful lot like brothers. Then there were several that clearly were gay porn.
Queerty seems to be more like an old auntie than anything else these days. The idea that any of these photos would violate your guidelines cries for a review of the guidelines and what they are all about. You have taken plain images of nude men and a few couples who are showing one another affection and TURNED them into a kind of tee-hee naughty picture kind of thing which is neither porn or even interesting unless we take away the little smarmy queerty fig leaves. I didn’t come to see anything, to use an old worn out word, “risqué”, but out of interest for period gay reflections. What I got was early 21st century prudery. Where are you guys coming from?
@Bill – the current term MSM, men who have sex with men, is much closer to the Victorian (and prior) understanding of what we now call gay, bi and straight. For most men, it was just that some men had sex with other men, some men didn’t. Walt Whitman is a good example of someone who happily had lots of sex with men but who rejected the homosexual / heterosexual medical definition when it was invented in the late 1800s.
The non-sexual pictures on the web of men together often show men who were romantically and/or sexually involved, but we can’t know for sure which couples were MSM couples – on the other hand, as the owner of one such website points out, lots of pictures of romantically involved men or women have been destroyed by relatives, friends and strangers along the way in an effort to wipe out the memory of those relationships. So if we take the pictures as all being MSM or WSW (even the ones who are obviously brothers or sisters could be MSM couples – I’ve known a few) – well, that’s likely to be the case for many of them, and is more accurate than assuming that none of them were MSM or WSW couples.
Aside from the more-than-Victorian prudishness of Queerty’s site guidelines, what I quibble with here is the whole notion that all of these represent pioneering efforts in proto-gay-porn. With the exception of the sailors and the seated/reclining snuggly nude couple, many of these could be simple portraits of affectionate men (as EdgarCarpenter notes) or simple Classical Figure Studies. Now, homosexual gentlemen may well have pleasured themselves to the figure studies, but that was likely not the intent (any more than it was the intent of Sears that the ten-year-old me got all hot and bothered over their underwear models).
“science” started calling homosexuality deviant and a disease that male affection became taboo.
Garbage! It was criticized in Aristophanes’ plays, which was written a couple of thousand years before the ‘Victorians’ and was indeed widely read in that era. Nice sentiment though.
My God, I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Censoring the penis in the year 2014? (Not to mention it’s in a queer website) This reminds me of the oppression and guilt trips of the 50’s I grew up in. How dare you cowardly queens decide what I can and can’t see.
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ncman
Another day at Queerty, another misleading headline.
It’s not NSFW if you cover up all the “naughty bits”.
AuntieChrist
When are they going to invent that damned time machine?
Ron Jackson
Good grief. Why so prudish?
MikeE
I’m not exactly young, and neither of my grandfathers was older than 10 during the Victorian era. So this is more the domain of GREAT grandfathers.
HirsuteOne
Just right click on the pic and “search Google for this image” (and the peen).
HirsuteOne
If you like these pics, try this blog: http://antique-erotic.tumblr.com/page/5
asirensong
This isn’t porn number one. There’s no kind of sexual activity. Many of the photos are of clothed men. This is misleading as usual.
mada
I found just a handful of sexual ones on the tumblr they linked at the beginning of the article. In fact, the second one. http://victoriangentlemeninlove.tumblr.com/
Bill
1. Most of these men are likely straight.
2. Victorian men were more comfortable with showing physical affection to and for other men. It was only when “science” started calling homosexuality deviant and a disease that male affection became taboo.
3. http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/07/29/bosom-buddies-a-photo-history-of-male-affection/
4. http://www.artofmanliness.com/2008/08/24/the-history-and-nature-of-man-friendships/
Bjk
I checked out the “source” and didn’t find the orginals of the “edited” pictures at all. Does anyone have a link to the two nudes in “thinker” poses?
Rockery
Porn???
Jonty Coppersmith
I clicked the link to view the other pictures posted. Interesting indeed, but there were some of the “couple” photos where the “couple” looked an awful lot like brothers. Then there were several that clearly were gay porn.
viveutvivas
Why did you sadly have to censor them? Is this website for 12 year olds?
jimbryant
A lot of these shots have nothing to do with male homosexuality. A male nude is not in itself homosexual.
esrose
Queerty seems to be more like an old auntie than anything else these days. The idea that any of these photos would violate your guidelines cries for a review of the guidelines and what they are all about. You have taken plain images of nude men and a few couples who are showing one another affection and TURNED them into a kind of tee-hee naughty picture kind of thing which is neither porn or even interesting unless we take away the little smarmy queerty fig leaves. I didn’t come to see anything, to use an old worn out word, “risqué”, but out of interest for period gay reflections. What I got was early 21st century prudery. Where are you guys coming from?
EdgarCarpenter
@Bill – the current term MSM, men who have sex with men, is much closer to the Victorian (and prior) understanding of what we now call gay, bi and straight. For most men, it was just that some men had sex with other men, some men didn’t. Walt Whitman is a good example of someone who happily had lots of sex with men but who rejected the homosexual / heterosexual medical definition when it was invented in the late 1800s.
The non-sexual pictures on the web of men together often show men who were romantically and/or sexually involved, but we can’t know for sure which couples were MSM couples – on the other hand, as the owner of one such website points out, lots of pictures of romantically involved men or women have been destroyed by relatives, friends and strangers along the way in an effort to wipe out the memory of those relationships. So if we take the pictures as all being MSM or WSW (even the ones who are obviously brothers or sisters could be MSM couples – I’ve known a few) – well, that’s likely to be the case for many of them, and is more accurate than assuming that none of them were MSM or WSW couples.
BitterOldQueen
Aside from the more-than-Victorian prudishness of Queerty’s site guidelines, what I quibble with here is the whole notion that all of these represent pioneering efforts in proto-gay-porn. With the exception of the sailors and the seated/reclining snuggly nude couple, many of these could be simple portraits of affectionate men (as EdgarCarpenter notes) or simple Classical Figure Studies. Now, homosexual gentlemen may well have pleasured themselves to the figure studies, but that was likely not the intent (any more than it was the intent of Sears that the ten-year-old me got all hot and bothered over their underwear models).
krystalkleer
@Bill: and you know this beeecaaause…?
http://getoffmydress.blogspot.com/2013/11/awww-precious.html
David
“science” started calling homosexuality deviant and a disease that male affection became taboo.
Garbage! It was criticized in Aristophanes’ plays, which was written a couple of thousand years before the ‘Victorians’ and was indeed widely read in that era. Nice sentiment though.
lelandjr
My God, I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Censoring the penis in the year 2014? (Not to mention it’s in a queer website) This reminds me of the oppression and guilt trips of the 50’s I grew up in. How dare you cowardly queens decide what I can and can’t see.