Over £1m taxpayer-funding - to the professor specialising in gay "pig" masculinities

Another dark day for austerity

Sometimes I think I’ve seen it all at Woke Waste HQ.

But today was like an episode of Eastenders (if it had a Professor character who studied the “stretching of the rectal sphincter”).

To take you from A to B (B may as well mean butthole)…

Some readers may know of my edifying social media exchanges with Professor João Florêncio, co-investigator on the £840k taxpayer-funded study “The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000”.

When I first started publicising taxpayer-funded studies, unsurprisingly Florêncio’s research attracted a lot of attention.

His response was unique, in that - unlike other academics - he decided to go on the offence. Ever since being scrutinised, he has intermittently tweeted about me. Here are some examples over the last few days:

If he wasn’t an avid researcher of gay porn, I might assume he fancied me.

Anyway, all this pulling of pigtails (unrelated to the pig title) made me start looking at his X page more regularly to see what he’d been tweeting about.

He never appeared very busy with his gay porn research - more often posting about Palestine:

Or slagging off the Government that gave him £840k to research gay porn. Was it worth it, Rishi?

Anyway, the other day I noticed a new thing: Florêncio posting that he had voted in the Swedish election:

Naively I had assumed that he might live in the UK - given that taxpayers have paid £840k so he can study gay porn.

But it turns out we are funding a Portuguese professor living in Sweden and elsewhere apparently (I guess it’s to be expected when you’re uncovering the gay porn that “Europe” built).

This afternoon I decided I would look into some of his lectures, to see what gay porn studies looks like.

I soon stumbled on other areas Florêncio is an expert on, such as gay “pig” masculinities.

You can see this in a webinar he gave in 2022, titled Of Pigs and Thresholds.

The company hosting the event is “Spike Island”, which has the Arts Council England sign in the bottom left - meaning we are in for a DOUBLE WHAMMY of taxpayer funding (it turns out Spike Island receives £285,152 per year).

A solemn host introduces Florêncio as the author of Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures: The Ethics of Becoming-Pig.

Informing this work is Florêncio’s previous research project, Masculinity and the Ethics of Porosity in 'Post-AIDS' Gay Porn, awarded £194,183 by none other than the UK taxpayer. It may be even more explosive (forgive pun) that the gay porn study. I’ve underlined some elucidating lines (it can be found here, in case you don’t believe me that this study really exists):

"Pig" is a term used by some gay men to self-define themselves in terms of their own sexual practices, which they regard as transgressive, pushing the limits of the body and of its integrity through relentless condomless penetrations, stretching of the rectal sphincter, and exchanges of all kinds of bodily fluids (sperm, urine, saliva, etc). It is used in the names of hookup websites directed at gay men into fetish or "extreme" sex (e.g. NastyKinkPigs.com or AssPig.com) and often included, as a pig head or snout emoji, on usernames or profile text on gay hookup apps like Grindr, Scruff or Recon. It is also a term that, alongside "bareback," has been appearing in increasing numbers of gay porn titles since the mid 1990s. What is interesting about gay "pig" masculinities are the ways in which they appear to be predicated on a transgression of the boundaries of the male body, a blurring of inside and outside, self and other, through the pursuit of relentless penetrations and exchanges of bodily fluids. Unlike hegemonic forms of Western masculinity, which have been shaped by a rejection of all things considered "feminine," including penetrability, gay "pigs" appear to become more "manly" the more penetrated and open to foreign bodily fluids they are.

Florêncio soon begins explaining his complex research.

NB. Due to time restraints I’ve used a translator, which isn’t perfect. But watch and read at the same time and you’ll get the gist.

“both men and women have already are bodies”

And colonized societies and the overwhelming natural cycles that mark bodies of women and racialized peoples, as Robin Longhurst put it. “Of course, in reality, both men and women have already are bodies. The difference is that men are widely considered to be able to seek and speak universal knowledge and encumbered by the limitations of a material body placed in a particular material context. Whereas women are thought to be bound to the desires of their flashy, natural bodies placed in time and space.”

“women don't piss”

What is interesting about Siemens Simons argument is that the act of urination was understood as the quintessentially masculine act because women don't piss that is, they cannot do it properly in the manly way because they do not stand up. So this is obviously not what we think, but it's the kind of idea in early modern Europe.

He then gets lost, with these complex thoughts about women not pissing, but thankfully finds his place again:

So often standing for semen itself via what Simons called a “semen-otic” system of fluids piecing. And by analogy, ejaculation both signaled masculinity because they were understood as quote, bold, assertive acts that cast fluid far from the male body. So this idea that, that the cast, that the casting of fluid, the protection.

Smelling salt warning (18/ adult content):

In the next bit, Florêncio shows his webinar audience a porn actor discussing his favourite kind of sex/ sexual acts - as an example of pig masculinities, or something like that.

You don’t have to watch it. But you have the choice at least!

Florêncio introduces it as “The Real Pump and Dumps of New York City”

Porn actor: What's hot? I went to a sex party. Everybody's fucking around. And you know, I was a little standoff and shit. I wanted to get the feel, and after a while I fucking just was getting into, you know, a little bit of my power juice. I went upstairs, man, everybody's fucking and shit like that. Some guy fucking huge cock saw. He starts fooling around. He starts fucking the hell outta me. I'm fucking going wild man.

Taking into my ass. He's pounding the hell outta my fucking hole. And then he's fucking, then I hear a fucking Mario. Oh yeah, I'm fucking coming in. I fucking come home. It's like, yeah, he pulls out and I'm like, get catch my breath. And before I even catch my breath, another guy starts fucking, fucking my ass.

Alright, fucking, come on, let's go. All right. I'm here at a central party it to do it. And then I went to get up. I would say, I would say over 20 guys. Fucking just boom, boom, boom. So what do you like, like you, what do you want?

What's an ideal fantasy? Just like that, that just happened. That's the fucking ideal fantasy.

Yeah. I have macho guys that are even fucking more macho, that are gonna fucking each take turns, tag my ass and take them just, and just go, go to fucking town.

No push down. My fucking chest is down, my fucking face is down in the mat or the fucking bed.

Alright. And my ass goes fucking up either to me give it to me, man. I'm gonna fucking take it. Liga, man. The fuck? Yeah. I, I fucking love getting it in my fucking ass. I like taking it like a pig. And I'm not gonna fucking say, oh, I'm versatile to make it seem like I'm more fucking masculine either or you aren't. You can be a fucking top and be a big old fucking queen. Kidding me if you're, you know. So I look for a guy that's that much more masculine, if not at at least as masculine as me. Yeah if I'm fucking sucking on a guy's cock, he's grabbing for my whole hole and then that goes through my mind, boom, this is gonna be a hot fucking fuck session.

That's hot. When a guy, when a guy starts grabbing for my hole right away, that's like I said, I'd be good.

This is gonna work out fucking really good. Yeah, that's what I do.

*If we got five guys here, four guys, and blindfolded you, what would go through your mind? Like what? Explain to me how, how*

I would not know who's fucking shoving it down my fucking throat, shoving it up my ass. And I would just be more than willing to take it from both ends

Like, yeah. 'cause then that fucking makes even the fucking fire and passion even more. Boom. Oh yeah, I'm a join it so much. Let's take it that one step further.

Oh, that's hot. And you just, you just literally, like, maybe you tied yourself or something or whatever, and you just, you saw their pictures before, if anything, or just said, or you just put up an ad and said, you know, my door's open.

Come fuck me. How about this? I got this friend up in Washington night. He says, man, Marco, the way you fucking take it is so hot. I want to fucking do on Friday. I'm gonna put a fucking ad on the fucking computer and have each guy come in and fucking tag your ass. One guy after another. And I'm like, yeah, that's it. Fucking whore out my ass. Make me take it like a man. You fuck me like a man. I'm gonna take it like a man every last edge. I want to fucking suck on a cock. So it's fucking as you fucking huge as could be. I don't want to spare one last itch.

'cause when it's rock hard, I don't want to fucking take it in the ass. Well, how do you describe yourself in the nastiest, dirtiest words? If I was gonna describe myself, I would say I'm hungry. Bottom cu loving pig ass hole dripping fucking cu loving bottom, loving in the ass. Love knowing I'm getting my fucking ass fucking red by a fucking macho fucking guy that wants to tear it up.

And how does one become a cum-loving, cum-dripping pig? Who, how does one become loving fucking pig whore bottom like me? Yeah. Like how just en enjoy it? Yeah, just.

How much is this research costing us?

Florêncio has been part of three taxpayer-funded projects in total, the other being Rock/Body: Performative interfaces between the geologic and the body (£34,271, 2016-17).

All in all he has had £1,070,284 for research projects (either being lead investigator or one of a team).

Austerity, ey.