Cybersocket Magazine Made a List Of ’40 Amazing Pornstars’ and Didn’t Include a Single Black Guy

We're about as annoyed with them as we can be. But one has to wonder: is Cybersocket really to blame here, or does their omission speak to larger issues with the persistently...monochromatic casting in gay porn?

Cybersocket writer Christian Martere's 40 Amazing Pornstars list does do a reasonable job of acknowledging the amazing work of a number of talented performers from the past year. All the usual suspects are present and accounted for: Francois Sagat, Junior Stellano, Brent Corrigan, Jeremy Bilding. MOC Blog was the first to notice the list's blatant lack of diversity, and thank goodness someone did. But we're not altogether certain that we can really get behind the "shame on you" message they aim at Martere himself.

That Martere could write up a list of 40 great pornstars from 2010 and neglect to include a single black performer is a shame, and it sends a clear message. But we can't help but think that that message says more about the porn industry, the studios themselves and the content and personalities that they put the most effort into promoting than it says about Martere's personal prejudices. Let's face it: gay porn and the publicity that surrounds it is chock full of white people. MOC blog contends that:

it's ridiculous that Diesel Washington, Race Cooper, Eddie Diaz, Ty Lattimore, Aaron Ridge, Scott Alexander, Ace Rockwood, Breion Diamond, D'Angelo Jackson or scores of other, lesser models weren't acknowledged.

And we totally agree, but we think that it's even more ridiculous that the few names mentioned above really do seem constitute the vast majority of well-known black performers working in the gay porn industry right now. Why is it that so many other talented black performers are stuck languishing in that limbo of no-last-name, one-time-only performances? Sites like Randy Blue have scores of scenes featuring black models that never appear again. Bel Ami released a 27-man circle jerk special a few weeks back and they couldn't be bothered to hire a single black performer. Where's all the outrage?

Personally, we think it's a crime that Diesel Washington and Fleshbot's Boyfriend Race Cooper were omitted from this list. On the other hand, black performers constitute such a ridiculously small portion of the number of gay pornstars with any sort of name recognition that it's often easy to forget that they're a part of the gay porn landscape at all. Black performers are being undersold and generally ignored all over the place in the porn industry, so why does this one writer's mistake really capture our attention? It's just the symptom of a greater disease and, while some online studios have made strides toward greater diversity, what we need to do is stop bitching about this list and start bitching more about the lack of color throughout the industry. It's 2010, people. It's time to have some equality.

· Cybersocket's Top 40: Black Performers Need Not Apply (An Update) (menofcolor.blogs.com)
· 40 Amazing Pornstars (cybersocket.com)