The Farmers Are Watching: Michigan’s Farm Porn Fascination
After PornHub ranked ‘farmer’ as a popular search term for horny Michiganders, Pride Source plowed into the new trend
We're a species of voyeurs. Whatever's done in private — medical treatments, sacred rites, marital spats — is also done in public, for thousands or even millions of viewers on screens big and small. This is particularly true of sex.
Dante catches Elliot watching him. Mark watches both Elliot and Dante, then — not so unexpectedly — makes his presence known. This is the somewhat predictable plot of “Going Down on the Farm,” a 2021 film by Next Door Studios. All around the watching men are bits of straw and hay, a detail which — depending on the kind of viewer you are — is either incidental or crucial. According to PornHub's 2024 Pride Insights, the word "farmer" is at the center of many gay Michiganders' porn searches.
“Going Down” might appeal, or maybe videos by Leviwranglerxxx, self-described as “just your average country boy top,” would be more to your liking. The word "farmer" shows up in the title of one 2023 video by Levi, along with some words describing what will happen to the farmer, but there are no bales of hay in sight. Levi, who grew up in Montana, Idaho and Colorado, says he makes videos about country guys because it's true to who he is, and others enjoy that.
"I feel someone like me is a fantasy because we enjoy our boots and being outdoors."
Erin Moor is of the same mind.
"[Viewers] can find a mindless creator anywhere,” she tells Pride Source, “but a creator who is a real person, who has and shows emotions, shows everyday life — as long as there’s good sexual content — those are the ones [viewers] want to follow."
Moor says her country-tinged videos have a mixed following — some urban, some rural; mostly men, but some women, too. Filming in barns, next to farm equipment and in the fields, Moor gives viewers the fantasy of sex, her sex, out where things are wild.
Wild to some of us, that is. As Moor and Levi know, what's "wild" is actually controlled: pastures are mowed, crops are managed, waterways are rerouted. There's a great deal of seemingly un-erotic work on the farm and, ironically, that may be part of what makes the place hot.
"Gender researchers have studied how the traditional farmer identity has been solidified as the rugged, tough individual who has control of nature and uses large equipment," says Dr. Michaela Hoffelmeyer, assistant professor of public engagement in agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Hoffelmeyer says that this rugged ideal may explain "eroticization of [masculine] bodies that do physical labor."
"I would say most [viewers] are city slickers or that’s what we call them. They have this innate fantasy of what is exotic to them. That is what psychology is all about: what is exotic becomes erotic."
Leviwranglerxxx
The farm is a place of fascination, even when a buff beau in the field doesn’t charm. BigGoat Farm is a new-ish operation in Houghton, Michigan, founded by two queer women: Danielle and Grace Perkowitz. Prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic to reconsider how they spend their time, the couple moved to the Upper Peninsula from Chicago.
"It started as a joke: what if we moved up here and started a dairy farm? But with some courage and hundreds of hours of research, we decided to turn our dream into a reality. We are so happy we did!"
The Perkowitzes aren’t alone in making this move.
“It's so interesting to me how many lawyers, engineers, data scientists are moving to the area to start farms. Most work remotely, including my wife who is still an engineer,” Danielle explains.
City queers moving to the country isn't new. Throughout the 1970s, separatist lesbian collectives formed sustenance farms as part of the "lesbian-back-to-the-land" movement. Radical Fairies, who were primarily gay men, created rural communes of their own.
This urban exodus is the reverse of an urban legend, which says that rural queers must quit the farm to be their true selves. However, in his 1996 book, “Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest,” WillFellows writes of a "balancing influence" that some of queer people find in the country. On the farm, the diversity and complexity of animal and plant life becomes an analogy for human difference. What these ruralites find in the city is a lack of meditative space, a disconnect from the environment and cultural norms which are almost foreign.
Fellows cites Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin who wrote this in 1948: "The city boy's failure to understand what life can mean to a boy who is raised on a farm, and the farm boy's idea that there is something glamorous about the way in which the city boy lives, apply to every avenue of human activity, including the sexual."
Farm queers moving to the city for a more "open" life might be a fantasy created by and for city queers. Leviwranglerxxx’s knows that, to many of his viewers, farm life is a mystery.
"I would say most [viewers] are city slickers or that’s what we call them. They have this innate fantasy of what is exotic to them. That is what psychology is all about: what is exotic becomes erotic."
This might explain, at least in part, why gay Michiganders' seek out farmer porn. Michigan ranks no. 30 among American states for total farm land, per USDA data. The farmer fascination might be less about "rugged masculinity," and more about the unfamiliar.
Maybe this is why Danielle’s city friends are so interested in country life, too.
“For my queer friends back in Chicago, the idea of being a farmer and seeing queer farmers is exciting. If there were more representation of female farmers in erotic spaces, I know my friends would eat that right up.”
But farmer porn doesn’t do it for everyone, and some styles don’t work for those who know the life.
"The farmer thing doesn't turn me on, really for no apparent reason," Erin Moor notes.
While doing his own online searches, Levi says he doesn’t find “a ton of actual good country content. Authentic, you know what I mean?”
“We wear boots going through rough terrain and buy what’s comfy. Then you see these [people] just really trying hard to look country, which distracts from the real focus at hand: blue-collar work."
In “Going Down on the Farm,” Dante rakes a pile of hay that never seems to go anywhere, and Mark draws a hoe across dry soil for no apparent reason. It's like they’ve never been on a farm before, and maybe that's the point. We 'city slickers' fantasize about a version of farm life we understand: city life copy and pasted onto rolling fields. The farm men from Next Door Studios look like they work out at Equinox and tweet Fire Island speedo pics with a caption that includes the hot tea emoji. It's familiar, but just different enough to be exotic and erotic to some of us. We're watching farmers who look like Midtown go-go boys, and the farmers are off watching something else entirely.
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