Legitimately straight men have performed in gay porn for as long as pornography has existed, though many prefer to take the easy road and presume these men are “actually gay” and just lying to themselves.

But the truth is that many gay porn performers are straight, they have girlfriends, and there’s an even larger number of gay men who love watching them simply because they are straight. “Straight guys” have become synonymous with gay porn to the point that many sites are specifically dedicated to only employing allegedly heterosexual men to have sex with other men.

What’s that all about? Why do straight guys do gay porn? Why do gay guys love it so much?

All these questions and more are explored in Straight Guys, a documentary film by Daniel Laurin now playing at the DOC NOW Festival in Toronto. In an effort to identify what makes the “straight guy” porn genre so popular while examining his own relationship with gay porn, Laurin interviews porn historians, porn theorists, porn producers and the performers themselves to find out — he even spent some time with some real, live straight dudes on the set of several ChaosMen films:

Why do some gay men prefer to watch sex between two heterosexual men? Where does this desire come from? Is it innate or is it learned? And why would men who identify as straight choose to perform in gay porn? Straight Guys follows filmmaker Daniel Laurin on his journey to answer these questions and reconcile his own relationship to this type of pornography. Daniel speaks to porn historians, porn theorists, porn producers and the performers themselves. Straight Guys is a lighthearted look at a very real and pressing set of questions. As children and teenagers get more and more of their information from the Internet, pornography has become an increasingly prevalent source of sexual education. It is an even more influential resource for gay/bisexual/questioning teens, who have very few examples of gay sexuality in mainstream media. This film uses Straight-Guy Porn as an entry point into deeper questions about gay desire in a very straight world.

Check out the trailer over at StraightGuysDoc.com, and visit the DOC NOW Festival for tickets and showtimes.