Every date in one place. Each event links to the chapter that tells its story, and has its own address you can share.
Painters leave the figures in the colour of the clay and paint the background black, allowing far more detail in bodies and faces
Read in Greece and Rome →A male couple kills the brother of the tyrant Hippias and is later honoured by Athens with a bronze statue group in the Agora
Read in Greece and Rome →A drinking cup signed by the painter Peithinos, now in Berlin, shows courting couples around its outer wall
In depth: The Peithinos cup →A painted grave at Paestum, in southern Italy, shows a symposium with a male couple embracing on a couch
Read in Greece and Rome →A Roman silver drinking cup decorated with two scenes of lovemaking between men
In depth: The Warren Cup →The eruption preserves frescoes and objects that will scandalise the excavators of the 18th century
Read in Greece and Rome →The emperor Hadrian deifies his young Greek companion and fills the empire with his statues
Read in Greece and Rome →On 30 October the emperor founds a Greek city on the Nile near the place where Antinous drowned
In depth: Antinous →Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius order that men who take the part of women in sex be burned in public
Read in The Middle Ages →Justinian blames famines, earthquakes and plagues on sex between men, followed by Novel 141 in 559
Read in The Middle Ages →Peter Damian sends Pope Leo IX his treatise against clerics who have sex with men, the first known use of the word sodomia
Read in The Middle Ages →The crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem orders both partners in sodomy to be burned, the first such law of the Middle Ages
Read in The Middle Ages →The first general council of the Church to legislate against sodomy, with deposition for clerics and excommunication for laymen
Read in The Middle Ages →Paris illuminators paint two couples, one of men and one of women, embracing among devils, one of the oldest medieval images of a male couple
Read in The Middle Ages →Philip IV arrests the Knights Templar in France and charges them with heresy, obscene kisses and sodomy
Read in The Middle Ages →On 12 May the archbishop of Sens sends to the stake outside Paris fifty-four Templars who had withdrawn their confessions
In depth: The trial of the Templars →Edward II's favourite is executed by rebel earls on Blacklow Hill, near Warwick
Read in The Middle Ages →At the Council of Vienne Pope Clement V dissolves the order with the bull Vox in excelso, which cites the outrage of the Sodomites among the crimes reported
In depth: The trial of the Templars →The last Grand Master declares the order innocent and is burned on an island in the Seine
In depth: The trial of the Templars →Florence creates a magistracy devoted to prosecuting sodomy, which investigates some seventeen thousand men before it is abolished in 1502
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →The first free-standing nude male statue since antiquity, first recorded in the courtyard of the Medici palace in 1469
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →An anonymous denunciation names the young Leonardo da Vinci among the men accused with Jacopo Saltarelli, and the charges are dismissed
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →On 7 June a new anonymous denunciation repeats the accusation against Jacopo Saltarelli, Leonardo and three others, and is dismissed again
In depth: Leonardo and the anonymous letter →Two years after the denunciation, the government of Florence asks Leonardo for an altarpiece for the chapel of San Bernardo in its own palace
In depth: Leonardo and the anonymous letter →Michelangelo begins the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, framing the scenes from Genesis with twenty nude young men, the ignudi
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →A Sienese confraternity commissions from Il Sodoma the processional banner of Saint Sebastian now in the Uffizi
In depth: Saint Sebastian →The start of the passion that produced Michelangelo's love poems and the presentation drawings of Ganymede and Tityus
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →On 1 January Michelangelo writes to Tommaso de' Cavalieri, among the earliest surviving letters between the two men
In depth: Michelangelo and Tommaso de' Cavalieri →Benvenuto Cellini is convicted of sodomy for the second time and sentenced to four years, commuted by Cosimo I to house arrest
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →Weeks before Michelangelo dies, the authorities order draperies painted over the nudes of the Sistine altar wall, a task given to Daniele da Volterra
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →The artist dies on 18 February in his house near the Capitol, with Tommaso de' Cavalieri at his bedside
In depth: Michelangelo and Tommaso de' Cavalieri →Michelangelo's grandnephew publishes his poems with the male addressees turned into women, a falsification corrected only in 1863
Read in Renaissance and Baroque →The London satirist describes a club of men who meet to talk and behave like women, one of the first accounts of a molly house
In depth: The molly houses of London →London constables arrest around forty men at a Holborn molly house, and three of them are hanged at Tyburn in May
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →His essay on imitating Greek art coins the formula of noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, and in November he settles in Rome
In depth: Winckelmann →Johann Joachim Winckelmann publishes the book that makes the naked Greek male body the summit of art
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →The scholar is stabbed in his inn room by Francesco Arcangeli, a cook he had befriended during the previous days
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →The revolutionary penal code omits sodomy, a silence kept by the Napoleonic code of 1810
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →Twenty-seven men are arrested on 8 July, and in September six are pilloried in the Haymarket before a violent crowd
In depth: The molly houses of London →The erotic finds of Pompeii and Herculaneum are locked in a separate room, open only to men of mature age with a permit
In depth: The Secret Cabinet of Naples →Pope Pius VII has Hadrian's obelisk for Antinous raised in the gardens of the Pincio in Rome
In depth: Antinous →Christian von Bunsen buys the signed cup from Vulci in Rome for the Prussian royal museum
In depth: The Peithinos cup →Daguerre's process is presented in Paris, and nude studies sold as académies soon follow
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →After the revolutions of 1848 the Bourbon government orders the doors riveted shut, and in 1852 the room is walled up
In depth: The Secret Cabinet of Naples →A translation of a German handbook of ancient art calls the makers of obscene pictures like those of Pompeii pornographers
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →The Paris photographer Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin, a self-declared specialist in académies, gets a month in prison for obscene images
In depth: Académies, nude studies for artists →On 18 and 25 June the painter directs nude photographic sessions with Eugène Durieu, whose prints he copies in his drawings
In depth: Académies, nude studies for artists →The third edition of Leaves of Grass adds a sequence of poems about love between men
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →On 11 September, by order of Garibaldi, the walled-up erotic collection of the Naples museum is opened again
In depth: The Secret Cabinet of Naples →Cesare Guasti publishes the poems from the manuscripts and brings back the male addressees changed in 1623
In depth: Michelangelo and Tommaso de' Cavalieri →The Westminster Review publishes Pater's portrait of Winckelmann, later a key text for English aesthetes
In depth: Winckelmann →Karl-Maria Kertbeny uses it in two anonymous pamphlets against the Prussian law punishing sex between men
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →At the grave of Keats in Rome, the young Oscar Wilde writes of Guido Reni's Saint Sebastian and calls the poet fair as Sebastian
In depth: Saint Sebastian →Thomas Eakins paints six naked men bathing, working from photographs taken the summer before
Read in Neoclassicism and the camera →Wilhelm von Gloeden moves to the Sicilian town for his health and later turns photography into his trade
Read in The Arcadian photographers →The young Prussian strongman wins a challenge at the Royal Aquarium in Westminster and becomes a music hall star
In depth: Eugen Sandow →Napoleon Sarony photographs the strongman Eugen Sandow and Florenz Ziegfeld presents him in Chicago during the World's Fair
Read in The Arcadian photographers →Leonard Smithers prints 200 copies of Teleny, an anonymous erotic novel about a love affair between two men
In depth: Teleny →Wilde is convicted of gross indecency in London and sentenced to two years' hard labour
Read in The Arcadian photographers →Adolf Brand launches in Berlin the periodical usually described as the first gay magazine in the world
Read in The Arcadian photographers →Magnus Hirschfeld and his friends found the first organisation to campaign against Paragraph 175
Read in The Arcadian photographers →The Boston pictorialist photographs himself as the crucified Christ in a series that scandalises critics
Read in The Arcadian photographers →Sandow fills the Royal Albert Hall on 14 September for the first large bodybuilding contest, judged with Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Lawes
In depth: Eugen Sandow →Edward Perry Warren pays a Rome dealer 2,000 pounds for a Roman silver cup said to come from near Jerusalem
In depth: The Warren Cup →Hirschfeld opens his institute in Berlin, and Different from the Others reaches cinemas the same year
Read in The Arcadian photographers →Nazi students raid Hirschfeld's institute on 6 May and burn its books and papers four days later
Read in The Arcadian photographers →The oldest surviving American stag film is made by anonymous hands, dated 1915 by most historians and a few years later by some archivists
Read in Stag films →A French parody of Puccini becomes one of the earliest surviving films to show sexual contact between men
Read in Stag films →On 18 August German censors ban Oswald and Hirschfeld's film except for screenings to doctors and medical researchers
In depth: Different from the Others →Eastman Kodak launches 16mm film, which later lets stag reels be copied, sold and projected at home
Read in Stag films →The strongman dies in London on 14 October and is buried in an unmarked grave at Putney Vale
In depth: Eugen Sandow →Hirschfeld's educational film Gesetze der Liebe includes a shortened version of Different from the Others, the form in which it survives
In depth: Different from the Others →The oldest known American film with sex only between men, credited to a writer called "Oscar Wild"
Read in Stag films →The photographer dies in Taormina on 16 February and leaves his archive of glass negatives to his assistant Pancrazio Buciunì
In depth: Wilhelm von Gloeden →Fascist police take about a thousand of Gloeden's negatives and two thousand prints as pornography, and another thousand plates are destroyed in 1936
In depth: Wilhelm von Gloeden →In a French edition of Teleny, the bookseller Charles Hirsch claims the manuscript passed through Oscar Wilde's hands
In depth: Teleny →Hollywood's Production Code Administration under Joseph Breen begins enforcing the Code, which bans complete nudity and any inference of "sex perversion"
In depth: Male nudity in mainstream cinema →On 19 January Marshall Field's in Chicago puts Cooper's new Jockey briefs in its window during a blizzard and sells about 12,000 pairs in a week
In depth: Underwear ads →Alfred Kinsey founds the Institute for Sex Research in Indiana, which becomes the main archive of stag films
Read in Stag films →A federal judge rules that erotic material held for scientific research is not obscene, protecting the Kinsey collection
Read in Stag films →Bob Mizer founds the Athletic Model Guild in his mother’s house in Los Angeles and starts selling physique photographs by mail
Read in The physique era →John Beazley sorts Athenian courtship scenes into the plea, the gift and the embrace, labels scholars still use
In depth: The Peithinos cup →Yukio Mishima's novel makes a reproduction of Reni's Saint Sebastian the moment its narrator discovers his desire for men
In depth: Saint Sebastian →The Indianapolis customs office shows a reporter material addressed to Kinsey, and the story goes national on 17 November
In depth: The Kinsey stag collection →Mizer launches Physique Pictorial, the pocket magazine that opens the era of the beefcake digests
Read in The physique era →Kinsey orders openly erotic photographs from a Danish dealer so that their seizure in New York can become a test case
In depth: The Kinsey stag collection →Randolph Benson and John Bullock launch Grecian Guild Pictorial, dressing the male nude in the ideals of ancient Greece
Read in The physique era →A drawing of lumberjacks by Touko Laaksonen, signed Tom, appears on the cover of Physique Pictorial
Read in The physique era →Bob Mizer publishes a pocket catalogue of every man the Athletic Model Guild has photographed, twelve tiny pictures to a page
In depth: Bob Mizer and the Athletic Model Guild →The Supreme Court rules that a homosexual magazine is not obscene simply for writing about homosexuality
Read in The physique era →The Alexandria postmaster holds back 405 copies of MANual, Trim and Grecian Guild Pictorial, and the Post Office rules them obscene a month later
In depth: MANual Enterprises v. Day →The California Court of Appeal reverses Bob Mizer's 1960 conviction because the trial judge never read evidence against his accuser's honesty
In depth: Bob Mizer and the Athletic Model Guild →The Supreme Court rules that physique magazines made for gay men are not obscene and can travel by mail
Read in The physique era →In New York the illustrator Jim French and his partner Lou Thomas launch Colt, and French begins photographing as Rip Colt
In depth: Colt Studio →Physique Pictorial publishes its first fully nude issue, as the physique era gives way to open male nudity
Read in The physique era →A Los Angeles cinema presents a festival of Pat Rocco's nude short films, usually called the first public programme of all-gay films in America
Read in Out on the screen →On 26 September the Theatres Act 1968 comes into force and ends the Lord Chamberlain's licensing of plays; Hair opens in London the next day
In depth: Naked on stage →On 1 November the Motion Picture Association of America replaces the Production Code with the G, M, R and X ratings
In depth: Male nudity in mainstream cinema →While Warhol recovers from being shot, Paul Morrissey makes Flesh, with Joe Dallesandro as a hustler, which opens at the Garrick Theatre in New York
In depth: Andy Warhol's films and Joe Dallesandro →A police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village sets off several nights of riots and launches the gay liberation movement
Read in Out on the screen →Kenneth Tynan's erotic revue opens off Broadway with long scenes of male and female nudity, and later runs for years in London and on Broadway
In depth: Naked on stage →Ken Russell's film, with Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling naked, is passed by the British censor and is usually called the first mainstream film with male full-frontal nudity
In depth: Male nudity in mainstream cinema →New York police seize Warhol's Blue Movie at the Garrick Theatre, and a criminal court rules it hard-core pornography
In depth: Andy Warhol's films and Joe Dallesandro →Atlanta police stop a screening of Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys and photograph the audience, a raid that leads to the city's gay liberation movement
In depth: Andy Warhol's films and Joe Dallesandro →A presidential commission recommends ending restrictions on explicit material for adults, and President Nixon rejects its conclusions
Read in Out on the screen →Wakefield Poole's film with Casey Donovan opens at the 55th Street Playhouse in New York, advertised in The New York Times
Read in Out on the screen →Pier Paolo Pasolini's Il Decameron, the first film of his Trilogy of Life, wins the Silver Bear in Berlin and sells more than eleven million tickets in Italy
In depth: Pasolini's Trilogy of Life →Chuck Holmes starts selling gay 8mm loops by mail order in San Francisco, a business usually dated to 1971 or 1972
In depth: Falcon Studios →Fred Halsted releases the film that later enters the collection of the Museum of Modern Art
Read in Out on the screen →Jack Deveau, Robert Alvarez and Jaap Penraat found a gay film studio in New York and release Left-Handed
Read in Out on the screen →Cosmopolitan's April issue prints Francesco Scavullo's photograph of Burt Reynolds naked on a bearskin rug, the first male centerfold in a mainstream women's magazine
In depth: Playgirl and the male centerfold →After complaints for obscenity, the Tribunal of Benevento acquits Pasolini's I racconti di Canterbury, calling it a work of art
In depth: Pasolini's Trilogy of Life →The Supreme Court ties the definition of obscenity to local community standards
Read in Out on the screen →Douglas Lambert's Playgirl, a monthly built around the male centerfold, publishes its first regular issue in June and sells about 600,000 copies
In depth: Playgirl and the male centerfold →Peter Shaffer's play opens at the National Theatre with a nude scene in a stable at the climax of its second act
In depth: Naked on stage →The Museum of Modern Art screens L.A. Plays Itself and The Sex Garage in its Cineprobe series and acquires prints of Fred Halsted's films
In depth: L.A. Plays Itself →Two new magazines launch in the same year, Mandate in New York with full-frontal nudes and Drummer in Los Angeles for the leather scene
Read in The studio age →Pasolini's essay abjuring the Trilogy of Life is published in the Corriere della Sera a week after his murder at Ostia
In depth: Pasolini's Trilogy of Life →Kept out of Los Angeles by the police chief, Terry LeGrand and Roger Earl's leather film premieres at the Powell Theater in San Francisco
In depth: Leather and S&M on film →Los Angeles police raid a Drummer charity fundraiser and arrest about forty men and the magazine's editor
Read in The studio age →Joe Gage releases the first film of his working man trilogy, with Richard Locke and Jack Wrangler
Read in The studio age →A members-only leather club with a strict dress code opens at 835 Washington Street in New York's meatpacking district
In depth: Leather and S&M on film →Jack Deveau of Hand in Hand Films shoots a feature inside a 1,400-seat gay cinema near Times Square
Read in The studio age →Falcon releases its first feature on 8mm film and, for the first time, on VHS and Betamax videocassette
Read in The studio age →Touko Laaksonen makes his first trip to the United States for an exhibition at the Eons Gallery in Los Angeles
In depth: Tom of Finland →Joe Gage closes his working man trilogy with a story of grief and love, in which the trucker Hank finally settles down with a partner
In depth: The working man trilogy →Chuck Renslow moves the Mr. Gold Coast contest of his Chicago leather bar to Navy Pier and renames it International Mr. Leather
In depth: Leather and S&M on film →The most famous star of the clone era founds his own production company in Hermosa Beach, California
Read in The studio age →On 5 June the CDC reports a rare pneumonia in five young gay men, the first official record of what will be called AIDS
Read in The AIDS years →Bruce Weber's photograph of the pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus in Calvin Klein briefs goes up on a giant billboard over Times Square
In depth: Underwear ads →Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz publish one of the first safe-sex guides written by gay men for gay men
Read in The AIDS years →The city's health director orders fourteen bathhouses and sex clubs to close, and New York follows in 1985
Read in The AIDS years →Laaksonen and Durk Dehner set up a foundation in Los Angeles to preserve his drawings and erotic art in general
In depth: Tom of Finland →Wakefield Poole and Casey Donovan return to Fire Island to shoot a sequel, held up by litigation and lost in the glut of home video
In depth: Boys in the Sand →The star of Boys in the Sand dies of an AIDS-related illness in Florida, aged 43
Read in The AIDS years →After Jesse Helms shows the Senate a safer-sex comic, Congress bans federal money for AIDS education that could promote homosexuality
Read in The AIDS years →One of the first producers to insist on condoms in his films dies of AIDS complications in San Francisco, aged 40
Read in The AIDS years →New drug combinations presented in Vancouver cut AIDS deaths in the United States by almost half within a year
Read in The AIDS years →Nick Kamen strips to his boxer shorts in a British television advertisement for Levi's 501 jeans
In depth: Underwear ads →HIS Video releases Lifeguard, in which a San Francisco AIDS doctor talks about safe sex between the scenes, possibly the first gay porn film built around condoms
In depth: Condoms on set →On 20 May Attorney General Edwin Meese names the eleven members of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography
In depth: The Meese Commission →Al Parker's partner and co-founder of Surge Studio dies of AIDS on 9 September, four days after his diagnosis, and Parker turns to safer-sex advocacy
In depth: Al Parker →On 9 July the commission delivers its 1,960-page final report, with 92 recommendations for a crackdown on pornography
In depth: The Meese Commission →John Travis launches Jeff Stryker in Bigger Than Life and Powertool, the start of the most famous career of the gay video era
In depth: Jeff Stryker →A drag queen from Minnesota working as a publicist at Catalina Video directs a first film and goes on to make hundreds
Read in VHS to DVD →The Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act requires producers of explicit material to keep proof of every performer's age
In depth: The Meese Commission →The last issue of Bob Mizer's original Physique Pictorial, volume 41, comes out after almost forty years
In depth: Physique Pictorial →Gay Chicago Magazine prints its first awards for gay adult video in its year-end issue
Read in VHS to DVD →Herb Ritts photographs Mark Wahlberg, then the rapper Marky Mark, in Calvin Klein underwear for a campaign seen on billboards across the United States
In depth: Underwear ads →A Slovak director working as George Duroy founds Bel Ami, which makes the slim, smooth twink look famous
Read in VHS to DVD →Joseph W. Slade attributes Le Ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly and some twenty other French stag films to Bernard Natan, a claim later disputed
In depth: Le Ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly →A Los Angeles judge settles Jeff Stryker's lawsuit over the sex toy cast from his body by ordering the makers to pay him 25,000 dollars
In depth: Jeff Stryker →Bruce Cam and Robert Kirsch found Titan Media in San Francisco, one of the big studios of the video era
Read in VHS to DVD →DVD goes on sale in the United States, and adult studios soon move their catalogues onto disc
Read in VHS to DVD →Adult Video News holds a separate ceremony for gay porn for the first time, in Los Angeles
Read in VHS to DVD →Paul Morris founds a San Francisco studio that films sex without condoms, reopening the debate on safer sex in gay porn
Read in VHS to DVD →Weekly DVD rentals in the United States overtake videotape rentals for the first time
Read in VHS to DVD →A Florida court rules against a bulletin board operator whose users swapped 170 scanned Playboy photographs
Read in The internet →The star of Joe Gage's trilogy, who had become a safer-sex educator after learning he was HIV positive, dies of AIDS-related illness in Sacramento
In depth: The working man trilogy →The Supreme Court strikes down the indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act, giving online speech full First Amendment protection
Read in The internet →Bel Ami releases the film its founder later called the only one he ever shot exactly as planned, as Prague becomes a centre of gay porn production
In depth: Bel Ami →Excavations at Hadrian's Villa uncover a complex that its excavators identify as the shrine of Antinous
In depth: Antinous →The museum pays 1.8 million pounds, at the time its most expensive single acquisition
In depth: The Warren Cup →The Alinari archive in Florence acquires 878 glass negatives and 956 vintage prints, the core of what survives of Gloeden's work
In depth: Wilhelm von Gloeden →Gay video's biggest star takes a comic stage show about porn prison films from Los Angeles to San Francisco and on tour
In depth: Jeff Stryker →The Gabinetto Segreto in Naples reopens to the public with a new layout and no permit required
In depth: The Secret Cabinet of Naples →The founder of Falcon dies of an AIDS-related illness, and his estate funds the San Francisco LGBT Community Center that bears his name
In depth: Falcon Studios →Roger Edmonson publishes the biography of the clone era's biggest star, drawing on Parker's unpublished autobiography
In depth: Al Parker →A San Diego website launches the clean-cut, first-name-only formula of the gay web studios of the 2000s
Read in The internet →French sells the studio to John Rutherford and Tom Settle, who rename it Colt Studio Group and move it to San Francisco
In depth: Colt Studio →An Ontario company launches XTube, an adult site where users upload their own videos, followed by the first free tube sites
Read in The internet →The Warren Cup gets its own exhibition in London, from 11 May to 2 July
In depth: The Warren Cup →The best-known American porn studio takes a free tube site to court as uploaded scenes start to empty the DVD market
In depth: XTube and the tube sites →A location-based iPhone app shows gay men a grid of other men sorted by distance
Read in The internet →After thirty-five years on the newsstand, Playgirl's regular print edition ends with the January issue and the magazine moves online
In depth: Playgirl and the male centerfold →Fabian Thylmann acquires Pornhub, Brazzers and their sister sites, the start of the group later called MindGeek
Read in The internet →Dennis Bell, who bought the Mizer estate in 2003, founds a non-profit to preserve close to two million AMG images and films
In depth: Bob Mizer and the Athletic Model Guild →The FDA approves Truvada to reduce the risk of sexually acquired HIV, and condomless scenes return to mainstream gay porn within a few years
Read in The internet →More than 1.5 million Falcon slides and negatives go to the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California
In depth: Falcon Studios →Los Angeles County voters approve a law requiring condoms in adult films shot in the county, later upheld by a federal appeals court
In depth: Condoms on set →David Cairns and Paul Duane compare stills from the stag films with photographs of Bernard Natan and show that the performers are not him
In depth: Le Ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly →Finland's postal service issues three stamps based on Tom of Finland's drawings, pre-ordered from 178 countries
In depth: Tom of Finland →Vinegar Syndrome releases a restoration of Wakefield Poole's film made from the surviving film elements
In depth: Boys in the Sand →A London subscription site for creators opens in November and soon becomes the main shop for performers selling their own porn
Read in The creator economy →The Prevention Access Campaign launches U=U, and with PrEP it helps make bareback the norm in gay porn
Read in The creator economy →California voters turn down a statewide requirement for condoms in porn, months after the state's safety board rejected a similar rule
In depth: Condoms on set →The Bob Mizer Foundation relaunches Physique Pictorial as a quarterly, starting from volume 42
In depth: Physique Pictorial →The founder of Colt Studio dies in his sleep at the age of 84, fifty years after launching the company
In depth: Colt Studio →A fan site founded by the owner of a gay porn studio opens on Valentine's Day, built around performers rather than influencers
Read in The creator economy →The American businessman Leonid Radvinsky buys the London subscription site, which grows into the main shop for performers selling their own porn
In depth: OnlyFans and the creators →A New York Times column leads Mastercard and Visa to cut off Pornhub, which deletes every video from unverified uploaders
Read in The creator economy →The Museum of Modern Art makes new 4K preservations of L.A. Plays Itself and The Sex Garage from its archival 16mm prints
In depth: L.A. Plays Itself →Citing pressure from banks, OnlyFans announces a ban on explicit content on 19 August and suspends it on 25 August
Read in The creator economy →MindGeek switches off uploads to XTube in July and shuts the site on 5 September, deleting years of amateur gay videos
In depth: XTube and the tube sites →Louisiana becomes the first US state to require porn sites to verify that visitors are adults, starting a wave of state laws
Read in The creator economy →Rather than check the age of every visitor, Pornhub blocks the whole state of Utah on 1 May, the first of many states it leaves
In depth: Age verification laws →The US Supreme Court upholds the Texas age verification law by six votes to three
Read in The creator economy →From 25 July the Online Safety Act requires highly effective age checks on every porn site seen in the United Kingdom
Read in The creator economy →Aylo cuts off Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube for French users on 4 June in protest at age checks, returns briefly and leaves again in July
In depth: Age verification laws →From 12 November AGCOM requires porn sites to verify age under a system of double anonymity, starting with a list that includes Pornhub and OnlyFans
In depth: Age verification laws →Leonid Radvinsky dies of cancer at 43, and weeks later a stake in OnlyFans is sold at a valuation of about 3.15 billion dollars
In depth: OnlyFans and the creators →