Pornography used to be a much dirtier word than it is today. When I was a young adolescent, only boys watched porn. And boys only watched porn because boys were perverts. No self-respecting girl would ever watch porn.
Thank goodness things are changing!
Nowadays, people are a lot more sex-positive and willing to acknowledge that girls get horny, just like boys. Because that stigma is relaxing more and more, we’re seeing a big rise in women watching porn.
FINALLY! Women are watching porn! Isn’t that great? Well, yes, but it’s also really frustrating because the industry hasn’t reacted as quickly to this change as we want them to.
When I finally got over my internalized shame around watching porn, I was excited to embrace this new part of my sexual experience. I was excited to watch other people have sex and feel good. I was curious about the differences between the ways different people had sex. I thought porn would be like real sex but BETTER!
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when I tried to find porn I might actually enjoy. At first, I didn’t really understand. I mean, the rules of the internet clearly state,
“34. There is porn of it, no exceptions.”
I expected there to be EVERY kind of porn. Turns out, the person who wrote that was a man and he clearly had not even conceived of what women want.
Search Terms
I tried all sorts of searches. I’d describe the kind of guy I wanted to watch. I’d describe the sort of plot or circumstances I was interested in seeing. I described the emotional tone. Nothing.
The more I searched, the more I realized that the whole system was flawed. None of the existing categories appealed to me, but I wanted to watch some sexy porn damnit! So I chose my porn lady avatar and hoped for the best.
Anal
Have you ever noticed how the majority of porn involves a fair amount of anal play?
Seriously, almost every video involves at least a little anal. Usually a lot of anal.
As someone who gets anxious about doggy-style for fear of receiving “accidental anal”, this was not something I wanted to see. At all.
Contrary to what I believed for a long time, it is actually possible for some women to really enjoy anal sex and even orgasm from it! Unfortunately, most women will not be able to orgasm from anal sex. My own personal experience with talking with other women about it suggests that most women don’t enjoy it and don’t do it.
Anal sex is probably heavily featured in most straight porn for a couple reasons. One reason might be that men do actually usually take pleasure in anal play and are probably projecting that pleasure onto women. Another is likely because so few women will let their boyfriends penetrate them anally, so it becomes taboo, and we all know taboos are pretty sexy.
Unfortunately, not too many women benefit from this particular foray into taboo territory (though probably a lot more today than, say, 20 years ago).
Aggression
Even if I wasn’t bothered by anal, a lot of the porn readily available on the internet was really rough. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good enthusiastic romp here and there, but I don’t like losing my humanity.
Video after video of mainstream porn involves a lot of disturbing use of women’s bodies. I don’t have any desire to ban this kind of porn outright because I know that it’s an intentional production and just because some people enjoy watching it, doesn’t mean they want to do that, or at least not without consent. People are into all sorts of things sexually and it doesn’t make them bad people.
However, I do think there should be some level of variety available for those of us who aren’t into that being used/humiliated/violated vibe. There are plenty of blowjob videos that start out with a woman sensually licking and sucking a big, hard cock only to then be grabbed by the back of her head and forcibly moved so that she chokes. Again, some of those videos are fine, but it would be nice if it wasn’t the overwhelming majority.
Lesbian
Between the anal and degradation, I couldn’t find any straight porn I liked, so I turned to lesbian porn. Even though a lot of lesbian porn is still made for the male gaze and the performers don’t seem to be having a genuinely good time, some of them are softer. Some of them even match a pace that I would enjoy. Some of them actually look like they’re enjoying it and some of those orgasms look real.
The lesbian category has been very popular in the anglosphere for a number of years, mostly among women.
I believe that my experience is common for women and that we watch lesbian porn, not because we’re hot for lesbians, but because the other categories have scared us away.
When people watch porn, they want to identify with at least one of the performers. They want to feel like they’re in it. Most straight porn doesn’t offer women great options for who to identify with in sex scenes.
Lesbian porn isn’t the porn we want, but it’s the most palatable option.
It’s like being gluten intolerant. You go to a restaurant with your friends and the only option you have is a salad, so you order it because you’re hungry. It’s not what you want to eat, but it’s the only thing that won’t make you sick.
POV
POV (point of view) porn is explosively popular right now and it makes a lot of sense. It’s shot in a way that puts you in the point of view of one of the performers.
Who doesn’t want to feel like they’re a part of the porn they’re watching? However, POV porn is usually from a man’s perspective. POV blowjobs are hugely popular, but their counterpart (POV pussy licking) has far fewer results and most of them are STILL from the man’s perspective.
Solution? Pussy-havers: record your partner licking your pussy! You get to be just like all those disembodied porn dicks with no face. If your partner doesn’t want to show their face, put on a mask! There are not enough videos of real pussies getting pleasured, and certainly not enough genuine pussy orgasms! #pussypleasure
JOI
Jerk Off Instructions are videos where women talk into the camera and tell the guy watching what to do with his penis to get off. Her role is pretty much just to talk dirty and tell him to keep stroking. Can we make Pussy JOIs? I would LOVE to watch videos of hot men (or really any gender) talking into the camera, telling me to rub my pussy and play with my vibrator till I cum.
Full disclosure: I have a long-distance relationship with a European man and I swear, just listening to his sexy accent saying sexy things is enough to get me to climax in a matter of minutes. I can vouch for the sexiness of having a man tell you how sexy you are when you touch yourself.
Guys, please, be the good feminists you’re always wanting to be and make some decent Pussy JOIs. Tag your videos with Pussy JOI so we can find it when we really, really need it!
User-Generated Content and Amateur porn
Want to know the most exciting thing about the porn industry right now? Anyone can be a pornstar! Seriously, user-generated content is the best tool we have to make sure that we can find the porn we want.
The most popular porn sites allow users to upload their own videos. You also get to choose your own tags. This is so much power and yet we’re not really using that power strategically…yet.
Looking at the PornHub’s Year in Review from 2019, the top search was amateur. Though we don’t know for certain why this is, there’s a pretty strong theory that people are searching for amateurs because they want real sex.
The porn industry is very performative. It’s full of women ooo-ing and aww-ing to the camera throughout the entire thing and acting as they live for cum on their faces. Sure, some women are super into that, but probably not a ton.
We’re done with alternative-reality porn that doesn’t represent our real lived experiences. We want pornstars that look like our crushes and partners. We want scenes to play out in a way that’s believable.
The old days of porn are gone, but their legacy remains. The industry has a very clear formula that they’ve followed with great success for a long time. It’s time to shake it up. We need to show them what our real, mutually pleasurable sex looks like! We need them to hear genuine moans!
The popularity of amateur porn is a power we can harness. Let’s use it to shift the focus.
It’s a bright future
The internet has given a platform for voices that were never really heard before. We used to be at the mercy of big businesses who were in the habit of telling us what we want and making sure we don’t get to choose an alternative.
Now we live in a world where we, the consumers, have more and more control. We, the consumers, are the new content creators. It’s time to flood the internet with our homemade Pussy POV and Pussy JOI videos.
It’s time to create the porn we want to see in the world.
Featured art by Marie-Maxime Giguère
