If you haven’t heard of feminist porn here’s a rundown of what it is and why it matters.
While there’s no universal standard for what qualifies as feminist porn, there are some elements the community generally agrees upon, according to the Feminist Porn Awards.
What is feminist porn?
First and foremost the porn has to be ethical. That means performers are paid fairly, given autonomy, treated with respect, and have good working conditions. Feminist porn filmmakers often collaborate with actors to make sure the person’s pleasure is incorporated in the scene—making for more authentic and arguably better scenes.
A hallmark of feminist porn is inclusivity. Many films prioritize the sexual visibility of people (as actors and filmmakers) and forms of sex that are often excluded from traditional porn narratives. This focus on inclusivity takes on many forms, from Shine Louis Houston’ approach to feature marginalized people including trans people, queer people, BIPOC, fat folks, and actors with differing abilities to Make Love, Not Porn’s focus on scenes that highlight all the silly, messy, and sexy bits that happen in real-life intimacy.
Here’s the thing, if you want to watch feminist porn it likely won’t be free. How else do you think people are being paid fairly? But that monthly subscription or one-time payment is the cost of knowing the people you’re watching aren’t being exploited.
Think of it kinda like a Netflix or Spotify subscription but for orgasms.
Check out the list below for some feminist porn to get you started.
Feminist porn 2020
1) XConfessions
From the get, XConfessions’s site, founded by the trailblazing filmmaker Erika Lust, looks absolutely delightful (sorry to sound like a Mary Poppins character). Scrolling through its films: BIPOC, fat rolls, a pregnant woman, older people, female pleasure, and queer folks are featured front and center. There’s no digging for inclusivity, its right there.
And the ~aesthetics~ of it all. The site’s content is beautiful from the film posters to the cinematography. Performers also look like they’re genuinely enjoying themselves, making the films all the more inviting.
The site also has a few non-traditional categories including music and dance, quickies, menstruation, and comedy.
In addition to all that, XConfessions has a fun interactive element. Viewers can submit their erotic fantasy on the site and maybe, just maybe, Lust will adapt their fantasy into a film.
2) PinkLabel.tv
Pink Label is like the ethical Amazon of indie and feminist porn. You can browse its many films and rent them for two days or, for a few bucks more, have it in your streaming library to revisit whenever you’d like. Sales directly support the filmmakers.
The site was founded by the legendary Shine Louis Houston, who champions inclusivity in all her work. Pink Label is a home for films that weren’t mainstream enough to be featured on other sites or that would have been censored for activities that stray from traditional straight porn. Porn films often need to be hosted on other platforms since getting a website up and covering credit card processor fees makes it increasingly difficult for filmmakers to make a profit.
The site hosts experimental films and people of all identities, abilities, and appearances. Its homepage currently highlights POC porn, Edu-porn, The Feminist Porn Gaze, and Boygasms. Pink Label also celebrates the work of women directors including those who are BIPOC, queer, and trans.
3) Crash Pad Series
Crash Pad Series is a continuation of the sex cult classic The Crash Pad—a secret San Francisco apartment whose key gets passed around so queer people can use it for their sex rendevous. Directed by Shine Louise Houston, one of the industry’s leading Black voices, the site prioritizes visibility for all people. Take a look at their Stars page and you’ll see an array of body types, gender, and gender expression, trans people, BIPOC, folks over 50, and people with differing abilities—among other identities.
Scenes come from the minds and fantasies of the site’s performers who are real-life “couples, play-partners, friends with benefits, and mutual crushes.” The Crash Pad team is basically there to film and bring participant’s vision to life.
Each performer is paid the same rate no matter who they are, how much experience they have, or how naked they decide to get. Their current rate is $500 for a half-day (3 hours maximum). Performers also get a lifetime site membership and the option to make ongoing earnings on their shoots.
Personally, the gem of this site is how approachable it is. Featured on its homepage is a COVID video where performer Ramses Rodstein hails the benefits of masturbating for stress relief from their cozy home set up and tells viewers to “wash those hands before you masturbate.”
4) Bright Desire
Bright Desire is about celebrating “all that’s good about sex” including the intimacy, pleasure, laughter, connection, fantasy, and fun that we rarely see in mainstream porn. If you love the bond between real-life couples (mostly straight though) the site has a whole collection of videos. Bright Desire also hosts a number of solo female and male masturbation scenes with voice overs and a female fantasy project.
Aside from porn videos the site hosts behind the scenes footage, post-scene interviews with performers, mini-documentaries, and erotic fiction.
Bright Desire features some queer, BIPOC, and older folks it seems the majority of its cast is white with bodies that fit the traditional standard of beauty. The site acknowledges that its main focus is on heterosexual sex.
5) Make Love, Not Porn
As its name implies the site is all about highlighting the silly, messy, sexy, glorious, and real-life things that happen when people are having sex with the purpose of making love, not porn. MLNP describes itself as “what Facebook would be if Facebook allowed everyone to socially sexually self-identify and self-express (which sadly, they don’t).”
Literally everybody over 18 anywhere in the world is encouraged to participate whether they’re flying solo or in a group. People submit their videos (accidents and awkwardness welcome) and they’re then curated by the Make Love, Not Porn team to make sure everything on the site is consensual, contextualized, and free of porn-cliches. Half of video rental revenue goes to those starring in the video.
Here are a few of the categories you can find on the site: public sex, sex with giggling, period sex, grinding, pegging, dirty talk, and mature sex.
6) FrolicMe
FrolicMe is a jack of all trades when it comes to sex and pleasure from a woman’s perspective.
In addition to HD videos the site has a gallery of high-quality photos, erotic readings, and audio porn stories. If you’re curious about what porn written by a woman is like I suggest browsing FrolicMe’s archive of free erotic stories.
Some of the stories give you a detailed backstory, immersing you in the characters before plunging into the sexy bits. Others immediately drop you into a sex scene leaving the characters to guide you through the many sensations they’re experiencing at the moment.
While you can imagine some of these erotica and audio characters as you like, the site still mainly features thin white women and conventionally built white men.
7) Sounds of Pleasure
Here’s one that’s free but ethical. Tumblr may have banned nudity but that doesn’t mean it’s been fully scrubbed of erotic content. Hosted on the site, Sounds of Pleasure queues up a new audio clip just about every day. With five years and 93 pages to click through I’m sure there’s something that will pique your interest.
Many of the audio clips are of people moaning, having sex, reaching orgasm, or the buzz of their sex toys. The audio tags include edging, couples, Femdom, begging and mutual masturbation.
Some of the clips have a generic title and sparing description of the person and whats happening while others give a sentences of backstory for the listener—up to you what you prefer.
The site is inclusive and gets its audio directly from listener submissions.
8) Slipshine
Slipshine is an erotic comics publisher that’s been around for almost two decades. They describe themselves as actively promoting “positive representations of various kinks, pairings, and orientations.” The site works with everyone from up-and-coming artists to career veterans to publish at least 100 new comic pages every month.
The site features just about every type of person and form of sex—both real and imagined. Among their comics is one series about nuns and naked angels, gay monsters, and an army of world-saving sexbots.
While the comics all have their own visual and writing style, many are produced with a humorous and dramatic edge not often found in traditional porn.
Feminist porn 2020: On the Watch
9) OnlyFans
Here’s a curveball. OnlyFans recently skyrocketed in popularity, likely a mix of that Beyoncé mention in the “Savage” remix and everyone—including out of work sex workers—being stuck at home because of the pandemic.
Whether the site can be considered feminist porn is up in the air. Were the site to operate without a hitch then maybe it would qualify. Creators who use the site keep about 80% of their earnings, most than other simialr sites, and have the autonomy to choose what they do or post.
That all sounds great, except for the fact that multiple OnlyFans creators claim they were kicked off the site and had funds withheld even though there was no evidence of that they’d violated site policies, Rolling Stone reported.
We’ll keep an eye out to see if OnlyFans turns this around.
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