I Worked On Feminist Porn Set // Here's What I Learnt
Last year I spent my birthday working on a feminist porn set with production company Sugar Town Girls. I wrote the following about my experiences and why I think we need to make more porn, not less. Sorry mum.
It’s my 31st birthday and I’m a little out of breath from spending the morning inflating hundreds of black balloons. I’m stood beside an ornate bath tub in a disused pub, watching with a mixture of curiosity and self-consciousness as a woman wearing a strap-on penis has sex with a woman wearing deer antlers. At first it’s awkward and disjointed, a stop-start encounter amid the balloons. Yet it soon begins to feel more sensuous and intimate. I’m transfixed by the spectacle in front of me.
I’m spending the day working as a production assistant on the set of a feminist porn film, All Eyez On Me. The movie is a mix of non-narrative sequences, there’s no plot as such, instead creating what feels more like a music video, a dreamlike fantasy with constant visual changes. “We're making art," says Caroline Flores, one of the actors. “It’s kinky. I love working girl on girl.”
There’s a myth that women don’t enjoy watching pornography but I sometimes take pleasure in watching porn when I masturbate. And I’m not alone. The most searched for term on Pornhub in 2017 was ‘porn for women’ and recent studies by Pornhub and YouPorn found that around a quarter of pornography audiences worldwide are female. The number of sites now dedicated to feminist porn is also testament to its popularity. “Feminist porn is amazing because it adds a new voice to the conversation about internet porn that we urgently need,” says Julia Schönstädt, All Eyez On Me director.
It’s a complex and growing genre. Not only does feminist porn strive to showcase female pleasure and cater to women’s desires, it also addresses vital issues such as consent and ethical production. Bored with seeing clichéd representations of sex through the male gaze, this is female scripted, female-directed and female led. The women drive the narrative and female gratification is at the forefront.
Adreena Angela, one of the actors in today’s film, elaborates: “I like porn and I want to enjoy it but I can’t find mainstream porn that doesn’t make me roll my eyes. The girls don’t look like they’re having fun. Why is he slapping her tit?! Why is he pulling her hair?! I think it’s very important to show some real female pleasure.” Like Angela, whenever I scroll through mainstream porn websites I'm always conscious of the way they commonly represent women and the problems this perpetuates. With titles such as ‘pussy gets pounded’, ‘obedient anal slave’ and ‘submissive in training’, the female role is too often reductive and subordinate. Women are portrayed as commodities, needed only to fulfil male sexual desires.
One academic study which looked at 50 of the most purchased porn films found that 88% of the scenes contained physical violence and 49% contained verbal aggression. Disturbingly, 95% of the victims (almost all of whom were women, it said) were either neutral to the abuse or appeared to respond with pleasure. To put it simply, a lot of porn narratives show women getting beaten up and smiling about it. I worry how these behaviours seep into everyday sexual relationships.
Of course, it’s not just women who are the victims of porn’s predominant narratives. In a survey of 1,500 young adult men, 56% said their tastes in porn had become “increasingly extreme or deviant” and doctors are seeing an epidemic of young men with erectile dysfunction, low sex drives and trouble reaching orgasm thought to be exacerbated by their addictions to porn.
Psycho-sexual therapist Sarah Paton Briggs tells me: “A rise in porn addiction has led to increasing demand for counselling: either men wanting to deal with their porn use or couples needing to press the reset button if problematic porn use by one partner has been uncovered. This can be incredibly distressing and can be hugely damaging for relationships.”
Flores is steadying her antlers, preparing to step into a roll-top bathtub for the next scene. Angela is waiting akimbo in a trench coat. The camera catches glimpses of the pair’s most intimate moments – their smiles and laughter; the blush of their cheeks; their lust and passion – as well as their more erotic exploits (feminist porn is by no means ‘soft’).
As a straight cisgender women, lesbian sex is not my fantasy, but I feel comfortable watching a performance which reflects my ethical conscience if not my specific sexual desires. Watching such attentive sex through a feminist lens, I’m reminded that pornography itself is not inherently negative. Clearly what matters is the kind of porn we produce and consume.
However, those who work within the industry are divided by the merits of the term ‘feminist porn’ – some fear that it actively dissuades many men from watching and understanding its values. “I’m not a fan of the term feminist porn,” says Cindy Gallop, founder of ‘real-world sex’ subscription service, Make Love Not Porn, “because when you call porn feminist most men will go 'not for me', and I very much want men to watch it because they won't believe how hot, arousing, enjoyable and educational that kind of porn can be for them.”
As we move upstairs to shoot the next scene, I notice there’s a pink neon triangle hanging on the far wall behind the actors. Coco, the producer, tells me later the pink triangle was a symbol used to identify gay men in the holocaust and has since been reclaimed as a symbol of queer resistance. I’m learning more today about sex than I ever learned at school. Sure, we were taught about periods, STIs and consent, but school doesn’t teach you how to care for your partner physically and emotionally between the sheets.
Another thing I’m learning is that feminist porn is about far more than what’s in front of the camera. “We respect each other on the set. Every woman is doing her job with passion; everybody knows what’s needed, everybody understands that we’re taking control in our own hands; everyone is proud of their job,” explains Flores. The actors are being well paid, looked after with unconditional care. Feminist values run throughout the production process.
All Eyez On Me is the result of an open-call by renowned adult film-maker Erika Lust, to encourage and financially support other female film-makers. Unsurprisingly then, the director, producer, gaffer, focus puller and lighting crew are all women (there is only one man on set in an assistant role) and the result is that set feels like a safe, nurturing space. Schönstädt says: “It’s been a beautiful experience for me personally to have so many women on the team in all the key roles. Usually as a woman I’m one of the very few, if not the only woman on set bar hair and makeup. If we as women don’t come together to make those changes ourselves, men certainly won’t either. It’s great to see that feminist porn has grown into this huge movement that will hopefully do its part in changing people’s perception of how we regard sex and intimacy.”
And that’s just it, porn goes beyond just pleasure. It has an educational responsibility whether intentional or not. Inevitably, many young people learn more about sex via porn. As Gallop tells me: “As a society, we still refuse to talk openly, honestly and straightforwardly about sex. Porn continues to operate as sex education by default. Nothing educates about consensual, communicative sex and good sexual behaviour as well as watching people actually having that kind of sex.”
As we move upstairs to shoot the next scene I’m heartened to know that there’s a whole industry dedicated to women’s pleasure – a place online for the kind of porn I desire, and an army of women keen to create it. The conundrum with ethical porn, however, is that it’s not cheap to make. This also means it’s not generally free to watch and is not as widely seen as it might otherwise be.
So how can ethical, feminist porn become mainstream and how can we ensure its values and narratives flourish? Gallop tells me we must talk about sex and porn as naturally as we talk about anything else, and that we must share the porn we enjoy with male partners. And, she adds, we must contribute by making the kind of porn we want to see. I laugh as I think back at my time on set – does inflating all of those balloons count?
