2014 marks the tenth anniversary of the Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog and the ninth anniversary of this retrospective. And you know, I’m not sure the retrospective is needed anymore, especially since the topics have expanded beyond the old idea of “porn for women” and now include feminist porn, queer porn and censorship. Still, habits are hard to break and there has actually been a lot to report on in 2014 so here it is.
In The News
The phrase “porn for women” continues to be the subject of debate but I think it’s also being used less in the media… at least in terms of the “What? You mean women like porn?” style of report. There’s been a couple of big news stories related specifically to women’s porn this year.
* In February I wrote about a growing market for erotica for women in Japan. Films featuring handsome “Ikemen” and “Eromen” are essentially romances with a higher degree of sexuality involved. Japan still has strict censorship but its a step in the right direction.
* In mid May, Sarah Gidick became the latest media spokesperson for “porn for women” when she announced that she was converting her 80,000 follower Porn for Women Instagram account into a full-blown site, ThePFW.com.† “Women have a sensory reaction when they see a photo of a hot man. It’s the same idea as food porn or shoe porn. People are really enticed by it, and I think women get happy when they see a picture of a handsome man,” she told WWD. Journos leapt on the story when they realized her Instagram account didn’t actually involve any real porn (that’s against Instagram’s terms) and instead was a feed of good-looking male celebrity photos. Slate was quick to list 28 Non-Pornographic Things That Have Been Described As Porn For Women. And Jezebel had a go. Gidick’s reply to the criticism is here. The PFW site currently seems to be focusing on fashion and celebrities, not porn.
* In June Dutch cable TV channel Dusk, which offers porna – their term for porn for women – announced they would be launching in the US. Unfortunately it’s now January and they’ve yet to get a start but insiders tell me it won’t be long.
* In October, blogger Nikki Gloudeman wrote a piece for the Huffington Post called “Seriously, Why Is There No Good Porn For Women?” (Seriously, do you know how many times I’ve seen this headline? The answer is look harder, your tastes may be different to other people’s). In any case, instead of grumbling like I did, several female directors contacted this blogger to point out the error of her ways. Jackie St. James even sent her some DVDs. The result was this refreshing turnaround from the author and an interview with four female directors who aim to make porn for women – Jackie, Erika Lust, Anne Frolicme and Angie Rowntree from Sssh.com.
* November finally saw the publication of an article almost a year in the making. Zoe Williams wrote a great in-depth article analyzing ethical porn and included interviews with a number of feminist pornographers including Pandora Blake, Madison Young, Danny Wylde and me. Zoe originally conducted a long interview with me in December 2013 and I’d assumed the article had been spiked. Turns out it just took the Guardian a while to get the guts up to run it. The UK Telegraph then ran its own article which unfortunately gave a lot of time to anti-porn feminists. My post on both articles is here.
* Other articles:
Feminist porn: sex is about female pleasure too. The Independent profiles Annie Sprinkle and Madison Young. “So what’s the difference between the two worlds? ‘One’s an industry, one is a movement’”
Defining feminist porn: is that XXX flick organic? The Daily Beast asks the usual questions, interviews Madison and also talks to Chelsea Poe and Lily Cade.
Awards, Festivals And Events
Me with my Honorable Mention Feminist Porn Award. Pic by ToTheTProductions
* In January the two major adult expos – AVN and XBiz – featured panels on feminist porn, showing that the mainstream is increasingly interested in women as consumers. Apparently the AVN one wasn’t that great but those on the XBiz panel reported a better experience. XBiz also had a separate “Feminist Porn Release Of The Year” category for the first time ever. The gong went to Occupied by Shine Louise Houston. After the dust settled it seemed that the mainstream still feel uncomfortable with the idea of feminist porn – I blogged about that here. Still, Xbiz once again has a feminist porn category for the 2015 awards.
* In early April the 9th annual Feminist Porn Awards were held in Toronto along with the 2nd Feminist Porn Conference. This was once again the major event for this growing movement. I attended both events and made a mini-doco of the whole shebang, along with a large report. Some of the winners at this year’s awards included No Artificial Sweeteners by The Madame (Best Short), The Submission of Emma Marx (Steamiest Romantic Movie) and Jennifer Lyon Bell’s Silver Shoes (Movie of the Year).
The conference was a fascinating event and proved that the conversation about feminist porn is evolving. I was part of a panel session discussing: Feminist porn: what it is, what it isn’t and why it matters. The concept of “authenticity” came under a lot of scrutiny, something I myself examined after an interesting filming experience in Toronto.
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While in Toronto I met a BBC journalist called Daniel Nasaw who was there to cover the awards. He sat in on the filming of Instructed, my collaboration with Pandora Blake, and then interviewed both of us along with several other performers and filmmakers. His article was a great summary of the awards. Here’s my post about it.
* In July Sssh.com organized a promotional debate called Women In Porn: Shattering The Myths. The event was newsworthy because they couldn’t find an anti-porn advocate to attend the panel.
* October saw the ninth annual Berlin Porn Film Festival where, for the first time, over 50% of films were made by women (a statistic that seriously shows up Hollywood, where only 5% of films are helmed by female directors). Here’s my doco and blog post about the festival.
* In late November Dusk TV held their second annual Porna Awards. The awards are decided according to voting on the Dusk Panel, which is a selection of porn-loving women who rate all the films seen on the channel. Best Porna went to Lena by British company Joybear. Best New Porna was won by Girls Sex Tricks by Spanish filmmaker Lara Tinelli. I was happy to be nominated.
Statistics and Research
* Pornhub made a lot of waves in September when they released traffic data based on gender and labelled it “What Women Want.” According to their stats, the top four categories women seek out on Pornhub are Lesbian, Gay, Teen and For Women, with the last being the one category women look at more than men. It also found that women searched for “eating pussy” and “pussy licking” more than men. As someone whose made a business out of catering to straight women, I had a few thoughts on this – post here. Filmmakers Erika Lust and Ovidie also chimed in and we all said pretty much the same thing (that what women search for on a sexist, racist, often offensive free porn site may not totally equate to “what women want”).
* It takes far more time and effort to debunk a lie than it ever takes to tell it. That’s certainly true of A Billion Wicked Thoughts, the dodgy research conducted by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam in 2011 (read my post here what’s wrong with it). In 2014, their erroneous assertions have been given a second run. Firstly in Psychology Today, where Ogas regurgitated his belief that women don’t like porn because they’re born that way (my latest response here). This led The Daily Dot to ask Is Porn For Women Pointless? And Alternet happily aired it all here. So did Bustle. Then it popped up again in the wake of the Pornhub stats. I gotta say, how hard is it to do some real research, people?
* In February a Cosmopolitan survey asked women who or what they focused on when watching porn. The results showed 60% focused on both partners when watching heterosexual porn, with 28% watching the woman and only 11% watching the man.
* The Australian Study of Health and Relationships released the results of their second major sex and relationship survey in November, the first being 10 years ago. The research spans many areas of sexuality but of interest are the stats on porn use. It found that “63% of men and 20% women had looked at pornography in the past year. Ten years ago, only 16% of men had visited an internet sex site and just 2.5% of women”. (Link)
* Dazed Digital conducted an extensive online survey of young people’s attitudes to sex and their results with regard to porn are really interesting. It found no gender difference in the numbers of people who watched porn; of the 75% of respondents that do enjoy porn, “around three out of five watch it at least once a week, regardless of gender.” The survey did find that 90% of the people who never watch porn are women.
In terms of what porn women are watching, Dazed found a greater diversity in tastes, with women far more open minded towards same-sex pairings. “The fact that twice as many girls chose ‘other’ as their favourite porn type than guys, for example, suggests that mainstream porn does not cater for women’s needs as well as it does their male equivalents.”
New Porn Movies and Sites
* I finished my first feature film The Fantasy Project – more details below.
* Petra Joy released her new film (S)he Comes which features a rather lovely threesome starring Wolf Hudson, Liandra Dahl and Jiz Lee.
* Shine Louise Houston released Bed Party, a short film featuring real-life queer couple Eden and Sebastian. It’s the first film I’ve ever seen that opens with male anal fisting.
* FrolicMe is a new glamour porn site aimed squarely at straight women. It combines erotic stories with artily-shot films.
* British couples site Joybear has been going strong since it launched in early 2014 with new full films added regularly like new releases Taste and The Pleasure Professionals 2.
* Erika Lust has fully launched her new site XConfessions which accepts fantasy submissions from members. She then makes 2 short films a month from the best ones. They also appear at Lust Cinema.
* Sophie Delancey and the people from The Art of Blowjob have finally evened up the score with their new site The Art of Cunnilingus. (Ten years ago I started my site Pure Cunnilingus. This is the first real bit of competition I’ve seen in this genre in all that time!)
* Kate Sinclaire from Cherry Stems has soft-launched her site CineSinclaire. It features a variety of indie queer content.
* San Francisco Lesbians, Courtney Trouble’s first collaboration with mainstream company Smash Films’ new label Pink Velvet, was released in September.
* French director Ovidie released her latest film Pulsion, which was one of my favourite films from the Berlin PFF.
There were a whole bunch of couples-friendly and romance-themed mainstream porn films released in 2014, along with a number of indie and queer titles. You’ll find them listed at Porn Movies For Women.
Censorship Shenanigans
* The December 1 introduction of new ATVOD guidelines banning certain sex acts from online porn in the UK has caused a wave of outrage there and internationally. The rules, which bring British online porn into line with existing DVD laws, prohibits the depiction of hard spanking, caning, bondage, gags, facesitting, fisting and female ejaculation. The last three are listed as being particularly “harmful”. Friend and feminist porn producer Pandora Blake has been at the forefront of the protests against this censorship, posting this widely-circulated post and a good URL roundup.
I wrote a piece about it for Daily Life and gave my view in this blog post. The new rules are now worse than Australia’s “Refused Classification” category.
On December 12 a protest against the laws was held in front of parliament with the press going into a frenzy over the mass facesitting aspect of it. Sample article. Violet Blue’s roundup. Pandora went on Channel 4 and did a great job of making her case against a woman who was arguing about what is “unacceptable” (official clip here, Youtube clip here). Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the ban went too far.
* In May, Vimeo summarily deleted all my videos, despite my attempts to adapt them to their rules. I decided to question them on their definition of “sexual stimulation” and successfully got most of them restored, though I spent many days re-editing them to suit the service. I posted their replies on the blog. Other porn producers like Dusk, Jennifer Lyon Bell, Lucie Blush and Four Chambers have had their accounts deleted by Vimeo this year. My Youtube account was also deleted without any hope of appeal in April.
* On 12 December The Daily Dot posted about how Twitter had suspended numerous sex workers due to their adult avatars and raised questions as to whether Twitter – previously friendly to porn and sex work – was about to have its own Pornocalypse.
* A similar drama had ensued at Facebook in September when drag queens and queers were targeted for not having “real names”. Despite Facebook publicly meeting with aggrieved parties, porny and queer people are still being banned from the site due to their pseudonyms. Here’s what I wrote about why “Louise Lush” is here to stay.
* In May adult star Eden Alexander ended up in a near-death situation thanks to a cluster of health issues. When her friends rallied to try and pay her medical bills and living expenses via a fundraiser on Giveforward, Wepay, the site’s billing company, abruptly froze the account and withheld the money, citing a breach of their rules because porn was involved (it wasn’t). It emerged that Wepay had made the decision after reading tweets from porn friends that mentioned Eden. The story became big news and Wepay found itself in an embarrassing PR situation. The situation raised wider questions about the way that billing companies censor and discriminate against porn and workers in the sex industry. In the end, an alternative site raised the funds and Eden got better and returned to work. She tells her own story here.
* Similar billing-company based discrimination occurred in April when Kitty Stryker and Andre Shakti tried to raise money to attend the Feminist Porn Awards and Paypal denied their funds. Kitty wrote about the ongoing issue here. I wrote about my own experiences of financial discrimination here.
Naked Men
* I have to give a shout out to the Warwick Rowers, who have gone a step beyond their annual nude calendar and made an hour long nudie video, all in the name of raising funds to fight homophobia. Well done, boys.
* While Game of Thrones continued to be hugely popular in 2014, several people pointed out that the ratio of male nudity to female nudity is out of whack; simply, we want more full-frontal cock in Westeros. “There’s not enough penis,” wrote Rebecca Pahle in Salon. Lili Loufbourow went further and pondered why GOT refused to cater to the female gaze. Her piece had me cheering:
I’m far from the first person to say we need more manparts on “Game of Thrones.” But this isn’t just about penises vs. breasts—seeing Tywin on the john in the finale had certain charms, but not the kind I mean. It’s about situation and camera angle. It’s about who has the right to be turned on. It’s about whose genitals are worth catering to.
Lili is not alone. The gorgeous Kit Harington has shown that he does know something after all by calling for more male nudity. As has Natalie Dormer, who plays Margaery Tyrell. Huffington Post helpfully compiled all the nudity and sex into one video so you can review this issue for yourself.
* In August, Jezebel posted cartoons of Disney princes naked, causing a bit of a kerfuffle. My thoughts here.
Ms. Naughty in 2014
It’s been a very busy year of filmmaking and travelling for me, which has meant my blog and writing duties were seriously neglected. The major project that took up most of my time was my first feature film The Fantasy Project. I finished principal photography in late May, having shot it scene-by-scene in various locations including Toronto. It took until October to edit and grade it. Given that the entire film was self-financed and produced entirely by me and my spouse, I guess that’s not a bad timetable.
The Fantasy Project is about a woman who is researching female sexual fantasies. It’s unashamedly a porn film and features a number of explicit scenes including a MMF bisexual threesome, a BDSM-themed group sex scene and also some sexy male masturbation.
The film premiered at the Berlin Porn Film Festival and the session was sold out, which was nice. I made a decision to make a few changes after the screening and so it’s really only been finally finished in late December. I’m in the process of setting up a VOD at Bright Desire to sell the film and will also see if I can get it available digitally at a few other places. DVDs may not be an option as they are expensive to produce and nobody buys them anymore. I’ll post release details in the coming weeks.
Bright Desire turned 2 at the start of December and is going really well. My schedule of filming and editing one new scene a month to the site has kept me incredibly busy and I’ve done a lot of travelling in order to shoot and promote the site. Bright Desire also sponsored a number of events this year including the Feminist Porn Conference and the Pornotopia Film Festival.
A still from the scene I shot in Berlin starring real-life couple Nichole and Jacob
In April I went to Toronto for the Feminist Porn Awards and shot five scenes there. I received an Honorable Mention Award for Something Better: Performers Talk About Feminism and Porn and was a speaker on several panels at the Feminist Porn Conference. In October I attended the Berlin Porn Film Festival where I was on the short film jury and also had a Filmmaker in Focus session.
A highlight of my year was when Dear Jiz won Best Experimental Short at Cinekink NY. This film makes me so proud and I continued to be humbled by the wonderfulness that is Jiz Lee. I got to screen it with Jiz present in Berlin and it remains an emotional experience.
For The Girls is now over 11 years old and it’s still going strong. Who knew that our little amateur porn for women site would last this long?
Longer Posts From 2014
Scripted Fantasy Vs. “Authenticity”: A Tricky Balancing Act – A bit of self-analysis as to methods, motives and ethics when creating porn
I Am A “John”: Thoughts on sex work and porn – Why I support sex workers and why you should too
Appearance, Gender and Why I’m Not “Cis” – Musings on my place in the gender spectrum
The Male Gaze In Porn (With Commentary By Doge) – the video that got me banned from everywhere.
Have I missed anything? Email me: msnaughty at msnaughty.com
Previous Retrospectives:
Porn for Women Retrospective 2013 – James Deen, more feminist porn, Porn Studies and Eric Northman naked
Porn for Women Retrospective 2012 – Fifty Shades of Grey, romance porn, After Pornified and the growth of feminist porn
Porn for Women Retrospective 2011 – Younger women using porn, more hot movies, sites and festivals.
Porn for Women Retrospective 2010 – “Hello Ladies”, queer fun, more hot movies and anti-porn crusades.
Porn for Women Retrospective 2009 – Oprah, awards and increasing censorship
Porn for Women Retrospective 2008 – Goodbye Playgirl, more queer porn, erotica book covers, The Porn Report and more.
Porn for Women Retrospective 2007 – That housework book, Daniel Craig in togs and blowjob debates
Porn for Women Retrospective 2006 – Inaugural Feminist Porn Awards, CAKE and Ellora’s Cave
† Insider story. Sarah tweeted me asking to buy one of my porn for women domains. I counter-offered, asking if I could buy her Instagram account, mostly as a joke. No further correspondence was entered into. She’s since deleted the original tweet so it looks like I’m asking her to buy her account out of the blue. Ahem.