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A History of Porn for WomenPorn for women is sexually explicit material – photos, movies and written content – designed expressly for a female audience. It's sometimes known as erotica for women. This article aims to give a history of porn for women, covering the major developments, producers, participants and associated philosophies behind it. IntroductionSince its inception in ancient times, pornography has primarily been designed for men. The majority of porn involves depicting naked women or sex acts for the enjoyment of the male viewer. The assumption about audience has meant that pornography often depicts male fantasies, or a male view of sex. There is, however, a branch of pornography that aims to cater to women. The aim behind porn for women is to showcase sexually explicit imagery that depicts female fantasies and focuses on female pleasure. Porn for women is a relatively new concept. For most of the twentieth century it was assumed that women were not interested in graphic depictions of sex. In Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, Dr Alfred Kinsey reported that 88% of women "never" responded to nude photographs and concluded that women were not stimulated by visual depictions of sex. He did, however, note that "there are almost no male or female nudes which are produced for the consumption of females." The popular belief that "women aren't visually stimulated" meant that very few commercial operations bothered to create porn for a female audience. It was generally considered that romance novels were the female equivalent of men's porn, and that slightly risqué descriptions of sex, with plenty of euphemisms thrown in, were all that women wanted. The 70sThe 1970s changed all that. Women's liberation, arriving fast on the heels of the sexual revolution of the 60s, saw a new vision of women's sexuality emerge. Sexual pioneers such as Betty Dodson encouraged women to discover themselves through masturbation and Nancy Friday revealed the hitherto-unknown world of female sexual fantasy in her book My Secret Garden. In April 1972, Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan, took the unprecedented step of including a male centerfold in her women's magazine. The near-naked photo of Burt Reynolds heralded the start of a new age for women's erotica, one that aimed to turn the tables on traditional porn by offering photos of unclothed, sexualised men created purely for an admiring female eye. Australian women's magazine Cleo followed Cosmo's lead in November 1972 with a near-nude centerfold of actor Jack Thompson. Numerous celebrity spreads followed, but, on the whole, male centerfolds in women's magazines did not normally feature full-frontal nudity. PlaygirlIn 1973 Playgirl magazine, the female equivalent of the hugely popular Playboy, was launched. It promptly sold out of its print run of 600,000 copies. The first centerfold was Lyle Waggoner (Major Steve Trevor from Wonder Woman) in June 1973. Waggoner's spread did not feature full nudity and this resulted in complaints from disappointed female readers. Playgirl promptly gave them what they wanted with a fully nude George Maharis. The title has continued to provide full-frontal nudity in their photo spreads, except for a brief lapse in 1987 – a decision which saw the magazine's fan base collapse. The editors re-instated the nude in 1988. Playgirl was the first magazine to concern itself primarily with female sexuality, often featuring articles on techniques, problems and sexual health. The magazine also featured erotica written by its readers, and photos of amateur men sent in by wives and girlfriends. Despite the magazine being aimed at heterosexual women, Playgirl's editors admitted in 2003 that around 50% of the readership base were gay men. In 2003 Playgirl launched a pay-per-view TV channel, PlaygirlTV. The channel features erotic movies for women made by female directors. PlaygirlTV also went online in 2006 after having been legally prevented from doing so since 2000. Crescent Publishing, the company behind Playgirl, had been convicted of credit card fraud committed primarily through the Playgirl site and was thus not allowed to create a branded site for the magazine. Other adult magazines for womenThere have been a number of magazines for women that followed the Playgirl format. Australian Women's Forum offered male centrefolds and amateur men as well as articles about sex, erotic fiction and a Penthouse-style letters section. The magazine ran from 1990 to 2001, when increasing censorship and falling circulation saw it close. In Britain, For Women magazine first appeared in 1992. It also featured nude male centrefolds, including several celebrities. The magazine ran for several years and was the subject of a number of academic studies into how women reacted to porn, but is now defunct. In January 2004 the independently produced Sweet Action magazine was launched. Based in New York with a staff of four, the magazine aims to offer an alternative vision of "porn for girls." Their male centrefolds are not the typical beefcake male models; rather, the magazine features thinner, "indie" types. At time of writing a total of four issues have been released. In 2006 Gluck magazine arrived on the scene in Germany. The mag is run by two women, Nicole Rudiger and Elke Kuhlen. With a similar "indie" outlook to Sweet Action, the title features non-mainstream male models. Scarlet magazine is a UK-based title that offers written erotica along with standard women's articles on health, fashion and beauty. It is edited by Emily Dubberly of Clitical, an online erotica magazine. Candida RoyalleEx-porn star Candida Royalle broke new ground in 1984 with the creation of her adult film company, Femme Productions. Royalle and her partners made Femme, the first porn movie made specifically for heterosexual women. The film offered seven vignettes depicting what Candida considered to be typical female fantasies, and deliberately went against porn dogma by refusing to include cum shots. Released with no advertising, the film sold well, surprising various naysayers who believed that women would not buy porn. Two other films followed in 1985, including the award-winning Christine's Secret. At time of writing, Femme Productions has released 16 films, including several with feature directors such as Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Hart. Most of her films feature storylines and realistic characters. There are less genital close-ups than standard porn, but more foreplay and emotional buildup. The focus is always on female pleasure and fantasy, even if the sex is relatively softcore. "It is not necessarily explicit sex that makes a scene hot," Candida says on her website. "It is the energy of the two people involved: are they really into what they're doing? Are they honestly enjoying each other? Is there real heat here?" The Femme films have been recommended by sex therapists as the sort of sex-positive erotica that couples should use together and they have been used as part of several experiments researching the responses of women to porn (see below). In the last couple of years Candida has stepped back from directing with the aim of encouraging a new generation of female directors to create porn for women. Caribbean Heat, released in 2005, featured new talent Manuela Sabrosa behind the camera, with Candida taking on the role of executive producer. More Femme films following this format are expected in the future. Other porn movies for womenSince Femme first appeared on the scene, major porn studios have made little attempt to follow in Candida Royalle's footsteps. The "couples porn" genre is the token gesture made toward female viewers; these films usually offer a plot but the sex is formulaic and still very much made for men. A number of female directors have stepped up to the plate with the intention of creating porn films expressly for straight women. In 2004 Estelle Joseph used her own cash to create City of Flesh, a porn movie set in New York and based on her own sexual fantasies and those of her female friends. Stella Films Productions (formerly Red Light Interactive) have since made another five City of Flesh films, all created for a female audience. The films are vignette-style pieces with a distinct urban viewpoint, and the sex is hardcore. Inpulse Digital was launched in the same year. Originally intended only as a pay-tv channel, it has morphed into a film production company. It's first feature was Velvet Thrust, starring porn star Julian. The aim behind Inpulse was to create porn "for women who love men." The idea was to shoot adult movies featuring good-looking male porn stars and ensure that the camera focused on the man, not the woman. Inpulse has since released two other films. Producer and Director Nina Lennox – who has worked for Inpulse - has also created her own porn for women company, Lennox Films, and released a number of titles under her own steam, including Ranch House Lust. These films, like those of Inpulse, focus mainly on the male porn stars, although they do not feature female orgasms. Spanish filmmaker Erika Lust made waves in 2004 with her short film The Good Girl, an indie porn movie for women. After meeting resistance within the porn industry to her product, she posted the film online for free in 2006. Erika has appeared on several European talk shows to discuss porn for women. At time of writing she is planning to film four more vignettes for a DVD to be released in 2007. Independent filmmaker Tony Comstock has created a collection of unusual porn films, all of which use a documentary style to interview real-life couples and show them having sex. Comstock's films are regularly recommended to women. British porn director Anna Span has marketed her films as being female friendly because they include female orgasms and a woman's perspective behind the camera. She has announced plans to create a movie specifically for straight women in the near future. Porn websites for womenThe internet launched a revolution for women's porn. The twin benefits of privacy and easy access meant that women were able to access porn without embarrassment or harassment. The first subscription porn site for women was Purve, launched in 1998 by an Australian webmistress. The New York Times called it "something of a cultural signpost." Purve featured photos of naked men culled from gay content providers, plus erotic fiction and articles. The site no longer offers subscriptions. A number of other large online adult companies created their own websites for women, including Womens Porno and Just for Ladies, but overall the general view remained that women would not pay for porn online. A few subscription sites were actually gay sites masquerading as women's erotica. Ladylynx, a linklist and portal appeared in 1999. This site aimed to help heterosexual women find porn specifically made for them. Kara's Links, another directory, has been online since 2002. In 2003 For The Girls was launched. The site, run by two women, loosely models itself on Australian Women's Forum, offering a blend of sexually explicit content and a women's magazine. For The Girls features movies and photos of naked men as well as hardcore heterosexual couples and erotic fiction. Ms Naughty first went online in 2004, providing a linklist, ezine and blog – the latter offering the latest news and information about porn for women. The internet has also proved a boon for women looking to buy porn videos and adult products. Female-friendly sites like Libida and Good Vibrations offer women the ability to discreetly buy sex toys and adult movies online without stress. Research into women's reactions to pornThere has not been a great deal of study into women's arousal patterns and response to stimulus, particularly when it comes to porn, but some research has been done in the last decade. Candida Royalle's film Urban Heat was used in a research experiment by Professor Ellen Laan at the University of Amsterdam in Holland in 1995. She found that women responded physically to standard porn as well as Royalle's women's erotica, but their subjective reactions were far more positive and accepting with regards to the Femme film. Laan concluded that physical signs were not the best indicators of female arousal. In 2001 Professor Michael Bailey conducted research into what kind of audio visual content women found arousing. He tested 29 straight female volunteers at Northwestern University, showing them a variety of hetero and lesbian porn and testing their physical reactions via a vaginal probe. He found that his volunteers became aroused no matter what kind of porn they were viewing and concluded that women would respond sexually to any kind of erotic material, not matter what their sexual orientation. Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine in California found that women became fully aroused within two minutes of watching a sexually explicit film – faster than the average man. Twenty female volunteers aged between 20 and 30 were each shown a 22 minute erotic clip featuring two different hetero couples having sex, while their breathing and genitals were monitored. It didn't matter whether the clips had sound or not, the women still became aroused. The results were published in 2003 in the journal "Fertility and Sterility." Porn for women statistics· In May 2006, Neilsen Netratings revealed
that there'd been a 30% increase in the number of British women using
online porn in the past year. Modern misconceptions and debates about porn for womenMisconceptions remain when it comes to porn for women. A large number of people still maintain that women aren't visually stimulated. Many within the porn industry itself also believe that women will not buy porn, even if it does arouse them. There's also debate as to what actually constitutes "porn for women." Some assume that it's simply a matter of turning the tables and offering up naked men, however this is too narrow a definition. There's also confusion as to whether "porn for women" is just a euphemism for softcore gay porn (and this arises from the assumption that women don't really like porn, so the only audience for naked men photos must be gay men). In the last few years, a perception has developed that women's erotica equals soft focus, "unthreatening", romance-based porn, with an emphasis on simple male-female intercourse. This perception has produced it's own backlash. A number of women, including columnist Violet Blue have said they are offended by the very idea of "porn for women" because it suggests that women are only turned on by softcore hetero sex and that they may be too fragile for more extreme sex acts. These commentators assert that, as women, they are turned on by many things, including hardcore porn, and thus the idea of women's porn is redundant, because it is impossible to identify what every woman wants. Others have suggested that the vision offered by "women's erotica" is stereotypical because it relies on outdated gender roles and old-fashioned notions of romantic love. Again, both of these arguments rely on the perception that "porn for women" is only a very specific kind of sexual content such as that seen in the Femme films. Ms Naughty has argued in her blog that the idea of "porn for women" is more about attempting to cater to a viewpoint than the actual porn content. Depicting female fantasies, giving priority to female pleasure and always ensuring that the primary audience is female is the best way to define porn for women because it doesn't marginalize different women's tastes Porn for lesbian womenWhile porn for heterosexual women has been making slow progress, erotica for lesbian women has been forging its own path, often emerging earlier and depicting a very different kind of viewpoint. On Our Backs magazine was created in 1984 by Debi Sundahl and Nan Kinney, assisted by sex columnist Susie Bright. It's purpose was to offer sex-positive erotica for lesbians and to offer an alternative to the anti-porn feminist agenda of the time. The magazine underwent a publishing hiatus in 1994 due to financial difficulties but resumed in 1998 and is still going strong. Fatale Media, owned by Sundahl, has produced a number of authentic lesbian porn titles including Hard Love and Turn Me Up, Over and On. Ssspread was an online lesbian porn site that offered hardcore dyke erotica – "hot femmes, studly butches, and lots of gender fuck." It closed in 2004 but the movies from the site are available on DVD in Full Load: Scenes from ssspread. Scarlet Letters, run by Heather Corinna, has been online since 1998 and offers a queer-based selection of erotica and articles, although unfortunately it hasn't been updated since 2004. Cyberdyke is a collection of subscription websites showcasing authentic lesbian porn. The photos and movies depict a variety of lesbian fetishes and fantasies, including some of the more hardcore elements such as BDSM and anal play. Women and gay pornSome women say their preferred porn is gay porn. The reasons behind this are varied: some say the men are better looking while others say that gay porn is devoid of the gender roles, degradation and power play inherent in much standard straight porn. There is also the appeal of watching men being intimate with one another, a sight usually denied women in a homophobic society. The future of porn for womenAs more porn producers acknowledge their female audience and more women work behind the camera, a new kind of porn may emerge. A number of female directors such as Abiola Adams and Audacia Ray have recently appeared on the scene, creating what's been called "pansexual porn" - explicit erotica that doesn't define itself according to labels. The idea is to simply arouse, no matter what content is on display. Pansexual porn is undoubtedly female-friendly, but not necessarily porn FOR women. The question for the future is whether porn for women will remain a legitimate concept. Ms Naughty has argued that porn depicting a female viewpoint will always be needed, because - whatever gender roles may come into play - sex is ultimately experienced by our clits and cunts, and a female orgasm is something worth celebrating. Want to know more? Please visit:Ms Naughty
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From
new women's erotica production company Stella Films! Director Estelle
Joseph has set out to offer hardcore porn that women will enjoy.
