Features

Innocent-minded Siobhan Downes experiences the genre of ‘female porn’ - pornography made especially for women.

It was the worst timing. When I set out to become a connoisseur of female porn, I was actually snowed in at my parents’ house. Thus the initial stages of my research were, unfortunately, conducted in my childhood bedroom. Undeterred by my pink-schemed, Twilight-postered surroundings, I pushed the Beanie Babies off my bed, wrapped myself in a Groovy Chick duvet cover, and immersed myself in the online world of cock, cum shots and cunnilingus.
 
I felt a bit dodgy about the whole thing, especially with Mum knocking on my door, offering baked goods as I scanned my way through pages of smut. Cheers Mum. So I consulted an online guide written by notorious sexologist Violet Blue – ‘A First Timer’s Guide to Watching Porn’. It was reassuring and informative. ‘If you’re female, admitting to yourself that you want to watch a dirty movie may take some – or a lot of – forethought. One of the major obstacles that we women face is the widely held notion that women don’t respond to visual imagery as men do – a notion that is absolutely untrue.’ She makes reference to a study conducted by the University in Amsterdam in 1994, which proved that women are just as turned on by sexy images as men, with all subjects experiencing increased vaginal blood flow. Graphic. But what is significant is that the study also showed that women responded better to women-directed, female-oriented porn.
 
If I was going to watch some of this female porn for myself, I had to know what I was looking for. I spoke with Anna Paris, a PhD candidate in the University of Otago Gender Studies programme, about the troublesome relationship between women and porn. ‘There have been lots of problems surrounding women and porn,’ she told me. ‘There’s been the idea that straight women don’t like it, it’s tacky, it causes problems in relationships – it’s accepted that women are generally uncomfortable with porn. As opposed to men, who are constructed as “visual creatures”, it’s thought that women need emotional stimulation instead – so your classic example would be Mills and Boon romance novels.’
 
These preconceived notions about women’s sexuality have created a divide among feminist groups about the role of porn in women’s sexual liberation, Anna explained.
‘Feminists sit differently on the fence. Some argue that female sex should be celebrated and enjoyed. Others say women should take control of their sexuality, and not ‘sell out’ by engaging with porn. The radical feminist argument is that all porn is wrong, and exploitative. The post-feminists tend to be supportive – you can still be a porn star and be a feminist. It’s all about breaking down double standards.’
 
She noted that the feminist arguments surrounding porn are also relevant to her own area of study, women’s use of cosmetic surgery. ‘Women are really affected by it. They go into the surgeon’s office and say they want breast implants so they can look like porn stars. And then there’s the “designer vagina”. They say they’re doing it for themselves, but they can’t even see down there. It raises the question, who are women’s bodies for?’
I put on my hypothetical porn-star-sexy-librarian outfit and did a spot of delving into what academia has had to say on the subject. A notable concept in feminist theory is that of the ‘male gaze’, which suggests that women’s bodies belong to men’s eyes only. The term, coined by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1973, refers to the fact that in classical Hollywood cinema, the spectator is constantly in the perspective of the man – in other words, we’re always looking from his ‘gaze’. Women always feature in relation to man, typically as objects of their desire. It creates a power imbalance in which women only exist passively to be gazed at. This is a huge feature of most mainstream porn movies, and something that female porn tries to react against – with the construction of the ‘Female Gaze’, which attempts to give women the power.
 
It was during the 1970s – the time of Mulvey’s landmark study – that the concept of female porn first developed. The sexual revolution movement that had originated in the 1960s came of age and united with the women’s liberation movement. Women were tired of thumbing through trashy romance paperbacks – they wanted the instant gratification that magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Playgirl were now offering, with their naked male centrefolds. It symbolised a new era of acknowledgment that women too were sexual beings. Then in 1984, ex-porn star Candida Royalle founded Femme Productions, where she created the first porn movies specifically aimed at heterosexual women. This paved the way for a new generation of female porn-directors – and obviously, the internet has since had a phenomenal impact.
 
So, what could I expect from female porn? How was this ‘female gaze’ put in place? Anna had some ideas for me. ‘In female porn, you’ll see more storyline, dialogue and character development in the plots. It’s more erotica based – there’s more foreplay, and less of the money shot, or the “cum shot”.’ The ubiquitous ‘cum shot’ has generated much criticism from feminist spectators. Female porn director Candida Royalle has said that she intentionally avoids using these shots in her own films, as she thinks they are ‘grotesque’ and ‘graphic’, and it’s ‘always over when the man comes.’
 
But Anna also raised the concern of some gender studies theorists that, despite best intentions, female porn is not helping to change gender-based stereotypes about sex. ‘Women-directed porn is just a minute fraction of the porn industry,’ she said, ‘and it’s all still based on the idea that women’s sexuality is somehow different. The industry tends to construct women as if their sexual needs are fundamentally different from men, but there is no acknowledgment that women might experience their sexuality differently from each other. It’s like all women are expected to get turned on by the same things.’
 
With all this in mind, I embarked on my adult adventure. I decided to start at the video shop – the appeal of the elusive R18 secret section was strong, and I thought it would be a symbolic homage to my female porn awakening. Or something. I dragged my boyfriend along with me because I thought he’d have a membership card. Turns out he didn’t. So I had to endure the lengthy sign-up process, which was made really awkward by the fact that I was only signing up so I could rent out porn. Smooth move. We retreated through the swinging doors, ignoring the judgmental sniggers of the video store assistants.
 
The problem was that there were no distinguishable genres of porn – no fetish porn, no gay or lesbian porn, and definitely, no female porn. Nothing but the mainstream, male-oriented kind. I was strangely disappointed. It was all so blatantly tits-and-ass, directed at that ‘male gaze’. I half-heartedly picked out something titled Sacred Sin (‘where ungodly mortal power is employed to diversify sexual experience’ – what the fuck?), and took it to the counter. I asked if many girls came in and rented porn.
 
‘Nah, never,’ the girl on the counter informed me. ‘Our main porn customers at the moment are guys from out of town working at the Stadium. At least this way they can go home and have a wank instead of cheating on their wives.’ Apparently people renting porn these days is a pretty rare thing – ‘you’d be crazy to pay for it, when you can download it’. She then informed me that I’d just missed out on ‘Porno Tuesday’, where I could have rented the movie for half price. I got really dark about that.
 
So I turned to the internet, like normal people in need of porn. I came across the New Sensations ‘Romance Series’, which marketed itself as ‘changing the way that women perceive pornography.’ According to its reviews, it was like ‘watching your favourite romance novel play out on screen,’ with a special focus on love stories. Apparently I was going to ‘identify with the women onscreen’.  I was sceptical.
 
The movie I watched from this series was called Recipe for Romance. I tried to ignore the fact that it sounded like something from the food pages of the Women’s Weekly. The plot was hilarious. It was about a cook named Carolina, whose food has a secret ingredient that makes people want to fuck. Unfortunately, the only unsatisfied customer is Carolina herself – she is so consumed by her work that she is blind to the affections of her sexy catering assistant.
 
If this was meant to be progress in recognising female sexuality in porn, I didn’t get it. The plot didn’t so much turn me on as piss me off. It seemed to be saying that I should ‘identify’ with the woman onscreen, because she was in the kitchen. Powerful stuff. There was a little more ‘romance’, I guess – if couples telling each other ‘you’re so fucking sexy’ in nasal Texan accents are meant to be romantic. The porn star girls were maybe a little bit closer to an ordinary girl – they had some pubes, at least, even if they were shaped into various artistic shapes (I swear one girl had a four leaf clover down there). And as for the ‘cum shot’ – well, he didn't cum on her face, at least, but I’m not sure how dribbling down her butt is an improvement.
 
It really just emphasised what Anna had said. The experience at the video shop showed that female porn is still highly uncommon – girls aren’t expected to want to watch porn, and if they do, the choice is limited to the “male gaze” variety. When I finally did get my paws on a female porn film, it was even more disappointing. It was stereotypical, sexist, and limiting - it assumed that what women wanted was an onscreen re-enactment of a romance novel. Female porn may be a step towards broadening women’s sexual horizons, but it seems that in the industry as a whole, it’s still a man’s world.