For discussion of what makes for ‘better’ porn, please see this page. But, as I say there, this whole site is about that question.
This page will list some of the websites out there where you can find ‘better’ porn. At the moment, it is very much in progress.
I have found that many people are reluctant to pay for their porn. They often seem to think that if, they don’t actually have a subscription, then they’re not really a porn hound. (Speaking of which, pornography addiction may not actually be a thing.) But, as the inimitable Jiz Lee once said, ethical porn starts when we pay for it. If we want the people making porn to pay and treat the performers fairly, then, well, it’s kind of hard for them to do that if they’re having to make the films for free. Besides, you can get a subscription to a site with enough ethically produced porn to keep your horny for the rest of your life for $20 a month, and usually less.
Beautiful Agony
This is a weird site to start with, because it’s not a porn site at all. It consists entirely of close-ups of people’s faces as they masturbate to orgasm. There are men, women, non-binary people, trans people, and a handful of couples.
When I teach my course on pornography, a clip from this site (with a man and a woman) is one of the first things I have the students watch. The reason is that it teaches us something important about pornography, namely: that its being hot need not have all that much to do with its being sexually explicit. Frankly, if these videos do not stir your loins, then you should check with your doctor and make sure you are still alive.
To my mind, then, the interesting question becomes: How do you manage to include what makes Beautiful Agony so hot in videos that are sexually explicit? The obvious first answer is to include more shots of people’s faces. But that’s only part of the answer. Another part has to do with the genuine pleasure that these people are experiencing and the almost synaesthetic response one can have to watching someone enjoying an orgasm. But I’m sure there’s yet more to it than that.
OK, on to actual porn!
Lust Cinema
This is one of the main websites operated by Erika Lust, who is one of the most celebrated, and successful, feminist pornographers working today. (For an introduction to her approach to porn, see this TedX talk.) Most of her feature-length films are available here, as are many of the films from the XConfessions series (see below).
There are also a number of films from other directors. Some of these are ‘curated’, such as many of the films that Jacky St James made for New Sensations (such as The Submission of Emma Marx, review later), and the amazing film Teenage Lesbian (review later), by Bree Daniels.
More recently, Lust Cinema has been producing serials—like you’d see on Netflix or whatever—such as Primary, directed by Casey Calvert, the first season of which (six episodes) is about the challenges faced by two couples who have open relationships, and Erika’s own Three, which has a similar theme.
Most of the content is heterosexual or lesbian, but there are some gay male films, as well. Erika included such a film in her first collection, Five Hot Stories for Her, and there are a few such films in the XConfessions series, such as Bruce La Bruce’s extraordinary “Refugees Welcome”.
If you’re looking for a first site to which to subscribe, Lust Cinema would be a good choice.
XConfessions
This is another of Erika Lust’s sites. It is devoted to the XConfessions series. Here’s how it works: Members of the site are able to post their ‘confessions’ (or fantasies) to an area of the site. Erika chooses two of these per month and makes them into films. Initially, she directed all of them. More recently, she has recruited other people (mostly but not always women) to direct them. The films themselves typically run 10-15 minutes.
What’s most impressive about this site, and about Lust Cinema, is the photography. The films are beautifully photographed, and sexually explicit without making it seem like sex is all about genitalia. Sex is about people, and that’s always true here, even when the fantasy that is being portrayed is anything but realistic. Indeed, I am often struck by how tenderly the ‘confessions’ are treated. Often with humor (especially when Erika herself is involved), but always with deep respect.
Everyone will have their own favorites. Some of mine are “Mad Men Porn”, “I’m Obsessed With Owen Gray”, and “Sweet But Pyscho” among many others. But maybe the most amazing film here is Trinity Tristan’s film Skin Is Skin. When I have showed this film to students, it has always left most of them in tears. It is that moving, and the sex, and the way it is presented, is very much part of why.
Sssh
Sssh.com is a woman-focused porn site run by Angie Rowntree. She and her husband Colin also run one of the oldest porn sites (and oldest BDSM sites) on the web, wasteland.com.
Sssh contains some ‘curated’ films from other sites, but the reason to visit it is to see Angie’s films. Some of them (in their NC-17 versions) have won awards at ‘legitimate’ film festivals. The film Gone, for example, won awards at iHolly and the Los Angeles CineFest, as well as winning major adult film awards. It is a really good film, and not even Angie’s best. Maybe my favorite is the beautiful film Alla Prima.
The photography here is, once again, fantastic. Angie and her crew shoot sex in a way that brings out its beauty and wonder, as well as what it means to the characters. But, as Angie once said to me, she’s really a story-teller, and it’s the stories that really make the films special.
A Four Chambered Heart
This is the best place to find the very artsy but nonetheless hot films of Vex Ashley. Vex started out posting photographs and short films on Tumblr. Back when you could post porn there, it was an important communal space for queer folk. Some time later, Vex started A Four Chambered Heart. Her early films were more like music videos than porn, but she soon started producing more explicit material.
As mentioned, the films are very artsy. The way the films are shot and edited is very different from anything else I’ve seen. They are often non-linear, trying more to capture the feeling of sex than the facts. One of Vex’s films, Gloaming, is one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen, and I do not mean just porn. When I first showed it to a group of students, they sat in stunned silence until one of them finally said, “It’s so tender“. Which it is. But you can’t really appreciate why that is so striking until you see it.
You can see trailers of all the films without signing up for the site.
Bright Desire
This site features the films of the Australian director Ms Naughty. It has, to be honest, been a while since I had a subscription, so I am not current on what she has been doing. But the films I have seen have been thoughtful, beautifully shot, and sexy. A good place to start might be the feature-length film The Fantasy Project, which is about a woman who writes erotic fiction. Another favorite of mine is the vignette “Dirty Weekend Away”.
Bright Desire has a great variety of content, from very romantic porn (like “Dirty Weekend”) to BDSM (like “Yes Sir”), though nothing I have seen is particularly heavy.
Frolic Me
FrolicMe is a European (maybe British?) site that aims to produce porn that will appeal to heterosexual women, but also to heterosexual men who are tired of the usual fare. It is, in a way, more ‘just porn’ than the other sites I’ve been discussing. In particular, the men and women in these films are all ‘conventionally attractive’, though they still seem like real people.
The content is mostly boy-girl, but there is some girl-girl content (aimed more at straight and bi women than at lesbians), and there is some solo masturbation, mostly with women but some with men. The films have minimal narrative, but they almost always suggest some kind of relationship between the characters. (Many of the films also have written stories that accompany them, as well, which provide more context.) They are often very ‘romantic’ in feel, but there is some kinky content: spanking and relatively mild BDSM. The films are also beautifully photographed, and the overall feel is of ‘authentic’ sexual interactions.
Personal favorites include “Two Wet” (sex in one of those huge showers we all wish we had), “Sofa Sex” (which does not end when he orgasms), and “Here She Cums” (which is all about her pleasure).
Bellesa
Bellessa is not a site of which I have personally been a member, so I cannot say a great deal about it. But it is probably one of the better known ‘porn for women’ sites and has been much discussed in the media. Many of my students seem to be familiar with it. It features both original content of their own and some ‘curated’ content that is licensed from other sites.
Afterglow
This site was recommended to me by a student. It is oriented towards women and couples and contains quite a lot of original ‘educational’ content, such as videos for women on how to ‘squirt’ and videos for couples on ‘pegging’. A lot of the non-educational content is licensed from other sites, but there is some original content as well. (It would be nice if it were easier to identify the original content.) The few original films I’ve seen so far are have a very ‘authentic’ sort of feel, though they are not as elegant as the videos on FrolicMe.
I Feel Myself
This is one of a number of sites operated by Feck Erotica. Originally based in Australia, the focus here is almost entirely on female masturbation (though there are some girl-girl videos and just a few boy-girl videos). Most of the videos are shot in a very sparse studio setting, with nothing more than a mattress on the floor, a white sheet, and some cameras that do not move during the scene (and so that appear to be fixed to tripods, etc).
What they aim to capture is how these women would masturbate if they were by themselves, and my sense is that the women are usually alone in the room. There are also videos shot at the women’s homes (especially during the pandemic), and in some other locations. Generally speaking, the videos all have a very ‘documentary’ quality, though they are often edited for length.
There is more of a range of body types here than is usual in porn, though most of the women are more on the ‘fit’ side, and most of them are under 30.
There was, for a time, a similar site focused on male masturbation, Gentlemen Handling. That content is now available at PinkLabel TV.
Abby Winters
Abby Winters is a very different sort of site from the ones already mentioned, and it is not likely to appeal to you unless you are sexually attracted to women. It mostly consists of solo videos featuring young Australian women, usually in their own homes, and without makeup. There is more of a range of body-types here than in most porn, too.
Some of the videos are softcore, especially the older ones, but the more recent ones tend to be focused on masturbation, though there are some girl-girl and boy-girl videos, as well. Part of their goal is to present the women as three-dimensional humans, with interests outside sex, so there are a lot of interviews and the like. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you like ‘naturalistic’ porn featuring ‘normal’ women, then you might enjoy Abby Winters.
Girls Out West
This is another site of which I’ve never been a member. It’s similar, though, to Abby Winters and so worth a mention. (Note: The “out west” here is western Australia.)
Crash Pad Series
In 2006, Shine Louise Houston released her first film, The Crash Pad. There had been lesbian and queer porn before that film, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s with The Crash Pad that queer porn truly comes of age. The film is mostly focused on masc-femme lesbian sex, and it involves, for the time, an amazing number of non-binary performers.
Today, there is an entire website, The Crash Pad Series, devoted to such porn. Mostly, it involves people with vulvas—women, non-binary people, and trans men—but there are some trans women, as well. Trans men having sex with trans women is about as queer as queer porn gets. Really unusually, there are also some videos that feature people with various sorts of disabilities—just as people, not fetishized in any way.
Houston has also made a number of additional films since Crash Pad, many with more robust story lines than that one had. These can be found at Pink Label TV, along with a number of films by other directors. Indeed, there is a huge amount of ‘curated’ content here, enough to keep you horny for the rest of your life.
Joy Bear
Joy Bear is a British website that aims to produce porn that is ‘different’ and at least seems to think of women as among its expected audience. You often find their films among the licensed content on other sites, such as Lust Cinema and Afterglow.
Some of their films just collections of vignettes, with just a bit of narrative to give the sex some context. Other of their films are more story-driven, but, even in those cases, there is not a lot of time spent on the story. In Housemates 2, for example, only 15 minutes is devoted to the story, and the film itself is over an hour and a half long. So it would seem again as if the narrative is just there to give a bit of context to the sex. There’s no genuine interest in story-telling.
You can find good stuff here, but there’s a reason it’s been a while since I watched any of their films. The sex often feels a bit routine, as if the people are just going through the motions. And the photography is much less good than on sites like Lust Cinema and Sssh. At least in the films I’ve seen, there are just too many shots that are focused on the woman, and hardly any corresponding shots of the man. So it ends up feeling like “Hey, let’s watch this woman be fucked by some dude we can’t even see!”
That’s a bit harsh, and it’s probably only in comparison to the other sites that it’s really obvious. But Joy Bear is still ‘better’ than most of what’s out there.
Dane Jones
Dane Jones is not just one website but several, including the ‘lesbian’ porn site Lesbea. For the most part, I’d describe it as ‘couples porn’, in the derogatory sense of that term. That is: A lot of it isn’t all that different from mainstream porn, but without so much rough sex, anal sex, ‘facials’, and so forth: the kinds of things most likely to turn off women viewers (and many men). But there is a strong ‘male gaze’ to the photography. Especially once the couple start having intercourse, we don’t see a lot of the guy.
Still, it is better than most of what you see on the web. There is more of an emphasis on pleasure, especially women’s pleasure, than in most porn. And every once in a while, they produce a really extraordinary video, which usually means tremendous chemistry between the people involved.
Sex Art
Started in 2012, SexArt is the ‘hardcore’ sister of MetArt, which has featured “tasteful” erotic photography since 1999 and is one of the most popular erotic sites on the web. As the name indicates, SexArt features an artistic variety of porn.
The first few dozen vignettes were directed by Bo Llanberris, who describes himself as “a mainstream filmmaker and director [who] was trained in one of the finest film schools in the world”. Llanberris was recruited by MetArt to create “high quality, cinema worthy, adult love scenes”, and he brings an unusual level of technical skill to porn. Several other directors have contributed to SexArt since then.
The videos are often beautifully photographed, but they tend to have the same flaws as the Dane Jones videos just described. Like Dane Jones, though, SexArt does produce some wonderful videos from time to time.
Adult Time
TBA
Sweet Sinner
Founded around 2008 by Nica Noelle, Sweet Sinner‘s motto is (or at least once was) “Real Lovemaking, Real Orgasms”. Noelle has since moved on and directing duties have been assumed by a number of other people, such as James Avalon and Jacky St James.
With a motto like that, it’s no surprise that they strive for a sort of ‘authenticity’. There are always stories that go along with the sex, but these are usually pretty cursory. Mostly, they do vignettes, with three to five minutes of ‘story’ at the beginning, which provides some context for the sex. There is the occasional feature-length film, but even then not much time is devoted to the story: We still get just a few minutes between the sex scenes. So these are not films for people who are really looking for narrative.
The videos are a mixed bag. Some of them are truly great, such as the first sex scene in Don Juan’s Therapist. But a lot of the time, they suffer from the same problems as Dane Jones and SexArt.
Sweetheart Video
Part of the same group as Sweet Sinner, and also founded by Nica Noelle, Sweetheart Video is devoted to ‘lesbian’ porn. Most of the women who appear in these videos are bisexual rather than lesbian, but it’s pretty clear that these are women who do genuinely enjoy having sex with other women—as opposed to the often faked ‘girl-girl’ sex that is still not uncommon in mainstream porn.
The sex is almost always very convincing and realistic, and the photography is generally terrific. There is also a real focus on genuine pleasure.
Most of the films are collections of vignettes, with just a bit of narrative context. But there are some films here, too, that tell more of a story, such as Dana Vespoli’s film Lefty, in which she plays a female boxer.
Girlfriends Films
Founded in 2001 by Dan O’Connell, the motto of Girlfriends Films is “Simply the most realistic lesbian sex in adult video”.
Verso Cinema
TBA