Most porn centers around men’s fantasies. Even when adult actresses take the reins and produce on their own, the product tends to be similar to that created by men for their male-centric audiences. That’s most porn. In recent years, however, several women have started to produce porn with an ethos to it. There are notable differences in the content: It is more story-driven; it avoids depicting women as mere objects of the male gaze; females dominate as writers and directors; and the talent seems to value working on these projects more than on conventional adult videos.
The studios that create this content range in size from independent artists, whose work can be seen at film festivals like Dan Savage’s Hump!, to the well-established empire of Erika Lust, whose brand includes a number of subsidiary platforms. To understand the driving forces behind the movement, as well as its present and future implications, HUSTLER spoke with creators of this sex-positive adult content, which producer Inka Winter characterizes as ethical feminist porn.
Winter, who owns and operates ForPlay Films, didn’t start out with a vision to produce adult content. Her journey to run a film company with the ethos of producing “Erotica for Women, by Women,” started with a personal tragedy. “Basically my story is, I’m a costume designer in my day job,” she explains. “And about ten years ago, I had an abortion, and I lost my sex drive for at least a year. As I was trying to figure out how to get out of that, I thought, Okay, let’s watch some porn and see if that helps. But it was the opposite of helpful, because male-centric porn is just not what I’m looking for. Then one day I saw GQ magazine doing this Fifty Shades of Grey fashion video that was really erotic. And I was like, That’s what I want porn to be like: fashion porn! I’m a costume designer; I do editorial shoots all the time, so my inspiration for what I do just comes from my own visual understanding.”
Her first inclination was not to go hardcore, but after some of her work got into the right hands, she received the nudge to go all the way. “I actually only intended to do softcore, but then somehow this teaser trailer I had made got into the hands of Kelly Holland, who was the directing manager at Penthouse, and she told me, ‘We want to work with you, and also we’re going to do one softcore version and one explicit version. Are you okay with that?’” Although Winter agreed, Penthouse went bankrupt, and the project never happened—but the idea had taken root.
Additionally, Winter states that listening to Dan Savage’s podcast helped to open her mind about such things. “Everything that’s sexual is being normalized by people talking about it. So when I first started meeting my Burning Man friends and so many of them were polyamorous or swingers or in open relationships, I was already so aware of it that it felt very ‘normal’ to me. Then, when I started talking about what I wanted to do, I already lived in a sex-positive world, and there was so much positive feedback.”
