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I just want some of the porn out there to be made for women. Is that too much to ask?
Erica lust, lust Films

By Mandy Van Deven

he two naked women wrapped around each others legs under the spotlight on satin bedsheets seem oblivious to the keen observers around them. One white and the other Latina, their movements and gestures get

more impassioned and urgent as the minutes go by, and the atmosphere in the room reaches a tense climax. Finally, when one begins slipping down the body of her partner, a womans stern voice calls out from the darkness beyond, Cut! When Shine Louise Houston

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photographs: www.ericalust.com

With more women making X-rated films for women, pornography is no longer an exclusively male club that objectifies the female form.

porn queens
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Meet the

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my fIlms happen to have a lot of sex In them because that aspect of humanIty Interests me
shinE louisE houston, Pink & White Productions

This picture and right: Shine Louise Houston at work making a porn film

graduated from the San Francisco Arts Institute with a Bachelors degree in Fine Art Film, she didnt anticipate becoming a porn-industry pioneer. Like most film students just out of college, Houston got a job in a retail store to pay the rent and focussed on more creative endeavours in her spare time. Unlike most film students, though, Houstons day job was as a sales clerk at Good Vibrations, a popular woman-run sex-toy shop in San Francisco. And it was there that Houston discovered where she should make her mark. uring her five years at Good Vibrations, Houston was asked by numerous women and heterosexual couples to recommend good lesbian porn. The customers were turned off by the readily available adult films of poor quality featuring straight women and faux lesbians enacting contrived storylines intended to titillate men. They wanted something created with a more artistic aesthetic and a queer sensibility, something that would be more appealing to women. Finding

the selection of pornography made by and for women quite limited in number and scope, Houston quit Good Vibrations to pursue a career as a pornographer and become a part of the $97 billion worldwide porn pie. Im a queer woman of colour who makes adult content, says Houston. Im an independent filmmaker and the films that I make happen to have a lot of sex in them because thats an aspect of humanity that really interests me. In 2004, after her first film, The Crash Pad, was a striking success, Houston became a different kind of feminist icon. She started her own production company, Pink and White Productions. Other women soon followed her lead. But Houston was not the first to dabble in the arena of women-made porn. I was 19 years old, doing phone sex to pay the bills, and got really tired of playing out other peoples fantasies all the time, says avant-garde feminist porn director Courtney Trouble. So I started No Fauxxx as an outlet for exposing the real desires of women and queers, she says. The site www.

nofauxxx.com was founded by Trouble in 2002, and is the first and longest running queer porn website and social community on the Internet. Trouble now has 10 films under her belt, including the Roulette and Seven Minutes in Heaven series, the awardwinning Speakeasy, and the newly released Nostalgia. I see my work as a very integral step in bringing feminism and porn closer together. What really needs to happen is for feminist options in porn to become more readily available and out there not just in San Francisco and New York, but in small towns too. Fellow adult-film director Bren Ryder, who turned away from her pursuit of becoming a firefighter to start Good Dyke Porn, agrees, Im

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Courteny Trouble, No Fauxxx

not an activist per se, but I feel that our work is making a positive impact. I think the more positive images we create, the more others will create too. And the more of them people watch, the more people will want to watch these images. he days of pornography being teenage boys dirty little secret are numbered, especially in countries like the United States where pornified images are increasingly going mainstream. Turn on the television and you can see Paris Hilton simulating oral sex on a hamburger in a fast-food commercial. Go to the toy store and youll find Bratz dolls wearing fishnet stockings, a miniskirt and a belly top. With sex shops brazenly displaying their wares on street corners, porn consumption is no longer a choice for most Europeans either; it is a part of popular culture. The Adult Video News (AVN) Awards have been held since 1984 and

sex agendas in films made by directors Erika Lust, Candida Royalle and Tristan Taormino. The co-founder of Lust Films in Barcelona and author of Good courtnEy troublE, www.nofauxxx.com Porn: A Guide for Women, Lust says, Like it or not, we live in are considered by industry insiders to a porn-saturated society; theres be the Oscars of porn. This annual porn all over the Internet, and theres ceremony celebrates the achievements porn in the media. We cant just turn of adult film producers and actors. our backs on porn and think it doesnt Yet, in its 26-year history, not one matter. Her solution? Make the kind woman has taken home the trophy of porn you want to see, which is for Best Director. Tired of womens exactly what Lust does. positive contributions behind the People, especially women, are camera being overlooked, Canadian sceptical about the idea that good sex-toy retailer Good For Her started porn is possible. I have no problem the Feminist Porn Awards four years with movies like Fuck Sascha Grey, ago. It celebrates sex-positive smut Cum Spewing Holes or Gangbang that adequately represents womens Junkies. If people want to buy those sexuality instead of the typical films, good for them! I just want some cheesy, clichd, degrading, and of the porn out there to be made for patronising porn created by men. women. Is that too much to ask? Not all women-friendly porn is girlNot for people like Houston, on-girl action. Youll find straight- Trouble and Ryder. All three

a woman and her desIres need to be a part of porn for It to be called femInIst

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the models create the scene. Its up to them to act out theIr desIres. we just fIlm It
brEn rydEr, Good dyke Porn

Akira and Tina Horn in The Crash Pad

women use a method of adult film creation that bucks the traditional man-made model. Divulging her way of working, Trouble says, Both a woman and a womans desires need to be involved in the production, editing and marketing of porn in order for it to be called feminist. Are all people on the set whether performers or crew respected and treated with fairness? Are the womans orgasms being filmed with the same importance as the mans? Does the woman feel safe with her partner? Are condoms being used? These are all things I think make up a feminist porn set. For Good Dyke Porn, the biggest factor that sets it apart from conventional porn is that the models are the creators of the scene, says Ryder. Whatever they want to do be it a role play, their natural sex, kink, giggles, cuddles, or boot licking its up to them to communicate with each other and act out their desires. We simply capture it on film. For Houston, the differences are deeper than simply how the films are made: We have a mission to show different types of bodies queer bodies, natural bodies, bodies of colour. In an industry dominated by degradation and objectification, Pink

Bren Ryder of Good Dyke Porn

and White Productions is actively working to reclaim real eroticism in a healthy and sex-positive way. Films like Tight Places and The Crash Pad reflected these ideals, the latter featuring adult stars Jiz Lee and Shawn Tamaribuchi, two genderqueer Asian American women with an androgynous presentation. Tamaribuchi was also the films

producer. If we dont take the power or ownership of creating images that represent us, we will continually be held subject to the assumptions and stereotypes that others create on our behalf, she says. Nearly a decade has passed since women began to enter porn production in earnest, and the question of impact still lingers. Judging from the sales of our movies, we have a lot of heterosexual men who watch our porn; its probably about a 50 per cent male audience, says Houston. For an industry previously assumed to be solely for men, an evenly split audience isnt half bad. Ive started to hear about mothers and older women becoming interested in the porn I am making, and thats really a sign of times changing regarding womens feelings about pornography, says Trouble. Ive been doing this for six years and right now I still feel like things are just beginning. Its really important to get our work out to places where queer people and feminists might feel alone or cut off from the community. Some developed nations are starting to embrace the gender-equalising potential of pornography. In Germany, video-store owners give adult films that feature women as active subjects a PorYes label so that customers can be discerning in their purchases. And recently, in Sweden, adult-film director Mia Engberg, of Dirty Diaries fame, received 500,000 Kronor (over ` 3 crore) in public funding from the Swedish Film Institute to create a collection of feminist pornographic films. Ironically, the protesters of this move werent upset that their dollars were paying for the production of pornography, but rather that the money was used for a feminist agenda. The times they are a changin.
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