An Adventure into Lady Porn By a Non-Porn Watcher

A journalistic expedition into female-only porn conducted by yet another female who has never seen porn (and frankly has no idea what she’s doing).

Hello there reader! What a delight to see you again- is that a new haircut? We really must stop running into each other like this.

In a complete departure from the last time we spoke, today I will be embarking on the most thrilling journalistic investigation since A Current Affair exposed some random Buddhist monk for shopping at Sexyland (cue a man running through a carpark with an oversized microphone). Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. As the title suggests, I will be documenting my experience of watching pornography for the first time.

Allow me to explain the parameters of this experiment. I want to evaluate a first-time user experience of an easily accessible, free-to-use porn site to emulate the way that most people tend to discover porn as adolescents or younger. Using my own sexual preferences as a guide, my goal is to provide an honest, blow-by-blow (stop it) account of navigating porn online from the perspective of a total beginner. Where do I start? How do I find what I like? How much squirting is too much squirting? You know, the obvious questions.

But first, I should address the modestly-dressed, conservative elephant in the room.

No, I have never been a porn watcher. Like alcohol or drugs, my early adolescent brain subconsciously characterised porn as a pursuit that didn’t fit with my limited, often pretentious self-image. My primary life goal consisted of being as similar to Harry Potter’s Hermione Granger as possible (also demonstrated in my bushy hair-styling choices from around this time), and lord knows Hermione was too busy campaigning for house elf rights to be scrolling the internet for any potential spank-bank material. My hobbies including running a weekend cupcake business, visiting the library on a bi-weekly basis and writing out plagiarised Audrey Hepburn quotes from Goodreads to blu-tack up on my bedroom walls. Simply no room for porn, you silly goose.

I was still at the age where I believed choosing not to participate in the same activities as your peers made you superior or “not like the other girls” (no please, tell me more about how all your best friends are male because you just can’t stand the drama of female company). The world at large had already categorized me as a quirky, studious prude, and I was not prepared to argue with this assessment. Just sign the sheet, take your name badge and go.

A lack of interest in porn didn’t mean that I never succumbed to teenage horniness or the soul-crushing sexual frustration that comes hand-in-hand with being a young, impatient person in the world. But whether it was out of pride or sheer disinterest, I just never got the urge.

The closest I ever got to porn was watching questionably perverse R-rated indie movies such as Basketball Diaries and Blue is the Warmest Colour (which I will always have a soft spot for as my first real queer awakening, despite its problematic nature). Sex scenes did intrigue me, particularly those with non-heterosexual partnerships. But I probably convinced myself that this experimentation meant nothing, as I could always chalk it up to an earnest appreciation of risqué, avant-garde cinema. Sure, Jan.

I knew that people around me watched porn, even though it was never discussed. In fact, my early sex education seemed to confirm that it was an activity that EVERYONE actively participated in, particularly my young male peers- and this was back in the early 2000s when dial-up connections were still a thing. I remember being scandalised after finding links to porn sites in the search history of our family computer, clutching my imaginary pearls in shock horror at the idea of such debauchery taking place under thy very roof, indeed.

The plot thickened. I had a vague notion that my high school boyfriend had a not-so-secret folder of pornography tucked away on his laptop, after it was reported that some, ahem…questionable images had popped up during an unexpectedly cursed English class presentation. At the time, a part of me believed that it was natural for women to feel insecurity about the presence of porn in their relationships- to feel inadequate compared to the never-ending parade of anonymous, big-breasted lusty women readily available online. After all, it seemed like an extension of the competitiveness for male validation which had already been subconsciously bred into me since childhood. Surely porn was my enemy- just another impossible standard I could never live up to?

If this sounds like an insecure 15-year-old way of thinking, that’s because it was. Although it was true that my lovely geeky boyfriend would have literally walked across hot coals for the mere POSSIBILITY of having SEX with a living, breathing HUMAN GIRL (let alone one he actually liked), I realised this mentality was damaging to him too. It was wrong to presume that his emotional needs were non-existent or required me to be someone who I wasn’t. When we discussed the subject together, he clearly expressed that he didn’t see porn as some kind of preferable substitute for sex, let alone human connection. Wait…so you’re telling me other genders have FEELINGS too?! No one hates that a teenage boy had to be the bearer of this information more than me, but there you go.

Now that we have had a one-sided discussion about the role of porn in our lives, back to the experiment at hand. So why lady porn, you may ask?

Well, for one, I am a queer woman- which basically translates to “not straight”. But even though I am attracted to all gender identities, the fear of being bombarded with hardcore heterosexual content is probably what has stopped me from ever wanting to watch porn in the first place. It sounds stupid, but growing up, watching intense hetero sex scenes often made me anxious, especially when the women involved appeared to have little to no agency. In hindsight, this did tend to happen more when the boundaries of consent were blurred or outright ignored (in particular, this scene from Rocky Horror used to make me uncomfortable for reasons I couldn’t yet articulate). As an adult, I still worry about unexpectedly seeing imagery that will impact me negatively, based on my own specific experiences.

Despite my commitment to science, I want to conduct this experiment keeping my own wellbeing in mind, so I think sticking to female-only porn will personally make me feel more comfortable in my pursuit for journalistic integrity (*snorts*). I hope you can respect that decision. Not that you have a choice- it’s my blog, sucker. Nothing but tits, boobs and bazoingas for me.

My goal is to react as honestly as possible and simply treat this foray like a noble-ish expedition, reporting back from the other side. To you. Who has statistically already seen porn. Or watches it on a regular basis.

But never the less! To horny Oz, we go.

A REGULAR TUESDAY AFTERNOON:

Pornhub, here we come.

Urgh, I feel bad for even looking this up…why am I such a judgemental snob? All I can think about the Zuckerberg corporate data drone who is monitoring my usually spotless Internet history. SHUT UP DRONE. THIS IS FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES.

Click. I can feel my heart rising in my chest as the screen turns white, preparing to load. Here we go.

Oh no, THE ADS. The first thing that comes up is an animated POV of a woman with massive, bouncing tits getting pumped by a black dude as she looks up at him upside down, saying things like “I really have to get going” and “I shouldn’t be here.” Excuse me, sir?! This woman has time commitments, places to be. Clearly she’s thinking about the tasks in her diary that won’t get done if she just stays here, getting pounded all bloody day.

Thanks, I hate it. Can I get rid of the ad? I’ll click the X in the corner very carefully, so it doesn’t show me more of this.

PORNHUB PREMIUM?! You need Pornhub Premium to get rid of the ads?! I have to pay money before I can stop staring into the eyes of this innocent-looking woman getting fucked in the ass? Guess I should feel happy for the Pornhub employee who will renovate their kitchen this year off the back of this kind of inconvenient marketing. Never mind, I will stay strong and avert my gaze from the repetitive thrusting action obscuring most of my screen. Go back, back, back.

Okay. The first video recommended to me is “Busty racist feminist stunner throat demolished by a big black cock.”

Wow. They’ve sure got me pegged (no pun intended). But how does the racism come into it? Is part of the appeal that she cannot express her racist views if she happens to have a massive black wang in her mouth? Lots to think about there.

I ACTUALLY SCREAMED. A new unavoidable ad has come up that shows a couple having sex with some kind of flesh-light vagina pillow. Another big-breasted woman violently bounces up and down on her partner like a trampoline while he sticks his face into the pillow. It cuts to an undershot close-up of his penis sliding in and out of the woman at a furious pace. Dear god.

What I am learning here is that I definitely don’t like being shown up-close footage of dicks being quickly inserted, removed and subsequently re-inserted into vaginas. Noted. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen snippets of it before in real life, but real life doesn’t have so many…angles.

I haven’t even gotten past the homepage and my face is already sore from being screwed up in penis-fuelled agony. Okay, I said I was here for the ladies, so like a lonely frat boy on a drunken night out, I must find them. Ladies? Please? SAVE ME?!

Click on videos, click on videos.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH.

My screen is covered with cocks. Veiny cocks, thick cocks, spurting cocks, cocks being shoved into mouths, orifices and locations too questionable to identify. I AM TOO PURE FOR THIS. I physically put my hand up to cover the screen, but it’s no good. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE. I can feel the beef noodle soup I ate for lunch twisting around in my stomach.

This is not me. This is not my existence. My personal life is one where sex is normally preceded or followed by wholesome activities like watching Futurama or eating some kind of cheesy snack. Where there’s lots of laughing and teasing and lounging around naked as you compare embarrassing stories from primary school (a competition which I always win, due to the humiliating nature of my Elvis impersonation phase). Is this what sex looks like for the rest of the world?

I need to navigate away from this. I keep my hand up (even though it’s doing a terrible job of covering the filth bursting forth from my screen) and scroll down the menu of buzzwords. Oh, they’re listed in alphabetical order- how convenient for a first term viewer such as myself. Anal, Asian, babysitter, big dick, brunette, cosplay, cumshot. And they’re ranked by popularity? Or amount of the amount of content available? I scroll down looking for the most popular, trying to avoid direct eye contact with the new couple now joyfully fingerbanging in the margins.

“Porn star” has over 300,000. “Small tits” has over 140,000. “MILF” has about 150,000. “Solo female” is sitting at a solid 100,000, while “solo male” has barely scraped 7,000. Interesting.

My stomach drops when I see the section “teen”- almost 300,000. It has almost the same amount as “porn star.” I feel a strong pang of empathy towards young Eve.

I scroll back up to the top of the list, eager to escape that particular statistic. No idea what to click on first. Underneath categories, there’s a section entitled “Popular with Women” with a little pink Venus symbol next to it. Yessss…go towards the women. The women won’t steer me wrong. Let’s click on that.

More graphic thumbnails come up, with a heading entitled “What Porn For Women Really Means!”

Oh great, I can’t wait for you to tell me.

“Female friendly porn isn’t one size fits all- here, you’ll find everything from story-driven, passionate softcore porn to hardcore gang-bangs. The one thing they all have in common? Real women actually prefer them.”

Well. That’s me. I’m a “real woman” (whatever the fuck that is). I scroll down.

Boobs. Butts. More cock.

I’m feeling slightly alarmed at how quickly I’m becoming numb to parts of this. The invasive video ads aren’t even phasing me anymore. It just gives me a sort of dull weighed feeling in the bottom of my stomach, like an heavy trunk sinking to the ocean floor.

A title jumps out: “Mischievous daughter gets munched out by stepmom”.

DEAR GOD, NO.

I don’t think I’m in the mood for any more thumbnails of penises being inserted into buttholes. The men need to go, stat. I click on the sub-section “lesbian.”

Goddamn it, the men have disappeared, but their cocks have been replaced by stepsisters. ALL THE STEPSISTERS. AND STEPMOMS. FOR GODDESS SAKE, CAN ANYONE HERE NOT HAVE HARDCORE LESBIAN SEX WITH A MEMBER OF THEIR RESPECTIVE FAMILIES?! It is NOT that hard.

I scroll down exasperated. Some themes are definitely emerging- strap-ons, squirting and strange racial bias. My favourite thumbnail so far is three girls in blue cheerleading uniforms, smiling at the camera above the title “Abella, Milana and Kendra in Squirting Lesbian Threesome.”

At least the image has some charming Disney Channel original movie vibes.

Shit, I don’t really want to click on any of these. But I made it my mission here to investigate, so we need to narrow this down. Which one has the least amount of incest, religious themes or kidnapping subplots?

Eventually, I decide to narrow it down to a video with no specific fetishes involved. There’s no graphic, animated thumbnail and simply has the two women’s names in the title. It has half a million views and an 81% positive rating (good Rotten Tomatoes score). Plus they appear to be in a very clean, white, Pinterest decorated bedroom, which looks like it may have been entirely decorated with items from the K-mart homewares section.

A pop-up ad comes up when I click on it, offering me the chance to “jerk off with random teens now”. My stomach lurches again. OUT, OUT, OUT.

As if the website can sense my panic, another unavoidable ad pops up at the side, this time with a bespectacled, older woman who looks like she might be someone’s grandmother. Except she has her tits out and is accompanied with the title “Would you fuck an older woman?” (excuse me ma’am, this is a Wendy’s).

Enough already. Let’s just play the video, so we won’t be subjected to any more ads that will give me sexually-charged nightmares about the elderly. Will check back in after I’ve watched the video.

 VIDEO ONE:

Well, don’t know what I expected. I just watched two young women having sex.

On the whole, I was actually pleasantly surprised.

The vibe was definitely more homemade, amateur porn since the set-up was basically just a desktop webcam. Even though they were actively producing pornography, the two women seemed like real people with a genuine attraction to each other. They held hands and stroked each other’s hair a lot, suggesting they may have been in some kind of IRL romantic relationship (but who knows). Their actions seemed natural and based around the pleasure of their partner, often stopping to laugh and smile at each other as they removed each other’s clothing. Plus there was no scissoring or any of the other cliches normally associated with lesbian porn.

That’s not to say there was no sense of performativity involved- particularly at the beginning. Obviously both parties know they’re being filmed, so there was initially an unavoidable self-awareness about the way they grinded against one another and stuck out their butts. Maybe trying a little too hard to look hot, despite their Australian-approved beach bodies with matching Billabong underwear sets. It felt like I was watching the popular girls from my local high school hook up. Both kept their hair down and one was wearing massive gold hoop earrings- how is that a practical sex choice?! I feel like I have to put my hair up to selvage even the smallest hint of concentration, let alone do any form of physical activity. But maybe it’s too harsh to judge- why should one not look cute while shooting porn?

But once they started having sex, there were times where both women looked so into it that I honestly thought they might cry. It was reassuring to watch them awkwardly swing their bodies around to accommodate each other- slowly disintegrating from cool-looking surfer girls into sweaty, moaning, animalistic beings, shaking and writhing around with their legs apart. I was also relieved to observe that I am not the only person who emerges from giving oral like I’ve been eating a bucket of extra spicy chicken wings (eyes watering, hair dishevelled).

But here’s the thing?! I wasn’t really interested in watching a 30-minute video of them having sex. Don’t get me wrong, very happy for them. Ecstatic, even. But despite proving to be a pretty harmless, healthy video of two women having a positive sexual experience, I didn’t really feel l had any reason to watch it. Maybe it was just my strong scientific resolve (or general lack of horniness), but I felt like going away to make a snack and leaving them in peace to joyfully eat each other out. My role as the viewer was pretty passive, aimlessly skipping ahead like a YouTube tutorial once I had gotten the general gist.

But overall, not too bad- a solid first choice. I feel like I need to find a contrasting piece of material to make a fair comparison. This definitely fulfills the more popular amateur niche, but what else was out there?

Back to the trenches.

(5 minutes later)

As expected, we’re going to stick with The Gays for round 2 because I think we’ve established that I feel more comfortable in their warm, sensual rainbow embrace. Plus if I see one more ad of a droopy elephant dick, I may never leave said embrace again.

One of my observations scrolling down is that the more produced, professional-looking content (you can tell there’s a ring light from the thumbnail) seems to contain all of the expected aspects of stereotypical lesbian porn- squirting, scissoring, massive fake boobs in tiny, striped bikinis. It’s like gay propaganda created to confuse straight men (“they jizz just like us, yeah?”).

But I feel like I should test out a more porn-star centric option. You know, the type where women have fantastically cartoonish names like Lola Snowflake and Emerald Noir.

Okay, this one is apparently created by a specific, branded porn production company and has almost 4 million views with an 82% approval rating. It stars two established porn actresses in a 12-minute short where a goth lesbian corrupts the innocent girl next door- there’s CHARACTERISATION, people. I’m sure these ladies prepared for these roles in the same way as I did in high school drama by playing a warm-up game of Space Jump and walking around the room reciting tongue twisters (“tip of the tongue, teeth and lips”).

Aside from the girl-on-girl subject matter, this video seems to differ in every other way from our last specimen, so let’s get into it. See you on the other side.

VIDEO TWO:

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I’m not even kidding. The first shot of this video is the dark silhouette of aforementioned goth lesbian standing outside her neighbour’s brightly lit bedroom window like the killer in Scream.

She keeps watching as the girl’s dress straps *accidentally* slips off her shoulders and she does a very convincing little “oh!” in surprise. But rather than adjusting it, she keeps it there and starts taking selfies of her exposed boobs, while our favourite gothy friend laughs at her outside.

The storytelling here is already impeccable.

She BOUNCES, not walks, over to the window, with her top still down around her waist like she’s forgotten about it. And whaaaaa, there’s a RANDOM PERSON right outside her window?! What are the odds?

There’s about a minute of Oscar-worthy dialogue where we establish that the goth girl is her, er…next door neighbour, and she better get out of there quick-bloody-smart because *my boyfriend will be here any minute*. All of said dialogue is carried out like one of them is not standing there with her tits fully out.

After some brilliantly executed PowerPoint-style fade transitions, the goth girl somehow gets inside the house and immediately starts groping the other one while SHE JUST STANDS THERE, rolling her eyes like this whole thing is a massive inconvenience to her evening. Plus it allows some time for us, the viewer, to appreciate the flawless selection of fake pot plants that the prop department was able to pull together on such short notice. It’s giving me massive The Room vibes.

SWEET JESUS.

I was messing around and turned back just in time to witness a sudden jump-cut straight to the goth girl licking the other’s vagina at close range. I mean, I knew the runtime was short, but they decided to cut any foreplay…for those two minutes of dialogue?! That is either a hilarious production decision or a sign I must have to pay for the full version to figure out how my favourite two gal pals managed to get themselves into this saucy predicament.

The next 10 minutes are so stupid that I can barely be bothered expressing any feeling about them. The overt fakeness of everything makes each passing minute less sexy than the last.

Every 30 seconds, there’s another PowerPoint fade transition as they go from one basic bitch position to the next with little discernible difference. The goth girl makes the exact same whine-y noises the whole way through, despite the fact that nothing pleasurable has actually happened to her yet. Even though her companion’s legs are expertly spread apart like she’s in a jazzercize class, both women’s flaccid bodies make it painfully obvious that there is no actual sex happening here (shock horror). The whining doesn’t distract from the lack of physical tension or desire and it’s deeply depressing to watch. At the end, they literally scissor like they’re miming heterosexual sex without a penis (or strap-on), and I was so fucking done. It was the most bizarre thing and to add insult to injury, THEY EVEN PUT IN SEVERE CLOSE-UPS OF THEIR GENITALS NOT TOUCHING. As in, they’re grinding on nothing.

And then the video ends. They couldn’t even be bothered to include anything that vaguely resembled an orgasm. What a waste of fake pot plants.

CONCLUSION:

Well, what a delightful little journey into the world of smut. Well done to everyone involved (I’m looking at you, squirting lesbian threesome). Like Sir Isaac Newton walking away from the apple tree, rubbing the bump on his head and wondering what the hell just happened, allow us to reflect on the vital scientific research that has taken place today.

Overall, I wasn’t exactly converted. But as a fair-minded, objective investigator, I can also admit that this may not have been a direct result of the porn itself.

In her 1964 essay Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag listed erotic films seen without lust as an example of the very “canon of camp”- in other words, an activity which exists within the realms of earnestly appreciating artifice and bad taste. Maybe watching porn without being horny is like being at a party where you’re sober and everyone else is drunk. It’s a lot less fun, and you tend to be much more judgemental of other people’s life choices as they give you sloppy hugs and inadvertently fall face-first into hedges.

Yet, I still can’t help but wonder how my relationship to sex might have been different if I had chosen to access porn at an earlier age. In the first amateur video, I gleefully noticed both girls using techniques and positions that I recognised from moments in my own sex life. But for better or worse, I wasn’t doing them in response to watching porn. It was years of awkward trial-and-error where I enthusiastically, if not gracefully, tried to learn what felt good for me and my partners. I never had the pressure of trying to emulate any aspect of porn because I was blissful unaware of its content. Who knows if it may have assisted with these discoveries (particularly as a young queer person) or merely hindered them? I guess we’ll never know.

But in hindsight, I also feel grateful to have had the privilege of exploring sex on my own terms, without a phantom porn-version of me floating overhead like the Hormone Monstress in Big Mouth– cracking filthy one-liners and influencing my ideas on what sex should or shouldn’t be. It feels like it would have made everything seem so much harder (again, no pun intended).

It also feels important to acknowledge that a large majority of people are probably more likely to view porn in moments where IRL sex is not an option for them. Today’s experiment seemed to confirm my suspicion that it feels more like a quick fix- somewhere to freely investigate your individual tastes and desires outside (or prior to) your own sexual experiences. It doesn’t seem like something that should be relied on long-term or used as the basis for an entire personality. Obviously, there’s aspects of sex that can never truly be grasped from porn, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t got a place in helping people express themselves and what they like.

But even with this perspective, I cannot lie to you and say the overall user experience on a mainstream porn site was enjoyable. After less than two hours of graphic animated ads, raunchy thumbnails and taboo taglines, I could already feel myself growing numb to hardcore sexualised imagery. Normally, seeing that kind of image would stick in my memory because of my bodily acknowledgement of its explicitness. But after being bombarded at every turn, the website was slowly training me not to have that reaction anymore- even when I saw things that actively made me uncomfortable. Even without clicking on more graphic stuff, it was basically impossible to avoid, and in all honesty? I couldn’t help thinking how my younger self would have felt seeing women getting ass-fucked in every single compulsory ad or witnessing the more predatory, fetishized parts of sexuality demonstrated in the way porn is tagged and categorised. It made me feel complicit in a way I didn’t want to be.

Throughout the process of writing this, I’ve worried about being too dismissive or unempathetic to those who do enjoy porn and consider it to be a valuable part of their sexual lives. You may not the share the same neurosis as me and even if you do, there are lots of wonderful sites for hot, ethically-made pornography which can give you all the best bits without compromise (I highly recommend the work of director Erika Lust, as well as inclusive platform Pink Label TV). My main insistence is that you do whatever makes you happy, sexually or otherwise.

But at this stage of my life, porn just might not be for me and that’s okay. Maybe I’ll report back in a year after spending some more quality time with the aforementioned Ms Lust and feel differently- who knows? But I’m also a big fan of illustrator Hazel Mead (check out her Insta here), and her educational, diverse imagery perfectly captures the best parts of sex that are left out of mainstream porn (most of these hit harder than I’d like to admit). You’re not missing out, my heavenly chums.

That’s all from me today! Until next time, you ravishing pervs.

Love Eve X