Today I'm posting in honor of tomorrow's "Lady Porn Day", the brainchild of Rachael Rabbit White- a day to discuss, debate, question and challenge our thoughts about women and pornography. Twitter hashtag for this project will be #ladypornday, feel free to read up on it and get involved!

I've always been a big fan of pornography, all sorts, from Kink Inc to Pink and White to porn parodies and vintage smut. I started the Erotic Award winning Ladies High Tea and Pornography Society to create a space for women to enjoy and debate the merits and issues with pornographic material.

But one thing that kept bothering me was the porn we'd watch. It took a lot of work to find quality porn available in the UK on DVD- quality porn with ethical values, different body types, different expressions of sexuality, queer people, people of colour... that was impossible to find. I worked at a sex toy shop that, in theory, supported porn that appealed to women, but in practice wouldn't carry it because of licensing/permitting issues. They had Anna Span- but no, I don't count Anna Span in the category of which I speak, as her work, while directed by a woman, is still prone to the pink shots and long fingernail "lezzer" scenes that scream Male Gaze.

London was so big, and I had met so many hot, awesome queer people through Ladies High Tea, Kinky Salon London, After Pandora, Night of the Senses, and just going to fetish clubs... why wasn't there porn that reflected that, that came from these fantastic people?

Well, where there's a hole, I like to fill it- so I decided to create Fantabulosa, a DIY queer porn project that would create the visual erotica I was missing. Why the name? Well, it comes from Polari, a slang language popular among queers, circus folk, criminals and sex workers- and hey, that sounds like my friends! Fantabulosa is the word for excellent, and that's what I want to encourage. Excellent, well-made porn that focuses on actual erotic connections- not genitals.

I decided I would love to see this done as a collective, of course, because I come and go to and from the UK and don't want this project to fall apart because of that. Plus, I want this porn to subvert ideas about porn- I want it to be made for us, and for other queers, to begin a discussion about objectification, what turns us on, and how we can present it in a way that validates us, that says "hi, we exist". I decided to seek out, not just performers, but for people who can help with creating a presence for this, whether that be excellent speakers, writers, bloggers, photographers, and generally brilliant people.  So anyone willing to take on a role with how this comes about (and I'll obviously help) is welcome to. It's a do-ocracy- if you're willing to do it, it's all yours!

I'm hoping to start this out by creating free content for upload on Queer Porn TV, a project started by the lovely Courtney Trouble. The US has had quite a hold on queer porn content for the most part and I think it's about time the UK carved out its own niche and began to connect with queers in other countries. I want us to make something to submit to the Good Vibrations Indie Erotic Film Festival.

My hope is that Fantabulosa is not going to tell people who's queer and who isn't- if you identify as queer and feel comfortable with other queers, awesome, I wanna see it. I want to see British trans-positive, kink-positive, body positive porn, with a DIY sensibility and a refection of the diversity of the awesome British queers I know.

I've worked in a bit of porn myself, and gotten a feel for how it can work thanks to the amazing Kelly Shibari and Padded Kink (there's four videos of me on there, if you're curious). I learned that you can let performers choose their own partners and decide on the scenes that appeal to them. I learned that sometimes it's worth making porn, not for money, but to show variety that is missing in social understandings of "pornography". I learned that queer sex work really does work, and we need to be vocal about it. And through Courtney Trouble's work with No Fauxx and Reel Queer Productions, along with Madison Young's new project "The Woman's POV" (DIY point-of-view porn between women in the style of "Lucky" or "Ciao Bella"), I have cemented my belief that women DO like porn, and they DO want porn- they're just sick of porn they can't identify with.

San Francisco is the home to so many amazing porn films and porn projects that served to inspire me to connect creativity and sexuality in my other heart home of London. I think London's ready. I can't wait to begin to take the art and sensuality of pornography out of the hands of seedy Soho and into the hands of freaks like me.

So Lady Porn Day seemed like the perfect time to announce Fantabulosa to the world. Get ready, London, cause here we cum!