It's time for the Feminist Porn Awards, well, vaguely time. The season for feminist porn, anyway. And what better way to mark it than arguing with idiots on the internet?

“How is say one cunnilingus shot different from another?”
There’s a huge difference in how it’s shot, for a start.
Cunnilingus that’s good for the camera (i.e. focuses on tongue barely touching pink) is very different from cunnilingus done for sexual arousal (and porn directors that focus on female arousal tend to focus on the facial expressions vs the actual act).
Other things you might see more often in porn made for women:
-use of sex toys that are high quality, body safe, and sterile (silicone, metal, glass)
-short fingernails!
-less focus on penetration-sexual contact after orgasm (the “moneyshot” is not the finishing point)
-longer scenes of oral sex on women
-showing and sexualizing the soft penis vs just the hard
-more use of safer sex, sometimes even shown on camera
-different body types/ethnicities on film without that being objectified- so, curvy women, small breasts, butch women, and people of colour, without the title being “Black Beauties” or “Whale Watching”
Other things you don’t see, but that happen behind the scenes:
-contracts that are respected- no bait and switch like you often get in mainstream porn
-performers encouraged to work with people they want to work with and do sexual acts they enjoy on film, vs providing a warm body
-performers having some say in the editing process
That’s just a starting place. Feel free to ask more about it. I’m the founding member of Ladies High Tea and Pornography Society, along with starting a British queer porn collective, so I’m pretty schooled when it comes to feminist and female-gaze pornography and how it differs from male-gaze porn.
And frankly, I’d argue that some of Anna Span’s original work was very much male-gaze porn made by a woman because it failed some of the above points in how it was shot.

I want to like Anna Span. Honest. But when I see a fair few fake tits, only slender bodies, long pointy nails going inside soft pink cunts, titles like "Lez Be Friends", lots of cocksucking and very little pussy eating... well. That just doesn't really fit with the above list, as far as I'm concerned. And honestly while I get the fantasy of "Their Pants Down"- being caught having a wank after ogling a hot woman, and having her "punish" you by using you- I feel like it's pretty fucking obvious this is a man's fantasy that turns sexual harassment into the start of sexyfuntimes- problematic to say the least. "Play the Slut" is about showing your "dirty side" by- what else? Playing with women!

Ugh.

So here's my problem with saying that Anna Span makes feminist porn. She really doesn't. She's a woman making porn, but it's definitely male gaze stuff (at least, it seems that way to me). Compare her work to Madison Young's and you'll see a pretty obvious difference. This is an important differentiation to be made.

Why is this all so important? Well, it's because I don't believe that porn in inherently "wrong" or antifeminist. Porn is sexuality on film. There's a lot of ways that can be made antifeminist, but I don't think it is by nature. However, when you equate women-directed porn that is still very much a product of patriarchal values and markets and CLAIM it's feminist, you ruin it for those who are actually trying to make ethical porn that values equality and diversity.

Today's rant- over.