Bright Desire is porn for women – and it’s also for anybody who wants to enjoy good erotica.
The original Bright Desire tour
When Bright Desire founder Ms. Naughty first started making and curating porn in 2001, her goal was to create porn for women like herself. Back then, most pornography was made for men, either straight or gay, and it catered to the male gaze via how it was filmed, how it was described and what it showed. Most people didn’t think that women even liked porn back then. There were a few magazines that catered to them and several startup porn websites, but mostly, porn made for women was very rare.
Ms. Naughty, and a number of other female webmasters, set about making more porn that women would like. The websites spoke directly to women, featured porn that focused more on female pleasure and generally acknowledged that women liked porn too. In 2003 Ms. Naughty jointly created For The Girls, Bright Desire’s sister website, which was absolutely considered porn for women and marketed that way (it still is).
In 2012 Ms. Naughty launched Bright Desire and it was originally intended to be her own independent porn for women site featuring her own films. It didn’t take long to expand the horizons. As the site grew, it became apparent that men were just as interested in good, alternative, ethical porn as women. Memberships at BD tend to be equally divided among the sexes. To accommodate this wider audience, Bright Desire has been called feminist porn, ethical porn and smart porn but the original intent still applies.
Should We Use The Term?
Many people are critical of the term “porn for women” and it has fallen out of favour in the last few years. Some say that it’s too vague – what sort of porn are we talking about? Which women? Given that women have vastly different tastes, sexualities and identities, does it make sense to be so broad and say one type of porn suits all women? There are those who say it is prescriptive and describes a very specific sort of porn, namely softcore, romantic, relationship-focused content.
And yet people continue to use the term and – importantly – to search for it. Given that most mainstream porn and most well-known sites typically feature the same old male-gaze, male-focused porn as two decades ago, it’s not surprising that people are still trying to find something different. And “porn for women” is one of the terms they use to look for it.
Defining Porn For Women
But what is porn for women, exactly? In a broad sense, you could say it’s just porn that aims itself at a female audience. That is, it deliberately speaks to women as the main viewer of the content. Doesn’t matter what the porn is or what it looks like, the main thing is that it’s for women and labels itself as such.
You could also define it by what it isn’t. A lot of porn doesn’t speak to women or include them as part of the audience. Most mainstream porn assumes a male viewer and depicts male perspectives. The porn often gives priority to male experiences of sex and male pleasure. The camera focuses on the female performers; the language speaks directly to men. A lot of this type of porn uses sex-negative language, especially toward women, and it depicts sex as something done to women, rather than as something shared equally with a partner. It’s often sexist and racist. All of these combines to exclude women as welcome and active viewers of porn.
So ideally, porn for women doesn’t do any of this. Instead it is respectful, consensual, inclusive and sex positive. It may give priority to women’s perspectives and to women’s pleasure or it may have a broader aim of pleasure equality. The language and descriptions speak to women as an audience (or – at the very least – recognizes that women are watching). Some say it has a female gaze.
The term has been somewhat replaced by other phrases in the mainstream media. These days you’ll see articles about feminist porn and ethical porn. These are both handy search terms that can help people to find essentially the same thing.
It’s Still Difficult To Find
Unfortunately, a search for “porn for women” may not always help you find what you want. Google has become notoriously unreliable over the last few years and tends to give priority to major tube sites or news companies. The free tube sites have categories that are ostensibly “female friendly” but these tend to feature exactly the same kind of male gaze content as elsewhere on the site. Certainly the ads or the language are often sexist or offputting.
This means finding good female friendly porn can be difficult. It doesn’t help that governments are also keen to censor porn and impose privacy-invading age verification laws which will squeeze out the small porn producers who can’t afford to lose viewers or pay for expensive verification software.
Luckily, you’ve found some here. Bright Desire features adult content that includes women as its audience. In line with Ms. Naughty’s original pro-women values, these films feature female perspectives and make sure to include or prioritize female pleasure. You’ll see more female orgasms, more cunnilingus, more sex from a female point of view. Performers are humanized and respected, sex is portrayed in a positive way and everything is made ethically (see the Bright Desire ethics statement here).
Since Bright Desire was founded, Ms. Naughty has worked to broaden the idea of “porn for women” and what it means. Her work is inclusive of different sexualities, genders and body types. She has experimented with short films and documentary to find new ways to explore sex and sexuality. She has been an integral part of the feminist porn and ethical porn movement, exploring new ideas of what porn can be and finding ways to make it better. And while some people may say that the term is outdated, Ms. Naughty is still using it. Because it’s still what people search for. And how else are you gonna find the good stuff?*
* Psst. It’s here! You’ve already found it!