“Ethical Porn” Appeals to Human Gaze, Conscience, and Fans

Now, More Than Ever, Ethical Porn is the Right Kind to Shoot and Sell.

There’s never a bad time to treat ourselves and other people with kindness and respect. It’s especially important to do so when you’re involved with the creation of a sexually explicit performance piece, whether live or recorded. As the number of women, couples, queer individuals, BIPOC, and freshly legal viewers has increased, a call for more “ethical” porn has also increased.

What, exactly, qualifies as “ethical” porn as opposed to just regular porn porn? The former is often called “feminist” porn or “fair trade” porn. Its work environment as well as the final product differ from most profit-driven “male-gaze” focused porn. Among the goals of ethical porn is fair pay for all, combined with active consent and respect. It prioritizes the needs, preferences, interests, and boundaries of performers over convincing them to engage in sexual activities they would rather avoid but might boost sales in some markets.

Ethical porn aims to display more realistic sex featuring participants who look less like conventional strippers, models, or porn performers and are more reflective of the full physical range of adult bodies. A variety of shapes and sizes, skin tones, ages, sexual preferences, and physical abilities are presented as valid and worthy of pleasure. In fact, depicting genuine female pleasure is the gold standard for ethical porn.

A 2018 study mentioned in Elle UK found that more than 60 percent of women surveyed acknowledged that they had viewed porn during the previous month. According to a 2022 survey also referenced in Elle UK, half of adults in the UK are porn consumers. That’s more people than those who subscribe to Netflix. A third survey cited by Elle revealed that 72 percent of women who watch porn find it empowering and 57 percent of them found that porn helped them become more open-minded about sex. That means a fair number of women are interested in porn but are also being exposed to content that is directed specifically toward men. Women, couples, and non-binary fans find locating more suitable erotica challenging.

This is frustrating for those who want to view or hear more ethical porn, but it is also a sign that there is a growing market for it. Given possible upcoming governmental changes regarding pornography, it might even be an industry saver. As the ethical porn website for Bellesa points out, “When it comes down to it, the above ‘ethical porn’ guidelines are really just baseline conditions for a fair, healthy, respectful, and human working environment.”

Opponents to porn often claim they are concerned about performer safety and the possibility that they are coerced into sexual acts. That makes it even more important to ensure that all talent is adequately compensated for their work, fully aware of what they are asked to do and in complete agreement to do it, genuinely attracted to the people they will work with, and provided with a safe location that includes easy access to safer sex supplies and lube. Perhaps most importantly, it’s the perfect time to treat models, performers, and crew like human beings with valid feelings, needs, desires, experiences, and rights.

Companies including the previously mentioned Bellesa make these values the basis for their business model. Since Bellesa’s content is made by and for women, award-winning director Jacky St. James is the creative director and visionary, assuring that content is high quality, intelligent, and erotically artful. The site also includes sexy stories and its own line of toys. The goal of Bellesa’s content is to “empower women to embrace, explore, and celebrate their sexuality – unapologetically.”

This passion for providing a safe and enjoyable place for both performers and viewers to consensually explore their boundaries, satisfy their sexual curiosities, and feel good about getting off is a tie that binds all ethical porn producers. Swedish-born filmmaker Erika Lust entered the adult industry in the 2000s and told Elle UK that she was unimpressed by the often vulgar, disrespectful, racist, and generally creepy titles and explanations used to describe sex scenes or features. “This isn’t who I am, maybe it’s not what I should be watching,” she observed. Like other ethical porn producers, Lust contends that “Porn can also be artistic and beautiful.”

It can also be revolutionary. Shine Louise Houston’s PinkLabel.TV, Courtney Trouble’s 2002 launched Indie Porn Revolution, and CrashPad proudly specialize in porn that features ethical, authentic queer sex directed by authentically queer directors. Lesbian, genderqueer, bisexual, gay, trans men, trans women, Black-Indigenous-People-of-Color, people with disabilities and all kinds of body shapes are far more likely to appear in content from or on these production and curation sites. Being ethical does not mean storylines can’t be edgy, intelligent, non-traditional, and horny as hell.

Further examples of places to look at high-quality ethical porn are Angie Rowntree's Sssh and "Very British" Justin Santos' JoyBear. Both sites were founded by professionals with decades of involvement and insight into the adult industry. And yes, one of them is a man! Their artful content proves that they have not wasted their time and have honed their already impressive technical, storytelling, and character development skills during that time.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of all the ethical/feminist porn available online. Ms. Naughty’s Bright Desire features real-world lovers to emphasize intimacy and connection. Cindy Gallop’s Make Love Not Porn site also focuses on realistic sex scenes that star real people and established couples who share their own recordings and earn half of all funds raised by them. Lustery and IFeelMyself also showcase content submitted by actual couples.

In this brave newly noticed ethical niche there is even room for kink. Pandora Blake is a UK spanker and sexual freedom activist who doles out corporal punishment to those who dearly deserve it on her site, Dreams of Spanking.

Ultimately, Lust Cinema's founder summed up the goal of ethical/feminist porn quite nicely when she Zoomed with Elle UK’s Shannon Mahanty and said, “Through the pornography that we’re making, we’re shifting values and helping people understand and respect other identities, sexualities, and kinks outside of a very heteronormative vanilla version of penis-and-vagina sex.”

The anti-porn forces won’t find that sentiment a comfort, but by increasing safety and respect at the workplace as well as boosting the authenticity of the entertainment offered, the harder it will be to justify opposition.