For Women, By Women

In the world of pornography there is little ground that has not been covered. Practically every genre or fetish one could imagine has been captured on film or video at one point or another. Yet, amazingly, one area that has barely been tapped by porn is women! Don't get me wrong, MANY women have been "tapped" by porn, but as performers, not as an audience demographic. Who is making porn movies for the ladies? Why is there not a bigger market for adult cinema aimed at what women want? Surely most women don't want to see themselves degraded and humiliated on screen as is the case in many porn movies, especially in the gonzo and anal genres. There must be porn meant for the ladies that is softer, sexier and more passionate, right?

There is, it's just that until now the genre has been only quietly making headway, with female directors like Veronica Hart, Chloe, Candida Royalle, Toni English and Anita Rinaldi creating hardcore vids for the opposite sex. They've been doing it for years, but only recently has the trend garnered some genuine heat.

"It's still the boys club," Hart admits. "But there's a couple of us out there who are throwing wrenches in their spokes. It's about being a smart enough woman and being able to find a place for yourself and work well."

Hart is a torchbearer in a growing group of women who are selling "female-empowered" adult entertainment to other women — the kind with plots, foreplay and cuddling that focuses on women's tastes and pleasure.

Likewise, Simon Wolf Productions recently announced they will be producing a line of adult videos aimed for the female audience in response to the success of their title For Women Only. The first in this new line, Woman’s World, will street March 16.

"For Women Only is our third or fourth biggest selling title and it was targeted directly at women," Simon Wolf Productions owner John Chambliss told AVN.com. "And re-orders today are phenomenal on the show, because as the female audience grows … There is a lot of intimacy, especially with eye contact. The sex is hard, very dynamic, but there is much more kissing and fondling and playing."

But what about the ladies who shudder at the thought of seeing women degraded, yet don't like the kissy-kissy romance stuff and do want to see hardcore, even anally-charged, sex? Well, female auteurs such as Brittney Foster have that area covered as well.

"The girl-girl videos that I've seen only get hardcore to a certain extent, they are usually too soft" says Foster of her ultra-hardcore, all-girl, fetish-themed Britney Foster's Disturbed. "So I'm taking it to the next level. There's fisting, double anal, double vag. It's has a fetish look and is extremely hardcore."

Meanwhile, you have male directors like Andrew Blake and Michael Ninn, who are making high-fashion, glossy porn that combines hardcore sex with a slicker, more artsy look.

Many women are beginning to see the sex industry as a viable area to make a legitimate living. Experts say demand by heterosexual and lesbian women is driving the growth of many sex-related ventures, from stores to catalogs to sex toy companies to adult Websites, porno films and cable TV programs.

In fact, there is even a movement of female porn Webmasters. Carlin Ross and Christina Head, a lawyer and a documentary filmmaker in New York, recently teamed up to plot new careers as Webmasters of a soon-to-be launched site that features "sex and love from a woman's perspective."

"It's all about empowering and educating women and, of course, I enjoy sex," the ironically named Head told the NY Times. "We're women. We enjoy sex."