Wait!
Are you at least 18 years old?
Four weeks ago I explained, in response to a person asking how they could keep up with what they perceived as the superhuman stamina of pornographic performers, that porn is no substitute for sexual education.
"But Stoya, I learned good things about sex from porn."
And people responded, mostly on Twitter, with things like "But Stoya, I learned good things about sex from porn, like how that thing we call foreplay exists and is cool," or "What about jessica drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex and similar sexually explicit work that is meant as educational?"
So I asked some of my friends and acquaintances who are also pornographers to talk about when their work is meant as educational, when it is accidentally educational, and the differences between the two.
First, I spoke to Nina Hartley, a pillar of the adult entertainment community who has been performing on camera for over 30 years. She confirmed that her explicitly educational video series "Nina Hartley’s Guide to…" which began in 1995, was the first of its kind. (It’s still going: Hartley told me she’s just finished shooting volumes 39 and 40.) "The Sinclair Institute may have started a series at about the same time but that company is rated a single-X for explicitness, while the Guides are truly a hybrid of XXX and fact-based information," she says.
"I know how misleading a lot of porn is — and a huge amount of people first learn about trans women through porn."
When I asked why she created her "Guide to" series, she told me that back when she was a part-time dancer and full-time nursing student, it occurred to her that "in our culture, sexuality is sick — and sick people need a nurse’s care." She continued, "It’s clear that sexual suffering is real suffering." And she aims to fix that by providing "fact-based, non-judgmental information so people can make their own best choices depending on their unique needs. "
Hartley’s not alone in her approach. Sex-positivity activist and pornographer Tobi Hill-Meyer makes a series called Doing It Online, which focuses on a trans woman and her partner. Every episode, Hill-Meyer interviews the performers about an issue that has importance to them and how it connects to their sexuality. Doing It Online winds up providing a more holistic representation of trans women’s sexuality than usually shown in mainstream porn. That’s part of the point, Hill-Meyer says. "I know how misleading a lot of porn is — and a huge amount of people first learn about trans women through porn. Rather than try to write a book or make a YouTube channel, I wanted to reach those people directly." And so she did it by making better porn.
Hill-Meyer also sometimes leaves things in the final video that other directors might cut. For instance, if a performer uses a safe word — a word or hand signal that is established between sex partners before interaction takes place, as a way to call a stop to the action cleanly and immediately — to take a break and then come back, she might leave that in the scene. "Other directors might simply cut it all out and make it look like they never had any difficulties," she says. "Instead, I’ll interview [the participants] afterward, asking about what was going on for them, and asking them to explain what a safe word is, then cut that into the middle of the sex so the audience can understand what’s going on. I don’t even think about it as being educational at this point, I just think about it as being real."
"Suddenly, it seemed like more and more people were coming to me asking for sex advice."
Wicked Pictures contract star and sex educator, jessica drake created the instructional series "jessica drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex." That’s because, she says, "suddenly it seemed like more and more people were coming to me asking for sex advice. There was a woman in her 40s who had never orgasmed and also a couple who thought they had failed in the bedroom because they couldn’t have anal sex the way they see it in porn!"
When talking about the differences between pornography and educational videos, jessica says, "I don’t like to use terms like ’real sex’ and ‘porn sex’ because, well, when I’m having sex on camera, it sure is real. And I love porn — I think it’s a great tool, but people must be made aware that foreplay is so very important, anal sex isn’t exactly easy, women don’t spontaneously orgasm, and we also (usually) don’t bang the pool guy."
"You can also see it as an attempt to ... make what we shoot look like something that can and should be done at home."
The recurring theme here is that without nuanced and complex models of sexuality presented by educators, some pornographers are picking up the slack. Take Courtney Trouble, creator of TROUBLEfilms and co-creator of queerporn.tv, another pornographer whose focus is on the representation of queer bodies. Though Trouble, who prefers the pronouns they and them, has little formal training in sex education, their films show safer sex, trans inclusion, how to engage in kink responsibly, and consent practices. "You can see it as education, and you can also see it as an attempt to set positive trends and make what we shoot look like something that can and should be done at home as much as possible," Trouble says.
There’s also a political aspect, Trouble explains. "Seeing queer bodies being vulnerable, sexy, and fully embodied on screen does as much for the audience as it does for those of us who are being given the space to perform in queer porn. So yes, the way we represent queer bodies is 100 percent educational, and in a way, that sounds more like what we are actually doing than explicitly engaging in politics."
The lines between entertainment and education are particularly blurry when the subject is sex
International Fisting Day, which was started by Trouble and queer porn icon Jiz Lee, engages more explicitly with the politics of pornography. Specifically, the holiday is meant to highlight the erasure of fisting from mainstream pornography. That’s because some billing processors may refuse to process transactions for a company that shows fisting, and because obscenity, in the United States, is a term with a slippery definition that can result in jail time if the producer is convicted of it. So some pornographers are leery of showing fisting — they want to make sure they get paid and they don’t want to have to fight an expensive obscenity case or go to jail. When Jiz’s employer, Pink & White Productions, saw that fisting was the most common search term on their site crashpadseries.com, they produced a special "CrashPad’s Guide to Fisting" episode for their 25th season.
The lines between entertainment and education are particularly blurry when the subject is sex. So when you’re watching pornography, take a minute to find out who made those videos and what the intent was. Are these videos made specifically for educational purposes? Or was the motivation to create a sexual fantasy as glossy and manicured as possible? Or was it somewhere in between? Knowing what the intent and authority of the creator was will help you figure out whether you’re getting useful information or picking up bad habits from fantasy- and entertainment-focused porn, which tends to edit out less visually exciting processes — like warming up and relaxing an anus before slamming another body part in there. (Which is, by the way, a very bad way to approach anal.)