There's No Good Porn for Women? Seriously?

LOS ANGELES—The sillist post was just published on HuffPo titled, “Seriously, Why is There No Good Porn For Women?” It’s written by someone named Nikki Gloudeman, who is editor of a site called Ravishly.com. She looks young from her picture, a millennial, which may explain her utterly vacuous—nay, fatuous!— argument that there is no good porn for women. This complaint in a world in which there is someone making every conceivable type of porn for every conceivable type of demographic, whether it is recognizable as human or not? But Gloudeman, who claims to have “tried to enjoy porn,” complains, “As women, we've essentially been given two options: plotless porn with women who are hard to relate to and don't get treated very well, or thoughtful, sexy movies devoid of actual sex.” It’s not like she hasn’t tried. “Once, in my single days,” she writes, “I spent no fewer than three straight hours scouring for titillating female-friendly porn online, until it became something of a noble quest, like journeying through the Arabian Desert in search of the Cave of Wonders.” She doesn’t say how or where exactly she looked for porn, or what sort of search terms she used, or sites she visited, but her frustration has finally forced her to inquire, “What I don't understand is why no one is making full-length, big-budget films that show graphic sex. While watching Witness the other night, starring a young Harrison Ford as a cop on the lam who ends up falling in love with an Amish woman, I ended up deeply disappointed that the central romance built up to nothing more than a passionate kiss/hug and one forbidden glance at a naked body. “I mean, come on: jaded male cop, chaste Amish girl? It has ‘porn’ written all over it,” she continued. “But it seems the fact that it also involved intelligent characterization and a compelling narrative precluded it from showing actual sex. In the world of film, sex and even just a whiff of intelligence are mutually exclusive entities.” One has to admit that the specter of a grown woman at the end of her porn rope is not a pretty sight, and one would normally drop everything to assist her in her admirable quest to find what she’s looking for, but the fact that Gloudeman lives in a digital bubble that has left her ignorant of the fact that full-length, big-budget films that show graphic sex have been made and are still being made boggles the mind and makes empathy more difficult. One also wonders if perhaps Gloudeman, rather than complain so publicly, might want to check out … oh, maybe the Wicked Passions like of movies made by Stormy Daniels, a woman, who has spent the last few years focusing her directorial attention on the romance genre—complete with actual sex! (Read more about Daniels and 29 other women in the adult biz in this AVN article.) There are other examples she could look into, to be sure. (Sssh.com also comes to mind.) But the point’s the same: rather than complain, she might actually find some satisfaction. Oh, and by the way, it's not like any of this is new territory for women looking for porn for women or for women making porn for women looking for porn for women, As but one example, in 2006, AVN published a short story about Sweden's Erika Lust developing movies for women. She's hardly alone. Just saying...