This Is Where You’ll Find Good Porn

Hint: You’ll have to pay for it, which is how we get good porn in the first place

A cozy evening at home for me involves lighting a few candles and pouring a glass of wine. Every now and again, I also kick back on the couch, alone or with someone special, to watch something. In a past life, I was an HBO and Netflix fiend, and I’ve now decided that my film and series binging days are over. Nowadays, my visual entertainment of choice tends to be porn.

Truth is, watching porn is fairly new to me; I hardly did growing up, and all the way into my thirties. I wasn’t avidly opposed either, I simply found it rather awkward and disenchanting. To this day, I can’t get past the poorly delivered lines, the horrendous lighting, the deadbeat clichés, and most of all, the lack of believable storylines.

A storyteller above all, if you can’t suspend my disbelief, I’ll disjoin fairly fast. Therefore, you won’t find me glued to PornHub—or xVideos, YouPorn, or any of the popular mainstream sites.

I discovered a different kind of porn

Finding XConfessions some years ago opened me up to a new genre of pornography: For the first time, I saw stuff that reminded me of art shorts, with intriguing storylines and flattering lighting. The performers were relatable humans with recognizable reactions—and a focus on female pleasure! I was thrilled.

Without hesitation, I signed up and started paying a monthly fee for access. Since then, I’ve explored further and have become familiar with a tight-knit community of sex-positive, stereotype-boosting performers, and creators. Via my writing, I’ve been fortunate to befriend and collaborate with a handful of talented individuals from the Berlin scene. Through them, I get to admire firsthand the passionate hard work, as well as the challenges that come with pushing the envelope of adult entertainment.

Why we should seek out alternatives to mainstream porn

Demeter deLune, in her article about introducing kink to your sex life, cited porn as a potential inspiration and urged her readers to “be sure to source your porn from places where the performers are compensated for their work.” I immediately wanted to comment with a list of my own recommendations. Then, as I read Yael Wolfe’s lament for all the crappy porn she’s watched, I decided this topic needs its own article.

There are so many reasons why we should turn to indie porn for inspiration. Here are a few:

They offer realness and diversity without the physical or racial fetishization

Common for the sites I follow is their representation of a wide spectrum of people, genders, and sexual expressions in respectful ways. While the performers tend to be attractive, they often look more similar to your cute next-door neighbor than what you find when you google porn star.

Films are intentionally not categorized according to primal physical features, whether that be body shape, ability, age, or ethnicity. The cringe-worthy tags from the commercial platforms, such as interracial, BBW, ebony, redheads, teenagers, and so on, have been done away with.

Paying for good porn benefits everyone

We don’t complain when asked to pay for most of the entertainment we consume, be it music or movie streaming—or our yearly Medium memberships, but for some reason, most seem to expect porn to be free. Why should it be?

By paying for our porn, we not only bypass the tiring ads but ensure that the creators and performers are compensated fairly for their work—just like everyone else who works should! #sexworkiswork

The more people are willing to pay fairly for the porn they consume, the more good porn will emerge. That’s basic supply and demand.

Porn can be so much more than a cheap and easy fix

The porn I’m listing below isn’t necessarily something I put on for a quickie; to get off in five minutes. Just like how I’m an avid supporter of mindful masturbation, I value how these films supply my imagination with vivid images; ones that linger on and provide continued arousal. The films, their topics, and artistry also challenge and spark conversation, making them a wonderful activity to partake in with a partner or friend.

Ok, let’s get to the point: Here’s my list of favorite, non-mainstream porn—including a few I’m excited to check out next.

Artistic Adult Cinema

The artistry that goes into alternative adult cinema should be recognized and most of the below studios are nominated and awarded yearly by festivals like Porn Film Festival, Dan Savage’s Hump Film Fest, Hacker Porn Film Festival, Hot Bits, and Schamlos.

Erika Lust

The queen of indie porn

Award-winning adult filmmaker Erika Lust has made porn since the early 2000s. The Barcelona-based Swede focuses on female pleasure, cinematic values, diversity, and an ethical production process. She strives to create intelligent narratives and relatable characters, engaged in realistic, hot sex.

XConfessions | This project was started in 2013 as an online place for people to share sexual confessions, from which Erika and her team would choose their favorites to transform into explicit short films. The platform has since grown into a global community of sex-positive film enthusiasts.

Since XConfessions was my way into the alt-porn world, it holds a special place with me. I adore the variety of styles and artistic expressions, and how they strive to push beyond stereotypes—and the concept of turning reader submissions into films is simply brilliant!

Price: $11.50 per month with a 12-month commitment. Single month $34.95 (Tip: If you sign up to their mailing list, you’ll continue to receive various discounts on your subscription.)

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Lust Cinema | Less artsy than XConfessions, this is the place for those looking for something more like regular porn, but with higher quality storytelling and a more realistic representation of sex and sexuality—and without the cringe-worthy categories.

Price: $11.50 per month for a 12-month commitment. Single month $34.95

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Else | Erika Lust’s Soft Edition is created for those looking for something ELSE. This collection, which also features selects from Lust and XConfessions, explores soft erotica with cinematic stories that are meant to be sensual and arousing, while somewhat less explicit.

Price: $8.95 per month for a 12-month commitment. Single month $11.50.

Four Chambers

Bridging art and pornography

For the most enchanting, analog, artistic porn, head to my newest obsession, Four Chambers. Created by performer Vex Ashley who’s self-taught in editing and videography, the collaborative platform works with the intention to “explore the aesthetic and conceptual potential of pornography as a medium for ideas.”

I’m just starting to dive into this site, but I look forward to investigating deeper. So far I’m mesmerized by their artful explorations of rather complex topics ranging from “technology, symbolism, mythology, alchemy, and their intrinsic intersection with sex.”

Price: $9.00 per month.

ForPlay Films

Porn for women, by women

This independent, all-woman production company is on a mission to create erotic short films through a feminist gaze. Founded by LA-based costume designer and artist Inka Winter in 2017, they’re still fairly new with a small but growing catalog of films. What has been published so far is very promising and has been nominated and awarded at festivals like Dan Savage’s Hump Film Festival, Berlin Porn Film Festival, and Cine Kink. Since I can’t do them all at once, this is definitely my next subscription!

Price: $9.99 per month.

Aorta Films

Experimental queer cinema

A good friend and adult director just pointed me to the award-winning experimental queer porn site AORTA, giving me yet another one to add to my list.

Led by Creative Director Mahx Capacity, the studio produces monthly shorts and longer feature projects centering performers across a wide range of bodies and identities. From a background of queer BDSM and experimental performance, the collaborative studio emphasizes safe, enthusiastic consent while creating “hot, kinky content that celebrates queer identity and explodes with destabilizing pleasure”.

Price: $9.00 per month via Patreon subscription.

PinkLabel.TV

A little bit of everything

PinkLabel is kind of like a Netflix for alternative porn. The platform offers a large collection of emerging and independent pornographers with a mission to support new producers by helping their films find a global audience.

As a viewer you can pay for a monthly subscription or TV on-demand, paying just for what you want to watch. The site’s collection has films from all of the labels I mentioned above, as well as from the brilliant educational series Sex School, making it a perfect place to start if you want to check out a little bit of everything before or without committing to just one or a few studios.

Price: $9.99 per month for a 12-month commitment. Single month $25.00. Or on-demand.

Amateur Porn

Low-budget, homemade porn has been growing exponentially in popularity, not just in alternative porn but on the bigger platforms too. The two sites below speak to my inner voyeur—when I feel like being a fly on the wall.

Lustery

Real people having real sex

Lustery is founded and run by performer and director Paulita Pappel who, after realizing the porn she enjoyed the most was not only made for the viewer but showed real people actually enjoying what they were doing. Pappel aims to give power back to the performers by allowing them to reclaim their own gaze and share their innermost passionate moments—and thereby serve the viewer organic, authentic reflections of real-life passion and lust.

The content on the site is filmed by couples from around the world who record their sex lives and share it with the community.

Price: $8.00 per month. Use my affiliate link to get 20% off!

Ersties

Women joyfully sharing their erotic experiences

The all-female team behind Ersties believes in movies filled with passion, joy, and natural beauty. Their content, which ranges from camming to low-budget, natural setting films, shows genuine, joyful adventures and erotic experiences, displaying female solo-play and girl-on-girl (or plural). There are occasional male guest stars too, but the majority of the content features females only—for everyone, but especially for other females.

Price: $11.00 per month for a 12-month commitment. Single month $35.00.

To sum up, mainstream porn is, in my opinion, the McDonald’s of adult entertainment; it’s quick, easy, low quality, and lacking substantial nourishment. There might be a time and a place for that, but in the long run, we should seek out more sustenance.

While the world of indie porn has grown exponentially over the last decade, there’s lots of room for advancement. This can and will only happen once we viewers start to support. Instead of lamenting the lack of options, let’s put our money where our mouths (and hearts) are, start asking for what we want to see and help blaze the trails for the pioneers of porn!