What is Ethical Porn and Why is it Important
By Syd Morris
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By Syd Morris
Porn is entertainment, plain and simple. It is not inherently created to be educational or even accurate. But, it can influence the ways we perceive and develop expectations around sex. Think of it just like your favorite rom-com or drama. In our minds, we know that these are not accurate depictions of the world. We know that in reality relationships are often not flying across the world to make a loud declaration of love after an explosive fight that happened a week prior. We know that we shouldn’t use these movies as educational films or expectations, and yet, they still end up playing a part in even our deepest most hidden hopes that maybe it will happen. Porn is similar. Porn is often a scripted performance done by actors that shows sex in a filtered way. It rarely shows the behind-the-scenes consent, boundaries conversations, or agreements around protection, and at the end of the day, it’s someone’s job.
Now don’t get me wrong, porn is an awesome way to explore fantasies, get turned on, or even connect with a partner. But it’s not a comprehensive educational tool. It’s also not a rule book for how your sex needs to look! These are professionals, so they likely last longer, moan louder, get into more flexible positions, appear to orgasm harder, and have less “awkwardness” than you might experience. So whether you decide to watch porn or not, remember to use it as entertainment and not an indicator of your own sex life. With that, grab your favorite solo or couples sex toy, and let’s get down and dirty with ethical porn!
So what is ethical porn? In recent years, there’s been an uptick in conversations around ethical porn — what it is, why it’s important, and how to find it. However, it’s important to note that the advocacy and demand for ethical porn by sex workers started long before the increase in public awareness of it. The more people can start to pay attention to the need for ethical porn, acknowledge that sex work is real work, and support sex workers in the way they want to be supported, the better! So here are some of the key components that make up ethical porn and where you can access it for yourself.
One of the biggest aspects of ethical porn is ensuring that all participants, but especially performers, are paid fair and living wages. Sex work is a career for a lot of people and they deserve to be paid what they are worth. Sometimes performers can set their own rates, sometimes they accept or decline scenes depending on the proposed rate, and sometimes they have a manager who helps coordinate that for them. Although we can’t often see how much a performer made from a scene before we watch it for ourselves, there are a few indicators that can help differentiate between porn that paid a fair wage and not. The best way is to pay or subscribe to performers directly. Whether that’s on sites like OnlyFans or other subscription sites, this is the best way to ensure that the sex worker will get the majority or all of the money. You can also explore or subscribe to sites that explicitly detail their commitment to paying fair wages. We’ll provide a list of those sites at the end!
Although there may be videos that were filmed ethically on platforms like PornHub, anyone can upload videos there, so it’s impossible to know if unethical practices were happening off or even on camera. You get what you pay for! So although some sites offer free ethical porn videos (like Bellesa), to ensure people are getting paid, you gotta pay. It also feels so much better to be watching porn where you know that everyone wanted to be there, was treated well, and was paid fairly.
Although there are plenty of people who choose sex work as their career for any number of reasons (schedule flexibility, autonomy, money, enjoyment), there are people who have been forced into sex work. The key difference here is that those forced into doing sex work are not sex workers. It’s just as important to advocate for the rights of sex workers as it is to advocate for the protection of those forced into it. To learn more about this, check out the work being done by SWOP USA. Ethical porn only includes performers who are there without manipulation, force, or threat. Sex work is real work, and we should watch people who are choosing it as their work! It can be challenging if not impossible to tell who did or didn’t want to be there solely based on watching a video itself. So again, a great way is to follow your favorite sex workers and performers on social media or other subscription sites. This way they often have full autonomy over what they post, what they agree to do, and who they work with.
Have you noticed that most readily available porn videos are of white, able-bodied, cis-gender, thin, heterosexual couples? If there are videos of people that deviate from those identities, it might be fetishizing their identity as a person of color, fat, or queer person. Ethical porn includes and celebrates the diversity of performers. It is constantly working towards the goal of showcasing performers from a variety of identities so that anyone watching may be able to see their own identity represented. This is also vitally important because there are endless stigmas around the identities of people and how those identities relate to their sex lives. Fat people and disabled people and older people are often desexualized and not included in conversations around pleasure. Sexually queer women are shown as a fantasy for straight men. Black people, especially Black women, are hyper-sexualized. But all of these people and identities are equally as important to have as performers engaging in the activities that they find pleasurable. This leads us to our next point…
Although porn is work, that doesn’t mean that pleasure exits the room. Performers should be able to choose and participate in what they find pleasurable. Conversations about boundaries, fantasies, what people like, and freedom to explore should happen before any scene. Sometimes we don’t get to see those conversations as viewers, but sometimes we do! @erstiesofficial on Instagram and TikTok does a phenomenal job of showing what their discussions look like before any scene. Their director, Karyn Hunt, is often shown leading these conversations with those who will be participating that day. She goes through the details of the scene and then asks each of the performers to engage in dialogue about what each of them enjoys, wants to try, have as off-limits, the ways they like to be touched, and more. Bellesa House also often will record interviews with the performers before starting a scene. These interviews cover anything from why they wanted to work with the other performer(s), how they got started in porn, what they like, and more.
Hopefully, by this point, you know that when we say “All Sex is Good Sex” we mean “All Consensual Sex is Good Sex”. But it’s true, even in porn! Porn is an awesome way to explore fantasies, see a visual of what your partner has expressed they are interested in trying and destigmatize the turn-ons, interests, and fetishes that people have. Many porn sites focus on specific genres, such as Kink.com, but ethical porn should never stigmatize the type of sex that is being had (as long as it is consensual). Just as we want porn that is filmed for all gazes and pleasure, we also want to have porn that showcases a wide variety of sex. If there is something you’re interested in, there’s a porn video for you! Ethical porn celebrates the sexual liberation, freedom, and pleasure of all kinds of sex. The sex that you are or want to be having is good and normal, and if you are consuming porn that is similar to that, it should make you feel that way too. Ethical porn is sex-positive, kink-positive, vanilla-positive, and everything-positive! And if you find something that interests you, take a peek at the Pepper BDSM Toys to try introducing it into your own sex life.
Just as in everyday sex, consent is 100% a necessity in porn. Just because someone is a sex worker does not mean that they are automatically ok with everything and anything. They are entitled to boundaries and consent conversations. Consent also has to do with comfortability. Performers should feel comfortable stopping a scene, having a safe word, pausing for water or a bathroom break, shifting positions, and everything else. Consent is a shared responsibility of everyone involved in shooting a scene. It is not only up to the performers, but the directors, producers, assistants, and anyone else should create a culture of consent. Directors of a scene should be spearheading consent measures and conversations to create a safe environment. Consent also encompasses where and how content is shared. Anything filmed should only be distributed in the ways that a contract or agreement states. Just because a performer filmed a scene, that doesn’t mean they want it posted on 10 different sites and social media. Consent extends from the beginning to the end of anything that goes into creating and producing a scene. And when everyone involved is comfy and safe, greater pleasure is experienced.
So much porn is filmed for the (cis)male gaze because our culture reinforces the idea that everything is created for cis-male pleasure and porn is only consumed by cis-men. It’s created with what men want to see in mind. But there are so many other people that are watching porn. Just like we talked about above, every identity deserves to not only see themselves represented in porn but also find pleasure in watching porn, if they are choosing to watch it. That means having writers, directors, and producers of all identities, as well as putting the pleasure of performers first. If we have diverse performers in porn and focus on centering their pleasure, then there will be a wider reach of pleasure that people watching can discover.
It shouldn’t be impossible to tell if porn has been ethically made or not. Companies that produce ethical porn are often very vocal and explicit about their practices and values. Companies that might be a little bit iffier on ethics are often silent or harder to find details on. We should be holding companies accountable for being transparent in their practices and supporting individual sex workers and performers as well. Don’t shy away from sending a company a DM on Instagram to ask about their practices or better yet, use the list below to find companies that we already know produce ethical porn!
A lot of the points we’ve discussed ultimately point to the working conditions and treatment of those engaging in porn. Production companies, videographers, directors, and performers themselves should all contribute to creating an environment that allows for pleasure, safety, consent, and quality work to be done! There should be processes in place that keep the performers safe, including, but not limited to: regular STI testing, birth control methods and protection, freedom to have autonomy in a scene, safe words, and reasonable working conditions such as length of working hours, breaks, and the ability to have food and water.
So now that you are no longer wondering “what is ethical porn?”, next time you’re in the mood to watch some spicy videos, grab your favorite Pepper toy and check out one of these ethical porn sites:
Sydney (Syd) Morris (she/her/), is a white, cisgender, queer, Sex Educator in Seattle who is passionate about making the worlds of sex education and sex tech easier to navigate regardless of beliefs, experiences, or identities. She is a Master of Arts in Education candidate at Antioch University, where her research investigates where adults go to find answers to their questions about sex. Syd approaches sexuality education from an intersectional and pleasure-centered lens. She believes that every part of you is relevant to your sexuality and you inherently deserve to experience pleasure in the ways that feel good for you.
