AS someone who actively talks about sex, who is passionate about pleasure and aims to create sex-positive work, there is one mainstream area of sex that I have never gotten into: porn. I have tried to watch porn on occasion, but never really got on board with it. Until now. Maybe...

Porn has always inspired a lot of conflicting emotions for me. I’m not against it. But as my interest in sex has grown and moved into my work, I have become more and more conscious of the potential damage that porn can, I reasoned, do to all genders. From the pressures that it applies to the expectations that it raises – these combined with the lack of sex education provided to teenagers – my thinking had been that porn can be a rather dangerous teacher to turn to.

Why? For a start, I’ve struggled to find porn that is an accurate representation of sex. Or that I can connect to. But mostly, I’ve struggled to find porn that is for women.

This struggle had made me lazy. Instead of making the effort to find the porn that resonates with me, I tended to turn it off. Why would I bother? In the time it’d take me to find the porn I like, I could have probably had around five orgasms, cleaned my room and written this article. As a result, when I have experimented, I’ve never got through the whole video – and I’ve always been underwhelmed. And so, it hasn’t been part of my sexual experience. Until today.

Speaking to my friends, I started to realise that I was pretty much alone in not watching porn. Not only does everyone else watch porn, but they enjoy it and get a lot of sexual pleasure from it.

As I said, I have never been against other people watching porn. But hearing about other people’s experiences, has made me curious again. Maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places? Or watching the porn equivalent of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie! I want to see if there is porn out there that I can enjoy – or establish, once and for all, if porn really isn’t a turn-on for me.

So here I am now, with a list of recommendations from my friends. I am watching porn for the first time in years. Wish me luck.

Approximately one hour later…

I’m back. And to be honest, watching porn for an hour straight, after barely watching any porn before, I am a little head-wrecked. I’m not sure what the average length is that people watch for, but that seemed like quite a long stint. So, let’s go through this together…

When I first get onto the website, I just see penises everywhere; women with cum dripping out of their mouths; and titles including the word “teen”. Immediately I am reminded of all the reasons I don’t watch porn. Seriously people, “teen”? Come on. The first page doesn’t feel very inviting for anyone who isn’t a cis, straight male. But I power on through to my first recommendation: amateur porn.

I have to say that I was a bit hesitant going into the amateur porn section: I started worrying about the payment to, and rights of, “amateurs” and instantly became very turned off. But then I found a sub-section: amateur couples. This seemed much more appealing to me. Couples consentingly sharing their sex lives online felt a lot more comfortable to watch. And I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

So much of porn feels artificial, staged and cringy, whereas the amateur couples felt more realistic. Of course, they may or may not be genuine amateurs, but I found it more pleasurable to watch two people who are together and whose shared pleasure is important, with the additional benefit that there were no fake sex noises or awkward story-lines.

Then I moved onto the porn for women section. By its very title, this should have been the perfect place for me. But, in my humble opinion, PornHub can do better. Again, all the thumbnails seem to contain either a woman giving a blowjob or a close up of her being penetrated. I was barely able to find one video that was centred on the woman’s pleasure here. It shouldn’t be so hard to find a woman receiving oral in “the porn for women” section – and so I decided to move on.

Hitting the jackpot…

Which led me onto Lesbian porn. Interestingly, this was the most recommended among my friends, regardless of sexuality. The general consensus was that nearly all porn is approached through the male character’s point of view: take away the man, and you have to show the experience through the female eye.

As it turns out, I couldn’t agree more. In lesbian porn, the focus has to be on female pleasure: as a result, this was the first time I felt I could genuinely relate to porn. Lesbian porn also displays more of the sexual experience rather than just penetrative sex: it explored oral and nipple play, showing me the type of pleasure that I could connect to and that actually turned me on.

It was here that I really hit the proverbial jackpot: compilation videos. As I said earlier, the staged porn really cringes me out. It is not as if the plot is ever any good. I’d much rather get to the point of why I am watching porn, which is for the sex. Combine this with the section that I found turned me on most, women receiving oral, and the compilation videos were perfect.

I could just watch a woman being pleasured over and over again for about 20 minutes. That makes for 20 minutes of me being able to see myself in the characters, of being able to imagine the feeling involved – and of connecting to the pleasure on the screen.

It is 20 minutes of being able to watch porn without the disrespectful titles and without the male viewpoint dominating. I mean, I didn’t need the full 20 minutes – but compilation videos allow each person to find what turns them on the most and not have to fast forward through all the other parts just to get to it.

So, am I fully converted to porn life now? Not totally. I still have issues with porn. It took me a long time to find what I liked. But once I had, I really did like it. I might not be watching porn every time I go to masturbate, but – honestly? – I will be watching it more than I did in the past.

And I am interested in continuing this porn journey, so any recommendations... send them my way!