The Lies of Mainstream ‘Lesbian’ Porn (explicit language)

Some porn defenders suggest that lesbian porn is an example of porn that is harmless, something that women freely and positively choose to do, and that sends no bad messages about women. While this may be true for a handful of films, it is not true for your typical commercial production. Biting Beaver explains in The Lesbian Caricature:

Before I start I’d like to clarify that yes, I’ve seen lesbian porn. I’ve seen more lesbian porn than I can remember…

Lesbian… For a typical man who watches porn it generally includes white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed nymphs. Large-breasted, soft-eyed creatures who playfully romp around, kissing, fondling, then retiring to the bedroom to pull out penetrative toys.

Then there are dykes. Generally non-porn-looking feminist women who are short, fat, hate men, and carry around small knives in case one gets too close. Unshaven, unfeminine, evil incarnate bitches who only want to have sex with other women…

Lesbian porn takes the scary ‘dyke’ and turns her into a caricature of female homosexuality…

Lesbian pornography sends propaganda-style messages about how all women wish to experience sex. It shows homosexual women performing for an implied or expressed male viewer, and shows those women performing only the acts men want to see… Lesbian porn reiterates to men that women, ALL women, regardless of their sexual orientation, are available for their sexual pleasure, even the private moments that lesbians share between themselves…

In lesbian porn what we see first is the male-centric idea of female appearance… When they’re shown with clothes at all, they are the same clothes that women wear to impress men: miniskirts, high heels and cleavage-baring tops…

How reassuring it must be for a man to know that women just love having large cocks stuffed into their rectums to the point that even when they’ve adopted a lifestyle that includes no men whatsoever, they’ll still perform the act. How comforting it must be for a man to know that women enjoy being called “whores” and “cunts” and being told to “take that dick” by anyone, not just him…

[Example scene:] B then turns, at the orders of woman A and, while on her hands and knees, gives a blow-job to the fake penis of woman A.

Lesbian porn works the same way as ‘hetero’ porn. There is a very clear ‘dominant’ woman and a very clear ‘submissive’ woman. There is the fucker and the fuckee. At least one of those women will be acting like a man. She is generally aggressive and sometimes even slaps the other woman in BDSM fashion.

Lesbian porn offers the titillation of showing a woman degrading another woman and the other woman enjoying it. Lesbian porn gives the opportunity for men to say that women like to be degraded, so much so that even other women can do so and the woman will still like it…

Keep in mind that none of these “lesbians” are just having sex for the joy of having sex; they are performing for a male observer. Most of the time, that observer is only implied by the way the girls frolic and play to the camera, performing only the acts men want to see and truncating or eliminating entirely the acts that most men are uninterested in, but that real-life homosexual women might actually do. For instance, how many lesbian porn videos are there that show more than a minute or two of kissing?…

Other times, the male observer is expressed, especially in videos. Either there is a guy watching and jacking off to the show, or there is a surprised bystander who ‘happens’ to witness, or there is actually a male (usually the cameraman or photographer) audibly telling the performers what to do…

Lesbian porn is the same old shit packaged for men, by men, to assure men that women love MEN…

Penetration is not at all an uncommon theme. It’s prevalent in the vast majority of ‘lesbian porn’ out there. Strap-ons, huge dildos, two women using a double sided dildo, digital penetration, anal penetration, there’s just as much penetration going on in lesbian porn as in hetero porn…

And whenever there is a strap on involved, or a dildo or a vibrator, the ‘submissive’ woman will take the time to give it head. As if homosexual women are turned on by sucking cock.

And here’s the giveaway: In the example movie mentioned above, the dominant woman acts as though she is deriving real pleasure from the submissive one sucking her fake penis…

Lesbian pornography also works to blur the differences between sexual orientations.

Lesbian porn is all about telling men that there ARE NO lesbians. Even women who say they’re lesbians desire penetration above all else. Even women who say they are lesbians let men in to watch the ‘fun’ (to wit: you). And in many, many, many instances, that women who are otherwise straight will enjoy having sex with another woman for your pleasure, thus blurring the lines between the various orientations.

According to lesbian porn, all women are bisexual…

Similar to the rape movies where a woman starts out [protesting] but ends up enjoying the act is a very common theme in lesbian pornography. Basically, a straight woman is “inaugurated” into lesbianism by an aggressive woman, or an aggressive man and a previously “inaugurated” woman. The straight woman starts off protesting, maybe even struggling, but then.. ohh, it’s so WONDERFUL! And she never looks back.

This message, that every straight woman can be forced into revealing her latent bisexual tendencies through verbal coercion and sexual aggression, is very dangerous…the rape potential for women around men who have embraced this lie is astronomical and frightening. The truth is, if you have to talk a woman into being bisexual, she’s not bisexual. Just as with the desire to have sex at all, if she possesses any of it, she’ll figure it out herself and it’s not for anyone, male or female, to try and convince her it’s really there and she just doesn’t realize it…

…I have personally met at [least] five heterosexual women who have engaged in ‘lesbian’ sex to try to live up to the promises lesbian porn made to their men…

There also exists a lie that bisexual women are incapable of monogamy, and are perfectly willing to hop into the sack with any strange willing (or drunk) female her husband brings home from a bar. The truth here is that bisexual women are just as inclined as anyone else towards loving relationships in a mutually respectful environment. They’re not anymore likely than anyone else to come home, find their boyfriend cheating with another woman, and then join them in bed than a heterosexual woman…

See also:

Biting Beaver–I Was a ‘Self-Esteem Vampire’: A Woman’s Journey Out of Watching Porn (explicit language)
I asked myself honestly, what was I getting out of porn? The answer surprised me. It terrified me. It shamed me… I was getting a sense of power from watching the humiliation and degradation of the women on the screen.

glbtq Encyclopedia, “Pornographic Film and Video: Lesbian”
Pornography has always sparked a great deal of controversy among lesbians. Traditionally rejected by lesbian feminists as an inherently male institution both violent and misogynistic, pornography has nonetheless been openly embraced by a faction of pro-sex lesbians (and so-called “do-me feminists”) for the past two decades.

At the same time, there remains to this day a decided dearth of authentic lesbian pornographic film–which only emerged in the mid-1980s in the first place.

It is easy enough to find numerous woman-on-woman scenes in the majority of heterosexual pornographic films, of course; but these representations of all-female sexuality are generally so inaccurate, and so clearly geared toward a straight male audience, that very few could truly be considered lesbian.

The differences between lesbian-made and male-produced movies are easy to recognize: most pornographic films made by and for lesbians are, first and foremost, non-commercial, often with amateur actors and makeshift sets.

These films feature women of different sizes, shapes, colors, and gender identities–butches, stone butches, femmes, androgynes, etc. Many of these lesbians have short nails, short hair, and modifications such as tattoos and body or facial piercings.

In contrast, most “lesbian” scenes in straight pornography feature stereotypical male-fantasy women with surgical enhancements, uniformly thin bodies, and long hair and nails. Despite the identification of many commercial porn actresses as bisexual or polysexual, there is never a butch in sight in these movies.

Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today’s Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)
Bridges: “And we’re actually going to get back to one of the issues
that was brought up earlier today, which is, ‘Well, you know, maybe we
just go out and make ‘fem-porn’, we get more females to direct it. And
then, it’ll be more egalitarian, it’ll be the kind of thing that we can
all embrace and say, ‘Yes, this is what we want.’

“Well, of the
popular films that we coded, less than 7% were directed by females. It
is still dominated by very male-directed films. And we are now in the
process of writing our second article from this study [where] we look
at female-directed films specifically. And guess what. They’re not
different. Not the bestselling popular ones. They’re on the whole just
as violent, just as aggressive… One difference we’ve noted
consistently is that they tend to show much more female to female
aggression.”

A Review of Christine Stark, “Girls to boyz: Sex radical women promoting pornography and prostitution”
Stark considers sex-radicalism to be a form of female self-hatred,
replicating male abuse of women even within all-female contexts such as
lesbian relationships. Carol Queen claims to be on the side of all
sexual minorities, but given the magnitude and pervasiveness of the sex
industry and its role in subordinating women, siding with pornographers
and pimps is not exactly an underdog role. (p.279) True “radical”
feminism is radical not because it takes the most extreme positions on
the issues, but because it looks at the roots of inequality and demands
structural changes as well as personal ones. Stark observes:

Queen and other sex radicals have a rebellious, adolescent-style
reaction to sex: what they perceive as being ‘different’ or rebellious
is good, period… They channel women’s vaild anger and desire to rebel
against patriarchy into their political camp by misrepresenting the
term sex radical. True sex radicalism would mean recognizing structures
of inequality and oppression, working toward egalitarian relationships,
and aligning with those (whether minorities or majorities) who do not
have social or political power–such as women and children hurt in
pornography and prostitution or lesbians against lesbian pornography.
(p.280)

Because they are women and/or homosexuals, sex radicals who enjoy
sadomasochism and purchasing prostitutes get away with claiming to
undermine patriarchal norms, while in fact they are perpetuating other
women’s subordination…

Stark is disturbed by how lesbian pornography replicates the same
master-slave dynamic of heterosexual porn, only with “butch” women
instead of men as the ones who abuse the weaker, more feminine sexual
partner. Just as in the girl-on-girl sex scenes in porn aimed at
straight men, lesbian porn often portrays sex as women being cruel to
one another:

[W]omen put other women into bondage using handcuffs, masks, ropes and
chains. A chain saw as phallus is next to a breast….Lesbian
pornography carries articles and advertises books that detail torture
methods for women to use on other women, including how to set one’s
partner on fire. (p.288)

Stark suggests that misogynist porn appeals to lesbians because it lets
them escape their feelings of vulnerability as women and sexual
minorities, and identify with the powerful oppressors. This is not a
new, radical vision of sex and society–it’s an unhealthy coping
mechanism that leaves the power structure intact. (p.289) Meanwhile,
potential abusers take women’s acceptance of rape and incest fantasies
as proof that sexual violence is natural, consensual or even invited by
the victims.

Kink.com: Bondage Porn Gone Chillingly, Cheerfully Corporate (explicit language)
Kink’s websites include:
Whipped Ass
“As the title implies, you will be seeing extreme ass whipping. Our
girls turn on each other and dish out the punishment like no other site
out there.”

Hugo Schwyzer: ‘Suicide Girls’, Empowering to Women?
…to be a feminist is about more than individual empowerment. Young women
who defend certain niches of the porn industry as woman-friendly must
be willing to ask hard questions about who really controls sites like
the Suicide Girls. They also have to be willing to consider not just
the impact on the individual models/performers, but on the broader
culture. The fact that doing a shoot for Suicide Girls makes you
feel empowered doesn’t mean that the audience masturbating to your
pictures is going to recognize you as any more of a human being than if
you had done a shoot for, say, Hustler! Authentic feminism
asks us to consider how others might interpret our actions. Our good
intentions are not enough. We have to be mindful of the broader
context, of the repercussions, of everything we do. [emphasis in
original]

Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn and the Death Spiral of a Marriage
…we would have incredible arguments with each other. I
would tell him I loved him, I only wanted to love him, I wanted to be a
good wife, I wanted our marriage to work, but I didn’t want to be with
these other people. It was he I wanted to be with, and no one else. He
told me if I loved him I would do this. And that, as I could see from
the things that he read me in the magazines initially, a lot of times
women didn’t like it, but if I tried it enough I would probably like
it, and I would learn to like it. And he would read me stories where
women learned to like it.

Testimony in Massachusetts: My Experiences with Men, Porn and Domestic Abuse (explicit)
He tied me up and blew strawfuls of cocaine up into my nose and then
would rape me. He read this in a porn magazine that said that coke
would turn women on and I would not take the coke willingly. He wanted
me to do the things he saw the people in the movies do, like have sex
with other people, other couples, and especially with other women. He
wanted to come home and find me having sex with women like on the
tapes. He told me that this was one of his biggest fantasies, and he
tried to convince me that it was mine as well. He told me that if I
felt guilty about it, he would tie me up and I could pretend it wasn’t
my fault.

Testimony in Minneapolis: With Growth of Porn, Rapists Show Less Remorse
[L]iterally hundreds of women have mentioned to me the anger and
despair they feel when their husbands, lovers, or other male partners
press upon them specific sexual acts which these men learned from
pornographic materials–acts of bestiality, sodomy, “swinging”, forced
group sex, etc. The men feel such pressure on women is acceptable
because porn is acceptable, and pornography was the so-called
“educational” source…