Female Gaze Porn

Female gaze porn offers a different perspective, one that includes women and reflects their experiences.

When discussing porn for women, we often talk about the female gaze. This is a term to describe the viewpoint of either the person behind the camera or the assumed viewer (and often both). The female gaze is shorthand for saying: “This film depicts how a woman would see things.”

Often, a female porn director will bring a female gaze to their work. Their ideas and visual depictions reflect their own experiences – or the experiences of other women. The women in the film are subjects, not objects. They look, they’re not looked at.

Defining The Female Gaze

“The female gaze” is a term that emerged after film theorist Laura Mulvey began to discuss “the male gaze.” Her theory looked at mainstream films and pointed out that the perspective of heterosexual men was common and presented as the standard way to view the world. The male gaze invites us to sympathize with the male character/s and uses camera angles, dialogue and narrative to make that happen. Often, the male gaze sexualizes, fetishizes and objectifies women in the film. Think of how many Hollywood movies focus on the physical appearance of the female characters.

The female gaze is meant to be the opposite of the male gaze. It presents the female characters as subjects and invites the viewer to see the world as they do. The female gaze tells stories about women and seeks to reflect their experiences. The female gaze may also sexualize the male characters. It may show sex and sexual experiences from a female perspective.

The female gaze is an important challenge to the patriarchy because it offers new ways of seeing and of storytelling. It pushes back against the narrow vision of most film which “others” women’s characters and experiences.

Female Gaze Porn

Pornography has traditionally been media created for a male audience and could be called “male gaze porn”. This type of porn centres male experiences of sex, gives priority to male pleasure and the male orgasm, and makes women – or other men – the objects to be admired. It also reproduces many sexist tropes about women. Male gaze porn uses camera angles and male-focused language to depict male points of view. This way of filming sex has become almost ubiquitous, to the point that some people insist that pornography can never be ethical or feminist.

Female gaze porn – as with regular mainstream films – presents an opposite perspective. It’s pornography that centres the female experience and tells women’s stories. Female pleasure is important and either given priority or equal screen time. Porn with the female gaze may also make use of different camera angles and techniques.

Female gaze porn steps away from patriarchal definitions of beauty and is far more inclusive of body types, genders and sexualities. Female gaze porn is sex positive, expanding the depictions of what sex can look like – especially when that sex leads to female pleasure. It’s also more focused on consent and safe sex.

Criticisms

The concept of “the female gaze” has its critics. While it’s useful to push back against the standardized male gaze aesthetic in both mainstream film and porn, some have pointed out that there is not single female gaze. Different perspectives and life experiences mean that there isn’t one way to depict women or a female viewpoint. There is only “a female gaze” or “the individual gaze”.

The terms “the female gaze” and “female gaze porn” could also be seen as excluding the perspective of trans women and non-binary people. There perhaps needs to be a more inclusive term that is still able to convey the idea that the gaze in question is not the standard heterosexual male gaze. Perhaps “the non-patriarchal gaze” will gain traction in the future.

This page is using “female gaze” mainly in an attempt to attract the attention of search engines.

Examples of Female Gaze Porn

So what does female gaze porn actually look like. Here’s a few examples:

The Fantasy Project

The Fantasy Project by Ms. Naughty is about a woman conducting research into female fantasies. This feature film delves into the sexual fantasies of four different women. At first a voiceover describes the fantasy and then we see them come to life in each scene. There’s fantasies of sexual pampering, of being the focus of two men’s attention in a threesome, of being fondled and watched by multiple men in an orgy, and of having a secret room where all sexual dreams come true. Inspired by Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, this is porn that unashamedly explores female sexuality and uses a variety of female perspectives to tell the tale.

The film also features a male masturbation scene, which is rare in straight porn. In this scene, performer Ryan James sits down to pleasure himself and the camera lingers over his face, body and cock. In this scene, he is very much the object of a female gaze, both of the audience and, ultimately, his partner who watches him.

The Female Voyeur

The Female Voyeur by British filmmaker Petra Joy is an ode to the female gaze. It’s all about women looking and getting pleasure from looking. It’s also about the fulfillment of female fantasies. In one scene a female photographer admires two men before enjoying a threesome with them. In another scene, an all-woman jury judges naked men. A third scene sees women being pleasured by male servants. The Female Voyeur is a film that elevates the gaze of straight women and makes men the object to be admired.

Camera and I

Camera and I is a short film casts the camera itself as performer in a porn film. Jasko Fide has a conversation with the camera and then proceeds to fuck it… well, as much as a camera can fuck. This short film by queer auteur Shine Louise Houston breaks the fourth wall and plays with the idea of the gaze, deliberately making us aware of the camera as part of the sex scene. It invites questions about the dividing line between looking and participation. The voice of the camera is sounds female so this suggests a queer scene, though the film itself isn’t specific.

Tease

Tease is a short film about a man putting on a show for a woman. Ryan James teases Lucie Bee by making her sit and watch him slowly strip. He then masturbates for her before going down on her. Tease invites the viewer to see Ryan through Lucie’s eyes; to admire his body and to desire him sexually. Lucie is the main protagonist in this film and her pleasure is given priority.

Melting Point

In Melting Point, a film by Mindy Stricke, a pair of lovers are shot using only a thermal camera. The queer encounter is played out in shades of orange, red and pink, revealing the heat of their bodies as they kiss, play with sex toys and fuck. Mindy subverts the usual porn gaze by changing the way the sex is filmed, inviting the viewer to see the sex in terms of heat and sensation. The scene is less about how it looks and more about what the participants are feeling. “The resulting experiment allows us to see women’s sexual pleasure differently” says Mindy, “and the joy that is possible when we are honest about who we are and what we want.”

Straight Man Porn

British porn studio Joybear makes couples-friendly porn and in Straight Man Porn the film deliberately plays with and inverts the male gaze of mainstream porn. The story centres on a man writing erotic fiction for women who questions his assumptions about what is considered sexy. The explicit scenes play with porn cliches, like fucking the plumber or having sex with a neighbour who wants to borrow a cup of sugar. The scenes first play out in a typical, male gaze way and are then “inverted” so that the female characters have more agency and actually enjoy the se

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There’s a growing number of people making female gaze porn at the moment but it can still be hard to find, especially if you’re only looking at free tube sites. On search engines, try searching for “ethical porn”, “feminist porn” or “porn for women”. You should also check out our list of Best Porn Sites For Women to see a more comprehensive list.

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