Erika Lust: The Director on a Mission to Get More Women Into Porn
Erika Lust, the Swedish filmmaker, is spending her own profits to bring more of the female gaze to the adult biz. Erika Lust wants to get more women in porn—in every possible position: Writer, Director, Producer, and Star. She knows that the more inclusive the adult industry becomes, the better—and, OK, sexier—the results.
The Need for a Female Gaze
"Here we are, in a time when feminism and gender issues are in the media more than ever, the conversation around female sexuality is happening all the time, and still, mainstream production companies keep creating the same boring stuff and are managed by the same kind of narrow-minded men," Lust says. "We need another perspective; we definitely need the female gaze." She believes that an influx of women creators can help present more realistic expectations about sex for all genders.
Mainstream porn consistently shows sex as a thing that men do to women, or that women do for men, which means misogynistic porn that objectifies women and places unrealistic expectations on both sexes. "The influence pornography has on our views on sex...and gender roles is huge," she says. Lust points out that the objectification of women on screen is frequently much more gratuitous in the adult film industry.
A Decade of Innovation
Lust discovered porn the way many young people do, but she wasn't stoked about what she saw—it just didn’t turn her on. In 2004, shortly after she’d finished grad school, she made her first porn titled The Good Girl. She uploaded this 22-minute twist on the “pizza delivery guy” cliché, and it was downloaded 2 million times in two months. In 2013 she launched XConfessions, an online porn site where the films are based on anonymous secrets submitted by fans.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2004 | Made first film "The Good Girl" (2 million downloads) |
| 2013 | Launched XConfessions online porn site |
| 2014 | Spoke at TEDxVienna about the need for women in porn |
| 2017 | Funded 10 films by women filmmakers |
Funding the Future of Adult Cinema
Last October, the Swedish producer put an open call on her website: She was going to be taking €250,000 (about $272,000) of the budget of her porn operation XConfessions and funding 10 films by women filmmakers in 2017. The plan was simple: If you were a female filmmaker, porn or otherwise, and had an idea for an adult short film that women would like and didn’t succumb to the cliches of mainstream porn, Lust would finance and produce it.
Within a few weeks she had nearly 100 applications, and they came from everywhere:
- Spain
- France
- The US
- India
Industry Perspectives
Changing porn from the inside isn't just an idea; it's already proven successful. Lily Campbell, a producer for Yanks.com, says: "Whoever is behind the scenes on a production will inevitably sway the attitude of the end product itself." Having women involved is very important, lest we see a sea of predominantly white women with fake boobs having fake orgasms to continue to be the ‘norm’ for our porn choices. As Lust told a TEDxVienna crowd: "It’s time for porn to change, and for that we need women."