UPDATE JANUARY 2022: The Good Porn book by Erika Lust is still (surprisingly!) in print. While you’re here, feel free to check out my other sex toy reviews, BDSM advice, femdom advice, or BDSM scene outlines. And enjoy Erika Lust’s work if you pick up a copy!
When I was offered a chance to review this new book about pornography, I have to say that I excitedly accepted. Good Porn is written by Erika Lust and is subtitled “A Woman’s Guide”. The book is soft-cover, black and white, and has 238 pages. However, the pages are very highly quality, and I think having the book in black and white only enhanced the information that the book was written for. The book is published by Seal Press and includes lots of illustrations and pictures. The front of the book is completely white except for a giant “X” in the middle while the back just includes some accolades about the book. Overall, it’d be possible to read this in public, but you’d want to cover the cover and be careful who sees some of the illustrations inside of the book. Overall, I’d say this book took me about five hours to read, cover to cover, and I read pretty quickly.
Good Porn is supposed to be a woman’s guide to porn. It really takes a feminist-type slant on the view of pornography, but honestly, it’s nicely refreshing. It isn’t anything that is insulting nor extreme – but it does tell the read that, yes, so very few porn directors are female – most are male, so expecting a female-quality product from male-made porn isn’t likely to happen. It talks about the difference in female-directed porn and male-directed porn, but it’s “absolute” about it at all. She recognizes that everyone will have their own preferences, but understands that, for the most part, females will want something different in their adult movies than males will. And when it comes down to it, I definitely agree with her. In an adult movie, I want a well-made storyline with possible humor that shows couples enjoying having sex with each other.
Like I said, though, the author, Erika Lust, doesn’t take a “I am completely right; you are wrong” approach which was extremely refreshing. Some other books can tend to get that way if the author really believes what they are talking about, but she managed to just explain her opinion then explain some of the bigger and better adult movies produced with females in mind. With all things considered, the book was well-written and actually made me want to even attempt to make my own female-orientated porn. (Obviously, I don’t have the equipment nor the actors, but it made me think of a script that I’d love to place in my own porn if I made one.)
The book’s chapters are really pretty basic. The first chapter is “Porn for Men”. This chapter gives a humourous breakdown of how male-orientated and female-orientated pornography differ from one another. She includes pictures of DVDs from each side to help explain her fact, includes what each’s plot would normally include, and even includes a list of things that we never see in male porn such as “When a woman is sucking a man’s cock, it is important for him to give her constant reminders about what to do: ‘Oh yeah, suck harder.'” Overall, this chapter was filled with quite a bit of humor and made me smile from the jokes. A good way to start this book.
Chapter 2 is “Women, Feminism, and Pornography”. Unlike the last chapter that just described all of the different things that made women’s porn and men’s porn different, this chapter describes what most women want to see in a porn marketed to them. This doesn’t include outrageous suggestions; it just has things like “We want to see ourselves”. I found that to be true. I don’t want to see some girl who is moaning and squirming when she’s not even being touched. I want to see someone who has normal emotions, finds herself in normal situations, and seems like she wants to have sex – not just that she has to.
Chapter 3 is “A History Of Porn”. This chapter will go in-depth about how porn has come to be in different parts of the world as well as through time. For example, I honestly didn’t know that porn wasn’t extremely popular until the 70s and 80s. I thought it had always had the same amount of popularity, but the internet had just made it easier to access. Overall, a nicely informative chapter that didn’t bore me while reading it.
Chapter 4 is a nice “FAQ” section. I’m not sure why this is in the middle of the book, but it is. I was expecting really stupid questions, but they weren’t. I was surprised. Questions included things like “What kinds of preventative measures are taken to avoid STDs?”, “Do fluffers really exist?”, “How much money to performers make for a scene?”, and 29 other neat questions. The boyfriend and I were both surprised to find out that fluffers don’t exist anymore. It made us a little sad.
The next chapter, “A Dictionary of Porn”, just defines some frequently-used words in the book and porn industry. Some neat words included are “bubblegum”, “gonzo”, “kokigami”, “MET Art”, along with tons of others. If Jor and I weren’t active in BDSM clubs and sex toy reviewing, I’m sure tons more words would have stood out. We did, however, research kokigami, and it’s apparently the art of making oragami to dress up your penis. We were completely thrilled by this. I think we’re going to order a book of kokigami art. Either way, this little dictionary included good words that would be nice to know if reading a review about, or choosing, a porn.
Chapter 6 was pretty uneventful. It talks about what a “good porn viewer” would know like using high-quality sex toys, reading decent erotica, and being careful about what sites she visits for online porn. A neat chapter worth reading, but I don’t think it added much to the book overall.
Chapter 7, “A word to the Wise Wanker”, talks about the different types of porn. This includes mainstream porn, reality porn, gonzo, Candida Royalle, bondage, and other types of porn. She talks about what is popular in each genre, what types of sex and fetishes it’s going to provide, how to pick out a movie in that genre along with some of the better directors in each genre, and just basic information to know about that type of movie. I made that sound small, but honestly, it’s a good twenty or thirty pages, so it’s a lot of great information over about 15 different porn genres. Very informative. I was impressed.
Chapter 8, “Sexy Shopping”, is all about the act of shopping for sexual items. It talks about the rise of adult boutiques, names a couple that are great for shopping, and then lists off a list of websites that have reputable stores to purchase pornography at. She also recommends some of the Adult movie award conferences to know what porns are getting good ratings.
Chapter 9, “A Smorgasbord of Adult Films” is a fifty page chapter that lists off all of the “popular” female-orientated porn and what their storyline is. This is a part of the book that I was actually pretty impressed with. For anyone searching for good feminine porn, this would give you specific titles and allow you to actually read what it was about instead of trying to dig throug some of the internet descriptions meant to sell the product. She gives a short opinion about the movie as well like whether it has more plot or more porn. Things like that. Extremely informative and led me to want to buy some of those movies.
Chapter 10, “Alone with an Adult Movie” is all about how to enjoy adult movies and where you should enjoy them. It’s really another one of those “I don’t feel like it added much” chapters, but it’s still worth a read. It has a little neat chart comparing the pros and cons of each “place” you could watch porn. After that, the last chapter pretty much summarizes why she would love to see porn start to cater to women instead of just men. A neat ending, honestly.
Overall, I was surprised by how much I liked it. It provided a neat guide that, although it isn’t going to tell me much about internet porn, has provided me great resources about some of the films to purchase that will be “female-friendly”. I have a list of titles that focus on a plot, and I’m excited to have been able to use this book really expand my journey for female-friendly porn. I’d say that, if you are bored of the regular “male-centered” porn and want to find some female-friendly pornography, you give A Guide to Good Porn a read because it will set you in the right direction.
