This porn finally shows off women having real orgasms
Have you’ve ever seen a woman have an orgasm in porn? No, sorry, definitely not the time you’re thinking of. And oh God no, absolutely not when they were using that thing. And no, not then either, they were probably faking.
It’s a sad and curious thing that in the whole internet of things – where every whim, fancy, morbid curiosity and spot-picking fascination is indulged with a click – it’s so difficult to find women just genuinely having a good time on camera.
The lack of authentic female-pleasure online is a well documented phenomenon.
Famous journalist and feminist writer Caitlin Moran has written and spoken at length about the effort involved in trying to find one solitary woman appearing to have a genuine orgasm online.
In her book How to Be a Woman she talks about the nightmarish frustration of trying to find, anywhere, footage of a woman coming.
Perhaps Moran hadn’t got the memo – female ejaculation on camera has, shockingly, been banned by the government.
Anyone looking for good (read: authentic) female porn online, must do battle with the sex-nightmare of internet content, which is filled with horribly sharp acrylic nails and painful positions that are more likely to send you fleeing to a nice nunnery than get you in the mood.
It’s hardly a surprise that while some studies couldn’t find a single man who hadn’t watched porn, estimates show that approximately only a third of women are going online to find what they want.
You can read more here about how almost all porn involving women has been shot from the male viewpoint – up until the 1980s, at least.
Enter Hysterical Literature, the art-porn crossover made by filmmaker Clayton Cubitt that involves no graphic images, and no nudity at all in fact.
There’s nothing to be found but a comfortable woman enjoying headphone-shakingly loud sexual pleasure, shot attractively in black and white.
(YouTube)
Hysterical Literature launched back in August 2012 on YouTube with Session One.
In it, alt-porn star Stoya sits primly behind a desk, all alone, reading a book to camera.
Dressed in the kind of cutesy, off-the-shoulder striped top that wouldn’t be unwelcome at your Grandmother’s barbecue, Stoya’s reading is increasingly interrupted by splutters and gasps, until six minutes into the reading session she has an orgasm on screen, and the whole thing comes to an end.
Only the occasional ‘buzz’ of sound lets you know that under the table lies an artist with a vibrator.
Session One became an immediate internet sensation when it first launched, garnering over 16,000,000 views, which – gratifyingly – is thousands more than most pieces of explicit online pornography might ever expect to receive.
Today, Hysterical Literature includes twelve short videos of women across a range of ages and ethnic backgrounds, each having the time of their lives whilst reading from a book of their choosing.
Collectively, these twelve women and their twelve orgasms have been watched over 60 million times (which adds up to approximately ‘123 years and 144 days’ worth of footage, according to the website).
Cubitt’s exploration of “feminism, mind/body dualism, distraction, portraiture, and the contrast between culture and sexuality,” doesn’t require fleshy close-ups or physical gymnastics to be erotic.
You’ll find nothing fake, exploitative or uncomfortable here.
(YouTube)
Instead – as many of the women have themselves pointed out in interviews and articles including Toni Bentley’s in Vanity Fair – the video’s eroticism lies in the battle between the pull of physical pleasure and the girls’ determination to keep reading.
It’s in the laugh at the end of the session that inspired the name hysterical in the title, and in the smiles throughout, which show genuine, female pleasure on screen.
There’s a whole page on the website dedicated to the experience had by the women in the videos, labelled as essays: “PS: to my parents (who I know will read this), I hope that you are as proud of me as I am of myself.
“I pray that you see the merit, the revolution that I am part of, the importance of this project,” writes the artist, writer and performance artist Solé.
Beautiful, honest, celebratory and miles away from the choreographed, fleshy moral quagmire that constitutes so much of online pornography, Hysterical Literature is the art-porn cross over that offers genuine pleasure with a smile.
Someone tell Caitlin Moran.
