Feminist Filmmaker Erica Lust Makes Porn For Women (And It's Really Hot)

Do you watch porn? Let’s face it: you’ve probably seen at least one video at some point in your life. Since the beginning of time, porn has kind of been portrayed with one view in mind: the man’s.

Porn is notorious for helping men play out all of their wildest fantasies and sexual needs, with little or no consideration for the women involved. Sure, that’s not to say that all porn is based around punishing or turning women into sex slaves, but a lot of it is. In fact, even the movies and clips in which women look like they are enjoying themselves in, the focus tends to be on the man’s pleasure.

For Erika Lust, a Swedish filmmaker living in Barcelona, the traditional type of porn was not good enough for her. These feelings are what drove Erika to create Lust Films, adult cinema with a feminist spin.

Offering up beautiful, emotional, and aesthetically pleasing pornography, Erika has turned her company into an alternative for mainstream porn.

Photo: The Tab

Featured on the first episode of Hot Girls Wanted, a Netflix series about the various forms of sex work, Erika explains her process and the journey behind her business.

RELATED: 6 Questions Women Should Ask BEFORE Looking For Porn (To Find The Good Stuff)

On the show, she says, “Typical porn is about a man’s desire. This doesn’t work for me because when I have sex with someone, it’s about both of us. Porn should show that the people in it are connected, respecting each other.”

Deciding to take things into her own hands, Erika started filming porn for women and the type of porn that she wanted to see. She figured that she wasn’t the only person out there who wasn’t satisfied with mainstream porn.

“When I look at mainstream porn, it’s not good enough for me. I want emotion, passion, intimacy. I want to feel with them. The people creating regular porn are more interested in punish-f***ing women,” she said during the show. “I’m not interested in doing porn, I want to show sex.”

Photo: Nailed

Aside from looking to make porn for women that shows connection and real intimacy, Erika also wanted to make films that looked good. Noticing that mainstream porn films were so horribly done, she now strives to produce films with incredible cinematic quality.

“I don’t like that most porn is so badly done. I wanted to see female pleasure and something aesthetically pleasing,” she says.

While she wants to show a more realistic view of sexuality and make beautiful films, Erika is also fueled by a more feminist motive. During one of her TEDTalks, she tells the crowd that she doesn’t want to get women out of porn, but rather into it.

Photo: Social Song Bird

She believes that women need to be in leadership roles, which is why most of her crew are women. She likes to have a woman behind the camera so that the actresses can feel they are surrounded by sisterhood.

“As women, we need to use our voice to tell the world what we would like to see,” she says.

Not everyone is a fan of Erika and her feminist work. She voiced that many producers feel she is pushing too much for the female perspective.

During the episode of Hot Girls Wanted, she said, “I’ve been called a feminazi and fake feminist.” When it comes down to it, Erika says, “It’s not fair that men are the only ones portraying human sexuality through porn.”

When she decided to start her website, it only took her two weeks to get two million downloads and people kept asking for more. Her partner Pablo has become both her partner in love and in the business.

Within the business, Erika does the creative work while Pablo does the more operational work. For Erika, the porn she makes is important for feminism, women, the porn industry and society as a whole.

She has two daughters and is afraid of what they will see once they start getting exposed to the internet. According to the show, forty percent of sexually active 14- to 18-year-olds say that they learned more from porn and sex than school.

“That’s why this company is important. We live in a society today where we are more responsible as consumers,” she said.

I’ve got to say, Erika is pretty amazing, and while I’m not a big fan of porn myself, I will be checking out her work for sure. What she has built is an amazing platform from which women can take back their sexuality in an industry that has been notoriously against it.

You can see an edited "safe for YouTube but maybe not safe for work" clip of her film "H*rny Beasts // XConfessions" HERE.