An Awful Lot of People Are Watching a Lot of Awful “Lesbian” Porn

There are two cultural truths universally acknowledged among queers: too many lesbian characters on screen die, and that too many performers in "lesbian" porn have long nails. It's also pretty widely known that lesbian porn is one of the most popular categories of NSFW entertainment there is, and 2018 was no exception.

According to new reports from Pornhub and YouPorn, two of the world's biggest porn sites, it was in higher demand than any other genre this year -- particularly among women. Women on both sites were more likely to use "lesbian" than any other search term, while it came in as the sixth most popular among men on Pornhub and tenth most popular among men on YouPorn.

Of course, this doesn't mean that most of the mainstream lesbian porn found on tube sites was made with women -- much less queer women -- in mind. And that's the problem with its stranglehold on the industry: Its focus on the male gaze risks warping perceptions of queer female sexuality, both within and outside of the queer community.

Historically, woman-on-woman sex scenes have been overwhelmingly written and directed by men; according to a 2008 study in Psychology of Women Quarterly, just four to five percent of porn directors were women, a figure that appears slow to change. And while a lot of what's out there is made for male viewers, it's also among some of the first representations of queer sex many queer women see.

It's not that lesbians categorically never have long nails (as impractical as they may be) or that they never enjoy slurping on girthy silicone dick facsimiles. There is no one right way to have sex, including queer sex. But that's the thing: Mainstream lesbian porn tends to show woefully undiverse women fucking each other in a woefully limited range of ways. Yes, some women do enjoy scissoring. But! There! Are! So! Many! Other! Things! To! Do! And the baby queers among us especially deserve to know that they need not find movies titled, "Lezzie Seduces STRAIGHT Best Friend and Dominates Her With Strap-On!!!" instructional, aspirational, or even sexy.

If they do, that's cool, too. But lack of choice and lack of representation stunt the development of our sexualities nonetheless, as does the co-opting of queer female sexuality, a trend that extends far beyond porn. When women's queerness is both dismissed as experimentation and fetishized as performance, it becomes more and more difficult to claim as our own.

This isn't to say that men or women who aren't queer shouldn't get off to "lesbian" porn, provided the cast and crew members behind it were treated well and compensated for their work. But narrow depictions of lesbian sex do queer women no favors. Viewers can fortunately play a role here by seeking out and paying for the work of queer and indie pornographers injecting some much-needed authenticity into adult entertainment: Once you're done mourning the departure of Tumblr porn, know that sites like PinkLabel.tv, CrashPadSeries.com, and Spit Exposed are a click away, with no stiletto nails in sight.

Hayley MacMillen is a writer and law school student.