Is porn finally starting to cater to the female gaze?

A new era.

Laura Roscioli is a Melbourne-based sex writer and host of the podcast The Sex That Changed My Life. Her monthly column on Fashion Journal is here to make sex (and the conversations around it) more accessible and open-minded. She believes the best learning comes from lived experience, and she’s here to share hers – and other people’s – with you. 

There’s been a noticeable shift in mainstream storytelling recently, maybe you’ve felt it too. The rise of films and television shows catering directly to the female gaze, many adapted from smutty novels written by women, for women. Men who ask for consent and care about the female orgasm. Women who don’t centre their lives around men, but instead follow their own instincts and desires.

And audiences are obsessed. Overnight, relatively unknown actors are becoming household names through roles in shows like Off Campus and Heated Rivalry. The girls are loving it. Finally, stories that speak to us. Characters that allow women to feel hopeful about romance again.

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Women have been yearning for these narratives for decades. And now, it feels like that shift is happening in porn, too.

When Pornhub and other mainstream porn sites were restricted in Australia earlier this year, I remember wondering where people would go to get their fix. I assumed many would simply download VPNs, but I also wondered if some might begin turning elsewhere towards ethical porn, independent creators, or more female-focused erotic platforms.

That’s what I did.

For most of my life, sites like Pornhub felt like the default. They were the sites everyone knew, the ones that dominated search engines and pop culture conversations. But truthfully, I never really connected with the content.

Over the years, I found specific performers and videos I liked and would revisit them. Almost always, the content I gravitated towards was female-centric, scenes where the woman genuinely seemed to be enjoying herself, or lesbian porn. And I know I’m not alone in that experience. Research has consistently shown that many women, regardless of sexuality, prefer lesbian porn over mainstream heterosexual porn. I suspect part of that is because sex between women often feels more believable to us. More reciprocal. More emotionally legible. Less focused on performance, domination and spectacle.

Which is why Pornhub’s latest move feels culturally significant. The company recently launched Pornhub Sapphic, a section of the site specifically built with the female gaze in mind, after recognising that women now make up around 38 per cent of its global audience, and that ‘lesbian’ consistently ranks as one of the platform’s most-watched categories among female viewers.

For an industry that has historically catered almost exclusively to male desire, that feels like a notable shift.

But ethical, female-focused porn has existed for years. I’d always known it was there in the background, yet still found myself defaulting to mainstream sites simply because they felt easier and more familiar. Honestly, it took a mainstream porn ban without a VPN for me to finally move over fully to ethical porn, and I genuinely wish I’d started sooner.

Recently, I was introduced to Ersties, an ethical porn platform that has existed for more than a decade. On paper, it contains many of the same categories you’d find on mainstream sites: solo content, threesomes, heterosexual scenes, lesbian scenes. But it feels completely different.

Every performer seems like they genuinely want to be there. Their faces show real emotion. There’s nervousness, chemistry, awkward laughter. They feel like actual people rather than exaggerated yet empty characters performing for a camera.

That realism is intentional.

“The female gaze isn’t just about women watching porn,” says Cat, Head of Community, Creative and Education at Ersties. “It’s about portraying sexuality in a way that feels authentic, emotionally engaging, and centred on mutual pleasure.”

Unlike many traditional porn studios, Ersties begins with the performers themselves rather than a script. Performers are asked about their desires, boundaries, fantasies and who they’d genuinely like to work with. Often, the people filming already know each other or share an existing connection.

“We don’t believe in forcing a storyline or directing every interaction,” Cat explains. “That’s why our content tends to feel more natural as you’re seeing real personalities, real reactions, and real attraction unfold in front of the camera.”

Since watching ethical porn, I’ve learnt a lot. Watching women express themselves so freely has made me feel more confident doing the same. It’s given me ideas about pleasure, communication, experimentation, and the many different ways intimacy can look and feel.

That idea, that porn could potentially be educational, connective, or emotionally intelligent, is something ethical porn pioneers have been discussing for years.

“When I released my first film over 20 years ago, something essential was missing from porn,” says Erika Lust, founder of ERIKALUST. “The visceral lived experience of pleasure, especially for women, queer people and anyone who didn’t fit into a very narrow idea of desire, was missing entirely.”

Erika says much of mainstream porn historically focused on bodies as objects, rather than people experiencing intimacy, pleasure or emotional connection. Her films instead centre on fantasy, storytelling, vulnerability and mutual desire.

“I want to know: who are these people? What’s drawing them together? What are they feeling? What’s at stake emotionally?” she explains. “Desire isn’t something that happens in a vacuum.”

And perhaps that’s the larger culture shift we’re witnessing right now. Not just in porn, but across entertainment more broadly. Audiences increasingly want authenticity. They want chemistry. They want to believe the people on screen actually desire each other.

Of course, ethical porn creators are careful not to position porn as sex education. But they also acknowledge the reality that, for many people, porn becomes an early reference point for intimacy, desire and communication.

Personally, I think showing communication, checking in during sex, enthusiastic consent, condom use, or nuanced female pleasure is probably far more productive than pretending porn can simply be removed from society altogether.

Humans are sexual beings. We are always going to seek out erotic content in some form. So maybe the question shouldn’t be whether people consume porn at all, but rather: What kind of porn are we consuming?

Because if audiences are already moving towards content that feels more ethical, emotionally intelligent and human, perhaps the female gaze isn’t just changing porn. Perhaps it’s changing what we expect from sex itself.

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