Words by: Dayna Lim 
Art by: Jennifer Hoang

I ventured into watching porn some time shy of 18-years-old, and like many others, I started on Tumblr. A platform that marks a bygone era and that will be missed by many.

On Tumblr, my primary viewing platform, most of the content I encountered was cis and hetero-centric. While this did not bother me as much back then, I look back in hindsight with a lot more potential concerns regarding my personal curation of pornography. I had not encountered the concept of ethical porn back then.

Distinguishing between ethical and unethical porn, as binary as the categories may be, did not become relevant to me until later down the road. My first touchpoint with ethical porn was Googling ‘ethical porn’, perhaps after encountering the term somewhere on social media.

Defining ethical porn is helpful. A succinct and relatively holistic definition would be its emphasis on enthusiastic consent and valuing viewpoints beyond the male gaze in both angling and plotlines. It emphasises non-male perspectives in creating porn and decentralises the male gaze, as opposed to those orange and black branded companies in the industry (Pornhub, we are looking at you).

Out of the varied ethical porn sites, Bellesa was the one that I chose to delve into, and it’s been this way for a couple of years now.

Bellesa’s unique selling point involves accessibility, with more favourable paid tier rates, compared to other sites. They also provide a wide range of genres that are easily searchable. Sure, there’s no shortage of the usual categories but I particularly appreciate their in-house productions of Bellesa House and Bellesa Blind Date. These stand apart from their other offerings for the candidness behind most of the videos, whereby performers don’t follow a set script, and are encouraged to simply enjoy each other’s company. They also offer a selection of erotica, which I found helpful in diversifying what I chose to explore. There is respectful representation of diverse ethnicities, rather than sensationalising or playing upon fetishes. One downside would be not featuring performers’ preferred pronouns or more diverse body types.

While Bellesa is relatively mainstream, other sites that entered the industry even earlier than 2017 when Bellesa came on the scene. Lust Cinema (2010) is directed and owned by Erika Lust, a visionary of ethical porn in a commercial sense. The site has feature-film length videos with more realistic plotlines, and could appeal to the cinephiles within the consumer base. For more candid portrayals of sex and pleasure, there are plenty of sites that specialise in submissions from non-performer partners to even one focusing on women and gender-diverse people engaging in masturbation. While the barriers to access involve paying for a subscription, there’s a site for everyone depending on what they’re able to afford or are drawn towards. The wide range of options available falling under the category of ethical porn empowers us to explore whatever is of interest to us, especially if we are unsure. We can also find niche corners of the Internet with people who get their freak on the same way we like to… the possibilities are truly endless.

The fact that ethical porn is gaining more traction reflects a welcome change in awareness amongst audiences that consent in porn is sexy. This evolution means we get to explore sensuality and pleasure through our consumption in a healthy way.