If you were to close your eyes and picture an image associated with the word “porn,” what comes to mind? Pizza delivery guy tropes are surely outdated by now, but what we likely haven’t outgrown are blonde women with their backs arched or white penises attached to faceless bodies. A lot might be missing from our internal definitions of what porn is: conversations about consent or barrier methods, body types that remotely resemble average Americans, clitorises as a whole — and, of course, queer sex. If you’re queer and reading this, was the picture that popped into your mind actually reflective of the sex you have?
Media as a whole has made significant strides as far as queer representation, with almost equally significant backlash. Gay love stories like Heartstopper are widely available to stream. Victoria’s Secret had a trans model at last year’s fashion show. Artists like Chappell Roan top the charts with unashamed queer anthems. But mainstream porn still trails behind. I spoke with founders and specialists in the ethical porn space to discuss how they navigate bringing something new, inclusive, and beautifully queer to a contentious industry, one that remains foundational to how we understand ourselves as sexual beings, for better or worse.
What Is Ethical Porn?
You may have heard the term “ethical porn” before. It might seem simple on its face, but in truth there are ethical considerations from hiring, to production, to storylines, to distribution. The gold standard looks something like this: On the hiring front, consumers deserve to see diversity among those engaging in pleasurable acts and to be able to picture pleasure for themselves. On the production side, consumers deserve transparency about whether or not performers are paid and treated fairly and can safely revoke consent at any point during filming. In terms of storylines, films should display conversations during sex that could make porn more realistic and destigmatize boundary-setting in our real lives. And in regards to distribution, charging for porn just makes sense. I mean, you wouldn’t expect Netflix for free, right?
What Does Queer Inclusion Look Like?
If a tenet of ethical porn is inclusion, it tracks that ethical producers are leading the way in expanding access to queer content. Queer inclusion, though, demands more than just displaying queer sex. As Sara Brown, a queer adult industry specialist and the Communications Manager at Lustery shares: “Queer-inclusive porn reflects the widest spectrum possible of queer desire, in ways that feel authentic rather than tokenized.”
Tokenized is the key word here, and the line between inclusion and tokenization is not actually as thin as it may seem. The difference is authenticity and conscious thought toward the question of who was this content made for? “Queer inclusive porn tells real stories from real people, not just fantasies filtered through the male gaze,” says Lily Sparks, the founder and CEO of afterglow, a porn platform specifically built for women, many of whom identify as queer. “So much ‘lesbian’ porn is actually created for straight men. We’re interested in what happens when the camera is handed back to the people who actually live these experiences.”
For these companies, including queer performers and performances also requires considering queer viewers rather than following the popular path of formatting media solely for cisgender-heterosexual men.
Why Choose To Include It?
Every representative I spoke with made it clear: Queer inclusion isn’t a trend or a box to be checked off in order to meet a standard of diversity. For most, authenticity is a part of their mission statement, and queer porn has been a part of that from the outset. Queer sex happens in real life, and ethical porn seeks to depict realistic sex. Make Love Not Porn was founded by Cindy Gallop, who would describe the platform as human-curated, social sex videosharing rather than porn. If porn sets are comparable to Hollywood films, MLNP is the documentary, a different approach to sexual content that people may masturbate to as well. Their mission centers on showcasing actual sex that reflects the real world. “My tiny but mighty MakeLoveNotPorn team has more queer than straight members,” Cindy says. “The whole team is committed to ensuring the inclusion of queer real world sex on our platform.”
Queer creators, performers, and members of production and distribution teams may feel more drawn toward work that is ethics-forward, rather than how mainstream porn has historically been. But beyond avoiding harm, these teams see queer porn as something celebratory, a joyful affirmation of queerness itself.
Perhaps not a motivation to include queer content but rather a glorious byproduct is that straight audiences can benefit as well. From Cindy’s Make Love Not Porn, which operates in the mass market, to Lily’s afterglow, which centers women and their partners, each interviewee noted queer content is for everyone. Lily cited the statistic that even among straight women, “lesbian” is consistently one of the most searched terms in porn. Cindy adds: “I believe that having the opportunity to see queer love in action can be transformative of others’ worldviews, encouraging more open-mindedness.”
Sex, porn, and queerness are inherently politicized. People fear, criminalize and pathologize what they don’t know or understand. Offering straight audiences a glimpse of real, queer sex dissolves some of the mystery about what goes on behind closed doors and normalizes queer sex broadly.
How Do Audiences Feel?
As expected, there’s no shortage of feedback from queer consumers thrilled to finally see themselves represented. But what stood out most were the stories of those who learned something deeper about themselves through watching queer adult content. Cindy tells me of a woman who left a comment reading: “Thank you for this video. I came out last year as a lesbian, after hiding it for 25 years, and I had never had sex before in my life. Seeing your video helped me see how to make love to a woman.”
In a society with inadequate sex education, research shows that 60% of youth look to porn to learn more about sex. Queer sex education is particularly under attack, with only 17 states offering LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculums and the constant, looming threat of another “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Adults aren’t that much better off. It’s not as if we turn 18 and are magically bestowed with all of the information we’ll need about sex. If online sexual content is acting as de facto sex education — or at the very least offering video tutorials — queer porn is about more than representation. Queer porn offers an answer to what sex even looks like beyond “penis-in-vagina” or what terms like “topping,” “bottoming,” or “outercourse” mean in practice.
The Impact on Mainstream Porn
But what of the porn industry as a whole? As essential as it is to amplify the work of smaller companies, often overshadowed by tube sites, queer folks deserve representation broadly. Unfortunately within mainstream porn, fetishism remains a major barrier to meaningful visibility for queer folks, especially lesbians and trans people. Lily Sparks puts it plainly: Though searches for queer terms on these sites are increasing, strides in progress must also take into account that “queer and trans bodies are too often packaged as objects of thrill instead of being shown as fully realized human beings.”
Lustery’s Sara Brown echoed this, noting a specific shift within the industry. “On the one hand, more queer creators are building their platforms and challenging outdated industry norms. Representation is growing; conversations are shifting,” she explains. “On the other hand, online algorithms and a dangerous wave of legislation and tech policy constantly threatens that progress. Over 20 US states have introduced or passed age verification laws requiring users to submit government IDs to access adult content. While framed as protective, these laws often force platforms to either invest in costly compliance systems or geoblock access entirely, hurting smaller, independent platforms and the queer creators who rely on them to share and monetize their work.”
I’d heard rumblings before that people in the industry largely oppose age verification laws. Why oppose them when, on the surface, they seem like a good thing? Many of us can recall coming across porn long before adulthood; it makes sense that we would strategize around keeping future generations from the same fate. Sara’s insights prompted me to dig deeper into the issue. As it turns out, in requiring an ID to access porn, we risk data privacy and may push some consumers to search in less-regulated corners of the internet. PornHub has even opted out altogether from age verification processes after laws were passed in Texas and Florida and proposed in other states, disabling access altogether. Age verification laws act as an ineffective bandaid, where the antidote to youth porn consumption would simply be teaching porn literacy and internet safety in sex education.
Sara points to even broader threats. “At the federal level, the recently proposed Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA), for example, aims to redefine ‘obscenity’ so broadly that even the plenty of consensual queer and kink content we have featured in Lustery could be criminalized. Because queer sex is often viewed through a stigmatized lens, it’s often the first to be flagged, removed, censored, or demonetized under these vague, morality-driven rules — and that’s especially dangerous when it’s backed by law.”
Then there’s the algorithmic bias that’s been quietly undermining creators for years. Inequalities and vague rules within content moderation mean queer sex is more likely to be censored, with queer creators shadowbanned and deplatformed, often without clear explanations or pathways to appeal.
The best hope for queer porn, at this moment, lies with independent platforms and filmmakers. In the face of changing policy, they continue to show up. They don’t just survive in this hostile landscape — they create community, offer visibility, and remind us sex is as diverse as the people who have it.
“When you center the voices and experiences of queer people,” Lily says, “audiences don’t just click — they stay, they engage, and they feel seen.”
