I just paid 22 dollars to subscribe to a queer porn website.
This is 22 dollars I really cannot afford to spend on anything, really. As in most economic scenarios, those 22 dollars, or 1700 rupees and change, could have gone to pay for so many things. New clothes for me. A gym payment. Savings. Or just plain stayed in my account and be used to buy food and coffee later.
But. I did pay 22 dollars for this website, which not only is queer, it is brilliantly erotic and exciting as well, and inclusive.
I paid 22 dollars for porn. For the first time in my life, I paid money to watch porn.
It was the least I think I could have done, to say thank you to the wonderful, sexy, beautiful people who have for the last month, allowed me to watch porn, legally, for free. I did not pirate it. I did not download it off some peer-to-peer network. I did not use someone else’s login to stream. Quite legally, because of the kindness of an amazing human being, I watched a month’s worth of beautiful people fucking each other.
And so I wanted to say thanks to the people. By paying for the privilege of seeing them having fun in their own and in each others’ bodies.
It’s beautiful.
It’s exciting.
It’s so relieving.
To watch porn that you’ve paid money for.
And the reason I paid for it, despite not really being able to afford it, is because I think this is more than just masturbating, more than just getting off to something on the internet.
This is my politics. This is my activism. This is my way of affirming my growing belief in a few things.
I’ve been trying to go ethical about the porn I see. Which means buy it, not just rip it off someone or copy from a peer-to-peer network.
It’s hard. It’s really hard to not make illegal copies of things because most of the porn produced is priced way out of my (meagre) disposable income range. And it is in American dollars and behind a credit card wall. Which is tough for someone in India, who has to support their parents, pay for their own living expenses, save up some money for transition, pay off past loans, and spend on things like clothes and make-up, because whatever minor ways I express my femininity is very, very, very important to me now.
But, paying for porn is what keeps the people I like doing the things they like, which happens to coincide with the things I like. If they don’t get paid, they might have to go back to doing shit porn, which is not stuff I like at all.
Ethical porn – in one of my fave porn performer Jiz Lee’s words – “BUY the Porn you want to see in the world.”
I’ve had an excel sheet – it’s been around for a while – in which I’ve noted down costs, rates, expenses etc. for transitioning outside India. Basically, it helped me feel better about the rather desperate situation I was in. I thought if I could calculate how much it would cost to move, to live and transition, and how much I could earn, I’d actually do it.
I’ve now added an extra section there, under expenses. Porn. Buying porn that I consider good – one that shows me people like me, having great sex, and enjoying it.
I believe Porn – pornography – erotica – is an essential, important thing. I wish we had more of a dialogue about it. I wish we talked more openly about porn, about sex, about sexuality, and being a sexual person.
But, that’s not just why I paid for this site.
I paid, because, as I have already said, it is queer (and how! I will get to this point soon), sex positive, fun pornography.
Not the kind of porn with false gasps and moans and the battle of sizes. Here it’s beautifully natural.
I’d like to describe one moment featuring Jiz Lee (who I would love to hug and kiss) and a performer called Nina Hartley, as an example of what natural means.
Midway through a rather awesome session of sex where Nina is on top and dominating Jiz absolutely; there is a pause as Jiz turns around and asks Nina to use their belt on Jiz, as a way of holding/gripping them better. It was considerate, sexy, practical and so much of a turn on. It was a moment in which porn became less an artifice and something of a piece of reality. Here was quite simply, two people having sex. In the best way they both wanted it. And the camera became nothing more, nothing less, than something marking a moment of truth.
But that’s not just why I paid for my porn.
I paid, because my porn is sex positive and body positive and queer.
One of my fave stars is Courtney Trouble. Oh they are such a hottie.
In any other world of porn, they’d be in a tiny category at the end of the site and with enough warning labels to turn off even the staunchest seeker. They would be called BBW, tubby, big mamma and so on, and be fetishized the hell out of any erotic impulse. Here, Courtney is front and centre, no labels beyond the ones they themselves want.
You could be any body, any colour, any shape, any size. You could question your gender or be fully comfortable with it. You could question your sexual orientation or know, compass like, where it points to. You could want to give pleasure or take pleasure or switch it up. You could be big, tall and have gloriously chunky thighs that rub and roll together when you walk. Like me. Or you could be petite, or you could be the statistically average height, weight, skin colour and have 1.8 kids and a car and a house in the suburbs. You could be anything and mix and match everything.
I feel, there’s a little bit of me, and a little bit of everybody in the kind of porn I like, and the kind of porn I paid money for.
This website showed me people having fun with their own bodies and the bodies of their friends and lovers.
I can’t think of a time when I watched porn like that. That is why I paid 22 dollars for the porn I would like to see.
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