Thursday, December 6, 2018

I Took a Porn Virgin to an Adult Film Festival

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

The witch's hand grips the leather whip as her breasts pop out of a pentagram-shaped bondage harness. She's looking straight down on us from the large cinema screen above. Suddenly, the camera cuts to the next scene. Now the witch is sitting on a chair, jerking her penis until she comes. In the corner of my eye, I clock my friend who is hiding her face behind her hands.

Over the next 90 minutes, my friend Kira* seems to choke whenever she sees a close-up of a penis or a vagina. Not surprisingly, really as this is the first time the 18-year-old has ever watched other people having sex.

"I've never understood why people find porn erotic," Kira tells me. "For me, eroticism is something intimate. I can't share that with an audience." Kira isn't some sexual prude—she has been living with her boyfriend since she was 16. She's just never been excited by the thought of watching two strangers fuck on camera. Still, I wanted to explore her views on this further, so I invited her to come with me to the queer-feminist porn film festival, and, to my surprise, she said yes—"out of curiosity."

Eine Frau beißt in eine Weingummi-Vulva
Kira inspects some of the items on sale at the festival.

But as I'm learning today, simply having a more diverse range of bodies does not automatically mean that the viewers are going to enjoy themselves. Kira slips ever deeper into her velvet seat and groans in disapproval as two non-binary performers shove crumbling marzipan between their lips. As a man puts his hand into a woman's vagina, she raises her eyebrows. And after watching several minutes of three women penetrated one another with strap ons, Kira hides behind her parka and stays that way until the show is over.

"That was a huge sensory overload," says Kira as we stand on the pavement after the screening. She appreciated the politics behind the festival. But she realized on her own at a young age that porn was not the norm, and that's why she decided a long time ago to stay clear. "I was afraid that porn would have an impact on my sexuality," she says as we explore some of the festival's exhibits. Still, after today's experience, feminist porn is still not an option for her. "I just think it's weird watching other people having sex," she says. "Even if it's two plus-sized lesbians fucking against fascism."

I'm worried that I've scarred my friend with the hours of explicit scenes and naked bodies. Thankfully, it doesn't look like it. Kira fiddles with a pink candy vulva that she bought from the theater at the end of the film and squeezes a cigarette through the small hole under the clit. Then she puts the cigarette between her grinning lips.

*Kira's name has been changed so that her current and future employers never find out that she spent six hours watching porn on a Friday morning.

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