Five Things You Learn on the Set of a Feminist, Instructional Porno

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Photos: GuideToWickedSex.com

It’s another dry weekend in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles, and red velvet cake and sushi are on the table. I’m in an ultra-modern mansion owned by pornstar/director/Playboy radio host Jessica Drake, and the atmosphere is loose and relad—not exactly what I was expecting on a sticky, high-velocity porn set. It’s here that one of the male actors will soon insert his fingers into his costar, tickling her into a moan, then an orgasm. A crew member is locked into his phone, unfazed by all the sexin’ going on around him.

Only Jessica Drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex isn’t your typical porn production. Her popular DVD scenes combines the masturbation fodder of regular porn with instructional demonstrations on everything from missionary positions to anal play; the idea is that everybody who watches it can have better sex. As a porn star who has 227 credits on IMDB, Drake is in classes to become a certified sex coach, and runs her sets as an extension of her personality—from the precise yet nurturing way she directs her actors and crew to the way she feeds her crew, well, cake.

Drake decided to get into making instructional videos after people started approaching her at porn conventions asking her for sex advice. "What struck me was that some people were unable to differentiate between sex on camera versus how it might potentially translate to their love lives directly," she said. As a result, Drake—who feels like Sundance darling Hot Girls Wanted isn’t an accurate depiction of the industry—is committed to featuring some aspects of sex that don’t often make it onto camera.

Welcome to the emerging world of ethical, feminist porn that teaches guys (and girls!) how to have more confident sex. Here are a few things I learned from my recent visit.

1. Consent, consent, consent

Consent is an important part, if not the most important part, of Drake’s directing style. One of the hidden aspects of porn is that everything is negotiated beforehand between the actor and the production, which allows the fantasy to play out onscreen. "Depending on what we’re booked for, we’re consenting to having sex with another person," Drake said. "And because of how much we’re being paid we’ve consented to the fact that it’s an anal scene, or it’s group or DP or whatever. But people at home don’t get that."

Drake makes sure not only to have the actors model consent, but to do so in a sexy way. During one of the instructional scenes, Drake directed the male actor in the scene to ask questions like, "Do you want to suck my cock?" To which his female scene partner would say, "Mmm, yes." Then, she’d do just that.

2. It’s like a family!

"We will now commence the foreplay!" said one of the actors robotically, before diving into a scene that emphasized "kissing and roaming hands." On the set, there’s a camaraderie that’s evident to anyone who’s ever worked behind-the-scenes a restaurant. (Except with un-restaurant-friendly bodily fluids.)

At one point, actors began swapping hookup stories from high school: One actor fell out of his girlfriend’s window after her father caught them together in her bedroom. Another’s car got stuck in the mud after sex in a church parking lot. But as soon as someone yelled "Action!" the actors would instantly snap into character, the lights would go on, and everybody else would watch the actors bone in silence.

As for the actors themselves? The male performers weren’t your typical genus of ’roided out dudebro, and nary was silicone boob in sight.

3. Condoms don’t just magically appear on dicks

In Los Angeles it’s required that porn actors wear a condom—a fact that Pornhub commenters bemoan and porn directors usually try to hide. Drake, however, makes sure to include instances in her films where actors put on a condom. The rubber doesn’t just "magically appear on a dick," she said. "I would rather have them reach over, get the condom, roll it down, put the lube on, and show the stuff that people don’t see when they watch porn." The goal is to emphasize safe, mutually satisfying sex. Fun sex. For everyone!

4. The guys start soft!

In the overwhelming majority of porn videos, massive erections materialize out of thin air, as if the guy had just downed a Viagra martini. But one time, one of Drake’s Wicked Guide to Sex viewers told her that the scenes made him feel inadequate about not getting it up right away—at least until he saw a flaccid penis in one of the videos. Now, as a result, Drake makes it a point to always shows an actor’s penis pre-erection.

5. Actually, "feminist porn" is probably a terrible name

"I think that my shoots, by proxy, are feminist, but I don’t wake up in the morning and go, ’Time to go shoot some feminist, ethical porn!’" Drake says with a laugh. Granted, so-called "feminist porn" has been around for a long time. (Suicide Girls, etc.) But this! This is instructional, and could help a generation of men raised on Pornhub and RedTube how to—and maybe this is super corny, but whatever—make love to a woman.

But most of all, it treats the performers as thinking, breathing, recreationally sexual human beings who aren’t just well-endowed pieces of meat. "I don’t shoot ethical porn," said Drake. "I shoot porn and treat people the way they should be treated."