Feminist Porn Awards

If you’ve been keeping up with my monthly updates, you’ll know I was on a jury for the Sixth Annual Feminist Porn Awards. The event is sponsored by Good for Her, one of the stores selling my book.

In the month of March, I watched more porn than I have in my entire life. I like porn—on occasion—in sound bites. This, however, was more than a bite. It was a gigantic chomp for about three weeks straight.  I watched and reviewed close to thirty films and websites, rating them on things such as level of erotic appeal and whether I saw anything groundbreaking or exceptional.

I was honored to be included as a judge, but I must say—it was work—a lot of work. I wanted to make sure I gave each film the attention it deserved, and to do that, I had to pay attention. It’s not unlike reading a book as a beta reader. You need to look for certain things: holes in the plot; continuity issues; unrealistic characters. With porn, the added element was “Does this film turn me on sexually?” If it did, I usually forgave a lot of the weaker elements.

As a writer of erotica, I don’t seek out porn to inspire me,  but I have used it for research—usually when I’m trying to figure out if a sex scene I’ve written is even anatomically possible. In the process, I’ve sometimes come across a scene that sparks an idea for a story, or just sparks something in me…either way, it arouses my psyche which leads to my imagination doing some acrobatics of sorts, and then words fall onto a page. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s really great when it does.

The Feminist Porn Festival continues tonight with a public screening and a Q&A session. Tickets are still on sale for tomorrow’s awards ceremony. I saw some excellent entries (no pun intended), so do try and attend if you can. It’s certainly a fun and different way to spend your Friday night!

I’ll be presenting an award and look forward to seeing you there.

I also got interviewed  by Toronto Sun columnist, Mike Strobel about my involvement with the festival and my views on the changing face of “Toronto the Good.”

Read his article here, which I’ll also repost on my Interviews page.

Stay sexy,

Eden