"Pornography benefits women, both personally and politically."
A disturbing number of woman-identifying classmates of mine do not watch porn. It's not that they don't like sex, or the idea of porn they assure me- porn just doesn't get them off. Once upon a time, I claimed the same thing... and then I started watching a different type of porn.
Soft core porn never did much for me, it was too pretty, too fairy tale like. I could never imagine sex actually working out like that or being enjoyable in such a manner. Their expressions seemed so exaggerated and fake. But then with the more animalistic, hard core porn, I felt disconnected to the characters. I didn't particularly care that they were fucking, with or without a back story. I just got bored unless something specific called out to me in the scene.
Naturally, this is not every woman's experience or reasoning for not liking porn. However, the women I've talked to and watched porn with have agreed though that a certain format just works better. This tends to include making the characters people, or having the porn actors and actresses being themselves.
A great example of this is Tristan Taormino's Chemistry. The general arc of the film is that seven porn stars are in a house together and have sex whenever they want to. Between each scene is an interview with some of the actors. This allows for the actors to have personalities. I find this makes people sexier and their sex scenes more exciting. Mika Tan, for example, is super adorable and energetic throughout the film, and brings her personality into every sexy scene she's in.
A few other examples are: Courtney Trouble's Seven Minutes in Heaven: Coming Out!, Buck Angel's Sexing the Transman, and Kelly Shibari's Overloaded. Seven Minutes in Heaven has the same idea of Chemistry, except all the members in the house are vulva owners and not well known porn stars. Sexing the Transman is composed of interviews and masturbation with transmen. Overloaded has Shibari, a BBW porn actress, and a handful of her fans compose a blowbang and then later some group sex scenes. Of these four, Chemistry and Overloaded happen to be my personal favorites; I found the actresses more attractive and excited.
Reality porn seems to be getting more popular through various amateur films, and as porn actors acting as themselves becomes a little more prevalent. Hopefully this will bring enjoyable pornography use to more women.
I would also like to state that there's nothing wrong with not enjoying pornography. I tend to compare liking porn to liking sex toys: if you don't, you still have your imagination and hands, and if you do, you have a few more tools in your toy box.
I'm also curious if this is just a specialized occurrence with my specific age group at my school. So please tell me, woman-identifying readers, do you enjoy porn? Is there a certain type you prefer? If not, why do you think you don't like it? Can you imagine a perfect porn that you would enjoy?