Virtual Reality Porn for Women

After Virtual Sexology II was launched 3 years ago, the VR sex experiences for women all around was expected to change the industry forever, but it didn’t happen quite as what a lot of people thought. 

Yes it’s true that  there’s a really a lot of different VR categories out there but here’s an excellent example from Andrea Barrica’s Sex Tech Revolution: The Future of Sexual Wellness - “most of the porn we know would tend to focus on certain body types, and races are surprisingly reductive, and most women are depicted to be quite meek.”

There’s really a glaring problem when it comes to being diverse in mainstream porn, and it’s well known. Will it be the same in the VR world? Is there going to be anything positive to take away from doing a better range of different adult VR experiences for all audiences, and what’s going to be the possible roadblocks it might encounter?

What are the different things that VR Porn can positively give?

Since the internet came along, we’ve had unlimited access to adult entertainment sites, and with that we’ve seen the absence of sex education at school, so most of the people will go to porn sties to know more about sex. This fact is proven true for women watching porn. According to Nicole Prause founder of Liberos and a neuroscientist, “women in general would only use porn as a means to “learn” things like certain sexual behaviors rather than for masturbating like most men would.”

“Reports show that women tend to show positive effects when watching porn in line with their romantic relationships, while it shows mixed results with men since it will be based on whether the frequency of masturbation is being managed in the study”

As per the CEO at Sensemax Paolo Griffo, for men watching porn “it can really be a good exercise to increase their sexual drive and performance, and can successfully treat some problems like premature ejaculation, and in some instances can boost one’s self confidence when they’re in an environment that’s non-judgemental.”

Top VR Porn Sites Recommendation

Multi Sensuality and Intimacy in VR Porn

Just as with 2D Porn, VR porn will always use a lot of technology to be able to create a really intimate sexual and sensual experience for anyone that’s in it. 

According to the CMO of Yanks VR Todd Spaits, after the financial chaos of 2008 that was slapped in the face of brought to pay-sites, VR was able to help the stronger brands that were able to endure that moment, and the other affiliates that helps them, a really good chance at surviving. Since VR has the more intimate nature attached to it, smaller brands are well equipped for it. VR is no doubt more personal.

Raspberry Dream Lab’s Multi-Sensory Seduction offers a surreal VR experience with vibrating motors that are attached to the viewer’s body, and partnered with a scent tech that will release different fragrances as the person watches a bunch of erotic scenes. 

A well known director, therapist, adult entertainer and co-owner of Royal Fetish Films, Jet Setting Jasmine has a lot of clients from every part of the world, helping people live their fetishes. She does this virtually, some over video chats, and she implies BDSM power exchanges while using sex toys to imply a sensory deprivation or tangible stimulation.

“Even one of my clients in Germany loves to purchase my used underwear, so I’ll simply send it to him and we’ll have a virtual session, and while he has my underwear, I’ll issue commands to him” as per Jasmine.

As technology advances, it’s allowing sex workers to reach more potential clients as it increases, and VR makes the experience more rich and enhanced. 

Catherine Smoos, who’s a sexologist and neuroscientist is currently working on a system just for couples. It’s meant for people to virtually be able to experience their fantasies with their partner present, and re-enacts the experience physically real-time.  Live VR cam chats are now being used more often with Teledildonics, and Lovense will incorporate Nora with it’s Rabbit vibrator with VirtualRealPassion contents just for women, since the “rotations will sync based on the actor’s speed” and “vibrations are meant to sync every time there’s body-to-body contact initiated.”

VR’s use for Therapeutic Pleasures

Since VR is way better than 2D, every scene that you experience in VR is totally enhanced and immersive due to the nature in which VR functions. 

VulVR, one of VR mental health expert Sarah Ticho’s project presents a virtual please and will give you a sex ed experience all in one. She understands the benefits of VR in getting that therapeutic environment and believes that it has the capacity and the potential to change anyone’s view about being in an intimate relationship or any form of intimacy, and will make us realize how to use our bodies by learning our emotional and physical needs and wants. She also produced Deep, a really good meditative VR game that’s controlled by a user’s breathing and founded Hatsumi, body mapping experience for VR that allows people to be able to visualize emotions, sensory experience and pain by utilizing 3D printing tools.  

She also states that you can “engineer” feelings in VR in a different way than dealing with 2D.  “While a lot of people that are watching screen-based porn would tend to be the ‘voyeur.’ VR is more of a first person experience. The POV will give you the experience that you’re actually one of the people in that scene, thus increasing engagement emotionally. She’s also exploring how to utilize sounds to better work in VR, like those mukbang videos where every crunch or slurp you hear stimulates your brain in different ways. “While a lot of people that are watching screen-based porn would tend to be the ‘voyeur.’ VR is more of a first person experience. 

It’s also suspected that pornographic POV experiences can help people relate with the actors, which will result in a deeper sexual arousal. This is because of the Body Transfer Illusion that was explored by the VR academic Mel Slater, where the first person would experience bodily transfer while in VR. 

An interactive wristband and a compatible SenseVR headset, SenseMax is actually in the works of developing VR content just for cis women. They tell us that “it’s required to adapt our MotionSensing tech, partnered with SenseVibe” as per Griffo. So while women can be the “man” in the scene while still using the male masturbator for SenseTube. Griffo also explains that a lot of female customers were pretty amazed by the experience. The device also controls the scene in time with the customer’s movements so meaning “the faster your hands would move, it would be the same on the screen as well.”

SenseMax also has it’s own SenseVibe G-spot vibrator that allows it to heat up to 38 degrees, but as of the moment isn’t that interactive but it’s already in the works. The idea was taken a step further in the trans and non-binary virtual reality experience. Trans sex bloggger Kelvin Sparks said that the VR realm will “allow all viewers to be able to get close to experience inhabiting any body”.

For people who’re suffering from any gender dysphoria, if they feel embodied physically by watching a VR POV porn scene can in fact give them a very liberating experience. As per Ticho, adult VR has come a long way and gives different people a more immersive way of telling stories in a lot of ways, not just simply watching porn. Another study shows that those who were able to relate with a porn character became more aroused sexually than those who viewed the video in a third-party setting or fantasized using the video. 

Limitations of VR Porn

Even if VR porn’s evolving, it still has its limitations, and also suffers from lack of diversity. For example, if you’re disabled and you use VR porn, you don’t see disabled persons having sex and enjoying it. You’d embody a normal person and then engage in sexual acts, which is still a problem.

A study said that physically disabled people can somehow really benefit from the VR experience. But Andrew Gurza, a disabled porn actor and disability awareness consultant says that “an authentic representation of disability in porn is really an important opportunity for people to see that a disabled person engaging in sexual acts are also enjoying themselves while doing it”

Ash Baccus Clark, a neuroscientist worked on a project dubbed NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism together with a dedicated team at Hyphen Labs that studied the benefits of VR therapeutically. The goal is to create an installation that will put the users in a body of an independent black woman to see how VR can impact certain prejudice or any bias.

“We never saw anyone that looked anything like us inside those 3D libraries, all of the avatars of black women were really hyper-sexualized.”

Jasmine mentioned that she decided to create RoyalFetishXXX for people of different colours to defy any stereotypes in the sex industry. Ranging from romance up to hardcore, she also says that her goal was to “curate a way for artistic self expression, to have a space where people can explore and see where we are sexually even if at first we thought it wasn’t acceptable. Coming from a sexual standpoint, a lot of our education and experiences in doing porn films, prints or even written have been pretty much left out of the story.” Finally she ends it with “If there’s not one person out there that reminds me of me, then I’m the one experiencing other people’s sexual desires. If I’m being represented, and I can desire my own, I know I’m worthy of being desired. It can really provide people with the outlet of potentially enjoying experiences that they can relate to sensually.”

This is more apparent in transgenders, but thanks to the people who created the Dominatrix Simulator, it enables people to customize their character down every detail, where you can have a body of a man, but have a vagina and still be called a woman, and where you can have a woman’s figure but have a penis and be called a man. VR is slowly paving the way, slowly but surely. 

Technological Design Prejudice

Erica Lust’s “360 in Lust” VR porn movie’s cast was really divers and the perspective of the whole movie was really voyeuristic but when people like Lux Alptraum, a well known sex writer did her own review after viewing it, found out a bias design attached with the technology used. 

Women tend to get motion sickness when watching VR more than men, and that was proved. Because the equipment used was more suitable for the male viewers rather than women. In both the UK and in the US, only 16% of women were able to experience VR, where men would be around 30%. 

The BaDoinkVR director Dinorah Hernandez, explains that pretty much of the bias in the design can be linked to the technological physicality of doing or filming VR porn scenes. Also she mentioned that by being able to film from the male perspective, “you have the absolute advantage that the penis would stick out, and that you can see the penetration, you can see all the action, but if you think about it from a female perspective, it’s limited in the positions that you can do, that’s because everything is focused on what’s happening inside. We had to get actresses who are really flexible, so that we can catch every single action that’s happening.”

Jasmine’s experience in doing VR porn was restrictive as well. “ I had 3 scenes, and two of them were solo, one was a really dominatrix scene with Crystal Orchard and myself. It was a really amazing experience but the camera was really close to us and it’s a bit different. It takes a camera man a certain level of patience to do it, and it’s really an intrusive experience.”

People like Jet Setting Jasmine wants the VR experience not just to include what the genitals are doing, but to also include the way the body moves, how emotions are shown and believes that by incorporating those small aspects would improve the experience of how VR Porn works.

The specialty of YanksVR is making real orgasms when it’s in an industry filled with fake ones. They only fim amateur girls and the sole focus is on their own or other women’s pleasure. Shooting VR porn for women has its own specific challengers because that aim for some realism is above everything but having an all-female team really helps in the long run.

“Getting the right angles are really hard to get during masturbation, and there’s even less angles when you do it in VR. If you’re filming a POV over the girls shoulder, the camera is going to be in a really weird spot placed for her to be relaxed and have real orgasms. And we’re built on real ones”, as per Spaits. “Our girls are much more free to express themselves in a sexual way around other women. Our CEO Billie Miller will always watch the content and if it passes she’s going to pass it on to our female content manager.”

The Gendered Plot Lines and Male Gaze

It’s already a known fact that whoever directs the production controls everything. And what women want in a porn scene or movie is way different from men. Men are visual beings and would tend to focus more on the physical traits, whereas for women, they would want more intimacy, possibly a plot and a little bit of dialogues with the actors. But to fully change the perspective of everyone included, it’s going to be a long road ahead. 

Maybe they give a cis man head, and get turned on and stay as hard as a cis man do coitus with them. It’s pretty much a similar scrip for porn with cis women, but it’s just rewritten to consider a cis man’s desire for trans women. It’s really not right for a whole lot of reasons, since it’s both objectifying the body, branding it with wrong ideas of how they work and defining how our sex lives are based on a cis man’s desire. Our penises don’t work the same way as a cis man. 

But there’s a potential improvement since there’s been an increase in requests from men to have more intimate scenes, they’d request for more dirty talks, eye contact and other things. So in a way, it’s already improving. 

Way back in 2016, Angie Rowntree, the founder of Sssh.com was able to finish Empowering Eva. It’s a 360 degree scene that can be watched in VR. Angie says that even if “adult VR films are pretty much made from a woman’s POV, the viewer is going to be immersed in a position of watching something that looks like they’re participating in the coitus that’s taking place, and that could have more potential to appeal to women all around.” 

Socio-Economic Inconsistencies

While we know that VR is fairly new in immersing itself in the mainstream porn industry, not all people have access to this technology. Not everyone can afford VR headsets, and that posts a problem for VR porn reaching other potential audiences. 

As per Jasmine,

“I’m just asking to be a part of the exploration, a seat at the table, make my voice count.” Getting a lot more people to chip in ideas would really have an impact on the overall result, and can appeal to a more diverse kind of audience. Rowntree on the other hand didn’t hire anyone that specializes in doing VR, but she chose to do it in-house. “There weren’t any multiple takes, just one fluid shot, and we just used a single camera. Dealing with the sound was really diiferent as well, and when we edited the film, we saw and learned that a lot of color correction was needed to be done on an equirectangular footage.”

It’s not easy doing a VR porn scene. It takes skill, time and investment. But still VR porn tends to close in to the most obvious customers - straight men. In order to make the most profit, every VR developer and studio will always have content that will appeal to straight men, since it’s easier to know their desires and other things. VR porn is really expensive to shoot and create if it’s done by Unity or Unreal. And there’s going to be limitations in the software companies on what you can and cannot publish. 

So it’s safe to say that VR porn is certainly growing day by day, but there’s still a lot of hurdles to tackle but hey, every new technology had to go through that. VR porn is on the rise, and it’s going to be good.