Women in adult entertainment are taking the lead behind the scenes.

Last year after diving down the rabbit hole of VR porn marketed toward women, I wanted to know more about the people who created it. I was wondering who was trying to satisfy the wants and needs of women, a question that long-troubled Sigmund Freud. (Yet didn’t prevent him from making bogus claims about women’s sexuality even as he admitted ignorance.)

I thought most of the VR porn directors and producers would have been women themselves. But actually, the responses I collected from studios showed the gender breakdown was somewhat evenly split.

What proved more interesting to me in the end was no longer a reductive category aimed at pleasing one sex. Instead, I was taken by the rise of female directors in adult entertainment over the last ten years. Male directors dominated in the age of 90s glamor porn and still today in mainstream film. But the adult film industry seems quicker to embrace diversity.

So what’s different now that the number of male and female directors is roughly equal? And who are the women behind the scenes creating VR porn? Here we showcase six accomplished women, their views on the industry, and what they've brought to immersive adult film.

[Note: Of course these women represent just a slice of who is creating content. If there are different people or groups working in an area of sex tech you'd like to learn more about, let us know in the comments section at the bottom of this article.]

Anna Lee – Director, HoloGirlsVR

“I wouldn't say the content has changed so much that we're now creating scenes specifically for women,” says HoloGirlsVR [NSFW] director Anna Lee as she starts to explain how the influx of female directors in adult entertainment has affected the industry.

“But we're creating scenes that empower women, that paint the women in a more beautiful light. That feature women in a stronger role inside of the scene.”

Lee began directing VR porn in 2010, and her specialty is creating girlfriend experience-type scenes that offer a sense of realism. Previously she shot standard 2D adult content for several years. In fact, Lee is a trailblazer when it comes to sex tech, but her success goes beyond film.

As the President of Utherverse Digital, she helped launch Red Light Center [NSFW] in 2006. The massively multiplayer online sex game was one of the first adult virtual worlds to hit the Internet and today has more than 8 million registered users.

Joining these two ventures and using photorealistic augmented reality may be the future of immersive sex tech, Lee speculates.

“If Red Light Center could completely merge with the VR live-action porn, then you have the perfect porn baby right now. Think about this for a second, if you could design your own self in whatever way and then pick your partner,” she says.

“I mean now we're talking Demolition Man, right.”

Fivestar – Director, KinkVR

“The most important thing to me when creating adult content (and it is the same for VR) is to foster a collaborative environment with cast and crew where performers feel valued and respected,” says KinkVR [NSFW] director Fivestar.

She’s also made about 300 videos for fetish site Kink.com and mostly directs lesbian and femdom videos.

Despite the fact that men make up the majority of Kink’s audience, her aim is to appeal to as many people as possible. This is particularly important when filming in virtual reality since the medium offers an added sense of immersion.

“When shooting VR video from a voyeur's perspective, I always ask the performers to use gender-neutral pronouns,” Fivestar explains.

Fans can also thank Fivestar for shaking things up creatively in VR porn. KinkVR differentiates itself from other studios by shooting from various perspectives, not just the overused dominant male and passive female viewpoints.

Of course, this is partly due to more diverse representations of sexuality and gender at Kink. But the relative newness of virtual reality to adult entertainment lends itself to exploration.

“It is still the early days of VR porn and it's the best time to experiment. I have intentionally tried different things to see what resonates more with the audience. For now, variety has been the driving factor on choosing perspectives.”

For the next round of production, KinkVR will be using updated rigs with higher resolution and shooting more 180-degree videos since they’ve proven popular among some members. For more long-term projects, Fivestar plans to experiment with interactive and volumetric videos, 3D modelling, and teledildonics.

Dinorah Hernandez – Director, BaDoinkVR and VRCosplayX

“Right now, the audience for VR porn is very heavily male dominated,” says Dinorah Hernandez, who began working with adult studio BaDoink five years ago. Today she directs virtual reality content for BaDoinkVR [NSFW] and parody site VRCosplayX.

It’s a challenge to create a lot of content for women without alienating BaDoink’s predominately heterosexual male subscriber base, she admits. Part of the problem is reconciling different tastes and overcoming common depictions of the passive female body.

“We found that while men typically do not want to see another man’s hands moving–women do want to have a more active role in the scene. That being said, we are looking into content that will appeal to both men and women–which would be the sweet spot for our target audience.”

Yet catering specifically to heterosexual women and couples, Hernandez directed the sex education VR film What Women Want released last June. Part of BaDoinkVR’s Virtual Sexology series, the 50-minute film features segments demonstrating exercises recommended by licensed sex therapists such as Kegel training, breathing methods, and a start-stop technique for extending orgasm.

“Our mission was to both educate and titillate your sex life by providing people with methods on how to enhance your confidence and pleasure in the bedroom,” Hernandez says.

Lily Campbell – Director, YanksVR

“The most important part of my job is that they are real,” says YanksVR [NSFW] director Lily Campbell about her models’ orgasms. “It’s like a mission statement I have, to create ‘anti-fake-porn porn.’”

Before becoming Lead Director of adult site Yanks in 2009, Campbell modeled in the industry for six years. Sharing the founders’ passion for representing authentic sexuality and busting unrealistic expectations, she also took the helm of its VR division when it launched in 2016.

YanksVR features all-women models, together and alone, in videos produced entirely by women. In some they simply talk about what gives them pleasure. But most show them enjoying their bodies in unique ways traditional pornography does not.

Part of Campbell’s job description, she says, is figuring out what the women like and then shooting it. One video, for instance, features a model rubbing herself against a couch until she climaxes.

“I ask them all of the ways that they actually orgasm and what happens often, especially with newer models, is a that they'll be like, ‘I can come from like this thing but it's kind of weird.’”

But when it comes to sexuality, so-called “weird” interests are not necessarily uncommon. If we all took a truth serum and admitted past experiences, we may be surprised at how many couch or stuffed animal humpers are really out there.

Perhaps this approach is why YanksVR members are 15% couples, 15% women, and 70% men.

“At first when I heard those numbers I thought, ‘Oh man, we need more women. That's crazy,’ but apparently that's actually kind of high for people in the industry,” says Campbell.

Angie Rowntree – Director, Sssh.com’s Empowering Ava

“Chemistry, passion, and emotional content is what I find missing from a lot of other porn. This is a big part of why I decided to start making adult films 20 years ago,” says director Angie Rowntree of Sssh.com [NSFW], a site that bases its films on fantasies submitted by subscribers.

“These are things that are important to me as a woman and as a filmmaker. Would they be as important to me if I were a man? That’s impossible for me to say, honestly.”

Rowntree’s first and only VR porn video Empowering Ava [NSFW], like all of her content, is targeted toward women. Shot from a third-person perspective, the story features an erotica writer and her husband trying pegging together for the first time.

“I meant it as the counterpart to the “male gaze.” Most porn is made from a male perspective, regardless of whether it’s literally shot from the point of view of the male characters. The same sort of thing can be said of my work, only with respect to the female perspective instead of male.”

For now, Rowntree’s dive into VR porn has been brief. She wants to buy better equipment before tackling her next project and has instead been focusing on a narrative film that better suits the traditional two-dimensional medium.

However, she holds big expectations for the future of VR porn and its potential to influence the industry.

“I want my VR films to be more than something people watch. I want them to feel like they’re part of the world of the film. I consider the audial component of VR just as important as the video component, for example. For adult VR films to be truly special, I think they must be more than just 3D versions of the same things we’ve seen in 2D porn over the decades. VR is potentially transformational for adult film, but only if we take real advantage of all the possibilities afforded by the technology.”

Ela Darling – CAM4VR/VRTube.xxx

If you know of just one person in VR porn, chances are it’s Ela Darling. Not only is she first VR cam porn performer, she’s a VR porn entrepreneur who has grabbed the attention of The New York Times and invented a patented VR camera-capture technique.

In 2016, just two years after shooting the first VR cam show, she licenced this technology to CAM4VR [NSFW} and joined the site’s team as VR Content Manager. In her role she coaches and trains models. And while Darling hasn’t directed since 2015, her influence on the field can’t be overlooked.

Part of what drives her work is fighting loneliness and its physiological impact. The sense of connection VR camming offers makes it an ideal medium.

“There are plenty of people who don't have access to traditional relationships, either because they don't have time or social skills. Or they don't the have the physical mobility to allow them to access social situations in certain ways,” Darling says. “They don't need human connection any less than anybody else does.”

“Being able to feel this personal emotional connection with someone, especially on an erotic level, can really do a lot to improve someone's day-to-day existence.”

This connection affects how viewers respond to her in virtual reality compared to standard camming shows. The people in her VR chatrooms are less likely to troll her, and more likely to stand up for her when others are rude.

“I think it grants a greater sense of personhood,” Darling says. “It creates this sense that, ‘Wow, I'm in someone else's house right now. I'm going to treat them with the respect that I would treat someone if I was actually in their house.’”

Image sources: Lily Campbell, Dinorah Hernandez, BaDoinkVR [NSFW], Empowering Ava [NSFW], Twitter/AnnaLeeVRX, Twitter/iamfivestar [NSFW], Twitter/eladarling,