Porn has long been seen as the exclusive domain of men — at least when it comes to who’s making it and consuming it. Whether it’s because women are assumed to be less horny and visual-oriented, or just too monogamy-oriented to be interested in watching other people have sex, pundits have long proclaimed ladies to be generally uninterested in erotic films. But it’s increasingly clear that that idea isn’t true: On the porn site Pornhub, “porn for women” was the top trending search term of 2017, and globally, women are estimated to make up about a quarter of porn viewers, a number that continues to increase as internet access becomes more widespread.

For the team at xHamster, one of Pornhub’s competitors, this explosion of female interest signals an obvious opportunity for investment — and they’re eager to get in on the ground floor. This month, the company launched the Porn for Women Development Fund, a grantmaking program that’ll award stipends ranging from $500 to $10,000 to female pornographers of all different backgrounds and experience levels. Through this program, xHamster hopes to inspire amateur filmmakers to consider porn as a profession, give more established filmmakers a little financial boost, and, of course, position itself as a destination for women looking for porn that caters to their interests.

But the first thing the company will have to determine is what, exactly, “porn for women” even means. For decades, the phrase referred to a softer, and presumably more female-friendly genre of erotic content, one with good lighting, minimal close-ups of penetration, lots of cunnilingus, and, of course, an actual plot.

The first thing the company will have to determine is what, exactly, “porn for women” even means

But as women have become more open about their porn consumption, and female directors like Tristan Taormino and Kimberly Kane have brought their own explicit — and often extremely hardcore — visions to the screen, that consensus about what women want has begun to fray. If some women are making, and are turned on by, plot-free porn featuring choking or slapping or anal sex, is that not porn for women, too?

To its credit, xHamster seems aware of the fuzziness of the categorization. “We’re not going to tell you what your fantasy should be... We’re just interested in original and authentic experiences,” the site’s copy declares, noting that the program is open to submissions from “young, old, cis, [or] trans” women, whose work will be judged by “a rotating team of women-identified judges, made up of fans, porn stars, journalists and xHamster employees.” It’s an open-ended mission statement that’s given many of the people I spoke with for this piece hope that, at the very least, the initiative could help bring more awareness and resources to certain underfunded, and often unpublicized, corners of the adult industry.

Even though “porn for women” is not one specific thing, the underlying sentiment the phrase attempts to communicate — that porn predominantly made by white, cisgender men probably doesn’t capture the full range of human sexual experience and expression — is one that many pornographers and porn consumers will happily agree with. “Whoever is behind the camera is writing the story,” says Shine Louise Houston, filmmaker and creator of PinkLabel.TV, a site specializing in independent erotic and adult films. “If all we have are cis white men behind the camera, then that’s the only story we’re going to get.”

It’s a problem that’s hardly unique to porn. Mainstream film and television are similarly plagued by an overabundance of cis white men in their directors’ chairs and writers’ rooms; a reality that undoubtedly shapes the content we see on screen — as this video by Slate makes clear. But porn can feel even more challenging for women to break into than more mainstream film.

Porn can feel even more challenging for women to break into than more mainstream film

Porn is a fairly cloistered industry. Getting hired to work on a porn set requires knowing the right people; and many of the people who’ve historically made hiring decisions on adult film sets have preferred to work with men. Going indie is always an option, but it requires self funding and navigating the complicated legal barriers of producing pornography — something that can be more difficult for women, who are less likely than their male peers to have access to enough capital for a film budget. And, most notably, there’s the reality that working in porn, even behind the scenes, brings with it a substantial amount of social stigma, stigma which weighs far more heavily on women in our misogynist society.

Houston isn’t convinced that the relative absence of women behind the camera on porn sets is due to a lack of interest from female filmmakers. “There are a lot of people making really cool stuff at film festivals,” she says, pointing to venues like CineKink, the Toronto International Porn Festival, Fish&Chips Film Festival, and Pornfilmfestival Berlin as some of the places where unique and interesting erotic content by and for women pops up. “The only thing is after you make it, you’re not making any money off of it.”

Unlike mainstream film festivals, which might connect you to a potential distribution deal, erotic film festivals are mostly just a way to showcase your work to other filmmakers and erotica fans who are enough in the know to attend these events. And what happens next is a lot less straightforward.

While it’s easy to upload a clip to internet and give it away for free, that kind of exposure doesn’t pay the bills

While it’s easy to upload a clip to the internet and give it away free, that kind of exposure doesn’t pay the bills — or, more to the point, fund the budget for future porn films. Sites like Clip4Sale or ManyVids offer independent creators a way to sell their clips to fans, but they can be confusing to navigate, especially for new filmmakers who don’t have enough clips to meet the sites’ content requirements. Even if you do manage to establish an account on one of these sites, the audiences that frequent them aren’t always interested in something new and different, and women who’d be interested in your films might not dig deep enough to find it.

Creating your own site is another option, but that prospect requires a level of technical expertise, and willingness to deal with the headaches of billing and customer service, that many aspiring pornographers just aren’t up for. Some unconventional pornographic filmmakers have found success promoting their content on crowdfunding platforms like IndieGogo or Patreon, but that strategy comes with some serious risks. For several years, the female-led erotic art project Four Chambers was a Patreon success story, making over $23,000 a month in pledges from thousands of devoted fans.

But at the beginning of this summer, they were unceremoniously booted from the platform after Patreon began aggressively enforcing its content restrictions and cracking down more heavily on sex-related projects. All of the project’s films still live online, but at present, there’s no way to pay to get access for them — and there’s no guarantee that Four Chambers’ Patreon fans will switch over to a new payment platform once it’s finally put in place.

It’s these kinds of structural barriers that pose the biggest challenge for increasing diversity among porn directors. Because it’s not just enough to open the door, or inspire someone’s interest: to truly create change, we have to figure out a way to make porn production a stable career for female pornographers. xHamster’s initiative is an encouraging start to a conversation about female sexuality. But if that conversation doesn’t eventually turn to long-term financial support for the people who are creating the content that authentically explores female desire, it isn’t likely to be a conversation that lasts very long.