Interesting Times, New York Times Opinion | Guest host: Julia Yost | 2026-10-29

Pornography use has increased sharply in the digital age. Americans watch more sexual content than ever, yet they report having less sex. Celibacy has become fashionable, and reports indicate that many young people are having less sex than previous generations. Julia Yost, guest host of Interesting Times, asks whether an alternative to mainstream pornography can address these trends. Her guest is Erika Lust, a self-described ethical pornographer who makes cinematic, socially progressive films aimed at women's fantasies rather than men's.

Background

Lust was born Erika Hallqvist in Sweden. She studied political science. She grew up in a country with a feminist tradition, comprehensive sex education, and a reputation for sexual liberalism.

As a young adult, she began watching pornography to learn about her own sexuality. Access was limited at the time, compared with the internet available to young people today. She reported a conflict: the material aroused her, but she felt the women existed mainly to please men and that their own stories were absent. She asked whether a different kind of pornography could exist.

She found the answer in Hardcore, a book by Linda Williams, a film professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Lust said the book changed her view. Pornography, she concluded, is a discourse about sexuality, gender, and how people relate to each other sexually.

Production practices

Lust describes her company as an independent production house. She and her husband own it, and it has no outside investors. Her crews are mostly female and queer, and a shoot can involve up to 50 people behind the camera. The films have developed characters, narratives, and a defined visual style.

Her production process includes several stages:

• Pre-casting conversations: Production staff and talent managers speak with performers to learn their preferences and boundaries.
• Script development: After casting, the team discusses the film in detail, including each character's motivations and the sexual dynamic between characters.
• Pleasure discussion: The team discusses what performers enjoy, how they like to be touched, and what methods are most effective. Lust said these talks cover boundaries and pleasure alike.
• Morning-of-shoot discussion: The team repeats the discussion on arrival at the set. The director of photography and camera operators join to plan camera angles, lighting, and positions.

Performers review and sign a document Lust calls the Bill of Rights before each shoot. The document sets out the process and each party's responsibilities. Lust said performers must understand that they can raise any concern, and that the production environment must allow them to do so without penalty.

Lust also conducts post-shoot check-ins to determine whether performers have second thoughts. She said performers have raised only minor concerns. In one case, a performer objected to a spanking scene and asked that it be removed from the film.

Ethical pornography and funding

Lust defines ethical pornography as a standard that covers working conditions, production practices, marketing, distribution, and consumption. She said consumers must understand that high-quality pornography has a cost. Crew and performers must receive fair pay, and a sustainable budget requires a funding model.

Her company is funded by its audience. Revenue comes from subscribers to its online cinema streaming platform, americanas.com.

Lust urged consumers to avoid free online platforms and to support independent producers, comparing the choice to buying food or clothing from responsible sources. She said companies track where users click and how long they stay on content. In her view, consumers therefore influence the industry through their online behavior.

Realism and female pleasure

Lust said her films aim to depict sex in a way viewers can recognize from real life. She said mainstream pornography often portrays women in unrealistic sexual contexts, and she cited clitoral stimulation, which most women need in order to reach orgasm, as a frequent omission. She said the topic should be stated openly and that explicit labeling is acceptable.

Feminism in pornography

Lust describes herself as a feminist who makes pornography. She identifies two areas in which feminism applies to the medium:

1. Participation: Who makes the film, who takes part in the process, and who has authority over decisions.
2. Representation: What appears on screen, how gender is portrayed, and which power relations the film shows.

She said negotiations between performers and production teams are standard in the adult industry. These negotiations usually occur off camera. She said showing them on screen can help audiences understand how the participants reached agreement.

Critiques of pornography

Yost noted that Lust's view is not universally shared among feminists. She cited Andrea Dworkin, who argued in the 1970s and 1980s that pornography inherently subordinated women. Dworkin described pornography as a system of sexual exploitation in which women are devalued and treated as commodities. She argued that it produces physical aggression against women and discriminatory attitudes, and that it undermines the struggle for civil equality.

Lust said some feminists hold that a fair feminist pornography is impossible. She rejected that view. She said women have the right to their own pleasure and sexuality and need space to explore their fantasies. She acknowledged that her fantasies are shaped by a patriarchal society. She said pornography helps women reduce the sexual shame many of them feel.

The mainstream industry

Lust said most pornography on the internet does not address female pleasure. In her account, many creators focus on clicks and algorithms rather than sexual content. She said technology companies have acquired much of the industry.

She traced the history of the industry:

• 1960s and 1970s: A "golden era" in which pornography appeared in theaters. Many creators were filmmakers and artists who sought to show a more liberated sexuality in response to conservative norms.
• Video cassette era: Distribution shifted to home video.
• Early internet: Pay sites and photo archives with slow downloads became common.
• Current era: Free "tube" sites dominate. Lust said the operators of these sites are more interested in technology than in sex.

Yost asked whether these sites are misogynistic. Lust described their content as phallocentric. She said it centers on male sexuality and frequently reduces women to objects. Women's perspectives, she said, are absent.

Yost asked whether millions of men who use this content are at fault. Lust said men have the right to their own fantasies, but each person must understand what they desire and how it affects their life. She said people are shaped by social norms and can change if they examine those norms. She also said many women share attractions that critics would classify as misogynistic, and that everyone should be able to explore those attractions and think about them.

Lust observed that people often watch pornography privately and then describe it differently in public. She said many people believe what they enjoy is shameful and fail to recognize what actually arouses them.

Shame and history

Yost asked about the origins of the idea that sexual desire is shameful. Lust said the idea has a long history. She said the transition from Roman to Christian culture divided goddesses who once represented power, fertility, and sexuality into separate roles, including a respectable mother figure and a sexualized figure.

Yost referred to the scholarship on the shift from pre-Christian to Christian Rome. She stated that Christianity granted women rights in sex and marriage and prohibited sexual abuse of boys. She cited Lust's book, in which Lust describes visiting Pompeii and seeing frescoes depicting sexual acts and erect penises. Lust said she viewed this openness as liberating. Yost said Pompeii's sexual practices were also cruel to women and children. Lust said she would rather live in the present than in any earlier period.

The Cornell case

Yost raised the case of the "Cornell seven," in which seven young men were accused of sexually assaulting a young woman during group sex on a college campus. The accused were reported to have been under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Yost asked whether the students drew on a gangbang scenario from pornography. She asked whether fantasy can create risk when it meets reality.

Lust said films, television, video games, books, and pornography all depict such scenarios. She said she does not believe pornography has a unique power to cause people to imitate specific acts. In her view, the principal gap is in sex education, including discussion of sex, consent, and respect for women. She said voices discussing eroticism should not be censored, books should not be removed from schools, and sex education programs should not be cut.

Sex education

Yost noted that sex education in the United States often focuses on preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, which Lust described as the basics. Lust said she grew up with the Nordic model, which is more extensive.

Lust proposed that sex education begin in early childhood. She said children explore their bodies from a young age and that adults send them messages about sexuality whether or not adults intend to. Children who lack vocabulary for their sexual organs cannot discuss them. She said parents should begin these conversations early and make them ongoing rather than a single event.

She said a sex education curriculum should include:

• Porn literacy: Students should learn to think critically about sexual images online and in other media.
• Media literacy: Students should evaluate all content they read or view.
• Gender identity: Curricula should address gender identity and pronouns.
• Queer perspectives: Instruction should move beyond heteronormative assumptions, which Lust said dominate sex education in most countries.
• Rights over the body: Students should learn that they have a right over their bodies and identities and can express them safely.

Yost responded that the Cornell case suggests a firm boundary between fantasy and reality. Lust said performers in professional productions work within controlled conditions, and that viewers should not attempt to recreate such scenes without care.

Gangbang scenes

Yost pointed out that gangbang scenes feature in Lust's book, whose first chapter asks, "Does every woman deserve a gangbang?" Lust said she initially shared the common view that a gangbang is a situation in which men prey on a woman. She said she met Katsumi, a performer, to discuss a possible film. Lust had expected a romantic project. Katsumi repeatedly described a desire for a scene with five men. Lust said Katsumi described her experiences outside the adult industry and the sense of attention and care she felt during such scenes. Lust said this changed her view.

Lust cited Virginie Despentes's King Kong Theory, which argues that risk is part of going into the world, taking up space, and learning.

Yost said Lust's discomfort may reflect an intuition that the Cornell case confirmed: a woman having sex with multiple men carries objective risk. Yost asked whether some stigmas exist for valid reasons. Lust said many stigmas originate in past situations in which women faced real danger, such as walking through a park at night. She said avoiding all risk also limits women's rights, opportunities, and possibilities.

Sex positivity and the orgasm gap

Yost argued that Lust's advocacy assumes a patriarchal culture that teaches women to feel shame about their bodies and desires. She said most messages to women are sex positive, and that pornography is widely accepted.

Lust disagreed. She said many women still worry about their sexuality, appearance, and sexual choices. She said many women in heterosexual relationships experience an orgasm gap. She added that sexual activity in these relationships often centers on male satisfaction rather than the woman's. When women describe sex they have alone, she said, their accounts differ.

Technology and the decline of sex

Lust said people increasingly spend time on social media and mobile devices and connect less with others in person. She said reports show that young people are having less sex.

Yost described sex as involving intimacy, negotiation, friction, and difficult conversations. She described pornography as other people's sex that viewers watch. Lust said pornography can encourage in-person sex and create connections between people who watch it together. Yost questioned whether this holds universally.

Lust said people often have anxieties about sex, including fear, shame, and difficulty connecting with others. She said technology has worsened this situation by reducing real-world interaction. People fear rejection or failing to make a connection. Many find it easier to meet sexual needs by watching pornography online than by connecting with another person.

Lust said she does not believe pornography replaces partners. She said people want to connect with someone they trust and share physical presence. Yost said that some people prefer perfect control over their sexual experiences, which they can achieve through a vibrator or online pornography. Lust said asking for what one wants is difficult and that many people do not know what they want, which reinforces the need for sex education.

Yost asked whether too much exploration reduces sexual enjoyment. She cited a recent survey reported by The Atlantic. The survey found that married, churchgoing Americans have more sex than any other demographic group in the country. Lust said the reasons might include the social connection after church on Sunday. She questioned whether people who watch large amounts of pornography, and then think about sexual activities they are not having, are more prone to dissatisfaction.

Compulsive use and moral incongruence

Yost noted that people who consider themselves pornography addicts often watch less pornography than people who do not describe themselves that way. This pattern corresponds to the concept of moral incongruence: a conflict between a person's values and their behavior.

Lust said this pattern does not undermine such people's position. She said someone who does not want to use pornography has an objection to it, whether religious or secular, or a desire for temperance or discipline, or a sense that it interferes with finding partners. Such a person will try to avoid it and will use it less, but may still use it because of a compulsion. Lust said this is the basis for the language of compulsion and addiction: people feel captured by pornography and cannot stop, even when they want to.

Asked what such people should do, Lust said each person must find a balance that works in their own life. She said the first step is to ask what kind of pornography they watch. She said she only watches material that reflects her values. For her, viewing is a form of erotic mindfulness. She acknowledged that most people do not experience it this way.

Yost's counterarguments

Yost said that Lust's account of shame does not match her own experience. She said her social and professional networks are conservative about sex. She said the people she knows do not regard sexual desire as shameful or sex as dirty. She said they regard sex as important and meaningful and, because of that, place parameters on it that not everyone needs to accept.

Yost said some people may avoid openly stating that they consider sex shameful, because they want to appear open and nonjudgmental. She said that many people she knows, including those with five or more children, clearly have sex.

Yost also argued that privacy explains many people's reticence without requiring a belief that sex is shameful. She compared this to privacy about personal finances. She said values shape these choices. She said she does not regard those values as a patriarchal or misogynistic position that Lust opposes.

Lust said she does not seek to push pornography on anyone. She said she wants to offer an alternative for people who could not find the pornography they wanted to watch, and that many people share that experience.