I get asked quite frequently if Sex Siopa stocks pornography or if I would consider stocking pornography. I always gave the same flippant answer "Why would I stock it, when you can get it for free on the internet?"

I'm ashamed of myself for answering that way, especially since in the same breath, I'd list off the names of porn stars I love and look up to whilst advocating piracy. I am also a hypocrite. Before starting Sex Siopa, I was a photographer, which comes quite in handy now when I need visual content for my site. There have been several times over the years when I have caught large, corporate companies stealing my photographs. I made sure to get my fees from them, but it hurt knowing that I worked so hard to create those beautiful images, and my work as an artist meant nothing to them. They felt entitled to take whatever they wanted from me for free and make money off the back of my hard work for themselves.

Pornography is similar in the way society feels entitled to consume it, and yet sadly not considered by many to be an art form. As Megan Wozniak of Adult Empire points out for this excellent piece in the Guardian "Unfortunately, porn still has a stigma attached to it, so we know that we won’t ever receive help or support from legislatures..." Megan is part of a grassroots campaign to encourage people to pay for their porn, aptly named #PayForYourPorn. 

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and like everything in the art world, taste in porn is subjective. Even if like me, you feel that much of it has bad lighting, tacky interior design, and ridiculous non-plots; that should not diminish the hard and often demanding work put in by performers, not to mention all the folks behind the scenes. Writer and sex advice columnist / podcaster Dan Savage often refers to porn stars as "The Olympians of sex." They fuck for long hours in front of a camera, and put themselves in wholly unnatural positions that some gymnasts would find difficult to maintain for more than a few minutes. 

My new rule for myself, and I hope that you'll join me in this too, is if a particular porn star helped you have an orgasm, buy a 1-month subscription to their site. This serves 2 purposes. 1) It helps to ensure that said porn star is able to continue producing content and make a living from your wanking. 2) If a performer has his/her own website or is signed to a bigger production company's site, it is far less likely that person is being exploited. However the ethics of the porn industry is a whole other conversation that I won't go into now.

Before I go, I'd like to recommend the following stars and porn sites and hope that you'll contribute to their industry.

Siri - Incredibly intelligent businesswoman, Winner of the fan-voted TLA RAW Female Performer of the Year 2014, nominated for AVN's Best New Starlet 2013 award, has massive boobs and talks dirtier than anyone I've ever seen on screen.

Nina Hartley - Has been around forever and she's still got one of the best asses in the business. On top of being the Milf to end all Milfs, her videos also double as being educational.

Calamity Amelie - Swedish feminist dreamboat! She's an independent director / performer and loves to interact with her fans via Facebook

Erika Lust - Swedish director based in Barcelona. Fantastic production values! Involves her audience by having them anonymously post their fantasies and sex stories on her site. She picks the best ones and shoots them.

Cindy Gallop's Make Love Not Porn - Completely user generated site featuring "real-world" sex where participants receive 50% of the profits generated from their videos.