WWW- Lesbian porn has come of age. Fatale Media is celebrating 21 years of bringing real lesbian sex to celluloid. No giggly "girl-on-girl" action for slobbering guys. No bored-looking bleached and waxed Barbie-types going down on each other. No Lee Press-on Nails. Fatale titles like Suburban Dykes, Dress Up for Daddy and the sci-fi slutfest Dominatrix Waitrex are all about lesbians and bisexual women having sex with each other, for lesbian and bisexual women porn aficionados.
As Fatale co-founder and president Nan Kinney explains, "girl-on-girl" porn made with the male viewer in mind essentially boils down to straight chicks having sex with each other while thinking about the guy who's watching them. "You can tell immediately that they're not really enjoying it," says Kinney. "It's not natural for them. They're in very unnatural positions, they have uncomfortable looking clothes on, uncomfortable long fingernails and you're just like, 'Huh? This isn't what we do.'" By contrast, lesbian porn is lesbians that are, well, actually into each other, and in as many ways as possible. "Their pleasure, you can feel, is more realistic and they're doing things that lesbians actually do," says Kinney. "It's not as limited as the girl-girl sex. There's a broader kind of sex activity going on, it's not nice side-by-side, two girls."
It was the profound absence of serious lezzie action in the porn world that led Kinney and Debi Sundahl to start Fatale back in 1984, a year after they began publishing (along with Susie Bright) the print paean to lesbian smut, On Our Backs. "We couldn't find any images that turned us on, images of ourselves, lesbian images that we could relate to and learn something from and get off," Kinney recalls. "And we were young and full of energy and we decided to start creating our own." Fatale's first release in 1985, Private Pleasures and Shadows features a biker butch and her real-life femme squeeze (both with New Wave mullets!) getting it on in an underground love nest. The rest, as they say is herstory.
Fatale has thrived in an era that has seen feminist presses, bookstores and bars go the way of those mullets. Kinney's not living like Hugh Hefner, but she didn't get into the lesbian porn biz to get rich. Otherwise, "I haven't worked outside of [Fatale] for quite a while," says Kinney, who notes that in the early days it was a volunteer operation. "I can at least keep a very little small independent business growing. Kind of a home based business if you will," she laughs. "In so many ways."
And what's her pleasure when it comes to Fatale's catalogue? Ironically, Kinney points to Suburban Dykes, an older title that features mainstream porn stars Nina Hartley and Sharon Mitchell. "Now here are two mainstream porn actresses and I've just been talking about mainstream porn actresses, but these two are bisexual," says Kinney. "Sharon Mitchell is quite butch, so they're not the norm that you're going to find in girl-girl porn. And what they're doing here is not girl-girl porn. Behind the old favorite, Kinney is wild over Take Her Down! Lesbian Erotic Oil Wrestling Party. "It's so gorgeous, I just love it. It's all these women - like 20 women - all oiled up and rolling around on a mat together," says Kinney. "It's so beautiful."
