9 New Ways to Turn Yourself On

Different strokes for different folks, goes the saying. So why limit yourself? Here are some places you should check out for their carefully-curated erotica for the modern woman. You’re welcome.

Portrait of Tammy Strobel

Different strokes for different folks, goes the saying. So why limit yourself? Here are some places you should check out for their carefully-curated erotica for the modern woman. You’re welcome.

My Reading Room

1 Ladies first

In Japan, there’s a term called eromen – which is a new genre in adult films that are geared towards women. What does this mean, exactly? Well, it’s like your favourite romantic Asian drama… only steamier. Adult films are often guilty of being designed for the male gaze, and two Japanese production companies – Silk Labo and Love Place – are changing that by putting their female consumers first. You’ll get more flirting, more foreplay, and male actors whose good looks tend to fall into the boy-next-door category, which adds to the realism.

2 Touch yourself

www.OMGYes.com

OMGYes is a sex education website that teaches women how to orgasm. Using interactive tutorials, touchscreen guides and, most importantly, interviews with real women, the site shows us there are various ways to get off and there’s no one-sizefits-all approach when it comes to, well, coming. You’ll have to pay a one-time fee of US$40 (SG$54) to access the website, but we reckon that’s a small price to pay for better orgasms, right? Emma Watson is a fan, and the website is also available in other languages like Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. How’s that for inclusivity? 

My Reading Room

3 Read me

www.literotica.com

It’s always hotter when you leave things to the imagination. Enter Literotica, one of the biggest sources of erotic fiction on the Internet. Anyone can post their stories up there, and it ranges from long-form pieces and poems to even illustrations. To help you sift through the massive content library, you can sort them according to categories (like Romance, Exhibitionist, Sci-fi and Fantasy) and ratings, given by the very users of the site. 

4 Camera, lights, action

www.xconfessions.com

In this case of art imitating life, one filmmaker is taking in anonymous descriptions of sexual encounters and turning them into tastefully-shot short films. Erika Lust, the woman behind this project, has directed three award-winning erotic films and published several books on sex, so at some point, you may feel as if you were at an indie film festival instead of just sitting there in your bedroom.

5 Smart and sexy

www.hystericalliterature.com

This video project, aptly called Hysterical Literature, is fascinating. Photographer-filmmaker- writer Clayton Cubitt gets his subjects to sit at a table and read a book of her choice out loud, while an assistant stimulates her with a vibrator. The recording ends after she’s had an orgasm. “The series examines the battle between the mind and the body. It also explores the cultural contrast between art and sex, particularly how people react to the mixture of the two, and the battle over female sexuality and society’s concepts of shame,” Clayton wrote on his website. The videos are shot in black and white, using a single angle and you can only see the subject from waist up. Very different.

6 Come as you are

www.beautifulagony.com

Not unlike Hysterical Literature, you won’t get to see any nudity or naughty bits here. Instead, the focus is on faces – faces of people as they’re experiencing an orgasm. It was initially an experiment by some curious minds to test whether people are more turned on by faces or outright nudity and, well, we think we know the answer to that one. You have to pay to view the full library, and it’s all contributed by real people who get paid for their submissions. It’s beautiful and oddly intimate.

7 Can you hear that?

www.audibleporn.tumblr.com

Here’s one for the audiophiles. This Tumblr site curates a list of user-submitted audio clips of people doing the deed for your aural (hehe) pleasure. Titles include “Great car sex”, “Cute boy moans”, and “Sex on a squeaky bed”, which will send your imagination running wild.

8 Making love

www.makelovenotporn.tv

Pornography is a performance, and sex IRL seldom plays out like how it’s depicted on screen. Make Love Not Porn started out when its founder, Oxford graduate Cindy Gallop, recognised that people were mirroring what they saw in porn, which does not translate well in the bedroom. With this, she aims to “re-educate” young men and women on how real-world sex looks like. The website curates user-submitted videos that depict “real sex” with “real people”, and they reject any submissions that are unrealistic or filled with porn clichés.

9 Send nudes

www.ishotmyself.com

www.reddit.com/r/gonewild

Some people like showing off their body, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as everyone involved gives their consent – including the audience. There are a few sites dedicated to nude portraiture, and website I Shot Myself and Reddit’s Gone Wild subreddit are popular examples of self-expression via nudity. Those running these sites are huge advocates of consent – which means nasty comments are weeded out and they try their best to make sure that “revenge porn” doesn’t get shared. 

Images 123RF.com Text Sophie Hong.

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