How It Started: Lesbian Adult Industry
Lesbian erotica dates all the way back to the Classical World – from the depiction of a woman manually stimulating another woman on a sixth-century BC vase from Ancient Greece to the erotic frescoes of Pompeii – but this work was largely produced by male artists.
In the 80s, lesbian porn production companies soon formed, like SIR (Sex, Indulgence and Rock N’ Roll) Productions, which was described as “100 percent dyke produced” and created by butch-femme couple Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano in the 1990s.
Performers regularly used sex toys like dildos, too.
As Ziv notes, this pornography had an educational purpose, both in showing how women could actually enjoy sex – rather than being submissive and passive objects of male desire – and in promoting safe sex.
Since the start of the millennium, lesbian porn has grown in popularity.