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I watch porn for a living. More specifically, I manage a proprietary database owned by a porn company, making schedules for cable porn. My job is to watch movies and decide whether we're going to buy them, then write titles and synopses, and put everything into a schedule with plenty of variety. There are surprisingly strict rules for all those things.
When I make purchasing decisions, I look at whether the girls in the movie seem to be having fun. It doesn't have to be professional quality, as long as the girls look like they're really enjoying themselves. We're open to a range of body types, but the girls do have to have pretty faces.
When I make the schedule, I have to make sure there's a good mix of themes. Some of our themes are MILF, teen (which really features actresses who are 18 or just over), interracial, fetish, squirting, and male ejaculation. The most popular are probably interracial, and anything ejaculation-themed. Oh, and big cocks are always in.
The rules for titles are really involved — there are a lot of words you can't say on TV. We have a whole folder at work containing all the rules. You can't say cock, so I'll say something like "big weiners" or "12-inchers." You can't say pussy, so I'll say "pink." I have to really have my finger on the pulse of what the current sex slang is. Lately I've been using "handy-j" a lot, for hand-job. Basically the goal is to have the title be as explicit as possible without breaking any rules. I prefer titles that clearly explain what happens in the film — like, say, "Horny Girls Having Sex."
The hardest porn to watch is movies that feature girls who are gagging and vomiting. That's personally difficult for me because I just really hate vomiting. Some people do have that fetish, though. Also, while we've never actually gotten anything that was actually incest, we have gotten some incest-themed movies with actors who aren't actually related. Incest is so taboo that those movies are kind of hard to watch too.
My favorite movies are girl-on-girl ones with girls who are really into each other. I like watching queer porn because they're doing things that haven't been done before — movies that feature trans people, or men who prefer a more submissive role, or just movies that feel more natural and less set-up. In general I like watching anything where it seems like the actors are friends and having fun.
I don't always tell people I work with porn. Sometimes I just tell them I work for "a cable company that airs movies." People can get judgmental — I happened to tell a nurse about my job once while she was drawing my blood, and she said her husband was addicted to porn and then tried to get me to come to her church.
I didn't tell my mom for a long time — she's a second-wave feminist and I didn't think she'd approve. She found out eventually, and while she isn't crazy about it, she's happy that I have a job and make money. My salary is actually pretty good.
I initially got into this business because I really like porn, but I've found that my tastes have changed since I started the job. I like harder, more unique porn than I used to. My interest in people just having sex onscreen has definitely waned.
But my job has also been good for my sex life in some ways, mostly mentally. Telling my bosses that I genuinely like porn helped me get this job, and it felt really good that I was able to be open about that and have it actually pay off. Confessing my love of porn made me feel sexually empowered.
As told to Anna North.