Imagine walking into an art gallery with a big fluffy, white mattress smack in the middle of the room. A thick red velvet rope and a scattering of “do not touch” signs surround the mattress. A few fellow art patrons shuffle around, regarding the works on the wall with thoughtful gazes. The wall text for the mattress reads “Sex.” The materials listed are “mattress, bodily fluids, naked bodies,” creation date: “NOW.” You have just entered the most recent sexual fantasy of Madison Young, San Francisco bondage and fetish model and, obviously, an exhibitionist.

Young sits in an old-school green and metal office chair in the office space of her art gallery Femina Potens. Fully clothed in a simple black dress with a soft baby pink cardigan, her cascading red hair glints in the late afternoon sun, her chair squeaks as she leans forward, excitedly describing a recent film shoot in which Young has sex in an art gallery. Her idea was to act out, in a public arena, the intensity and desire of new lovers in the very first week of a relationship.

“I wanted to show that point when you’re starving for each other. When you hardly get out of bed, falling asleep after fucking, only to wake up to fucking once again,” says Young. She goes on to describe her experience when she was being filmed and everyone was watching her, “The energy was amazing. It was the best sex I’ve had in years!”

Although her most recent sex scene was done with a man, Young labels herself queer and has performed in numerous films and photo shoots with all types of people; she has become a hot commodity with her talents as a Japanese-style rope bondage performer, in which another person ties her up and suspends her from a tangle of ropes, knots and pulleys. She self-produces three of her own bondage and pornography websites and is constantly flown all over the world to perform for fetish community events.

“I was frustrated with all the bad porn that’s out there,” says Young, discussing the problems with mainstream porn, elaborating on porn actresses with big blonde hair and big fake breasts—the homogenous “look” of the mainstream industry. Mainstream porn tends to represent a wholly unrealistic look and behavior of females, giving viewers false expectations of how women really act in bed.

“If you’re not finding what you want, you have to create it.” And, create it she did. In an industry that has been traditionally controlled by men and loathed by feminists, Young is spearheading a new trend in the porn industry by self-directing and producing porn.

Take 1: Lesbian Porn Gets a New Direction

Shine Louise Houston began creating porn a few years ago, partly out of frustration with the mainstream porn industry. After working at sex-positive, female-centric adult store Good Vibrations for nearly six years, Houston was constantly being asked for recommendations on what porn to buy. Many of her customers were queer women and men who had difficulty finding something that appealed to their senses.

As a sex-positive, queer woman of color, Houston found herself wondering what kind of porn she would want to watch. It occurred to her she knew exactly what her community was looking for.

Houston, a graduate of SF Art Institute’s cinema department, began making porn depicting the types of sex and types of people she wanted to see. Houston views gender and sexuality today as fluid, and wants to produce something that is “gender-bendy” as she puts it. “I wanted to see my own experiences reflected,” Houston says. “I employ the people who look like the people in my community.”

The result Houston came up with is Pink and White Productions, which has put out two full-length features in two years. The first of film, “The Crash Pad,” whose box promises a “panty dripping good time,” features many real-life lesbian couples, both butch and femme. The video nabbed the “Best Dyke Scene” award at the First Annual Feminist Porn Awards, for it’s hardcore scenes heavy with chemistry and believable depictions of lesbian sex.

It doesn’t take Freud to appreciate Houston’s call to the industry: “I know where the holes are and I try to fill them,” she says.

The Alternative to Alterna-Porn

Sites like SuicideGirls.com have made it possible for women with “alternative” styles to publish self-produced photo sets of themselves in the soft-core porn community. But even on a site that set out to “not conform with what mainstream media is reporting,” is laden with stereotypically and commercially beautiful women with taught bodies and perky breasts—though pierced and tattooed they may be.

Courtney Trouble was initially accepted as a Suicide Girl, but when she submitted her first photoset, she was told her pictures needed to be shot at more flattering angles, a polite way of saying Trouble was showing off a few more pounds than they like to see on their models.

This particular photoset holds a special place in Trouble’s heart. After working as a sex phone operator, constantly fulfilling other people’s fantasies, and playing other people’s characters, Trouble decided she wanted to live out her ultimate fantasy—an ultimate stripping down of all the outside expectations of her. She chose to outlive this fantasy in front of the camera. “I wanted to show off my stomach and my curves,” says the barely five-foot, cherub faced Trouble, confessing over an iced coffee on a sunny San Francisco day. “I wanted to be shown as a short, chubby riot grrrl.”

Trouble was initially distraught over her rejection, but it instantaneously catalyzed the creation of her own queer, alterna-porn website. “NoFauxxx started before I opened my eyes that very next day,” Trouble reminisces.

The pink adorned website NoFauxxx appears similar to SuicideGirls on the onset—it too features “alterna-porn,” girls ranging from goth to punk to hipster, many with bright flashes of Manic Panic in their hair. NoFauxxx has taken the “alterna-porn” label leaps and bounds further by allowing women, men and “gender-queer people” of all styles, sizes, shapes, and colors to appear on the site.

Trouble’s site is a place for anyone who identifies as generally queer, a term Trouble says, “Defines this 2007 outlook on sex and gender. It’s basically anything that isn’t straight.” She accepts photos on two criteria—that the shots look professional, and that the images are appeal sexually to at least one person out there.

The models label themselves using numerous sexual epithets ranging from a man identifying as “hard femme genderqueer (with male priviledge)” to a woman identifying as “fag elf boy.”

The lines between gender, identity and expression become heavily blurred on NoFauxxx. One photoset titled “Tom and Huck” depicts two androgynous people, both rosy cheeked and looking freshly graduated from high school, who defile each other with a black-strap on dildo in a vividly lush forest.

For the past five years, Trouble has kept herself plenty busy with the booming business activity of NoFauxxx and maintains her personal profile with six albums of explicit content, including the would-be SuicideGirls set that shows a glowing, coy young woman with a black, shaggy bob and crimson painted lips, showing off her vintage cameras and record collection, whilst stripping off a scant amount of clothing.

“If we can control enough of the sex industry to own it, it can change the world,” Trouble says as she examines the state of porn today. “It’s the one place where we have to try to make a difference.”

Trouble’s friend and occasional pornographic partner-in-crime, Madison Young couldn’t agree more. After airing her frustrations with the “acting” in mainstream porn scenes, she says that she and her peers are making a change in how women are depicted in porn. “Creating an authentic performance on film was a revolutionary thing,” Young says. “Every orgasm that is documented is a fucking revolution.”