A – Z of Porn. ‘A’

Understanding porn without actually having to watch it. A is for amateur and anal.

In this series of posts I’m going through some of the main ‘categories’ in porn so you don’t have to, or if you’re confused about what you’ve already seen. I’ll be providing information, general thoughts, discussion points and generally taking all the fun out of everything. (Remember the legal age to watch porn is 18 in UK).

Amateur

As the name suggests amateur porn is made by amateurs. These are regular people making films of themselves or their friends/other lovers having sex. They aren’t usually doing it to get paid (although some websites do offer cash for amateurs to send them their material) they are doing it because they want to make their own porn films and for the excitement of being a porn star. Real people having real sex in their real messy bedrooms (tidy up people!), with a lamp that could fall over at any minute, with their pets in the background looking confused and slightly scared.

Real lovers, real hot?

Many people don’t like porn where they think that the performers are pretending to enjoy sex more than they actually are – lots of people think this is the case with ‘professional’ or studio made porn. People like watching amateur porn because they are peeking into the sex lives of another couple. If they see enjoyment on their faces they are more likely to believe they are enjoying the sex – for some people knowing or believing this is key to them enjoying what they’re watching.

Sometimes it should read ‘Amateur’

Some ‘amatuer’ porn is made by paid porn performers who pretend to be amateur. Porn companies realised sometime ago that amateur porn is pretty popular because some people like to see something which looks more realistic. So some porn is made using shaky hand-held cameras with the people involved often holding the camera (known in porn as ‘gonzo’) to make it look like it’s not professional but really is. This kind of porn is less likely to have messy bedrooms, bemused looking cats, bad sound, TVs on in the background and the sound of neighbours complaining about all the banging.

Real lovers, real sex?

As I said at the beginning, amateur porn is (for a lot of people) about people making their own porn films and the excitement of them being a porn performer. Because they are making their own porn often they are copying the stuff that they’ve seen in professionally made porn. They often look at the camera rather than just at each other. With straight couples the focus is on the woman with the guy pointing the camera at her. They do similar types of sexual activity as in pro-porn with the scene often ending with penis ejaculation (where scenes have a penis).

So it might be ‘real’ people but they are often making their own porn – which doesn’t mean it’s the kind of sex that they have all the time and nor is it the kind of sex that most people have most of the time. People have lots of different kind of sex which might not be shown in a lot of amateur porn.

Is it all legal and ok to watch?

One thing to think about is whether everyone in the amateur porn agreed to it being put on a website and also whether everyone is of legal age to be involved. Professional porn makers make sure that everyone is over 18 and that they agree to the images and videos of them being sold on DVDs or put on the internet. As we know with celebrity sex tapes, (like Paris Hilton) sometimes videos can be uploaded without the permission of one of the people involved.

Porn tube sites, particularly the most popular one, have more strict about uploads. So people have to go through quite a lot of steps to get verified, but this isn’t the case for the less popular websites.

Read the Educational Guide to Porn 

Anal

Anal sex is probably more popular in porn than it is in real life, but that’s not to say that it isn’t popular in real life.

People often under-estimate how many straight couples (and lesbian couples) have anal sex, just as people often over-estimate how many gay male couples (or men who have sex with men) have anal sex. There are a lot of different statistics about the numbers of people having anal sex (more on that here) but this article suggests that 1/3 of heterosexual couples and 2/3 of gay men have anal sex in UK.

People have been having anal sex (both heterosexual and homosexual couples) long before porn became as popular and widespread as it is today. Some people think that porn might be encouraging more people to try it, or that it might make people more inclined to say that they’ve tried it.

However if porn is making people want to try anal sex, I really hope that people are not trying to do it like they see in porn. Anal sex can be a safe sexual activity but only if it’s done carefully and properly. The vagina gets wet when sexually aroused – the opening to the vagina also relaxes, to allow fingers or a toy or a penis to slide in. This does not happen with the anus.

For anal sex to be comfortable and safe it’s best to use lots and lots of water based lubricant and to slowly slide a finger inside to relax the opening. It’s a slow process which requires a lot of care, a lot of trust, a lot of patience and a LOT of lube. (It’s something that a lot of couples feel they want to build up to after having other kinds of sex).

This is very rarely seen in porn. It happens, but it happens off camera. Remember porn is edited. You don’t see them having a cup of tea or farting or stretching their legs when they get ‘pins and needles’ either. They are using lube and gently stretching the anus: they don’t show this bit. The performer being entered also usually cleans their anus very carefully hours before. However in porn it looks like the penis (or sex toy) slips inside the anus really easily and quickly without preparation at all

It’s one of those situations where porn is a really bad sex educator.

Condoms

Anal sex is risky in terms of getting a sexually transmitted infection: such as HIV. It’s easier for bacteria/viruses from semen to get into the blood stream of the other person. Remember someone can only get an infection from someone who has an infection. Though it’s important to remember that for HIV if someone is getting effective treatment, they can’t pass it on, even if they don’t use condoms. Read more about HIV and AIDS here.

So it’s really important to use condoms for anal sex. Condoms are much more common in gay porn than in straight porn – in fact they used to be always seen in gay porn until relatively recently when ‘bareback’ became popular as a type of scene.

It’s also really important that once a penis or sex toy has been inserted inside someone’s anus that it isn’t put inside a vagina (or even someone’s mouth) unless a condom is put on it.

Read the other A-Z of Porn

© Justin Hancock, 2026 Find out more about me and BISH here. If you’re an educator, head to my website BISH training, to find out about my resources for SRE and training for practitioners.

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