Erika Lust's Blog

I’ve said many times that one of the most crucial roles on my movie sets is that of the intimacy coordinator.

Coordinating sex scenes is no easy task — that is, if you want to get the shots you need and also offer the hard-working performers the most professional environment possible. The intimacy coordinator starts working during pre-production, long before the actual shoot day, and they continue providing their services well after I call “Cut!”

At ERIKALUST, we developed our communication protocols in close collaboration with performers and intimacy coordinators, drawing on their experience of what makes a set feel safe, transparent, and respectful. These protocols guide conversations about boundaries, desires, safety needs, medical considerations, sexual preferences, and emotional triggers before filming begins.

Then, during the shoot, my intimacy coordinator and I watch the scene unveil together, ensuring that everything previously agreed upon is being honored.

Pre-shoot sex talk with performers Emma C, Martin Grey and Venus Grey and Anarella. Photo: Jahel Guerra An excellent outfit choice by Anarella Martinez, our intimacy coordinator and a key member of the crew, during one of our shoots earlier this year.

I feel so strongly about these crucial members of the creative team, that I’ve long advocated for them to have their own high-profile awards when they oversee mainstream productions.

As I wrote in an open letter a few years ago, if there are BAFTAs and Oscars for costume design, interior decoration and hair and make-up, the mainstream industry could extend that consideration by recognizing the critical role of Intimacy Coordinators with its own award category.

“Porn is a dirty word for many,” I wrote then, “but as a female director in a still predominantly male-dominated porn industry, just like Hollywood, I bet Hollywood could learn from the ethical standards and expectations we place on set to protect cast members from exploitation, misogyny, and degrading behavior.”

And now, my advocacy for the crucial role of intimacy coordinators has borne surprising fruits. I wanted to share with my Substack readers my excitement about a new cinematic audio drama that the Arc podcast feed on BBC Sounds will air in the U.K. starting July 22.

Why am I telling you about this? Well, “Intimacy” is based on an original idea by none other than… me!

“Intimacy” features a remarkable cast of British actors headed by Lena Headey (whom I’m sure you remember as problematic Game of Thrones matriarch Cersei Lannister), who also wrote and directed the show. The cast also includes Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Maisie Williams (also from Game of Thrones), Alison Steadman (Gavin & Stacey, Pride and Prejudice), Thaddea Graham (Bad Sisters), Matthew Broome (The Buccaneers) and Tom Goodman-Hill (Baby Reindeer).

Image credits: BBC

The show — an eight-part comedy drama which will also be rebroadcast on the BBC’s prestige signal Radio 4 starting 27 July — follows intimacy coordinator Liza Simmons (Headey) on a Greek island movie set, as she navigates her professional role as what the show calls “a warrior for consent” and much more complicated personal dynamics, some of them involving her co-workers.

I am truly impressed by how production company Merman and Headey as star and showrunner took my original idea and turned it into a nuanced exploration of the uneasy balance for professional women between career and life, and how that becomes even more complicated — and dramatically rich territory — when sex is part of the equation.

I cannot think of a better place than the Arc podcast feed — BBC Sound’s home for premium cinematic audio drama — as a home for a project that began with my desire to foreground the hard-working intimacy coordinators. As someone who usually develops films from my own ideas from start to finish, I’m genuinely curious how other artists interpret and build on them.

Have you ever thought about what happens behind the scenes when sex is part of a production? I’d love to know whether the world of intimacy coordination is new to you — or whether you’ve encountered it, on screen or off.

Last month, in collaboration with The Queer Agenda, we brought A Night of Lust into Nassaukerk in Amsterdam. The event, billed as “a night dedicated to worshipping queer eroticism, on and beyond the screen” still feels slightly unreal to me.

Within the unlikely confines of a 100-year-old church, there was queer porn on the screen, a beautiful shibari performance by Antartica and Mary Hoochie, and the kind of joy and laughter that only happens when people feel a little nervous and a little turned on.

As in other ERIKALUST special events, everyone was aware that we were sharing a room with others. I keep thinking about the room itself. The fact that we were all there, watching together, reacting together, and letting erotic cinema take up space somewhere physical and old and full of history, was electrifying.

Most of the time, our films travel through private little portals — laptops, headphones, the lowered brightness of a screen afterhours — into bedrooms, for late-night rituals, alone or partnered, maybe under cover of darkness. But there is something very different about seeing them with other people around you — people you hear, you see, and you feel what they feel in the same room. You remember that cinema has a body, and that erotic cinema, especially, needs bodies around it.

This feels even more important to me now, when so much of our work depends on digital spaces that can disappear, censor, punish, or misunderstand us without much explanation.

I wrote more about this in my recent post about leaving Meta, but the Amsterdam event made the feeling much less abstract. If platforms keep making less and less room for sex-positive, queer, feminist, performer-led work, then we have to keep making rooms of our own. Us finding each other in this third space to watch pleasure unraveling on screen is building that community that no one can take away from us, not even the Meta overlords.

I’m not invoking “community” here just as a brand buzzword: I mean actual people sitting together, asking questions, laughing after a screening, telling us what moved them, what surprised them, and what they want to see more of.

The June 11th edition of A Night of Lust was such a gathering: a beautiful, surprising night in a church in Amsterdam. But it also reminded me why these physical spaces matter so much. We need third spaces, analog spaces, strange and generous spaces where erotic culture can breathe without being flattened into a category or hidden by a platform.

These moments remind me that my work exists because people still need cinema that gives pleasure another frame and makes sex feel curious, funny, beautiful, awkward, tender, and, yes, political.

All pictures by Leroy Leijtens

My ERIKALUST site recently premiered my latest film, “Lessons From a Dominatrix.” Like all the titles in my XConfessions series, the film was based on a fantasy (or personal experience) submitted by one of our subscribers. It has been important for me to include the ERIKALUST community into the creative process, creating the kind of conversation about erotic desire that has become an important throughline for my two-decade-long career. That spirit is there in all my projects, including this from-me-to-you Substack.

In this “Lessons From a Dominatrix,” I wanted to explore that quiet moment when control begins to loosen. And also, how a couple can work together to learn more about how to incorporate power play in their sexual dynamics.

In my conversations at events and also during my research, I’ve found that BDSM is often misunderstood as something extreme or predefined. But at its core, I believe it is really about play and the capacity of communication with your partner, and about listening closely. “Lessons From a Dominatrix” is a deep exploration of this feeling.

The script was based on “Let Me Let Go,” a sexual fantasy by subscriber YourVenus. They write:

“Sometimes I get tired of deciding.

What to do, what to say, who to be.

Even the small things—what to eat, what to wear, when to speak—feel like a maze I can’t find my way through.

I spend my days analyzing everything, trying to make the right choice. It’s exhausting.

There’s a voice in my head that never shuts up—Did I do the right thing? Did I upset someone? Should I have said that differently?

I crave silence.

Not outside—inside.

That’s why I want you to take control.

Not because I want to be small or powerless,

but because I want to feel safe enough to stop thinking.”

I think many women in relationships can identify with these feelings: the way we are in charge of the emotional labor but sometimes just want our partner to take over and lead, but how we need to feel safe with our person for that to happen.

In my upcoming book “LUST: Pleasure, Performance, Power” (coming out in October, but please preorder it here), I also reflected on my ever-increasing fascination with BDSM and its larger implications, both socially and for women’s sexualities.

A crucial moment in my career as a filmmaker regarding this world was “Safe Word,” a four-­ episode series I made in 2019 about a successful, commanding woman who discovers liberation in surrendering control. In “Safe Word,” Christie (Mona Wales) goes through a private awakening under the tutelage of a dom (the absolutely iconic Nina Hartley), which ultimately leads to public catharsis.

“Safe Word” probed a long-time preoccupation of mine, how power is casually thought of mainly in one way: as control or influence over others, be it through money and force, and privileging a masculine logic of dominance. Something you hold over someone else. Something that serves the self.

But control is only one form of power. And there is also an enormous power in letting go.

Over the years, looking through the XConfessions, I found again and again that many women feel that giving up control can be empowering, liberating, and, yes, deeply consensual.

Or, as YourVenus wrote, a deep-seated desire to “stop managing every detail, every emotion, every outcome.

“I want to surrender, not to disappear, but to breathe again.

I want to be told what to do—not because I’m weak, but because I trust you.

I want your hands to ground me, your voice to guide me.

I want to feel my body instead of my mind.

When you tell me to kneel, or to stay still, or to look at you—

something in me quiets.

The world narrows, and for once, it’s simple.

You lead. I follow. I don’t have to think.”

In “Lessons From a Dominatrix,” a couple (Venus Rey — the perfect actress to portray a confession written by our subscriber YourVenus ;) — and Martin Grey) steps into the unknown with the help of a therapist (Emma C) who understands that desire may not always be about doing more, but about feeling differently. And all of this in French! Which adds a kind of intense intellectual sexual curiosity to the film.

(Sidenote: Directing in French was a bit of a challenge but I still have some notion, as I spent a year in France when I was in high school. And I had my francophone co-worker Arthur there as a script supervisor on our shooting day.)

And this is a topic I will continue exploring, both personally and artistically. I am currently preparing a very exciting project with the always inspiring Eva Oh. Eva (aka Mistress Eva) is a dominatrix, podcaster, performer, and advocate with extensive experience leading conversations about sexuality, BDSM, and sex work to a smart, worldwide audience. Eva’s work caught my attention years ago, when I fell under her spell.

What we are envisioning this year will be another two chapters of our ongoing collaboration “Madame Oh’s Manor,” which last year produced one of my favorite films, “Madame Oh’s Shoeroom,” a feminist exploration of fetish that easily stands out within its genre. That film continues subverting expectations — particularly of female audiences — of what can be achieved when two likeminded artists combine their powers and turn their probing curiosity in the direction of power itself.

Allow me then to wrap this up with the last delicious morsel of YourVenus’ XConfession that inspired “Lessons From a Dominatrix”:

“It’s not about control. It’s about release.

It’s about trust so deep that I can finally let go of the weight I carry every day.

Let me give that to you.

Let me let go.”

p.s.: If this post made you intrigued about the possibilities of having your own fantasy or experience turned into an ERIKALUST film, we would love to hear from you. You can find more information here.

On May 20th, as I was getting ready to celebrate the official announcement of the U.S. edition of my upcoming book “LUST: Pleasure, Performance, Power” (which you can preorder here), Meta decided to commemorate the event by disabling the Instagram accounts for @erikalust, @erikalustfilms, and @iamerikalust.

Click on any of those handles, and you will be told — with typical tech overlord opacity — “Sorry, this page isn't available — The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed.”

This is hardly the first time I’ve dealt with this. Even though for some members of the press I may be “the presentable one” among the pornographers, the all-powerful and arbitrary forces of online censorship don’t distinguish between sexual representation that is ethical or feminist, and all the other kinds of things it objects to.

From the blanket interdiction of “female nipples” — which results in the absurdity of the same person having their nipples suddenly become acceptable with IG if they transition from female to male and get a mastectomy — to never-properly-explained sweeping claims of “sexual solicitation,” Instagram’s commitment to censorship has been something I have written about for years.

In 2019, for example, I published an op-ed with USA Today about that very topic, and also wrote an article about it on my own Lust Zine. The title? “The War on Sex & Social Media Censorship: How Instagram Censorship Could Affect the Lives of Women.”

As I noted at the time, “countless profiles of predominantly female and queer artists, educators and sex workers as well as companies working around sex and sexuality have been targeted by Social Media’s crackdown on sexual content.”
Like it had done to many others, I explained at the time, Instagram had at times “deleted my account in the past, took down my posts and stories and I have been and continue to be shadow banned on the platform,” which made “the account in question less visible and harder to find for potential new followers.”

Seven years later, we have made no progress. Instagram and parent company Meta chose to hurt my visibility at a time when I was eager to tell you about my new book, which is all about my journey in the world of sexual expression. It’s almost too on the nose, and I may even smirk about it, if it wasn’t so damaging to my free speech and yet another contribution by the tech giants towards the erosion of public discourse around sex.

How bad is it? Bad enough that the Pope himself recently issued a major warning about the unchecked power of these Masters of the Tech Universe playing at being little gods.

In his new encyclical letter Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo has the exact same diagnosis as your favorite feminist pornographer. It is not that often that the head of the Catholic Church and a porn director share the same thoughts, but the hubris of the technorati has brought about this modern-day miracle!

Here’s my new comrade Pope Leo on this Brave New World of artificial (i.e., inhuman) intelligence: “The content that circulates within digital environments shapes how people perceive the world and introduces into the collective consciousness images and narratives that direct our desires and influence our daily choices. This is ‘not a parallel or purely virtual world,’ since what originates online now becomes a part of people’s lives, especially of the youngest.

“For this reason, those who control digital platforms and means of communication have a considerable ability to affect the collective imagination and to present a particular vision of reality as desirable. Such power should be constantly guided by the pursuit of truth and respect for human dignity, so that the culture fostered on the internet does not become an instrument of excessive distraction, homogenization or dominance, but rather a setting in which inner freedom and critical thought can mature.”

And this was me in 2019 in my opinion piece for USA Today:

“A paternalistic framework, like the one seemingly employed by Instagram, which is based on a gendered notion of indecency will inevitably disempower people who are already marginalized — as well as disproportionately affect women. A possible gendered censorship from a platform as large as Instagram reflects a societal fear of the female body and promotes the power dynamics that keep the female body sexualized and commodified by men, rather than understood or celebrated by women.”

“Social media is a parallel world but changes that happen online can cause real-life ripple effects. Pages that promote sexual education, women’s bodily autonomy and sexual pleasure are particularly vulnerable to censorship, leaving the many women who use these pages at risk of losing vital resources. These channels are so important for teaching a more inclusive, diverse sex education and covering topics that schools neglect — something that is especially important in the U.S. where abstinence-only sex ed is still prevalent.

“If the internet mimics real life, then real life can also mimic things happening online. If women are censored on Instagram there is no doubt that we could be censored in offline life too. When Instagram pages that promote female pleasure are hidden, young women will come to understand that their pleasure is invalid in real life. When anatomical drawings of vaginas are censored on Instagram, women will learn that their bodies are something to be ashamed of in real life. When female nipples are censored but male nipples are not, we are taught that we must police our bodies to ensure we do not arouse men. When photos of period blood are taken down, a natural bodily process is turned into a source of shame.”

Last week, after exploring our options for recovering our Instagram accounts — and having to maybe wallow in the mud of the shadowy world of people (helpers? extortionists) who claim they can restore accounts — we decided to end this toxic relationship, at least for now.

It's time to reclaim our time and efforts, and so we want out of this toxic relationship we have with Meta, which prevents our entire hard-working team from planning and growing. Fine — they can ban us, but now we don't want to go back to this space anymore. We can choose to reallocate time and resources to create spaces within other networks, and with our own community.

So thank you for being here with me on Substack, and let others know we are still here, even if Meta/Instagram broke our links. Fortunately, we have many other links — and we don’t take our links with all of you for granted.

Two years ago, I stood at the Cambridge Union and argued against the idea that the internet has ruined sex.

The questions behind that debate haven’t gone away. The general historical points about the internet having been a positive force for sexual liberation and expression still stand. Also (unfortunately) my statements about the unfair deplatforming and shadowbanning of legal content involving sex and sexualities (including several of my own accounts) remain a major issue for free speech online.

I thought my readers here would enjoy reading and watching what I told the future political leaders of the U.K. at the Cambridge Union, a group of opinion-shapers that will be crucial in safeguarding — if we as a society agree that this is worth safeguarding — free speech for the 21st century.

Below is the full text of my speech, along with a link to watch the video of my appearance.

Ladies, gentlemen, non-binary folks, esteemed Cambridge students, and respected colleagues, today, we gather to engage in a hot debate in the media and society: the Internet’s profound impact on human sexuality.

I will challenge the motion “This House Believes The Internet Has Ruined Sex.” This is a superficial assumption, and I invite you to embrace a more nuanced perspective.

The motion appears conservative. It reminds me of the Victorian Era when a secret room was created in The British Museum — a room to hide from women and the working class all the artifacts and images considered sexually graphic that the explorers and colonizers brought from all around the world.

I argue that the Internet has not ruined human sexuality; instead, it has catalyzed a shift toward sexual liberation and diversity. In an era where digital connectivity permeates every facet of our lives, the Internet is crucial to fostering sex positivity and celebrating the rich tapestry of human sexual and gender identities.

Let us acknowledge the Internet’s democratizing influence. People now have unprecedented access to information, communities, and resources championing sexual empowerment and inclusivity. Whether through online forums, activist platforms, or digital publications, the Internet has become a conduit for marginalized voices to meet and be heard and for diverse perspectives on sexuality to flourish.

The Internet has confronted rigid constructs of gender and sexuality, helping to foster greater acceptance and understanding. From the increase of LGBTQI+ representation to the destigmatization of non-traditional sexual practices, the Internet has allowed a culture of openness and acceptance previously deemed unattainable.

I was born in 1977, so I grew up in the pre-Internet times. The mainstream cultural discourse was hard to challenge. Gender norms were strict, and sexual choices were narrow.

I have a 17-year-old son who is transgender. Without the Internet, it would have taken much more time and effort for him to validate his feelings and identity. By equipping individuals with references, knowledge, and agency, the Internet has played an instrumental role in promoting healthier attitudes toward our bodies, sex, and relationships.

However, I acknowledge that the Internet is messy and chaotic too.

There are digital spaces where hate speech and harmful ideologies thrive. But the dark side of the web is not only individual haters and bigots. We need to talk about Big Tech.

In her recent book Silicon Values, Jillian York explores the ethical implications of the tech industry’s dominance, focusing on Silicon Valley’s influence on global culture and politics. While publicly selling themselves as champions of connectivity and progress, Silicon Valley giants like Meta, Apple, Google, and X (before known as Twitter) prioritize profit and biased moral standpoints over principles, leading to harmful consequences worldwide.

Let’s take a look at some of those consequences: queer voices, sex educators, erotic artists, and sex workers are being banned or shadowbanned from social media platforms, cornered, silenced, and censored. My accounts have been repeatedly taken down. Meanwhile, models of heteronormative beauty standards, or even the big mainstream pornstars, can show ass and tits and link to their highly profitable OnlyFans accounts.

I affirm that they are allowed to exist and even to promote themselves because their sexual expression obeys the rules of sexism and patriarchy.

Rich, white, CIS, heterosexual men rule BIG TECH. These private companies are making their own rules and pushing their moral agenda.

Finally, I want to turn our attention to the Elephant in The Room, to my industry, Adult Entertainment… PORN. Porn is the reason why we are here tonight discussing if the Internet has ruined sex. I know that many think that online Porn kills our erotic imagination.

It’s time to acknowledge that online porn is not monolithic. There is more out there than mass-produced chauvinistic content. There are many dissident voices producing content that is inclusive and sex-positive. This new wave of creators is challenging traditional narratives and power structures, championing diversity, creating beautiful erotica, and celebrating a myriad of sexual experiences.

Berkeley Professor in Film & Media Linda Williams wrote in her book Hardcore that porn might be one of the only spaces where women are allowed to experience sexual pleasure.

However, the critics tend to focus on porn always being degrading towards women. Another common misconception is that it creates unrealistic body standards, but if we look closer, the diversity in porn is greater than on Netflix or in Vogue Magazine.

I shot my first short film 20 years ago. Like me, many people (primarily women) are reshaping the landscape of adult entertainment, not only artistically or regarding representation on screen but also implementing better working standards.

The answer to bad porn, as Annie Sprinkle said, is not NO PORN, but to make and consume better Porn.

Porn can be an excellent way of finding inspiration, playing out fantasies that maybe you’re not ready to explore in real life yet, or facing your own shame or taboos. Porn can also help you understand other sexualities, identities, or kinks you might be curious about. You can learn how to talk about sex, consent, and boundaries.

The Internet has not ruined sex, it has changed sex. The real challenge is not the medium itself but our relationship with it. Moderation and mindfulness are crucial; we must strive to use Internet to enrich our sex lives, rather than letting it dominate us. By cultivating media literacy, self-awareness and managing our anxieties and obsessions, we can enjoy Sex on Internet instead of fearing it.

Thank you.

Working on my upcoming book “LUST: Pleasure, Performance, Power” I got to reflect on my craft. As an adult filmmaker, I get to experience the creative processes of other filmmakers — in all their glorious unpredictability — but also have an unusual front-row seat to the always fascinating, ever-evolving world of human intimacy.

Trust and preparation make intimacy more possible, not less real. People often imagine intimacy as something wild, immediate, unplanned. But on set I’ve learned the opposite. The more clarity there is — conversations, boundaries, check-ins, practical details — the more room there is to breathe. The more someone feels safe, the less they need to pretend. Also, what looks effortless is very rarely accidental.

The most beautiful moments, once all is said and done, usually come through collaboration. I’ve never believed in the director as dictator. The magic happens when a performer says, “This feels right,” or someone on set solves an impasse by suggesting a change in pace. A scene becomes more honest because nobody is forcing it into a fixed idea. Intimacy needs authorship, but it also needs listening.

What happens off camera always (and I mean, always) enters the frame. Tension shows, but so do tenderness and trust. It’s true that you can feel it in the final product when people have been rushed, as much as you can feel it when their needs have been met properly. The dispassionate camera eye excels at catching what a room feels like.

Directing has made me more protective of my own privacy. This may sound strange, but spending years filming bodies has made me more aware of what it means to reveal something — and what it means not to. I’m still a private person, and maybe that’s part of why I care so much about how intimacy is held.

Age has made me less interested in performance. I don’t mean in cinema — I still really love performance there — but in life, in desire. I now have an inner watchdog monitoring the old reflex to please or impress (thanks for nothing, patriarchy!). What interests me much more now is presence: a body that feels inhabited, a person who is no longer auditioning.

Maybe that is one of intimacy’s quieter truths: it asks less for perfection than for trust, and less for bravado than for the courage to stop performing and stay present.

In 1843, my fellow Scandinavian Søren Kierkegaard wrote in his journal: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

When I was writing my upcoming book LUST: Pleasure, Performance, Power, I had a rare chance to do exactly that — to go back and spend real time with my past selves. The book braids personal history with wider reflection, moving between memoir and essay, between the specific and the general. It was an unusual experience for someone who is usually thinking about what comes next.

Going back meant going back to Sweden. To a country that the world tends to think of as sexually liberated — and in many ways, it was. Sex education was relatively open. There was a cultural permission around these topics that I know many people didn’t have growing up elsewhere. But there’s a difference between being told you’re free and actually feeling that freedom in your body. Those are not the same thing, and for a long time I confused them.

Understanding desire came later, through experience, through questioning what I had internalized — and through filmmaking. Making films became part of how I figured myself out, not just my own desire but desire as something shared, negotiated, constructed with other people. It made me very aware of how power moves in intimate spaces. How quietly it can be shaped by habit, by culture, by what we’ve been taught to expect.

That awareness followed me into every production, and it’s made me suspicious of easy labels.

There’s a tendency to believe that if you call something “ethical,” the question of power is resolved. But it never is. Power doesn’t disappear — it shifts form.

It would be naive to pretend that there are no hierarchies, even in feminist productions. I’m still the director. I still control budgets, editing, distribution. The question isn’t whether power exists but how consciously you work with it, how transparent you’re willing to be about it, and how much genuine space you create for the people you work with to shape the work alongside you.

Where I feel the most resistance isn’t actually on set. It’s outside. The industry is still structured around a very narrow idea of what desire looks like, and those expectations seep in through platforms, algorithms, financing, audiences. You don’t build something different in a vacuum. You build it inside a system that has its own logic, its own gravity, and that system pushes back.

Writing LUST helped me see myself in sharper focus. I didn’t expect the process to be as revealing as it was, but I guess writing your own history has a way of surprising you. One of the insights I came away with, above all, is a clearer sense that power is an ongoing negotiation — with collaborators, with audiences, with yourself. Going backwards helped me understand something I’m still living forwards.

I’d love to know where you feel that negotiation most — in your own life, in the work you do, in the relationships you’re in. The question of power and desire isn’t only mine to answer.

Hello Substack, I’m Erika Lust and I’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately.

I don’t mean this in the abstract. Writing has always been very personal to me. It was an integral part of my expression, before the films (that came much later, and is a fun story you’ll be learning more about very soon), or even before I had the language (or even knew some of the languages I’m now writing in…).

As a girl, I was always reading and writing. Stories, poems, my diary, theatre monologues, articles for the school magazine. I even won a few small awards here and there, which at the time felt huge.

And then, cinema took over.

And I love cinema—it has been my main language for more than twenty years. There are things film can do for me that no other media can, like holding chemistry, tension, glances. I’m fascinated with how desire moves without a single word being spoken.

But lately I’ve felt very clearly that there are things I want to say that images can’t carry on their own. Or that are just too expensive to film.

And that’s why I’m here.

I wanted to have a space to think out loud, to write about what I see, what I react to, and to figure some of it out. A place that would let me stay a little longer with things that, in interviews or panels, are reduced to a sentence or a position.

My new book LUST: Pleasure, Performance, Power (coming soon!) is also part of that process. It’s a very personal journey—from being a shy Swedish “good girl” to building a career in an industry that most people prefer to talk about from a distance, often with judgment or sometimes even contempt.

But the book is not a conclusion. It is more of a starting point of all the questions that I keep returning to. One of those questions is shame.

We often talk about shame as something private, something individual. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s something we learn, something that is passed down, something that shapes us before we even have the words to understand it.

I remember one of my earliest encounters with it. I must have been around nine. I wrote down a sexual word I barely understood—kuk, a word for “cock” in Swedish—trying to be bold in front of other children. When the adults found it, the atmosphere changed completely. No one met my curiosity with calm. It was clear to me that I had crossed a boundary, but no one explained why.

That feeling stays in the body.

And I think many women know exactly what I mean, even if they would describe it differently. It shows up in small ways: in silence, in embarrassment, in the sense that wanting too much—or too openly—might cost you something.

Even today, after everything has supposedly become more “open,” I don’t think we speak honestly about desire. We are surrounded by sexual imagery, but at the same time, so many people still don’t have the language to talk about what they feel.

We are very good at showing sex.

We are not very good at saying what we desire.

And that contradiction is something I live inside of, both as a filmmaker and as a woman.

Because desire, to me, has never been only about sex. It’s tangled up with imagination, with permission and self-knowledge, bundled with the question of who gets to be a subject in their own story rather than an object in someone else’s. It’s about whether we can allow ourselves to be complex without immediately trying to clean it up.

In my work, I’ve seen how much people carry inside them that doesn’t fit the roles they’ve been given. I’ve seen women begin to speak almost apologetically. But when something shifts—when there is permission, when we start unlearning what we’ve been taught—we stop asking for that permission.

I’ve seen these moments happen. They are small, but they are not small.

Because behind them there is always something else: a long history of being told how to be, how to want, how to stay acceptable. That “good girl” voice that so many of us know. The one that edits before we even speak.

I don’t think that disappears just because we live in a more visually explicit culture. If anything, sometimes it makes the tension stronger.

That’s also why I’ve never been interested in simple conversations about porn. Porn is not one thing. It reflects the culture that produces it, with all its contradictions. It can reinforce stereotypes, but it can also challenge them. It can be empty, and it can be meaningful.

What matters to me is whether we are able to talk about it, and about desire more broadly, with honesty and complexity.

And that kind of conversation feels harder and harder to have. Everything speeds up, hardens into certainty, turns moralistic. But desire is not clean. It doesn’t fit easily into categories of right and wrong. And when we try to force it into those shapes, we often end up losing something essential.

So maybe I want to claim this space as a way of resisting that.

A place where I can write more freely. A space to connect what I’m making with what I’m reading, watching or thinking. A virtual room of my own (with you as my guests, of course!), where I can go deeper into certain films and certain questions.

And also a place where you can be part of it. Because I don’t want this to be a monologue. I’m genuinely curious about how these things land for you—what you agree with, what you don’t, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve never had the chance to say out loud. What perspectives I might be missing.

Don’t come here looking for perfection. This is a space that embraces contradiction and curiosity. And welcomes dialogue (comments below!).

I come here as a filmmaker, as a writer, and also, more importantly, as a person who is still trying to understand myself and our world.

Think of this post as a beginning, an opening.

And maybe, a place where we can talk about desire without letting shame have the final word—even if we are all still shaped by it.

Last week the New York Times magazine published an article called "Teaching Good Sex", about a coprehensive sex-ed class at a Quaker school in the United States that premises itself on an open discourse about sex and an embrace of sexuality. Al Vernacchio, Laurie Abraham writes, thinks that "if kids are starting to use their bodies sexually, they should know about their potentialities."

Right now most sex-ed in America follows two lines of reasoning: that sex is an awful thing that shouldn't be done, or that sex is an awful thing with which, as a last resort, a condom should be used. Varnacchio, alongside a smaller group of educators, believes that a comprehensive sex education for teenagers functions as a "force for good," and that it should be approached realistically as heavily braided with risk, responsibility, and pleasure. He urges his students to "know their own minds, be clear about what they do and don't want and use their self-knowledge to make choices." He allows students to ask whatever questions they have and answers them frankly and from several perspectives.

One little note, Laurie Abraham also wrote a little follow up to her article that was posted on the New York Times' 6th Floor Blog: "What Sweden Knows About Orgasms." She writes this little anecdote about the experience of a sex-ed class in Sweden:

Q (Student). "What is an orgasm, and why do people talk about it so much?"

A (Teacher). "Orgasm is the moment of highest pleasure during sex, and that's why people talk about it so much."

Abraham's point here was that American sex-ed neglects to talk about pleasure and desire in sex, thus alienating students, who are at the same time plugged into a media-driven world where graphic sexual imagery is rampant. She, and other writers agree, that if an open conversation about sex does not start in the classroom, it might begin in the places that do not foster nonjudgemental instruction on bodies, birth control, disease prevention, healthy sexual attitudes and relationships, and responsible choices.

Abraham brings up a topic about porn that several of her responses dilineated on: that if teenagers don't get their sex education from educators, they will get it from porn, which will instill at a very early age unhealthy sex roles and stereotypes. While this is not obviously true of all porn, yes, we agree that if teenagers are only exposed to mainstream porn and not aware of how to have an open conversation about sex, it becomes much more difficult to have healthy sexual relationships. Amanda Hess talks about this very beautifully in her article, "An American Oddity: Sex Ed That Actually Talks About Sex."

She writes:

"If we miss out on the basics at a young age, when do we evolve into full sexual adults, people who know what we want and how to get it? Proponents of "disaster prevention" sex ed seem to think that if we teach kids about sex at a young age, they'll mature too quickly. I was educated on that assumption, and I'm still waiting to really grow up."

This article appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine and was followed by many other articles responding to it. That's great! We're happy that the American media is beginning to accept sex positivity as a part of the mainstream conversation about sex. We also hope that this will draw more attention towards people like us who are working to create alternatives to the way that we experience sex.

Another interesting article following up this debate in Slate.

We have just released my last movie CABARET DESIRE in our online theater Lustcinema.com





I hope you enjoy the movie as much as I've enjoyed doing it!