BRISBANE, Australia - ForTheGirls, an erotica site for women, has launched a fiction competition to celebrate its fourth birthday.
Writers may submit erotic stories written specifically for a female audience, according to the company’s press release, under the themes of self-discovery, exploration, experimentation, and invention.
"In essence we're just after good writing," ForTheGirls’ webmistress, Karen Jones told AVNOnline.com. "There’s actually a lot of dross floating around the Internet masquerading as erotic fiction. It takes finesse to write a good, quality sex story. We want to promote the good stuff — interesting characters, engrossing situations, believable setups — and the sex has to be arousing, of course."
"Discovery" is a deliberately broad theme, Jones added, and this expands the possible themes of submissions. "We could end up with anything — bondage stories, threesomes, lesbianism, you name it," she told AVNOnline.com. "A lot of people think women’s erotica is just romance with slightly larger euphemisms, but it’s actually a very diverse canon. We’re looking for anything that turns us on, although the focus has to be on female pleasure and female experience."
The winner’s story will be published on the website, and he or she will receive $200 and one month’s membership to ForTheGirls. The runner-up will receive $100 and one-month membership plus publication. There are additional consolation prizes.
ForTheGirls has been providing women with erotica for more than four years, and the site has steadily grown, amassing a significant base of members, some of whom have been members from the site’s inception, Jones said.
Although the demographic is growing, female users often remain second tier when it comes to adult-oriented sites, she added. "We regularly receive comments from members who said they felt relieved and grateful to find us," Jones told AVNOnline.com. "So many women want to enjoy sexually explicit material, but the majority is made for men and uses language that can be off-putting. We make a space for them and they appreciate that. They feel like they’re part of something positive — and they like the hot guys, of course."
While the site has no specific plans, Jones said she’d rather focus her content on one particular niche without getting lost in the plethora of adult sites. "At this stage we plan just to concentrate on ForTheGirls," she said. "It’s an unusual thing to do in an industry where affiliate programs offer hundreds of sites, but for us it makes more sense to offer a single, high-quality site that sells well and retains members. From the beginning, we aimed at creating a quality site that offered value for money and we still believe in that idea.
"I’ve been involved in making erotic websites for women since 2000, because I believe that female surfers deserved their own kind of porn," Jones continued. "Feminism and porn have long been at odds, but I think that offering women sexually explicit material that reflects the female experience is a feminist act. Creating ForTheGirls was a natural step along that path, and I’m so proud that it’s become so successful."
ForTheGirls offers photos and movies chosen aimed at female consumers, along with articles, columns, advice, reviews, and more. The site contains a variety of user-submitted erotica and features guest writers.
