CYBERSPACE—Marking a new twist in the endless saga of porn piracy, Bellesa.co is being called to task for pirating adult content under the guise of feminism and “porn for women.” Interestingly, it was a piece published on Bustle.com that brought the site’s manipulations to light.
Bellesa is an erotic space populated with GIFs, images, stories and porn clips. And though at least one writer claims she was paid for her contribution to the site’s “Erotic Stories” section, the site’s “Featured Videos” curation is largely, if not exclusively, populated with pirated porn.
The site, which launched in early 2017, and its CEO Michelle Shnaidman were profiled earlier this month in a gushing article on Bustle titled “Bellesa, A Free Porn Site For Women, Is Changing How We View Sex.” Just like mainstream coverage of Tumblr sites populated with curated “free” GIF porn almost always fail to ask critical questions related to content copyright and worker compensation, this article serves to further both sex worker exploitation and the trivialization of erotic media.
Consider the story’s opening paragraphs:
“It’s hard enough to find porn that isn’t totally degrading to women. And then, when you finally come across porn for women, it’s usually behind a pesky paywall. There’s a good reason for this: It’s hard to produce porn ethically without charging customers. But Michelle Shnaidman, founder of Bellesa, has found a way to bring women porn they’ll actually enjoy without draining their bank accounts.
“Here’s how it works: Bellesa’s community of female users share videos from all over the web that appeal to them (and don’t make them feel like objects—unless that's what they're after). They also share erotic stories, sexy photos and GIFs, and feminist blog posts. Then, anybody can scroll through and enjoy them.”
Paywalls are “pesky.” It’s hard enough to find porn that isn’t totally degrading to women! A community of lady-users share videos from all over the interwebs ...
The utter naiveté exhibited by the author, as well as (presumably) by her editors, is shocking—even more so considering the sex-positive positioning Bustle touts as a media space.
The remainder of the story reads like a slog of Bellesa PR. It alludes to “extensive [market] research,” uses key phrases and ideas like slut shaming and heteronormativity, and relies on gender-divided ideas of what women and men supposedly want from sex and sex media—rendering viewers effectively blameless for indulgent exploitation via “free” content consumption.
Though community responses did not come until days after the piece’s publication, once aware, the industry’s reaction to Bellesa and Bustle’s coverage thereof was marked with collective disapproval.
Performer Kim Cums was one of the first people to express outrage over the site, stating in a tweet, “It's not free content. It's stolen content. [Bellesa is] no better than PornHub, Imgur, or Reddit.”
Takedown Piracy’s Nate Glass explained Bellesa’s “content curation” process via a statement to Ethical.porn.
“Bellesa.co is essentially a piracy curator,” Glass stated. “This site subsists, if not entirely, off of pirated videos. Those videos have been uploaded to other piracy-based tube sites, and then a person or persons at Bellesa.co curates them into the single biggest piracy site focused entirely on female-centric videos.”
“This site is absolutely no more ethical than The Pirate Bay or any number of piracy sites designed to exploit producers and performers for financial gain,” he added.
The additional dimension of gender politics augmented community outrage, which award-winning performer Casey Calvert called out in a tweet. “Just because you're stealing *for women* doesn't make it ethical. This is repulsive,” Calvert stated.
Jiz Lee, producer at PinkLabel.tv, explained via email, “It's an especially insulting blow when a site that claims feminist empowerment steals specifically from female producers. Tube sites like Bellesa will continue to get away with breaking the law and exploiting sex workers unless we take a stand.”
“The irony here is that piracy is most destructive to independent creators, especially women filmmakers and female performers who produce their own content,” Lee continued. “Without the time and money to go after piracy by issuing DMCA and following up with legal charges if those DMCAs are ignored, independent pornographers—the exact type this site and its audience claim to love—will be less able to create these kinds of films.”
Lee also called out the extra-industry media’s culpability in both perpetuating Bellesa’s—along with other piracy-based tube sites’—fraught nature, as well as exploiting the adult industry community for their own gain.
“Adding insult to injury, media publications eager to gain traffic from a hot commodity like 'feminist porn' seem not have the awareness to question the validity of the content truly being uploaded by users—which in itself would be fine, but that's hardly ever the case!” Lee stated. “Instead, they promote a piracy-fueled site over the hard work of ethical content creators and distributors.”
Requests for comments from both Bellesa and Bustle article author Suzannah Weiss were not answered at the time of publication.
Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals is a sociologist and author. Contact her via Twitter at @drchauntelle.
