The Women Who Make Money Telling Men to Jerk Off

JOI stands for "jerk off instructions." A typical JOI video involves exactly that: a female talking into a POV camera giving detailed and thorough instructions to the male viewer on how he should masturbate.

Some introduce role-play—a step-mother punishing her "dirty little menace" of a stepson, for example—while others gamify wanking, saying "green light" for go and "red light" for stop. Most of the content available for free online is low budget, shot in someone's front room with a camcorder and a sofa. As a result, JOI porn is found in abundance on porn tube sites, with many listing it as a category alongside mainstream themes such as "anal" and "homemade."

For such a niche interest, JOI has a huge fan internet base. The /r/JOI community on Reddit has 28,000 plus subscribers brimming with thirsty guys seeking specific videos from "JOIs where she tells you to tie up your balls/shaft?" to "JOI with a cactus and/or cheese graters?". There's even a Bible of sorts: a Google Docs spreadsheet of the JOI videos available online.

Delve deep into this Reddit community, its sister subreddits, and Tumblr accounts, and various themes repeat themselves—from sissification (the practice of rendering a man "girly" by making him wear panties etc.) to strap-on domination—but there is one common theme found throughout: humiliation.

Indeed, the two most popular sub-genres of JOI are frequently referred to only by their acronyms: SPH ("small penis humiliation") and CEI ("cum eating instructions").

Redditor jamekey1 is a regular poster on /r/JOI. He told Broadly that if he's feeling vanilla, a regular JOI with a countdown to orgasm at the end does the trick, but his main go to is CEI, sometimes even including a "self facial."

"I guess you could say it's linked to sissification. The dirty talking, being called a slut, that I want to take a big load, etc. are all extremely arousing," he says. "However, there is one problem with CEI that EVERY man who has tried it will agree on. The moment you come, you lose ANY desire to eat that cum. That is why I generally do CEI on webcam with a cam model. Having that real person there helps force me to go through with it, because I don't want to disappoint them."

This is a key facet of the JOI fetish: interaction. It's not what you're doing that matters, it's that you're being told to do it.

Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals, sociologist and author of Exposure: A Sociologist Explores Sex, Society, and Adult Entertainment says that "the power dynamic that comes from one person having control and the other being obedient can be found in many other fetish spaces." What's unique here is "the idea of instruction" and how that "shifts the culpability in taboo."

"Cum eating may not be 'ok' in of itself, but being instructed to do it taps into fantasies related to having no control while also giving tacit permission for desires that may be construed as 'more deviant' in vanilla, or even fetish-minded, communities," she says.

So if jamekey1 wants to be humiliated whilst he's being dominated, why doesn't he just pay a visit to a professional dominatrix?

But JOI doesn't really work like that. It's a fetish fuelled by remote interaction and facilitated by Internet connectivity. It's about having a shared and curated experience—and one that's online.

As with all instructions, it's the mouth they come from that really matters. As jamekey1 says, what JOI fetishists really want is a particular and personal experience, someone who can "get into your head, who knows how to ebb and flow the interaction, use different techniques and visual cues"—and for that they have to pay femdoms or webcam models for sessions, either in real time cam-to-cam or via custom created videos.

Miss Kelle Martina is a pro-switch. She began JOI videos as an alternative means of income aside from in-person sessions and online webcamming. She says that it's easy to be "vaguely mean" and that's why that kind of content saturates the Internet. She prefers to call JOI "fantasy creation with a camera," describing it as a "personal dialogue" with her clients. A private, custom-made clip by Miss Kelle costs around $60.

Does she ever feel bad when she's hit peak humiliation? "No, never. As a switch, I understand," she says. "It would be crueler to not do it."

Mistress T, who has been performing JOI for seven years, is one of the genre's leading producers and online stars. She says shooting JOI videos is one of her favourite things to do in front of the camera. "It's meant to feel more intimate and interactive than traditional porn where people have sex without looking at the camera," she says. "It's especially effective for men who feel lonely. It gives the illusion of human connection."

Beyond the sexual thrill of giving up control, jamekey1 says the appeal of JOI is "the intimacy" offered by its personal performers. But does he feel like the sense of connection he enjoys is legit?

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"That is impossible to answer as a blanket statement. Absolutely I have had sessions with girls who only care about the money. I have also had sessions with girls who seem to genuinely care. More often than not, they seem to be girls who are very open with their sexuality and have found a line of work they enjoy, so yes I do think they care emotionally," he says.

Mistress T certainly seems to. This month she's launched a free video series on her blog called T-Time Sex Ed—"designed to help guys improve their sex lives". Topics so far include "online conduct and dick pics" (as in, don't send them unsolicited) and "pussy licking tips."

In our email exchange, she even worries about her fans enjoying too much JOI. "I don't think this of porn is without potential harm. I worry that if young men start out exclusively masturbating to it and don't get real life sexual experiences with women in person that they set themselves up for sexual dysfunction, as the experience is so very different from actual sex."

Typical sessions with pro-dommes are limited to a time and space set within a play area such as a dungeon, hotel room, or fetish club. JOI has no such boundaries—devoid of the other usual real world demands like admin, logistics, and required cleanliness, the only thing separating the dom and her client is a working internet connection—and sometimes, that's enough.

yayareaballer is another member of the Reddit forum. He says the appeal of JOI for him isn't the "male sub stuff" such as sissification, SPH, or CEI.

"Those are actually videos I avoid," he says. "I enjoy JOI because it is the closest thing that exists today to truly interactive porn. A lot of the female-produced videos for men revolve around personal attention and feigned intimacy, and new media forms are making these experiences a lot more powerful and convincing. VR [virtual reality], ASMR [autonomous sensory meridian response] and to an extent JOI are all about having a virtual erotic experience with someone that feels more personal and real than watching two actors go at it.

"And in the end, that's all men want. Sex and an emotional connection."