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We all harbor secrets. Some are big and bad; some are small and trivial. Researchers have parsed which truths to tell and which not to.
Posted June 30, 2018
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Reviewed by Matt Huston
When it comes to porn, many of us tend to hold a bit of a gender bias .
That is, when we think performers in porn, we might be more likely to think about women. And when we talk about consumers of porn (whether that be casually or compulsively), we more often think about men.
While research typically supports the idea that men report watching more porn than women, it is still common for women to report watching porn (and the numbers are most likely skewed due to increasingly outdated social standards, which still leave some women feeling uncomfortable disclosing their porn use).
And due to a lack of social discourse and empirical research, we just haven't learned all that much about women's experiences when watching porn. Until now.
In a new study published in The Journal of Sex Research, researchers provided a comprehensive overview of all qualitative research conducted on women's experiences of watching porn between 1999 and 2016. After conducting a thematic analysis of 22 articles (based on 21 studies) spanning nine countries, the authors made a number of observations.
Here are some noteworthy highlights.
Across several studies, the authors concluded that women focused on more than just the physical sexual acts they were watching on screen. Rather, the authors noted that there were numerous examples of women experiencing empathy for the performers.
That is, women commented on the facial expressions and potential feelings of the actors during various sexual activities. For example, they might notice if a performer was experiencing genuine sexual pleasure versus whether a sexual activity looked to be less enjoyable or even unpleasant for the actors.
The women's perceptions of the performers' enjoyment had implications for their own arousal. When women perceived the sexual activity as "unrealistic" or not "genuine," they also reported feeling less pleasure and sexual enjoyment themselves.
Given that porn exposes viewers to naked bodies (which most of us don't tend to see in our day-to-day lives), it is perhaps no surprise that women in the studies reported evaluating the performers bodies and reflecting on how they felt about their own bodies. However, the ways in which women compared their bodies varied considerably.
Some women described feeling less secure about their own bodies after watching porn — feeling their own bodies did not measure up to some of the porn star physiques (i.e., breast size, pubic hair grooming, age). However, in contrast, other women said that seeing porn actors' naked bodies helped them feel more normal about their bodies — seeing some similarities between themselves and the actresses — and some even reported feeling better about their bodies after watching porn.
Across studies, women reported varying comfort levels and preferences for how porn use was incorporated into their relationship.
Some women indicated that porn was arousing to watch with their partners and helped to give inspiration and ideas for different types of sexual activities. However, other women described feeling threatened with their partner's porn use, indicating that they did not like that their partner was experiencing arousal for someone else.
Finally, some women reported that they felt that porn was something their partner had a "right" to watch and were okay with their partner's viewing behaviors, as long as it was done privately.
Finally, the authors noted that a number of women experienced cognitive dissonance when it came to watching porn. That is, a number of women reported holding a certain perspective of porn that did not necessarily align with their behaviors.
With regards to arousal, some women reported that watching porn was sexually arousing, but also thought their enjoyment of porn was socially inappropriate (believing on some level that women should not watch porn). In that sense, some women felt conflicted with what they enjoyed and what they felt was socially acceptable for women to enjoy.
Additionally, some women reported holding negative perceptions about porn or actors who perform in porn (particularly concerns about exploitation), yet still reported using and watching porn for their own sexual stimulation. In this sense, some women experienced difficulty in terms of reconciling how porn felt to watch (i.e., titillating, sexually arousing, etc.) with certain cognitive and moral beliefs about porn (whether it's "ethical" or appropriate).
While it would be easy to make the argument that the majority of mainstream porn continues to target heterosexual men, it is common and natural for women to watch and enjoy porn.
The limited research on women's experiences watching porn, particularity in comparison to the abundance of research on men's experiences, leaves us with more assumptions and guesses about how women feel about porn than empirical research.
However, these findings offer some initial insights into women's experiences and may be a useful step in normalizing women's experiences and promoting a healthier and more open discourse about pornography use among women.
Ashton, S., McDonald, K. & Kirkman, M. (2018). Women's experiences of pornography: A systematic review of research using qualitative methods. The Journal of Sex Research, 55, 3, 334-347. doi: http://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1364337
Sarah Hunter Murray, Ph.D. , is a sex researcher and relationship therapist specializing in how men and women experience sexual desire in long-term relationships.
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We all harbor secrets. Some are big and bad; some are small and trivial. Researchers have parsed which truths to tell and which not to.
Q: Am I the only woman in the world who likes watching porn with her husband? My friends say they think it's disgusting, but I find it keeps me focused during sex instead of thinking about my to-do list.
— Sheila in Illinois
A: Although the man in your life might prefer to believe that the only to-do in your head during sex is him, that's not always the case. Busy women, even when we're getting busy, have active minds. If it took men as long to reach orgasm as it does women (on average 20 minutes), their minds might wander too.
That's why I like your style, Sheila from Illinois. You figured out what you need in the bedroom (a television), and you made it happen. So what if your turn-on has to be turned on? At least you and your husband are enjoying porn together. I think that's very enlightened and cool, and I think your friends, frankly, are not. Who are these women to say what's disgusting? I'll tell you who they are: They are classic pornophobes. I know this because I, Cindy Chupack, used to be slightly pornophobic myself. I thought porn was something a man watched alone in a dark room and then stashed away so his girlfriend wouldn't find it. And then, if she did find—and maybe even watched—it, she would have to decide for herself if she could love a guy who enjoys 12 hours of The Blow Job Adventures of Dr. Fellatio . For example.
Okay, I admit it. Until Sheila challenged my thinking, I'd only watched porn surreptitiously, in the name of research. (You know; meet his parents, meet his pals, meet his porn.) But most women I recently asked admitted to watching porn with a boyfriend or husband. I began to wonder if I should be writing Sheila for advice rather than the other way around. For starters I'd ask: How does a modern, respectable woman get porn?
My friends scoffed when I mentioned going to an adult video store. They recommended On Demand, a pay-per-view service. One benefit of this service is that it vanishes on demand as well, so you never have to worry about what to do with your videos should you die in a horrible accident. While I admired the ease of On Demand, I felt this column required me to purchase actual pornography. I brought this up with another friend and her husband, and she admitted (much to his dismay—he thought it was none of my business) that they, too, enjoy porn together, and when I asked where she gets hers, she whispered, "Blowfish.com."
Blowfish.com turns out to be as user-friendly as Amazon.com. In addition to extensive privacy policies, it features enthusiastic, well-written reviews and a whole section of couples videos. I picked one to watch with my husband that had won so many awards it was like the Schindler's List of porn (best film, best director, best screenplay, best couples sex scene, best group sex scene, and my personal favorite, best non-sex performance, which I imagine is reserved for pool boys who simply clean the pool). I figured it had to be good.
And it was. Not the film but the...experiment, which I did for you people, because I'm that dedicated to getting you answers. My husband and I agreed that the award-winning plot and acting left something to be desired, but despite that, desire is what it eventually inspired. So if, like me, you've been pornophobic in the past, here's a to-do: Try this with someone you love and trust. You might be aghast, aroused, or amused, but at least you'll be those things together. And isn't that what intimacy is all about?
Cindy Chupack is the author of The Between Boyfriends Book (St. Martin's Griffin).
From the October 2007 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine
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This article is more than 2 years old
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‘If men and women’s brains respond the same way to erotic imagery, then why do most statistics find men are far more likely to consume porn?’ Photograph: Frederic Lewis/Getty Images
Sat 20 Jul 2019 13.00 BST Last modified on Wed 19 Feb 2020 17.13 GMT
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We’re told men are biologically wired to be more sexual than women, but this is junk science used to excuse bad behavior
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Shocking neuroscience news this week, as a rousing new study discovers women have sex drives . Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany analyzed brain-imaging findings from a wide body of research and found that the “the neuronal response to visual sexual stimuli … is independent of biological sex”. In other words, women and men get just as horny when they look at erotic imagery. These revelations were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
While the conclusion of this study may seem blindingly obvious to most women, it counters previous research which found men were more likely to respond to visual sexual stimuli. The study hypothesizes that this is because of small sample sizes, and because a lot of previous work on the subject relied heavily on self-reporting rather than biological responses. “Female sexuality has quite a lot of stigma around it,” Hamid Noori, one of the study’s senior authors, told the Guardian . “Maybe the main reason is that for the woman there are secondary inhibitory effects that keep them away from expressing what they really feel.”
If men and women’s brains respond the same way to erotic imagery, then why do most statistics find men are far more likely to consume porn? The social stigma around female desire that Noori notes is one big factor, but another obvious explanation is that porn is largely designed by and for men. As sex tech pioneer Cindy Gallop told me over email “any industry dominated by men at the top inevitably produces output that is objectifying, objectionable and offensive to women”. Gallop runs a user-generated videosharing startup called MakeLoveNotPorn, which she says is enjoyed by women and men equally. “So much so, that with those of our MakeLoveNotPornstars who are straight couples, we’ve found it’s usually the woman who’s decided she wants to socially share their #realworldsex, and persuaded the man.”
But enough about porn. What makes this new study important isn’t really what it says about pornographic consumption, it’s what it says about patriarchal control. We’ve been trained to believe men are biologically wired to be far more sexual than women, and this junk science is used to excuse a lot of bad behavior. Women shouldn’t dress “provocatively”, we’re told, because men are visual creatures who are easily distracted and can’t control their urges; if you wear skimpy clothing, you’re asking for it. Indeed, a survey conducted for the Independent earlier this year found that 55% of men in the UK believe “the more revealing the clothes a woman wears, the more likely it is that she will be harassed or assaulted”. Depressingly, 41% of female respondents also agreed with this view.
There’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to debunking the idea that men’s brains are wired to see women as sex objects, but this study is a good step in the right direction. It’s yet another reminder that the policing of women’s clothing has nothing to do with “biology” and everything to d
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