Women Who Like Porn
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Women Who Like Porn
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This article is more than 2 years old
‘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
I’m 34 and still a virgin. What’s wrong with me?
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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 do with society.
On Monday, Mike Pence toured the detention camps on the Texas border . The pictures of caged migrants that were released from this visit were horrific. Also horrific is the fact that Kiara Cervantes, a female US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, who appeared in one of those photos has now become an object of lust. The internet has dubbed her #Icebae and Cervantes seems to be reveling in her new-found fame. She’s posting selfies in her CBP uniform and has started a Twitter account to engage with fans. The CBP has said they are fine with her doing this. As, of course, they would be – having an attractive Latina woman as the face of a racist and inhumane organization is the best PR they could hope for.
New Jersey’s supreme court has finally taken action against a judge who didn’t want to try a 16-year-old rape suspect in adult court because he was a nice boy from a good family. “This young man comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school where he was doing extremely well,” Judge James Troiano said in his July 2018 decision. On Wednesday, the court terminated the judge’s temporary assignment. The court also recommended state superior court Judge John Russo Jr be removed. In 2016, Russo told an alleged rape victim that she should have closed her legs if she didn’t want to be assaulted.
A former University of Toronto medical student convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman simply “availed himself of an opportunity,” his lawyer argued in sentencing hearings . His client couldn’t resist raping the woman because he was so stressed from “leading an exemplary life,” apparently.
The California city voted to un-gender its municipal code on Tuesday. Words like “manhole” will be replaced with “maintenance hole” and “manpower” will apparently be replaced with “human effort”. The code will also use “they” and “them instead of gendered pronouns.
Look, I know penguins have nothing to do with the patriarchy but it’s been a rough week and I think we all need some cheering up. So let’s head to New Zealand where two little blue penguins keep breaking into a sushi restaurant . Police dealt with the “waddling vagrants” on Monday morning but the well-dressed criminals returned just a few hours later. Authorities are now keeping an eye on this fishy situation.
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Posted June 1, 2020
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Reviewed by Lybi Ma
When women comment publicly about porn , some say they enjoy watching, but most condemn it as incomprehensible, off-putting, disgusting, misogynous, or worse. It’s surprising that 2019 Google Analytics data show that the audience for PornHub, one of the world’s most popular porn sites (30 billion views annually), is 32 percent female.
Corroborating evidence on female porn viewing comes from a University of Denver study of 1,291 coupled individuals. Among the women, 45 percent said they watched with their partners, 30 percent by themselves.
Sexologists generally agree that porn-watching women fall into four groups:
But the available evidence suggests that these four reasons don't add up to almost one-third of the porn audience. What have sexologists overlooked? Personally, I believe it’s the surprisingly large proportion of women who have BDSM fantasies of sexual submission.
Like boys (and many older men), girls (and many older women) feel uninformed about sex and curious about intercourse positions, oral sex, and kinky play. They know that porn is only a few taps or clicks away on phones or computers.
There’s been scant research on porn viewing to satisfy sexual curiosity, but studies of adolescent girls suggest that once porn has answered their questions, few return to it frequently, if at all. Consequently, it’s highly unlikely that female sexual curiosity accounts for more than one-quarter of the porn audience.
In 1984, porn star Candida Royalle (born Candace Vadala, 1950-2015) tired of its myopically male perspective and founded Femme Productions to produce sex videos aimed at women. Femme videos contain plenty of you know what, but the characters also converse, laugh, and have relationships. The sex is not fixated on the genitals. It includes whole-body massage. And unlike standard porn, there’s as much cunnilingus as fellatio.
Two studies have compared gender reactions to standard porn vs. Femme videos:
I know of no studies that estimate the popularity of feminist porn. But before her death, I was acquainted with Femme founder Royalle, who expressed frustration about the difficulty of getting her videos distributed. Mainstream video distributors wouldn’t touch Femme, saying, “It’s porn.” But porn distributors also passed: “That’s not porn.” Royalle distributed through her website and gained some traction with sex-toy marketers. But it’s hard to believe that feminist sex videos account for more than a tiny fraction of the porn audience—let alone 30 percent.
University of Chicago investigators asked a representative 1,749 U.S. women, age 18 to 59 if, during the previous year, they’d had partner sex four or more times a week. Only a small minority did.
Not surprisingly, that frequency was reported most by young adults (11 percent), with the proportion of highly sexual women declining with age (50 and older, 2 percent). Overall, around 5 percent of women of all adult ages said they had partner sex four or more times a week.
A European study supports these findings. The researchers surveyed 2,599 Croatian women age 18 to 60. Those reporting partner sex several times a week—7 percent.
A Michigan researcher interviewed 44 highly sexual women. That’s not a huge number, but this is the only such study I’m aware of. All the respondents reported intense libidos that compelled them to have lots of sex, both solo and partnered. Their attitudes paralleled those of the horniest men. It’s reasonable to presume that women with intense male-style lust would deal with it the way men do, by frequently self-sexing to porn.
But could 5 percent of women account for 30 percent of the porn audience? Possibly, but I’d be surprised.
Most studies show that women who watch porn usually do so with partners—before sex to pique arousal, and/or during sex to spice up erotic play. The Denver study (above) showed that 45 percent of couples have viewed porn together. Or have they? A Swedish study of 398 heterosexual couples age 22 to 67, shows that only 15 percent said they’d ever watched with a lover.
It’s likely that a good deal of women’s porn watching can be explained by couples viewing it together. But 30 percent of the porn audience? That seems unlikely.
The Surprising Popularity of D/s and BDSM Fantasies
Which brings me to women who have fantasies of sexual submission. Most Americans consider consensual kink—domination and submission (D/s) and bondage , discipline, and sado-masochism (BDSM)—minority sexual pleasures. As far as actual physical play is concerned, that’s true. But kinky fantasies are remarkably common.
During kinky play, men and women may assume either role—dominant (dom, top) or submissive (sub, bottom). But women generally gravitate toward playing the sub—but with safe words, ironically, they’re always in full control.
Whether or not porn explicitly depicts D/s and/or BDSM, a great deal of it contains elements of consensual erotic domination and submission. The men say things like, “Take off your dress … your panties. Now spread your legs….” The women obey, sometimes with big smiles. Or the men say nothing. They simply unzip and the willing women quickly drop to their knees.
Feminist porn also depicts a good deal of D/s and BDSM, usually with women as subs. One Femme video is titled My Surrender , and a good deal of feminist porn features women reveling in men’s playful erotic commands and domination.
Sales of Fifty Shades of Grey prove there’s a huge female audience hungry for D/s entertainment. But after women with sub fantasies read the Fifty Shades trilogy and watch the movies, where can they turn for similar entertainment? A great deal of porn.
I can’t prove that D/s fantasies play a key role in the surprisingly large proportion of the porn audience that’s female. Sex researchers haven’t ventured there. But it’s difficult to believe that the four standard explanations account for a porn audience that’s 30 percent female. Women’s fantasies of erotic submission just might supply the missing link.
Dear readers, what do you think? Do you believe that almost one-third of the porn audience is female? Why do you think women watch? And if you’re among them, why do you?
Facebook image: Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley/Shutterstock
Alter, A. “E.L. James, New Ties to Fame,” New York Times , April 13, 2019.
Blumberg, E. “The Lives and Voices of Highly Sexual Women,” Journal of Sex Research (2003) 40:146.
Bridges, A.J. et al “Romantic Partners Use of Pornography: Its Significance for Women,” Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy (2003) 29:1.
Daneback, K. et al. “Use of Pornography in a Random Sample of Norwegian Heterosexual Couples,” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2009) 38:746.
Kohut, T. et al. “Perceived Effects of Pornography on the Couple Relationship: Initial Findings of Open-Ended, Participant-Informed, Bottom-Up Research,” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2017) 46:585.
Laumann, E.O. et al. The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States . University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 88.
Maddox, A.M. et al. “Viewing Sexually Explicit Materials Alone or Together: Associations with Relationship Quality,” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2011) 40:441.
Stulhofer, A, et al. “Is High Sexual Desire a Risk for Women’s Relationship and Sexual Well-Being?” Journal of Sex Research (2016) 53:882.
Holvoet, L. et al. “Fifty Shades of Belgian Grey: The Prevalence of BDSM-Related Fantasies and Activities in the General Population,” Journal of Sexual Medicine (2017) 14:1152.
Joyal C.C. and J. Carpenter. “The Prevalence of Paraphilic Interests and Behaviors in the General Population: A Provincial Survey,” Journal of Sex Research (2017) 54:161.
Michael Castleman, M.A. , is a San Francisco-based journalist. He has written about sexuality for 36 years.
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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.
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