When it comes to what women want, the porn industry is a bit… confused. When they’re not trying to peddle us eye-achingly cringey female friendly‘porna’, they've decided that the only porn star we’re interested in is James Deen. The assumption is that, because porn is made by men for men, women find it impossible to find anything online that actually turns them on.
However, they would be wrong, wrong, WRONG. Because recent research suggests that most women don’t actually watch porn, the ones who do like the same kind of things that guys do. Neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, co-authors of the book A Billion Wicket Thoughts, found that while women feel like they shouldn't enjoy the same hardcore, mainstream sites that men do, they are still visiting them in their droves.
‘There is a real interesting phenomenon in women’s sexuality – not seen in men’s – and that is this divide between what erotica should be and what actually turns women on,’ Ogas told AlterNet. ‘Studies show that what turns women on is different to what they wish turned them on, or how they politically feel about it. There is a paradox in the brain that women have to wrestle with. Men like what they like sexually. But with women, we see political manifestos embedded in their sexuality, with just as much emphasis on whether or not we’re discriminating on any particular gender or race. Whereas, for a man that just doesn’t occur.’
The researchers also found that women who did like to watch hardcore porn shared certain (traditionally masculine-sounding) personality traits. Olgar explained, ‘Women who like hardcore porn tend to be more aggressive, more socially assertive and more comfortable taking risks. They are comfortable playing both roles sexually, they like being dominated and being submissive. They possess a constellation of personality traits that you would normally associate with men. It is reasonable to imagine then that for a minority of women, their sexual brain develops in a masculine way.’
Despite the fact that most women are getting off to the same ‘cream pie, deep throat, teen gang bang’ style videos that men are, Ogas still thinks there’s a place for female-friendly porn. ‘There is definitely an audience for feminist-friendly porn, just a small audience and a small fraction of women overall. What is fascinating is that women commonly promote the idea of feminist porn and socially want to believe in it. Activists argue that there needs to be more of it, women support it in public and I see women start erotic websites all the time. But when it comes down to it, that is just not what they are interested in looking at.’
Who knew that our masturbation material gave such a terrifying insight into our personalities?
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Picture: Eylul Aslan
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.