Good day gentlemen and of course ladies! It is time for another column where we will give some special attention to this latter group. In my first column I created a very global setup to give you an idea of what this column would be all about. Today I would like to address some of the questions I raised back then, dive a little deeper into some research and hopefully give you some satisfying answers.
Do women like porn (related) things?
To be straightforward: yes they do! But of course not all women have the same level of interest, and of course there are also women who just aren’t really into it. But generally speaking a woman can have the same kind of erotic feelings a men can have, even though they might not express it in the same way.
Also, just as with men, no woman is the same, and thus each has different interests and other things that might turn them on. So in that aspect we may not be that different after all! However there seems to be a few things that do differ, and for this I’d like to turn to a study that has been done by a female researcher named Meredith Chivers.
Sexual arousal men vs women
In her study, she showed various video clips of naked people to both women and men, heterosexual and homosexual. The videos presented both sexual as well as nonsexual situations to the subjects and during the time they were watching those clips their genital and subjective sexual arousal got recorded. Both men and women had the weakest response to nude exercise, and the strongest response to intercourse. However, there were a couple notable differences:
- The gender of the actor was more important for men than for women
- The level of sexual activity was more important for women than for men
In other words, that what mattered for the women was not the gender of the actor, but the degree of sensuality. On the other hand the men had a more category-specific preference; they showed way more arousal for their preferred gender.
Another interesting result of this research was formed by measuring the sexual arousal in two different ways: objective and subjective. They measured the genital arousal using a plethysmograph (a device measuring changes in blood flow) and they also asked the participants to rate their sexual arousal themselves. The strange thing is that for women these two measurements did not match most of the time. While the device showed that many videos aroused them, the women often claimed in their reports that it did not arouse them much at all. For men, however, their bodies and their mind told the same story.
But where exactly does this difference come from? Perhaps this has got to do something with self-image, or social acceptance? Are they afraid to admit what they like, because they have a feeling that they are not supposed to like it? Another study, done by Terri Fisher, decided to test these hypotheses. He asked 200 female and male undergraduates to complete a questionnaire dealing with masturbation and the use of porn. They were split into groups and wrote their answers under three different conditions:
- They had to hand the finished questionnaire to a fellow student
- They were given explicit assurance that their answers would be kept anonymous
- They were hooked up to a fake polygraph machine
The results showed the following:
“The male replies were about the same under each of the three conditions, but for the females the circumstances were crucial. Many women in the first group said they’d never masturbated, never checked out anything X-rated. The women who were told they would have strict confidentiality answered yes a lot more. And those who thought they were wired to a lie detector replied almost identically to the men.”
So these results do kind of suggest that things such as gender and normative expectations play a big role for women when expressing their sexual behavior. Men have a certain form of sexual freedom, which makes them feel more comfortable in expressing their sexuality than women.
True or false?
As a woman myself, do I feel that the above are correct statements? Well, I have to admit I personally think there is some truth to be found in there. For me it’s not necessarily only because of normative expectations that I’m not that open about my preferences, I just don’t really feel the need to share this information with just anyone. Although somewhere inside I might also be afraid of what other people might think, but I guess this can also be the case for men as well, especially when it comes to certain fetishes that might not be accepted as ‘normal’ by the large masses.
I also think that the above-mentioned difference of sexual arousal between female body and mind is not necessarily only caused by things such as social pressure. There might be some underlying reason for this, perhaps we are not even consciously aware of this difference between physical and mental reactions. But this is kind of impossible to judge at this point.
With regards to the statements about gender preferences and sensuality, I think they might be on to something there. Men do tend to have stronger erotic feelings to the gender that corresponds with their sexual orientation. Heterosexual men will be more aroused by watching women and homosexual men will be more aroused by watching men, while I think that for example heterosexual women can get aroused by watching both women and men. I also think that the ‘level of activity’ is indeed important for women. Men might already get aroused by just watching a pinup picture of a naked women, whereas I think most women prefer seeing some more action before they start to really feel it.
Next time, more 3DX
With this I’d like to wrap up the column for today. I hope I was able to give you some interesting information and new insights into women and erotica, and if you are interested it’s possible to read the full studies using the below mentioned resources.
Next time I want to take all this information and see how it fits into the world of 3DX! Because you might wonder, if women indeed watch porn, then what kind of porn do they like? Do they also watch 2D or 3D animations?
To be honest, before I started working for Affect3D I was not aware of the fact that 3DX is such a big thing! Of course I had heard about it before, but I didn’t know there was a whole community, and that there is such a large variety in artists and the products they create. So perhaps there are a lot of other women like me out there who don’t know of its existence just yet. But who knows, maybe there are secretly a lot of women who enjoy 3D porn, in this case I hope I’ll be able to find out what it is that attracts them to this genre.
I hope you enjoyed it and until next time!
List of sources:
Research:
- Gender and Sexual Orientation differences in sexual response to sexual activities versus gender of actors in sexual films – Meredith L. Chivers, Michael C. Seto and Ray Blanchard
- Women’s desire is an underestimated and constrained force – Daniel Bergner
- Truth and Consequences: Using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality – Michele G. Alexander and Terri D. Fisher
Images:
Angel willams
July 13, 2016Hi i love videos i am so happy found your web site big fan