Most People Who Seek Rough, Aggressive Porn Are Women

Who watches aggressive pornography? Conventional wisdom says legions of men and few if any, women. But recently, a McGill University researcher discovered that more women than men seek out rough pornography and find it arousing.

Based on interviews with 122 porn-viewing adults, this study is the first to explore attraction to aggressive porn. Participants replied yes or no to these statements:

• “Aggression in porn is arousing.” Forty percent of men and 65 percent of women said yes. The gender difference is 25 percent more women.
• “Very aggressive porn is arousing.” Seventeen percent of men said yes. Thirty-nine percent of women said yes. The gender difference is 22 percent more women.
• “Women who look like they suffer pain in response to aggression in porn is arousing.” Fourteen percent of men and 24 percent of women agreed. The gender difference is 10 percent more women.
• “I’d like to see more aggression in porn.” Seven percent of men and 34 percent of women said yes. The gender difference is 27 percent more women.
• “I actively seek out aggressive porn.” Twenty-one percent of men and 35 percent of women said yes. The gender difference is 14 percent more women.

The researcher recruited participants through advertising around Montreal and posts on Craigslist and Facebook. Volunteers received $20 and were interviewed anonymously. They included 61 women (one transgender), 60 men (one trans), and one who identified as nonbinary. They ranged in age from 18 to 40+ (average 25). More than half (55 percent) were North American. Most of the rest were European or Indian. Half (53 percent) were white, and the rest (47 percent) were members of all other races. Most were heterosexual (77 percent) and college graduates (71 percent).

In studies based on interviews, research methodologists consider any number of participants over 50 reasonably credible. This study involved 122.

While not exactly representative of Canada’s population or the world’s, the sample is much broader than the many studies that rely solely on college students.

And it was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, a peer-reviewed journal.

So we have a reasonably credible study producing findings that many, if not most, people would consider counter-intuitive, if not impossible. How could more women than men enjoy aggressive porn?

From Immoral to Misogynist

Until the mid-20^th century, pornography was available only at seedy shops on the wrong side of the tracks. But every major metropolitan area and countless rural locales had porn shops and theaters. Some ministers called porn immoral. But pornography was not a political issue.

In 1953, Hugh Hefner launched Playboy magazine, which put topless models on North American magazine racks. Soon after, more explicit magazines appeared: Penthouse and Hustler. Self-proclaimed guardians of morality screamed, forcing publishers to wrap copies in plastic that blacked out everything but cover models' faces.

Video cassette players debuted around 1975, allowing people to easily rent movies. Most video shops had back rooms that offered porn–and rented tons of it. Porn moved into the nation’s living rooms.

The 1970s also birthed the women’s liberation movement, whose leaders denounced porn not as immoral but as misogynistic, alleging that it caused sexual assault.

In Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1980), Susan Brownmiller argued, “Pornography represents hatred of women.”

Essayist Robin Morgan wrote, “Pornography is the theory. Rape is the practice.”

Since then, for the past 40+ years, porn critics have maintained that most porn depicts sexual aggression, almost all of it directed against women by men. Critics have insisted that porn promotes sexism and rape. These claims turned porn into a political issue.

Porn Up, Rape Down

In previous posts, I have discussed the many rigorous studies that refute the porn critics’ allegations:

• Far from promoting sexism, robust research shows that compared with men who view little porn, those who watch lots often hold more egalitarian views of women. My post.
• Pornography flooded the Internet during the mid-1990s. Today it attracts more than 100 billion views per year worldwide–an average of more than one view a month for everyone on Earth. If porn promotes violence against women, then rates of sexual assault should have soared during the past 20 years. Actually, women’s rape risk has fallen substantially. My posts from 2009 [5.1.09], 2016 [1.15.16], and 2017 [7.1.17]

Pornography Essential Reads

Do Accessibility and Anonymity Lead to Problematic Porn Use?

14 Ways That Porn Can Threaten a Relationship

Fifty Shades of BDSM Fantasies

In 2010, University of Arkansas researchers analyzed the content of hundreds of porn videos and concluded that nine out of 10 porn videos (88 percent) depicted violence against women: spanking, slapping, hair pulling, choking, and restraint. Porn critics amplified this finding relentlessly.

One year later, in 2011, the romance novel, Fifty Shades of Grey appeared. It’s largely a standard romance: An insecure but feisty woman meets a powerful, charismatic man who decides he must have her. She resists. He persists–and in many romances, threatens rape or ravishes her. But there’s something about him. The resourceful woman eventually domesticates the brute. Cue wedding bells.

But in one regard, Fifty Shades differed sharply from other romances. Its leading man is a committed dominant in bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism (BDSM), and the woman becomes his submissive, at first reluctantly, eventually enthusiastically.

Fifty Shades rocketed to unprecedented success. It has sold more than 150 million copies. It’s by far the world’s all-time best-selling work of fiction.

Until Fifty Shades, the public and sex most researchers relegated BDSM to the sexual fringe. But books about fringe pleasures don’t sell like that. The novel’s extraordinary success triggered a flood of research showing that many elements of BDSM are quite popular:

• In 2015, Indiana University researchers surveyed a representative sample of 2,021 American adults. Many said their lovemaking included: spanking (30 percent), Dominant/submissive role-playing (22 percent), and restraint (20 percent).
• In a 2017 survey of a representative sample of 1,027 Belgians, 47 percent said they’d experimented with BDSM.
• In 2018, an Indiana University researcher analyzed the erotic fantasies of 4,000 American adults. BDSM reveries ranked as the second most popular category (after sex with someone other than one’s regular partner).

A Window Into Erotic Fantasies

In BDSM, people of any gender may play any role. But most women gravitate toward submissiveness.

This brings us back to the recent study showing that women are more likely than men to seek out aggressive porn. The following statements are typical of the study's findings:

• A 20-year-old woman: “Every time I watch porn, I look for BDSM or dominance.”
• A 26-year-old woman: “I find spanking, spitting, choking, and facials very arousing.”
• A 34-year-old woman: “I search for porn with gangbangs and rape. Not that I want to be raped. But porn is fantasy. I like it when one person totally controls another.”
• A 41-year-old woman: “I love BDSM porn. The aggression is exciting and arousing.”

Given the popularity of BDSM fantasies, it’s no surprise that many women seek out and enjoy aggressive porn. Women are considerably more likely than men to have submissive fantasies, and those fantasies require controlling–even aggressive–dominants.

Porn is a window into erotic fantasies, many of which involve domination and submission, which some mistakenly call aggression. Since the arrival of Internet porn, women’s rape risk has plummeted, and we’ve learned that many women enjoy fantasies of sexual submission.

The critics are mistaken. Pornography is not misogynistic.