I’m not sure exactly why I find these charts — depicting the various subjects and categories that turn people on and how they differ between men and women — so interesting.
Well, duh it’s related to sex so it’s naturally intriguing. But I think for me, the science and research behind human attraction has always been captivating because the driving forces behind what makes one person attractive to another can vary so greatly.
Granted, these charts are not necessarily about attraction. But what turns someone on can’t be too far from their preferences in pornography, no?
Here is a ranking of Pornhub’s most-viewed categories:
And the most-searched terms:
Is it just me, or is the fact that “teen” takes the top spot for men in both charts sorta disturbing?
Head on over to the original article for more detailed insights. (Warning: it is hosted on Pornhub’s main site so you may not want to open the link at work or anywhere else where your internet activities are monitored.)
Via Geekologie.
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I have thought about this a (very little) bit and I think that the general preference for, in this example, “teen”–since it’s pretty high for women, too–is not really any different than our general preference for youthful beauty over mature beauty. It’s easy to look at how we treat actresses, for example, and say we are “sick” in our drive for youth, and I think that we do become warped in how much we let that drive our decisions and choices, but I don’t think it’s inherently that bad. The teenage and young adult years are when our own sexual awareness and desire start to bloom, and sex at those ages lacks much of what you get in more mature years but is enhanced by high energy, heightened anticipation, the thrill of risk–in short, I think that a lot of what we like about porn is less what we want to project onto another person and more how we want to project ourselves into it. If porn is getting at our most basic desires, it makes sense that we would identify with a time in our lives when our feelings about sex were, in their own way, uncomplicated. I think that’s what we see reflected when we look for youth, particularly in porn where we can do that in a very private and vulnerable way.
Unfortunately, it seems like porn culture has some narratives that are hard to shed, such as degradation, humiliation, and domination of the woman in some way, so everybody knows that “teen” pretty much only refers to the woman, and the male partner is indiscriminately older, a creepy power dynamic. Maybe that’s because they think that people want to see a real “manly” man, with beards and chest hair, that doesn’t lend itself to showing younger men, or that it’s easier to make a woman look younger by dressing her up than it is with a man. Maybe that’s because seeing two just-18-year-olds makes us feel more like we’re seeing children. Or maybe it’s just that young women are in more of a position to be coaxed into starring in porn than young men.
Emily: I learned more (got more food for thought) from your speculations than from the actual statistics themselves. I think that even though we watch programs like “Masters of Sex” , whose campy humor partly depends upon our (alleged) progress in the intervening years, we still have a long way to go to understanding our lizard brains. Also since I live in Asia, I was a little shocked by how low ‘Asian’ scores, so I wonder if this poll also reflects the ethnic and national makeup of the users (in Great Britain “Asian” and “Indian” are almost indistinguishable). The fact that “Japanese” is so high, might, as you touch upon in one of your reasons, have more to do with supply than demand, since that country is not only famous for exporting Toyota and Honda. But I guess my own confession is that I found it more interesting what women searched than men, since women are stigmatized more for admitting to liking porn, and found that gay male sex being watched by men mirrors a preference by men for girl on girl- though what confuses me is that one of the most salient theories about this posits that men watch lesbian porn as a sort of homoerotic wish fulfillment fantasy within the ‘safe’ zone- it’s ok to approve of same sex sex, as long as you are watching the opposite sex. So is the same happening with women, who allegedly are less stigmatized to explore their own sexuality more than men?
I think that the popularity of gay male erotica and porn among women is fascinating! Particularly if you look into manga and anime–there is quite a strong subset of gay male romantic or sexual series. They are incredibly varied in how explicit they are, what the dynamics of the relationship are, and the nature of the participants. I have to admit to being a fan of a couple of these series, and there was one I remember that was a romance/drama about a couple of cops in New York. (To be perfectly honest, that one was a little bit “In a world… where every single cop in the NYPD is gay. And half-Japanese.) The relationship was playful, sweet, and emotionally intimate. I know, like you say, we write off men watching lesbian porn (which is laughably different than porn made for actual lesbians) as a sort of chauvinistic fantasy, but I don’t think that can explain the whole thing. Okay, yeah, I’ve known guys who really don’t understand that lesbian couples aren’t an opportunity for a threesome, but I think that a lot of the appeal of watching same-sex couples (but opposite from you) is seeing someone of the opposite sex act more like you do and feeling that connection. When there are two women, for instance, one or both of them is going to be the “initiator”, and you’re more likely to see a woman tell her partner what to do or otherwise take on agency in the whole encounter. Anyway, I think that’s another explanation of the opposite-but-same-sex thing.
Like you point out, I can’t think of a much safer way to think about same-sex exploration than watching a couple of the opposite sex from you do it, and it’s certainly interesting to think about what kind of difference you get in the results between men (a group expected to watch porn) and women (a group expected to be disgusted and offended by porn). Although I would assume that here, you don’t get as much of the self-reporting bias as you would if pollsters from an external organization were cold-calling people in their homes and asking about their preferences. I’m also curious about the ethnic alignments–I wonder if people are typically searching for their own ethnic identities, or if the people actually typing in ethnicities in search boxes are doing it for the exoticism? Especially terms like “Asian.” Would that be more likely to be a white American who doesn’t really know or care about the differences, or would that be, say, someone from an ethnic group that just typically isn’t represented among porn stars, so they’re looking for someone who looks more familiar but they’re not going to type in a specific country of origin?
I’m more disturbed that “mom” is the third most popular male search term. 😐
oh please look at the female search terms there is some sick shit in there…women are the biggest fucking perverts out there…sick fucking cunts always blaming men for their taste look at that shit…..
this is only data for the people who visited that particular site….asian should of been waaaaaay higher…you can’t beat the TAP! (tight asian pu@sy) 😉