One of the more surprising revelations the giant data pool owned by the world’s biggest porn conglomerate MindGeek is telling us is that men are actually not to blame for violent porn and trends towards rough sex scenes. As it turns out women don’t prefer soft sex categories, in fact they actually build the biggest audience for rough sex.
One of the most annoying Hollywood and pop culture narrations is that men – and exclusively men – are rough, cold, love sports, drink beer and watch porn. While everyone knows that most of these clichés are not depending on gender the idea that men watch porn and women – if at all – watch soft or lesbian porn is flat out wrong.
According to Pornhub women search for certain categories a whole lot more than male visitors of the site. And while »porn for women« is popular with women they also are the biggest audience for so-called »extreme« categories like »rough sex« and »hardcore«, two categories typically featuring rater violent scenes.
All in all the tube site features 90 categories. Rough sex is the 35th most popular category among them. And it is 63% more popular with women than with men. In other words women are 63% more likely to look up rough sex scenes. And young women like the category best.
The same picture presents itself with the rather rough category »Hardcore«. Here, too, women are much more likely than men to watch videos from the »hardcore« category: A whopping 75% more likely to be precise. Again younger women tend to like the category best.
Contrary to popular belief the »fetish« category doesn’t count among the first two thirds in popularity among Pornhub viewers. It is only the 69th most popular category. While men tend to watch this category more often than women the discrepancy is not as big as with »rough sex«. Men are only 7% more likely to watch fetish porn than women.
Pornhub’s findings are in line with surveys. The dating website OkCupid found that among 400,000 OkCupid members 62% of the women enjoy rough sex. Among their favorite sex acts were being bitten, being tied up, name calling and hair pulling.
Is it the end of a myth? It would be an interesting topic for a scientific study.