I'm not sure why you don't believe the numbers, Amy. On a more informal scale, I'll tell you that out of my close friends and close acquaintances, women who don't watch porn are in the minority. In fact, the few who don't are not uptight about their men watching, they just claim to not be into it. I went back to school 2 years ago (39) and took a class where we discussed gender issues, (no, not a sociology class) and I was surprised at how many of the 19-21 year old girls not only had healthy attitudes about sex, but admitted to not just watching porn, but enjoying it when alone. I know that I'm not a dinosaur, but 20 years ago when I was a 20 year old, I never would have admitted to masturbation or a porn habit. It was refreshing to see how open these girls were and how comfortable they were in their own sexuality. So based on my own informal little survey, I can believe these numbers. A few friends and I have also been known to visit the local sex shop to buy new toys for ourselves. We are not Carrie Bradshaw look alikes or Sex and the City wanna be's. We are average women living on Long Island.

"Candida Royalle's "

Really? Royal yeast infection? Mmmm, I wants me some of her porn! Yum!

There must be something to the sex change. I knew a guy who became a girl, including loping off the big one. After the change, she noted a marked decrease in sexuality. Before he visited gay bathhouses and had sex "thousands of times," but after the surgery, just interested in sex with "the right person."
Men love recreational sex; women love recreational shopping. Just the way it is. I never saw a good-looking woman I didn't want to have sex with.
Women have it easy. I guess from 45-50 some women have sex-pangs amounting to minor urges, but that's about it.

Afterward, even nice ankles on a woman would be "enough to flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images. ..."

I'm not sure I believe this quote though....
Except for the part where it's a person undergoing medical treatment and injection of hormones, it sounds like something I'd read about explaining how liberating burkas are to women or how dangerous men are to women. I wonder if this is a typical response to testosterone injection or if her doctor had it dialed up a bit much.

I know that men and women see things differently, but that doesn't mean that women don't enjoy porn. If you think about it, porn has changed alot in the past 20 years. Even in the past 10 years. While stories are laughable, it has gotten a lot nicer to look at for both men and women. No offense to Ron Jeremy, (ok, a little) but that was what women had to look at way back. Now, not only are the women gorgeous, but the men are too. They are shaven and clean. They are not overweight, bloated, hairy men who are in a movie just because their member happens to be huge. And while I am not suggesting that you have a limited social circle, I would say that maybe as an advice columnist, you get more than your share of letters from women who are threatened by porn because of their own insecurities and inferiority complexes which could be clouding your opinion on the numbers. I find it very hard to believe that I have met the only porn loving women and that we are all concentrated in one county of New York. I don't think the numbers are close to men's, but I do think you are lowballing it.

Jerry-
Then my testosterone was "dialed up too much" from age 12 through 54...still waiting for the dial to go down. A woman bending over is enough for me to deeply wish rape laws included loopholes, as in "women was bending over."

More interesting to me is how many women allow themselves to get involvolved in the porn industry...

I can understand when some stars made huge money (Jenna Jameson, Christy Canyon, etc.) but today it seems like most porn is so low budget and pervasive there can't be much money in it for the actors\actresses. I would be really interested to know how the producers of todays porn get so many women to volunteer themselves to be exposed to STD's and a lifetime of public exposure.

"The fact remains, men & women see things differently"

Of course they do, but since when does seeing things differently mean men & women can't enjoy looking at the same thing? If I showed you & Gregg a photo from my last trip to Banff National Park, the first thing to catch your eye might be the meadow filled with lovely wildflowers in the foreground, and you would wish you could lie down in it & day-dream all day long, breathing in the wonderful fragrance. The first thing to catch Gregg's eye might be the towering mountain in the background, and he might wish he could grab a rope & an ice-ax & go climb it. Completely different focus, completely different emotional response, same enjoyment.

"Sorry, but I just don't believe these stats"

I looked up the male/female viewer % stats for 20 high-traffic porn paysites on Quantcast. By way of comparison, they give advicegoddess.com a 58/42 M/F ratio. Is that accurate? It seems perfectly plausible to me, based on the gender of your commenters. Here are the #s:

met-art 3.7 million monthly US viewers 78/22 M/F

brazzersnetwork 3.4 million 67/33

bangbros 3.3 million 70/30

femjoy 1.9 million 79/21

scoreland 1.6 million 75/25

bigtitsroundasses 1 million 66/34

ftvgirls 900 K 73/27

allinternal 809 K 71/29

hustler 797 K 65/35

sapphicerotica 693 K 62/38

justteensite 555 K 79/21

bignaturals 530 K 67/33

hogtied 487 K 73/27

danni 482 K 75/25

primecups 453 K 71/29

sexandsubmission 432 K 71/29

whippedass 411 K 73/27

amkingdom 408 K 80/20

domai 374 K 80/20

abbywinters 321 K 79/21

These sites cover the full spectrum, from softcore nude modeling to bondage & gangbangs. If you want to dismiss these stats & say that all those "female" viewers were dirty old men pretending to be women, fine. But if you want to convince me that women are only 5-10 % of the porn audience, then you need to come up with some good hard data. Simply asserting that it must be so because men & women are different is not good enough evidence.

> Completely different focus,
> completely different emotional
> response, same enjoyment

That's kind of a contradiction in terms... And of horse sense. Man & women respond to stuff with tremendously different enthusiasm. Prager used to say that when women go to strip clubs, they laugh, but men wear the game face.

> male/female viewer % stats for 20
> high-traffic porn paysites on
> Quantcast.

Well, if you're going to concede that your own numbers are baseless (and even discount them so tremendously), you shouldn't pester debaters to provide, um, hard data.

Besides, what other market have the ratings people got for porn data besides porn vendors? If their clients want 25% of their pageloads to be for women, then why would Quantcast want to disappoint them? And how would they possibly know who's on the other side of a keyboard except by count cookies from visits to the Tampax website or something like that? Where would you find a bigger discrepancy in webpage preferences than porn?

> how the producers of todays porn
> get so many women to volunteer
> themselves to be exposed to STD's
> and a lifetime of public exposure

1. Daughters of divorce!
2. Drugs / similar human incompetence.
3. [#1.]
4. [#1.]
5. Machiavellian emotional manipulations.
6. [#1.]

Is the topic sex differences? Yes? Great. Here's a fun gal.

Kristen writes....>>>I find it very hard to believe that I have met the only porn loving women and that we are all concentrated in one county of New York. I don't think the numbers are close to men's, but I do think you are lowballing it.

I also am in the category of, "I find it hard to believe I have met only porn loving women". My experience is that considerably more than 5% to 10% of women enjoy/use porn. I am, though, not entirely sold on "because porn stars are better looking now". Obviously that doesn't hurt, however, I think it has to do with what is now acceptable for a woman to do sexually. I have been with women who needed that, "it's ok for you to like porn" atmosphere to be created in her mind. Once she believed (I'd call it deprogramming) it didn't say anything negative about her to like/use porn, forgetaboutit!

TW, you are right. It isn't just that it's prettier now. I did say earlier that 20 years ago when I was 20 that I did not have the same comfort sexually that these young women have now. And their comfort isn't about them using sex for acceptance. I enjoyed sex as a young woman, but it was more about what a man wanted. It wasn't until after my divorce and in my 30's that I realized that sex was about me too and what I liked and wanted. Society has changed and it isn't all bad. Women can admit now that they enjoy sex and not always in the confines of a relationship. I hate to use the term "enlightened" but the truth is that even in the past 10 years I've seen more of an openness and enlightenment in sexual attitudes and that isn't saying that everyone is out sleeping around recklessly. My reasoning though for pointing out the prettier aspect though was that the truth is that if I had to look at a Ron Jeremy for all of my porn, then I don't have the same interest. In fact, I'd probably be a little turned off. But if the guy is just as hot as the girl or girls, then yeah, I'm in.

"Daughters of divorce
Drugs/similar human incompetence"

The number of A-list Hollywood stars & pop musicians is very small, certainly much smaller than the number of women in porn. But the amount of drug addiction, alcoholism, idiocy, bizarre behavior in public, suicide, and self-destruction of every sort imaginable in this tiny pool of people is staggering. Compared to Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, or Lindsay Lohan, just about any porn star is the sanest, most sober woman alive.

Listen, I think sarcasm gets away from people sometimes. Do what extent are these porn people "stars"? Do they achieve wealth sufficient to meet their needs for any longer period of time? Do they move through the community, and then through their later lives, with any substantial bank of affection from "fans"? Most of us couldn't name a "star"... Even if you do know who Ron Jeremy is, would you cross the street to shake his hand?

I love porn. Love it. Gay, straight, plot, no plot, whatever. I wish someone would make some of my favorite bodice-rippers into porn films, that way I wouldn't have to try to hold the book with one hand whilst touching myself with the other. Awkward!