Mar 14, 2018
Women enjoy porn for a variety of reasons. It can be a learning opportunity, a masturbation aid, an intimacy booster, and simply a major turn-on. But it can also contain major turn-offs, from misogynistic themes to depictions of acts you’re just not into.
In a small new study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers dove into the porn paradox that often dogs viewers, female viewers in particular: Good porn is awesome, but there’s always the risk of encountering something unpleasant as you search. That’s why the researchers analyzed the strategies women use to search for online porn they like, avoid content they don’t, and enjoy their viewing experiences.
“We were interested in what women do to negotiate the negative content they anticipate in porn,” University of Michigan researchers and study authors Sara Chadwick and Sari van Anders tell Allure. By exploring how women navigate pornography, Chadwick and van Anders wanted to highlight how women often have to work to create positive sexual experiences for themselves in the frequently male gaze-dominated porn world.
