This is a statistic I see tossed around quite often, citing Nielsen data. While I can’t find the actual data that posits that 1 in 3 porn viewers are women, all searches seem to point to Violet Blue.
In the first three months of 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, approximately one in three visitors to adult entertainment Web sites was female; during the same period, nearly 13 million American women were checking out porn online at least once each month.
I’m going to assume that she didn’t just pull these numbers out of thin air. So why do they sound so unbelievable? Even James Deen was shocked!
“I’m not old and ugly. For the percentage of women interested in porn, I’m a guy who they would talk to in a bar.”
He says “percentage of women” like it’s a teaspoon of water in the ocean of smut, and it occurs to me that he doesn’t know how popular he is. I tell him that the latest data from Nielsen shows that . “What? That’s awesome! I had no idea it was so high!”
What does this mean? Do 1 in 3 women really like porn? What other explanation could there be? The real problem with this data is the conclusions being drawn from it. Technically, I would be one of those women that view porn more than once a month, and I hate porn. I can honestly say that I still haven’t met a woman, out in the real world, who likes porn. I do know a lot of women who have accessed porn at one point or another, however. Some of them look for advice on how to please a man, and many more are tracking their partner’s online porn use. Most women, at some point of time in their lives, will look at porn out of sheer curiosity. That’s how it started for me. Keeping this in mind, 1 in 3 is not so hard to believe anymore. 1 in 3 have viewed porn…that doesn’t mean they liked it, though.
Additionally, what “adult entertainment websites” were covered in this study? Would Playboy.com count as a porn site? How did they determine the sex of the viewer, such as in a multi-person household? Did they record differences in average viewer sex by content?
Other Side of Porn 
August 7th, 2011 at 12:15 am
Hey, thanks for quoting the James Deen interview I did on The Good Men Project. Just thought I’d throw in there that while skepticism of the 1 in 3 figure is totally valid, I know a lot of women around my age (I’m 23) who watch porn on a regular basis (i.e. at least once a week) for personal enjoyment. I’m not sure if it’s a generational thing, or what, but we’re not imaginary.
August 7th, 2011 at 12:24 am
Of course, I know some women watch porn for enjoyment. I guess I used to be one of them. However, it still stands that the only other female porn-watchers I know of are women blogging or alluded to on the internet. I haven’t found any in day-to-day life.
August 7th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
They should divide the usage of porn by women according to genre and sex of the performers involved. I had a look through a recent issue of Playboy because it professed to once again show what type of men women REALLY want and they quoted a neuro-scientiest (Yes,I know. Neuro-scientists know all about social interaction.) as saying that a lot of or most women watch gay porn. He concluded they did it to find out what is pleasing to men (I lol’ed so hard.). Women watch gay porn because the men are attractive and well-built AND because there are no women (to degrade and compare to/identify yourself with) present. My humble theories as a once-rabid yaoi and slash fangirl, at least.
The way this is reported makes it seem like women prefer exactly the same stuff as your regular porn-dog. Being come on, being anally penetrated and being roughly fucked in every orifice. You can see the male-centredness from a mile away. It might as well be and it might much more likely be, that women like it when men penetrate each other, perform oral sex on each other and hold their asses into the camera. They might like it when men are degraded by other men because it works as a safety valve for their own hatred towards men. They might like it because they have a lot more choice in type of men (twinks, bears, jocks…). We all know why this has not been taken into account, do we? Men like women to want what men want.
Additionally, what “adult entertainment websites” were covered in this study? Would Playboy.com count as a porn site? How did they determine the sex of the viewer, such as in a multi-person household? Did they record differences in average viewer sex by content?
All relevant and interesting questions. They would answer so much.
August 10th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Well, the pornographers have been saying forever that women love porn, not just being in it, but watching it.
In a porn culture, though, it makes sense that an increasing number of women would actually watch porn. I can believe it.
It would be interesting to find out how groups that try to study this do so, though. I’m guessing they just ask women, “how often do you watch porn?” But that doesn’t answer whether they wanted to or not. As a child, teenager, and adult, I’ve been in settings where I did not want to view porn, but didn’t really have a way to get out of the situation. This can be especially common in college, where one dorm/suite may have a DVD/tv, and dudes just take it as their right to come in and play whatever (and women are too intimidated to tell them to fuck off).
Fortunately, I haven’t been in a group setting like that in years.