A History of Porn for Women

Since its inception in ancient times, pornography has primarily been designed for men. The majority of porn involves depicting naked women or sex acts for the enjoyment of the male viewer. The assumption about audience has meant that pornography often depicts male fantasies, or a male view of sex.

There is, however, a branch of pornography that aims to cater to women. The aim behind porn for women is to showcase sexually explicit imagery that depicts female fantasies and focuses on female pleasure.

Porn for women is a relatively new concept. For most of the twentieth century it was assumed that women were not interested in graphic depictions of sex. In Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, Dr Alfred Kinsey reported that 88% of women "never" responded to nude photographs and concluded that women were not stimulated by visual depictions of sex. He did, however, note that "there are almost no male or female nudes which are produced for the consumption of females."

The popular belief that "women aren't visually stimulated" meant that very few commercial operations bothered to create porn for a female audience. It was generally considered that romance novels were the female equivalent of men's porn, and that slightly risqué descriptions of sex, with plenty of euphemisms thrown in, were all that women wanted. Read on >>