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What do we mean when we talk about “ for women”? Google it and you’re met with terms like “sensual” and “romantic,” “tasteful” and “erotic”. So far, so predictable. For the purposes of search engine optimisation at least, “” equals deep kissing, soft lighting, and slow, sensuous massage. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, of course. I’d happily take all three of those things on any given day. But it’s far from being the whole picture.
In 2015, of more than 3,000 women found more than a third watch every week. Anotherpublished earlier this year showed almost half of women had watched in the last month. So what are we watching? And what do we mean when we talk about “ for women”?
While both these people have clear personal preferences, it’s not immediately apparent that the they enjoy is more “,” at least as far as the internet would define it. The idea that women are looking for something softer, more gentle, is borne out of a variety of social and cultural tropes. Firstly, the long-standing notion that women simply aren’t as interested in . Despite much evidence―both and―to the contrary, a showed that almost half of us still adhere to the belief that men have stronger drives than women.
Secondly, there is a widely critiqued idea that men are “more visual”. In fact, has shown that the differences are not so much in whether we respond to visual stimuli, but how different genders respond, which aspects we respond to, and what strategies we employ when viewing visual stimuli. Furthermore, a statistical review of existing neuroimaging studies by the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany, earlier this year, that women were just as likely as men to be turned on by images.
“There is a culturally accepted idea that men are more visual than women, and this is just not true at all,” says Gigi Engle, coach, sexologist, and author of. “Women are just as visual as men, and they like dirty as much as men. The idea that for women should be soft and gentle is not only not an ideal way of thinking, it’s downright inaccurate. Do some women want , scene-based ? Sure! That doesn’t mean everyone wants this.”
