Fantasies and Preferences

Paraphilias.

In which Lindsey talks about different paraphilias and how they are defined and disordered. https://fetlife.com/ You can support Sexplanations directly by going to https://subbable.com/sexplanations and subscribing. You can choose a monthly contribution, a one-time contribution, or just subscribe for $0 to show your support. Go to DFTBA.com to get your very own Want/Will/Won't Poster: http://dftba.com/product/18u/Sexplana...

Pornhub: The impact of 50 Shades of Grey on porn searches.

Pornhub, one of the huge porn aggregator tube sites, has its own research wing (how nerdy!). They analyze search data, and some of it gets reported on Pornhub Insights (check it out here). A recent project examined the impact of 50 Shades of Grey on porn searches. Here's what they found (in its entirety):

50 Shades of Pornhub
Cinema has come to affect our lives and views in real and meaningful ways. For instance, after the release of the film Sideways, Merlot became more difficult to move off of shelves while Pinot Noir enjoyed a 16% spike in sales. Deer hunting decreased by nearly half for a few years after Bambi. In the same vein, the recent release of the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey has been shaking things up over here at Pornhub. Specifically, people are getting freakier in their pornographic preferences and we’ve got the data to prove it.
Not So Grey Area
There’s no real debate here; since the now infamous film was released overValentine’s Day weekend, BDSM related searches have seen a significant increase on Pornhub. The charts below trace BDSM related searches during the days leading up to and then immediately following the film’s February 13th release date. When comparing this activity in the US to the rest of the world as well as to women versus men, the specific traffic patterns follow the same general rises and falls, with a few exceptions. Overall, it seems that the press tour leading up to the premiere helped things along a little, with a decent increase in BDSM searches having been observed the weekend before, over the 6th through the 8th of February.
The 13th marks the real threshold though, with searches for words like ‘submission,’ ‘spank,’ and ‘bondage’ among others, increasing in the US by over 20% and by nearly 40% in women. Suffice it to say, our female users have definitely been channeling their inner Anastasia Steele’s.
Handcuffs and Flogging and Whipe, Oh My!
Now for a look at which specific search terms Pornhub users have been employing to access their new favorite kind of content. Here, action words like ‘submission’ and  ‘dominate,’ top the chart, both having increased in the range of about 50% in searches since the movie premiere. Other tools of the trade type terms like ‘whip,’ ‘master,’ and ‘leather’ all also saw some notable spikes in search activity during this time. According to some research by our friends over at Refinery29, these last 3 words are interestingly some of the most used throughout the 50 Shades novel as well.
Femme Domination
It’s no secret that the intended audience of both the novel and subsequent film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey is women. Touted for a while now as ‘mommy porn,’ it seems that after having experienced the film women are now looking to have a red room experience of their own, at least according to these numbers. In this last chart, the Pornhub statisticians have whipped up this impressive list of which kinky terms women are more likely to search for than men, proving some dominating female tendencies. Following the release of the 50 Shades film, women appear to be more curious about most BDSM terms, searching upwards of 200% more for certain terms in some cases than prior to the release date. Men have been exploring these new waters as well, with increases closer to the range of 20% having been observed with these same terms. Again, action words like ‘submission,’ ‘dominate,’ and ‘spanking’ all skyrocketed by 150-220% by female Pornhub viewers. Suffice it to say, the desire for less vanilla type videos is strong among the ladies – the only thing we can’t say for sure is which side of the paddle they’d prefer to be on.

Everything is hot when you're aroused.

From Dr. Justin Lehmiller (check out his great blog here):

Almost Everything And Everyone Seems More Attractive When You’re Sexually Aroused

How attractive do you find the prospect of sex with animals? Do you think it would be fun to watch another person urinate? Do you find shoes erotic? If you’re like most people, you probably said that these things aren’t exactly up your alley. However, if you were asked these same questions while you were in a heightened state of sexual arousal, research suggests that you might perceive them at least a little differently. Scientists have found that when we’re feeling very sexually aroused, things that we might otherwise perceive as gross or disgusting don’t seem quite as bad.

As some evidence of this, consider a classic study by Ariely and Lowenstein published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. In this research, 35 heterosexual male college undergraduates were asked to evaluate the attractiveness of various sexual activities under two very different circumstances: once while in their normal, unaroused state, and once while masturbating. All of the sexual stimuli were presented on a laptop computer while subjects were in a private room. In the masturbatory condition, the men were instructed to pleasure themselves to a “sub-orgasmic level of arousal.” They were explicitly told not to ejaculate, but if they accidentally did, they should hit the tab key in order to end the study (on a side note, ever since I read this paper, I’ve never been able to look at a tab key without snickering).

Subjects were presented with 20 different sexual stimuli and asked to rate how attractive each one was on a scale of 0 to 100. These included:

“Are women’s shoes erotic?”

“Can you imagine being attracted to a 12-year-old girl?”

“Can you imagine having sex with a 40-year-old/50-year-old/60-year-old woman?”

“Can you imagine having sex with a man?”

“Could it be fun to have sex with someone who is extremely fat?”

“Could you enjoy having sex with someone you hated?”

“If you were attracted to a woman and she proposed a threesome with a man, would you do it?”

“Is a woman sexy when she’s sweating?”

“Is the smell of cigarette smoke arousing?”

“Would it be fun to tie up/get tied up by your sexual partner?”

“Would it be fun to watch an attractive woman urinating?”

“Would you find it exciting to spank your sexual partner?”

“Would you find it exciting to get spanked by an attractive woman?”

“Would you find it exciting to have anal sex?”

“Can you imagine getting sexually excited by contact with an animal?”

“Do you prefer to have sex with the light on?” “

“Is just kissing frustrating?”

The researchers found that out of all 20 sexual stimuli presented, only one of them (sex with the lights on) was rated as less attractive in the masturbation condition; the other 19 were rated as more desirable when the subjects were masturbating compared to when they weren't aroused, including sex with animals, finding a 12-year-old girl attractive, and watching a woman urinate. I should note that of the 19 stimuli that increased in attractiveness, all of the differences were statistically significant except one: sex with another man. What this means is that perceptions of same-sex contact did not really become substantially more arousing, but everything else did.

These findings are consistent with a more recent study of sexual arousal in women that was conducted by a different set of scientists. In that study, participants were either shown “female friendly erotica” or not prior to being asked to engage in a series of disgusting tasks, such as putting one’s hand in a bowl full of (seemingly) used condoms. The researchers found that women who were sexually aroused from having watched porn were more willing to attempt the disgusting tasks and rated those tasks as less gross than women who had watched something else (you can read more about the details of that study here).

These findings tell us that sexual arousal changes our perceptions of the world around us. And we are not necessarily cognizant of these changes either—in other words, we may not consciously recognize that our perceptions have shifted when we enter a heightened state of sexual arousal.

There are huge implications of this for the development of our sexual interests. If this high state of sexual arousal leads to actual changes in our sexual behavior or if we start to create a psychological association between arousal and the presence of a disgusting stimulus, this could plant the seed for developing a fetish. I guess the take-home message from all of this is simple: be careful where you masturbate!

Data visualization of top 500 porn tags.

From Gizmodo:

The 500 most popular types of porn in one chart

Everybody watches porn but everybody has different tastes. And there is just so much porn to watch. But how can we figure which type of porn is most popular? This chart from Data Looks Dope's Max Einstein reveals the top 500 video tags in porn. You'll see everything from hardcore to Argentina.

The data comes from Xvideos' 500 most used tags. The idea is simple, if there are a lot of tags, there's a lot of demand.

Any surprises? Brunette beats Blonde, stockings is shockingly popular and words like 'this' 'and' and others make the cut. Einstein writes:

This is a visualization of how users of the most popular porn website in the world tag the astronomical amount of content being transferred each month.

And the chart (click to make larger - it's enormous):

Pornhub data on women's porn preferences.

Pornhub, as described by Wikipedia, is a "video sharing website and the largest pornography site on the internet." Like most modern businesses, Pornhub do analytics to better monitor performance and gain insights into their customers and market. They report some of their findings on a blog called Pornhub Insights, which is good fun. One of their more recent posts provided a glimpse at what their female viewers search for and watch:

What Women Want

Pornhub Insights is getting down with demographics! As part of a collaboration with our friends over at Buzzfeed, the Pornhub statisticians are offering a unique look at the way that members of the fairer sex get turned on with everyone’s favorite porn site. By segmenting by gender within our analytics tools, we were able to generate anonymized data that brings us one step closer to answering the time old question: what do women want? What does she desire? Well, apparently they want to watch a bunch of gay sex. Pornhub’s Lesbian category is the leading favorite among the ladies, with Gay (male) following close at second place. The Gay category only falls into 7th place for men in terms of top viewed categories so it’s noteworthy here that overall, this category ranks higher with the sex opposite to that which this type of content is intended for.

There’s no love from the ladies for the bigger beauties of porno land with the BBW category noticeably absent from the list on the female side despite its ranking at 13th place for the men. Though other classics like Teen, MILF, Threesome and Anal pepper this list as well, it’s clear that the type of sex that women are most interested in watching occurs between members of the same sex.

Go read the rest here.

Atypical sexual preferences, guilt and shame.

Another piece that's too nuanced to be cut up. In its entirety, from xoJane (click the link to get to the comments section, which is worth reading in and of itself):

TRIGGER WARNING: sexual violence.

Hit Me Baby, One More Time: Slapping, Spitting, Name-Calling and Other Sex Preferences I Feel Guilty About by Emily McCombs [check out more about Emily here]

I might prefer that my big controversial sex preferences involved whipped cream or whatever instead of wanting to be slapped in the face during intercourse, but that is not the hand I was dealt.

I feel bad about my BangBus.

Not while I'm actually watching it. Sexual arousal doesn't leave a lot of room for ambivalence and who stops masturbating to ponder the political implications of what they're getting off to? I can barely stop masturbating if someone else comes in the room, much less to make way for niggling feminist guilt.

But occasionally, when someone asks me if I watch porn, I feel embarassed to say that the only porn I regularly watch is founded on the (scripted) premise that a bunch of dudes are driving around in a van coercing women into having sex on camera with the promise of cash, before dumping them by the side of the road, shouting insults as they peel away.

Yep, that's what my vagina's into.

She unfortunately doesn't consult me much on what turns her on, and she never checks the current political climate, or she definitely would NOT be aroused by all the degrading, violent stuff she has shown a marked interest in over the years. I'm starting to feel weird about personifying my vagina in this way, so I'm going to shift gears.

I consider myself to err on the side of sexual submission. I have never been into the performative aspects of it all -- I am not some weird sex LARPer who wants to wear costumes and address each other as "Master" and "Slave." I don't want to go to special events, I shouldn't have to wear pleather just to get it done, and I don't want to "play." I want to have weird sex with weird people who like weird things, like an adult.

Some of those weird things that I like include: rough breast play including slapping, clothespins and ropes; name-calling of the slut-bitch-whore variety; forced deepthroating; facials; "Daddy" talk; rape play; spanking; dirty talk; hair-pulling; group sex; anal; and basically anything else filthy/nasty/taboo/found in your average pornographic video. Also, and here's the stuff that's more for special occasions and that I don't want to admit on a site for ladies: being slapped, being spit on, being choked, being urinated on.

Does that sound like a list of nightmares to you? To me it sounds like a delightful Tuesday evening.

I don't begrudge anyone their role as captain of their own sexual steamship. Desire is complicated and tricky to regulate -- I don't think I could stop being turned on by being treated "badly" any easier than a gay man could suddenly start being attracted to women. I might prefer that my big controversial sex preferences involved whipped cream or whatever instead of wanting to be slapped in the face during intercourse, but that is not the hand I was dealt.

A lot of factors go into the creation of a fetish, just as they do our non-sexual preferences. One of mine is almost certainly trauma. I wish this is something they had told me about rape: that afterward, your brain will try to work out what happened in bizarre, repetitive ways, which may include recreation of the trauma in your fantasies and life. I don't really understand it intellectually, but apparently my brain and heart think they can make things turn out differently this time, somehow reverse the past by taking control of what was once a powerless scenario.

You don't have to have been raped to have fetishes like mine. In fact, I liked a lot of this stuff before the traumatic event. But it's certainly an angle that seems to go unmentioned by those who think admitting that some women have rape fantasies is in some way encouraging men to rape. Are we willing to tell women how they should process their own experiences?

Recently I did a consulting job in which the state of modern sexuality was a major topic of discussion. We were given a presentation from a nervous young PR consultant whose main thesis was that pornography has damaged the state of gender relations irrevocably, that women now feel they can't measure up to the paid actresses and men's desires have been warped by repeated exposure.

"How can men and women be truly equal in a world in which men want to cum on women's faces?" he asked.

These issues are certainly real, but the idea that men consume porn and women are damaged by it seems too rigid to me. We'd all do well to remember that the actors and actresses in films are getting paid to do things that even they might not engage in in real life. I'll do a lot of shit for money I wouldn't do for fun. In reality, not all men want to cum on a woman's face, and a lot of women like having their faces cum on. (Just picture me doing that two thumbs "This guy" gesture right now.)

We all, male and female, live in a world where a wider range of sexual activity is visible and accessible to us. As long as we keep consent, respect and common courtesy top of mind, that fact in itself doesn't have to hurt anybody.

If you don't have fantasies like mine, I can understand the impulse to want to erase them from the world. But women like me and all the other straight freaks in this world stubbornly refuse to be erased. Sex is too important, too essential a life process, to spend our lives faking it. Anybody who thinks I, personally, am going to spend the rest of my life being sweetly made love to while I cry tears of sheer, uncut BOREDOM is out of their freaking minds.

Sometimes I hear women say that by engaging in "politically incorrect" sex, we are sending a message to men that all women want to be treated in such a manner. But consensual sexual activity, even if it resembles some non consensual sexual activity, isn't rape any more than movie murder is real murder. And while some people certainly think we should eliminate movie violence lest it drive the easily influenced to commit violent acts, we're not talking about movies here. We're talking about people. And you can't eliminate people or ask them to eliminate parts of themselves, no matter how messy or unappealing their desires may seem to you.

Since we can't erase reality, we better start dealing in nuance.

Getting slapped and called a slut because it turns me on and I've asked for it is not abuse. The men who want to do that are not abusers; in fact a lot of them are some of the nicest and most respectful men I've met outside of the bedroom. Rape play and rape are never going to be the same thing. And pretending that the two are similar is actually way more confusing and dangerous than clearly differentiating them.

If our men truly can't tell the difference between hurting, abusing and degrading a woman, and participating in consensual play utilizing some of these elements, then the problem lies with them and sexual education in our society, not with those temptingly rape-able women who enjoy rough play.

If you are still confused, consider this: After we're done, when I'm spent from being used, being told I'm a filthy whore as you hold me down or toss me around or hit me if those are the boundaries we've agreed upon, when I'm covered in saliva and sweat and bodily fluids, look at my face. I will be smiling.

That's the difference.

Real-time porn searches.

From Jezebel (and PornMD):

realtimepornsearch
realtimepornsearch

Here Is a Very Illuminating Feed of Real-Time Porn Searches

Ever wonder what kind of porn people are searching for right now? Wonder no more.

Here is a list of real-time porn searches on PornHub's network. It is a daunting and enlightening look into the human psyche and the very nature of desire. Also, if you are open-minded, it kind of reads like a provocative band name generator that's unusually plagued by spelling errors.

Some of the searches are very oddly specific; some are baffling; some are fairly predictable. Our favorites are as follows:

  • naughty bookworms
  • too drunk to orgy
  • mom tired (this is possibly the best because I imagine it's a weary suburban mom being like, "Not tonight, I just want to put my feet up and watch some Sex and the City.")
  • show one breast
  • farts
  • lucky girl
  • asian perfekt (so close on the spelling!)
  • anal vergine (keep trying!)
  • masculinity fail
  • pokemon hentai
  • son loser
  • feet caned
  • handjob outdoor (sounds very idyllic)
  • bug tits (less idyllic)

Masculinity Fail is clearly the best band name, followed by Bug Tits. Please feel free to share your own PornHub search feed findings in the comments!

Go check it out here. And see the comments, including the best-ofs, here.

Dinosaur erotica.

From Jezebel:

Dinosaur Erotica Exists and It's Just as Amazing as You'd Imagine

I found something to haunt your dreams and fuel your nightmares: DINOSAUR EROTICA.

I purchased one AS RESEARCH OKAY and, my oh my, it is delightfully disturbing. Here's a taste of In the Velociraptor's Nest:

Azog stood, back to the wall, clad only in damp buckskins, waiting for the beast to slash at her torso until she lay helpless and bleeding on the damp cave floor. She wondered if it would kill her first, or if her limbs would be sliced from her body as the beast gorged on her.

Instead, it reached out with a classed hand to snatch at her damp animal hide as it clung to one shoulder. Azog felt the kiss of sharp claws against her skin as the hide slid from her shoulder and exposed on naked, heaving breast. The raptor paused, curious, sniffing at her as she pressed desperately against the wall.

A reptilian tongue, stiff and hot, dashed out to lick at the tender, naked flesh so suddenly exposed. Azog gasped at the touch, then gradually relaxed as her body warmed to the intoxicating sensation of the beast's flesh against her own.

She wasn't sure if her sudden arousal was because of her earlier thwarted climax in the cool stream, or if she was just desperate for one last pleasant sensation before being torn limb from limb by the great, scaly beast. Either way, Azog relished the rasp of its tongue, hot and rough, on her sensitive skin.

I just want to point out that it took two people to write this 18-page book. That is all.

Happy reading!

Ad: Don't Offend.

An German ad that is likely to stir up some controversy, especially here in North America: 

The new commercial of the Prevention Network "Don't Offend" (Prevention Project Dunkelfeld) is to show that therapeutic treatment of people who feel sexually attracted to children is effective to prevent child sexual abuse. The protagonists represent the experiences from the Prevention Network: "People like you and me"- People from different age and from all social ranks.

Lift and carry.

Macrophilia and sthenolagnia are two atypical sexual preferences that feature, as the objects of desire, tall and strong women, respectively. Some women, especially body builders or ex-body builders, provide sex work-like services related to sthenolagnia, or muscle worship. These services typically involve displays of strength used on the client (i.e., lift and carry). To give you an idea of how this plays out, here are two videos that feature such behaviour: 

LIFT AND CARRY Lift & Carry is a session mainly performed by our strongest wrestlers, for example competitive weight trainers, fitness models and experienced wrestlers. A style that includes lifting of the client and carrying them. PLEASE NOTE: MAX WEIGHT RESTRICTIONS APPLY FOR PARTICULAR MODELS. PLEASE CHECK BEFORE BOOKING.

She is a real beauty with strength. Woman is 35 years old and guy is 23 years old. How easily she carries him.

Mainstream erotic literature here to stay?

The massive success of Fifty Shades of Grey (of which I'll hold my opinion, for the time being) has led to a growing interest in erotic literature. From an article on the CBC:

More shades of sexy in 2013

The resurgence of interest in erotic literature this past year, thanks mostly to E.L. James's Fifty Shades trilogy, is only the tip of the iceberg, as 2013 will see a big wave of new hyped-up sexy adult stories hit the market.

"I definitely don't see this phenomenon slowing down. It certainly hasn't yet," Beth Lockley, executive director of publicity and marketing for Penguin Group of Canada, told the Canadian Press recently. "It sort of seems almost hotter than ever in a way."

American author Sylvia Day, who has found immense success with her Crossfire series, will see her third book, Entwined with You, out in bookstores this spring. The previous book, Reflected in You, sold nearly 20,000 copies in Canada alone during its first week of release last October.

There's also quite a buzz surrounding a Canadian author writing under the pseudonym Sylvain Reynard, whose series Gabriel's Inferno also began as Twilight-inspired fan fiction, much like Fifty Shades of Grey. The story is more distinctly Canadian, however, based around a brilliant but mysterious professor at the University of Toronto who has a passionate affair with an intelligent but conflicted grad student.

Read the rest here.

Autoandrophilia.

Autogynephilia is a "man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman" (Blanchard, 2004). Someone asked if the same phenomenon exists in women. A student from class did some poking around on the CrossDreamers website and found some case studies of autoandrophiliacs, or women who are turned on by thinking of themselves as men. Here is one of the cases:

She enjoyed having sex as a woman with men but also particularly enjoyed living out her sexual fantasy of being male with a penis. She was a self-declared bisexual who, apart from having sex with Robert [her husband] and other couples, would also go off to visit female sex workers herself. She particularly enjoyed the fantasy of raping someone else. This was generally played out with female sex workers who would be accommodating and compliant with the fantasy to her satisfaction. The only male she carried out this sex fantasy with was her husband Robert and at the time of penetrating him she said she clearly envisioned herself as a man with a penis, dominant, powerful and aggressive. Clair was quite clear that although she might run these fantasies in her mind they were just sexual fantasies.

There are several others, all worth reading. You can find them here.