I always sort of thought that most women watched porn and just didn't disclose that fact, but A Billion Wicked Thoughts has not only clarified that issue, but has explained why I would have guessed as I did:
Only a minority of women watch porn, they say, but "One particular group of women reported higher amounts of porn viewing, larger porn stashes, greater comfort with their partner watching porn, greater enjoyment of bondage, and more interest in using the Internet for porn. Who were these women? Self-identified bisexuals."
Oh. I see.
And then, "On OKCupid, the pattern of bisexual women's responses to questions was distinct from straight women and lesbians- but quite similar to the responses of heterosexual men, as shown in the figure below." In fact, their chart displays bisexual women's answers as almost the perfect midpoint between those of straight men and those of straight women. In addition, "Among registered users on the visual porn site Fantasti.cc, 38% of the women identify as bisexual." Actually, it looks like bisexual women are more into lesbian porn than lesbians; and, all women are WAY more into GAY PORN than anyone has ever suggested ("In Japan, almost anything homosexual can attract an all-female audience," for example) - why is this?
The authors suggest that (1) the fact that women like gay porn is not really surprising because it removes the gender dynamics that women can find distasteful and therefore that turn women off from porn; it keeps the power dynamics and hot male bodies they like; and (2) bisexual women may watch porn more like straight men because their brains are more like "straight" men's than "straight" women's brains.
Let's unpack this, because this last bit is what I draw from what they wrote rather than an explicit claim the authors make. They talk a lot about the physical difference between the stereotypical male brain and the stereotypical female brain, but they also explain that brain structure is determined in large part by pregnancy hormone balances; while your sex organs are determined early, the bulk of brain development that might give one a taste for masculinity or femininity, as well as a toppy nature or a bottomy nature, happen later - and may happen at slightly different times. Hormones called androgyns course through our veins during pregnancy (ultimately we're talking about estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, but depending on how much we have of each one hormone might be automatically converted by the mother's body into another). You might have already guessed the implication of this claim: these hormones vary with every single pregnancy, so no two sexualities are ever going to be completely alike!
A fetal boy, therefore, can be subject to androgyns that trigger the development of aggressive brain structures popularly associated with men OR, at a certain point, androgyns that develop communicative, perhaps more passive brain structures - the type we find most commonly in males who identify as "gay." They might be subject to both types, too, along the way (maybe ending up as a gay top). The authors don't talk about women here much (they have less evidence on women because of the smaller sample set of porn-watching and searching women).
But it can be easily extended, I think, and I'll use myself as an example. After my first trimester I had my little vagina just growing along already, but somewhere in the next 6 months I got a heavy dose of testosterone at the precise moment it would make me slightly toppy and more aggressive than your average gal. As a byproduct of this process I am more willing than the average woman to watch porn (I got me some brain structures that react to visuals alone without as much female-associated contextual need for a story). The fact that I respond to the sight of either kind of sex organ doesn't appear dependent on this process, though - it turns out women have a physiological reaction to graphic imagery of members of either gender even when it turns them off psychologically - what's changes is what actually has the capacity to turn me off psychologically.
The combination of my male-like search for more partners over quality partners (experience has definitely borne this one out) and my indifference to sex organs makes me closer to the hypersexual pole of my graph. I retain more of my ability to STAY turned on psychologically by sex images of any kind, which causes me to fall right in the middle of the hetero-homo axis. My cocktail of androgyns building up aggressive brain centers makes me more toppy.
Now let's take the graph of my character Jackson from No Church in the Wild - a self-identified gay man who says he's grossed out by pussy.
Jackson is equally interested in topping and bottoming (the authors make a point that a bottomy nature may be the result of the greatest influx of testosterone during gestation, interestingly, perhaps converted to estrogen to explain the development of female-like reward cycles). He's not particularly hypersexual or asexual, but he is a great communicator. In fact, as teens, I talked on the phone with the man who inspired this character almost every day (the authors note that this is very common among young girlfriends, but almost no young men talk to friends on the phone for fun). So, it seems that an influx of feminine-making androgyns hit him later in development, enough to make him communicate in a more "feminine" way, but not so much that he came to be stimulated entirely by passivity.
None of the axes can be determined with just the development circumstances that affected the other; you need a different calculus for each one. But it does work if you split the analysis up...and the logical conclusion would be that MOST people actually get a little bit of hormones that trigger the development of male-like AND female-like brain characteristics.
Cue lifetime obsession with the effect of androgyns on fetal development!
Only a minority of women watch porn, they say, but "One particular group of women reported higher amounts of porn viewing, larger porn stashes, greater comfort with their partner watching porn, greater enjoyment of bondage, and more interest in using the Internet for porn. Who were these women? Self-identified bisexuals."
Oh. I see.
And then, "On OKCupid, the pattern of bisexual women's responses to questions was distinct from straight women and lesbians- but quite similar to the responses of heterosexual men, as shown in the figure below." In fact, their chart displays bisexual women's answers as almost the perfect midpoint between those of straight men and those of straight women. In addition, "Among registered users on the visual porn site Fantasti.cc, 38% of the women identify as bisexual." Actually, it looks like bisexual women are more into lesbian porn than lesbians; and, all women are WAY more into GAY PORN than anyone has ever suggested ("In Japan, almost anything homosexual can attract an all-female audience," for example) - why is this?
The authors suggest that (1) the fact that women like gay porn is not really surprising because it removes the gender dynamics that women can find distasteful and therefore that turn women off from porn; it keeps the power dynamics and hot male bodies they like; and (2) bisexual women may watch porn more like straight men because their brains are more like "straight" men's than "straight" women's brains.
Let's unpack this, because this last bit is what I draw from what they wrote rather than an explicit claim the authors make. They talk a lot about the physical difference between the stereotypical male brain and the stereotypical female brain, but they also explain that brain structure is determined in large part by pregnancy hormone balances; while your sex organs are determined early, the bulk of brain development that might give one a taste for masculinity or femininity, as well as a toppy nature or a bottomy nature, happen later - and may happen at slightly different times. Hormones called androgyns course through our veins during pregnancy (ultimately we're talking about estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, but depending on how much we have of each one hormone might be automatically converted by the mother's body into another). You might have already guessed the implication of this claim: these hormones vary with every single pregnancy, so no two sexualities are ever going to be completely alike!
A fetal boy, therefore, can be subject to androgyns that trigger the development of aggressive brain structures popularly associated with men OR, at a certain point, androgyns that develop communicative, perhaps more passive brain structures - the type we find most commonly in males who identify as "gay." They might be subject to both types, too, along the way (maybe ending up as a gay top). The authors don't talk about women here much (they have less evidence on women because of the smaller sample set of porn-watching and searching women).
But it can be easily extended, I think, and I'll use myself as an example. After my first trimester I had my little vagina just growing along already, but somewhere in the next 6 months I got a heavy dose of testosterone at the precise moment it would make me slightly toppy and more aggressive than your average gal. As a byproduct of this process I am more willing than the average woman to watch porn (I got me some brain structures that react to visuals alone without as much female-associated contextual need for a story). The fact that I respond to the sight of either kind of sex organ doesn't appear dependent on this process, though - it turns out women have a physiological reaction to graphic imagery of members of either gender even when it turns them off psychologically - what's changes is what actually has the capacity to turn me off psychologically.
Now let's take the graph of my character Jackson from No Church in the Wild - a self-identified gay man who says he's grossed out by pussy.
Jackson is equally interested in topping and bottoming (the authors make a point that a bottomy nature may be the result of the greatest influx of testosterone during gestation, interestingly, perhaps converted to estrogen to explain the development of female-like reward cycles). He's not particularly hypersexual or asexual, but he is a great communicator. In fact, as teens, I talked on the phone with the man who inspired this character almost every day (the authors note that this is very common among young girlfriends, but almost no young men talk to friends on the phone for fun). So, it seems that an influx of feminine-making androgyns hit him later in development, enough to make him communicate in a more "feminine" way, but not so much that he came to be stimulated entirely by passivity.
None of the axes can be determined with just the development circumstances that affected the other; you need a different calculus for each one. But it does work if you split the analysis up...and the logical conclusion would be that MOST people actually get a little bit of hormones that trigger the development of male-like AND female-like brain characteristics.
Cue lifetime obsession with the effect of androgyns on fetal development!
