While I have my reservations about 50 Shades of Grey, I have always credited it with one thing.

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The book demonstrated that women like sex.

Not just sexy, young women, and not just sweet, vanilla sex. It proved that all sorts of women enjoy all sorts of sex.

The book and film franchise had, in theory, erased the notion that women don’t like kinky or dirty sex.


So how are we still expressing surprise at data which suggests that women, just like men, enjoy dark porn?

Dr Seth Stephens-Davidsowitz, a former Google data scientist was given access to PornHub’s search data, for his latest book. He writes:



‘If there is a genre of porn in which violence is perpetrated against a woman, my analysis of the data shows that it almost always appeals disproportionately to women.’

According to PornHub’s data, women are watching content with tags like ‘painful anal crying’, ‘forced’ and ‘brutal’ and presumably they’re aroused by this.

As someone who enjoys darker porn, I was entirely unsurprised by this, but academic experts seemed unwilling to buy the research, with Dr Gail Dines telling Vice:

‘Until we know how long [the women are] staying on the porn sites, and have actual empirical evidence about what they are doing while on the sites, we don’t know if they’re looking out of interest, or doing it because that’s what their boyfriends or hook-ups want, or if they’re actually masturbating to it.’

An equally patronising take on the issue is to suggest that women who enjoy this kind of porn have experienced abuse.

Dr Raj Persaud told Vice:

‘I think it’s probably the case that women who’ve been abused have ended up with a disturbed view of sex. People who’ve suffered former psychological trauma or abuse are often in abusive relationships – they repeat the cycle.

‘We don’t know whether the people doing those searches are in an abusive relationship, and are doing the searches because they are being coerced into doing so.’

As someone who enjoys BDSM porn, as well as all sorts of other niche interests covered in the research, I find the suggestion that I’m only wired that way because I was abused as a child, or because my boyfriend forces me in to it, incredibly offensive.

I have a perfectly healthy, happy relationship with sex, good self-esteem and a great relationship. And yet yes, I sometimes enjoy some faux-violent porn. I refuse to feel bad about that. I also will not the pathologized for it.

Despite the fact that some depictions (like corporal punishment and consensual non-consent) are now deemed illegal for production in the UK, extreme porn production companies like Kink.com are, in fact, extremely ethical.

My porn consumption is ethical, free range and practically organic. It’s the Whole Foods of porn.

The actresses who work for the production companies I watch porn through are women who love what they do for a living. Women who genuinely enjoy the activities that they get up to on film.



Believe it or not, women are actually capable of enjoying sex that doesn’t involve vanilla scented candles and massage oil. That doesn’t mean that they’re victims, or that their partners are manipulating them. It means that they have a fantasy.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

There is no reason to be ashamed of a fantasy. You don’t choose what you’re aroused by, and just because you are aroused by something in fantasy does not mean that you want to do it in real life.

Rape is often reported as a common female sexual fantasy, and it’s true. Many women (the statistics are sketchy but they’re reported as between 31 and 57 percent) do fantasise about forced sex.

These fantasies are driven by all sorts of factors. Some women find the idea of being irresistible a turn on. Some like the idea of being guilt free in a sexual scenario because it’s not their fault.

Some women are aroused the potential for violence or degradation. In the same way that straight women can watch lesbian porn without wanting to be with another woman, it’s entirely possible to watch violent porn without wanting to experience violence in real life.

Encouraging those women to feel bad about themselves because their fantasy isn’t pink and fluffy does no-one any good.

Anyway, research from University of North Texas and University of Notre Dame found that women who had rape fantasies were less likely to be sexually repressed and more likely to have high self-esteem.


So that theory about anyone who likes dark sexual fantasies being sad and broken just doesn’t hold any water.

We don’t need to answer the question ‘why do women find this arousing’. Female sexuality should be allowed to exist, just like male sexuality, rather than being shoved under the microscope at every possible juncture.

MORE: People share their anything but vanilla sexual fantasies in eye-opening video

MORE: Why are so many women choosing lesbian and gay porn over heterosexual porn?

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