Though it's rarely discussed, research has long suggested very few women are actually straight, at least, not as far as the traditional definition of heterosexuality is concerned. I've found myself on the receiving end of these comments in real-life, too, by well-meaning strangers and peers alike. Since my own coming out, barely a day has passed when I haven't opened social media to see a comment suggesting my queerness is a performance, a cry for attention from men, or a reaction to not being able to find "a good man".
Queer women and femme-identifying people face disproportionate discrimination and violence as a result of this, and are additionally far more likely to have our relationships stigmatised, fetishised, and delegitimised. To identify as anything outside of this, and rebel against the idea that appeasing men is the price we pay for admission into the world as women, is to threaten the entire ecosystem of the forest. Instead of recognising what's around us, compulsory heterosexuality (the idea of presenting straightness as a kind of "default setting") teaches women to view ourselves through the lens of the male gaze. Some study subjects also reported feelings of guilt towards female porn stars, which are avoided in all male scenes.įor a subset of women who are rape and abuse survivors, m/m is one of the few types of sexually explicit media they can enjoy without feeling triggered or re-traumatised.Įven more interestingly, the research revealed that over half of the women watching gay porn also imagine themselves as a man while masturbating, describing this as ‘empowering’.That's the thing about heteronormative culture it takes roots in our lives that grow into branches which weave themselves around us so insidiously, we can't see the forest we're walking through. Some of the reasons are pretty self-evident: it probably shouldn’t be surprising that a good number of women like looking at naked men.
women represent viable secondary consumers of m/m porn. There is growing acceptance that it is perhaps not quite as uncommon as first thought.įor example, m/m was the second most popular choice for women visitors to Pornhub for the last two years of viewer data. Given the fact that most men identify as heterosexual, this means that women are proportionally more likely to watch gay male porn than men.ĭr Lucy Neville, who lead the study, said: More interestingly, 37 percent of the viewers of gay male porn on the site were female. Last year, Pornhub’s annual review revealed that over a quarter of their users were women. This isn’t the first indication that some women are partial to male only scenes. According to a new study from the University of Leicester, a significant number of women are watching gay porn while they enjoy some “me time”. It’s often assumed that men watch more porn than women, and that their viewing habits are kinkier.īut it turns out that this couldn’t be further from the case.