Let’s talk about the many benefits of porn for women.
One of my friends is a crusader of a different kind—she is intensely devoted to spreading the word to women that porn is their friend. She is constantly encouraging her circles of friends to discover the benefits of porn for women and use it to their advantage.
Some women are ambivalent about porn and have concerns about consent, objectification, violence, desensitization, and unrealistic sexual and body expectations. Some women are flatly opposed to porn. Others prefer feminist or women-led pornography to male-driven porn. And some are brazenly pro-porn, like my friend.
She feels that women are too worried about men thinking about sex—even kinky women—and not worried enough about how porn can enhance their own pleasure, orgasms, and erotic life.
Read: What Kind of Porn Turns Women On
Kate acknowledges that there is a downside to porn, and shares women’s concerns about the sleazier side of the sex industry. But she sees that all industries, all organizations, all institutions, even churches and charities, have problems with greed, slavery, lack of consent, corruption, assault, and more. “Even the United Nations,” she quipped. To her, anywhere humans go there is a dark side.
Rather than point out the obvious and focus on the negative, she says we should support the best practices, focus on the positive, and take what we can get. I’m pretty porn positive, too, so I think she has a point!
How Porn Benefits Women
Here are some of the many benefits of porn for women that I have come up with after a few hours of sexy talk with Kate and the girls.
1. Porn shows all kinds of bodies, for men, women, and transgender lovers.
Porn is often criticized for creating unrealistic expectations of what women should look like. While there is some truth to this, it is a small minority of porn nowadays that promotes a limited notion of beauty or who gets to have hot sex.
Sure, elite model magazines like Playboy focused on blonde, buxom, slender, curvy ideas about beauty. Kate says, with her characteristic candid charm, “So what? Beautiful boobilicious blondes need fucking too. They get a few pages, don’t they?”
Kate points out that the idea that porn today features only skinny young white women with trim labia is “nonsense.”
So much porn now is “amateur” or “real lovers” that you see every kind of body shape, cultural background, every shape and kind of pussy and cock. The kink community and polyamory community were also pioneers in democratizing erotic beauty and our homemade and professional porn has long featured women—and men—in realistic range.
All you need to do is a search on any popular porn hosting site and you’ll find everything from barely legal to grandma, from skinny-mini to queen-sized women, blondes, natural dreadlocks, to redheads, of every race and culture. There are men, women, transgender, and nonbinary bodies of every conceivable kind.
2. Porn features naked women and lesbian sex.
A huge part of women’s sexuality is fantasy about women. This holds true even for those who have not had lesbian sex and those who don’t even want to. Female sexuality is expansive and fluid and often includes other women. Way back before this was politically correct, porn gave women the outlet to enjoy fantasizing about other women.
Read: Why You Should Watch Gay Porn
3. Porn is pro-orgasm, for women.
Porn is often criticized for showing women howling at the moon just because a man sticks his cock inside her. Kate says this is a partial truth—yes, porn is greatly exaggerated in many aspects. While the “how-to” part is lacking, porn still promotes the excitement and importance of female orgasm. While some kinds of porn don’t show a fair assessment of what female orgasm looks like, a lot does!
There is a very wide variety of porn, and some of it is downright obsessed with our orgasms and different techniques to get there. Even more, women are constantly shown masturbating ourselves during sex, promoting the best way for women to orgasm, by taking charge and taking matters into our own hands, playing with our clits while fucking.
Read: 5 Myths about Female Orgasms
4. Porn has been polyamorous since day one.
If mainstream society has taught only one kind of sexuality was normal—monogamous, heteronormative sexuality—porn has always pushed for freedom and expanded boundaries for lovers.
5. Porn intensifies arousal for women.
Women’s libido and arousal have an incredible range from “go ahead let’s do it, it’s nice” to “OMG, TEN ORGASMS ARE NOT ENOUGH!” Sex is better for everyone involved when women are intensely aroused rather than simply “into it.”
Porn can make that happen. Study after study shows that physical arousal for women gets more intense—contractions, lubrication, heart rate—when looking at porn. Even if she’s not as psychologically interested as men in looking at other people fucking, her body responds.
This doesn’t mean we are machines who just consume videos and eject orgasm. It means that when there is a quickie or things are a bit routine or she needs novelty, consider looking at some porn of her choice and let it ignite more intense sex!
Read: Kinky Sex: 10 Surprising Benefits
6. Porn is important for women as they grow older.
To keep hormones flowing, blood circulating, and tissues in sexual shape, continuing to have sex and to masturbate is very important for women in middle age and after, before, during and following menopause. But many women lose libido entirely or it is greatly reduced and so days, then weeks, then months go by without pursuing sex or masturbation. This is not healthy—our vaginas need to be used to stay healthy!
Most older women have mild to moderate pain and dryness, but the antidote is the very thing many women may feel they aren’t up to. Porn can help women continue to experience arousal—porn is great for “masturbation quickies,” Kate told our fortysomething girlfriends. Even if you’re not thinking of sex all day, you can still get off, and quickly, if you throw some porn on your phone!
Read: Women Share How They Masturbate
7. Porn is a safe way to explore fantasies and fetishes.
If women are shy or not sure about pursuing erotic adventures, or a partner is asking for something and she isn’t sure how it will feel or look, porn can give us a wide variety of access to any kind of fantasy. What does a particular kink play look like? If I’m turned on by a certain kind of body, or a role play or fetish, what will it feel like to see that play out?
Women can find out if something a partner wants but falls flat for us could be exciting anyways, or just check out how others enact a kink. We might have a strange fantasy we don’t want to share in real life first, so we have the chance to get comfortable in a private setting before deciding to go live.
Read: Kinky Masturbation Tips for Solo Love
Do the women in your life watch porn? What benefits for porn for women do you see?
Tell us what you think