It's no secret that I'm a big fan of porn, which means 2015 was a good year for me. Not only because there was so much porn (there always is), but because with new research, technology, and ways to consume it, the porn industry is changing.
Yes, it can seem that at base and animalistic as (mainstream) porn is, it's pretty much been exactly the same from beginning of time. The tropes stay the same, and the unoriginal story lines (when they even bother to have story lines)— I can imagine that somewhere there's a cave drawing of a pizza delivery man with an erection. But as time goes on, we are becoming more conscious of the other areas around porn— how it's produced, what we're watching, and the effect it has on us. And this can only be a good thing. Because porn is great— but porn that's feminist and more fun to watch is even better.
This year brought more types of porn, more feminist options, and more ways to watch it. We basically started looking into the porn of the future, and it looked pretty awesome. So here are six ways porn changed in 2015, because it was an effing great year and I can't wait to see what 2016 brings:
1. We Became Realistic About How Much Porn Women Watch
This was a good one. While porn has long been thought of as a male arena, in 2015 we started to acknowledge that women love it too. A survey of 3,000 women by Marie Claire found that not only are women watching it for themselves and not their partners, 10 percent are doing it every day and 30 percent are doing it once a week.
2. ... And What They're Into
And, the types of porn that we thought were made for men are actually being watched by women more. According to a study done by Pornhub and Buzzfeed, the most popular porn for women is lesbian porn, followed by gay male porn. Women are 80 percent more likely to search for gang bangs and 75 percent more likely to search threesomes than men. While none of this is to say that all women like the same porn, it's good to finally open up the conservation about the different types of porn women enjoy.
3. Feminist Porn Boomed
Speaking of catering to female porn desires, 2015 was a great year for feminist porn. And more queer porn, more ethical porn, more everything good porn. There are so many feminist porn directors to check out, as well as amazing sites like Make Love Not Porn and the "How To Make Me Come" Tumblr, which has real women describing what actually makes them orgasm, there's a lot more realistic porn available.
4. We're Phoning It In
This still blows my mind. Although we've longed moved from the days of embarrassingly watching VHS on the family TV, and even the days of my sexual awakening (aka smutty Harry Potter fan fiction), I thought laptops were the standard porn devices. But in 2015, a Pornhub survey showed us that 60 percent of us are actually watching porn on mobile devices. WHY WOULD YOU WATCH IT ON YOUR PHONE? DON'T YOU NEED YOUR HANDS!?! You're all too techie for me.
5. We Tumbled
It's not just what we're watching it on, it's what we're looking at. Although Pornhub and similar sites are still huge, 2015 saw more and more of us turning to Tumblr for porn, especially women. There are lots of amazing Tumblr accounts for porn, but I'm still trying to work the internet, so I'll leave it to you young folks.
6. It Went Virtual
THIS IS THE FUTURE, people. Although it may have been in the pipeline for a while, 2015 is when virtual reality porn really burst onto the scene. There are loads of options, including dates rather than sex, for those of you who want the romantic option and have a very fancy set of goggles.
The people of BaDoink took their product out into the world and let people experience virtual reality porn for the first time and they went effing nuts for it. Seriously. I didn't want to try it and then I watched the joy on the faces of the people giving it a go and now I want to experience this crazy porn that you're a part of while you watch.
The future is here and it looks sexy as hell. Well done, 2015.
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