Hey, guess what?! Women. Watch. Porn. While only eight percent of women admitted to watching online porn in a 2013 Pew Research Center Report, just 25 percent of men admitted to it, too, which means everyone's kinda just full of it. But that's OK, it's time to start talking about the porn we're watching. While a lot of research is done to figure out exactly how women watch porn, what they search for, and who they're searching for — and according to PornHub that's lesbian porn, threesome porn, gay male porn, My Little Pony porn, Kim Kardashian and JamesDeen.com — that doesn't mean this is what turns every woman on. Like any other form of entertainment, just because you like one genre one day, it doesn't mean that's what you want the next day or every day.
But what if you're new to porn or haven't really explored what's out there? Luckily, the options are bigger and better than they ever were to watch and enjoy porn. And who better to remind us of that then female porn star Stoya? She was our special guest on the latest episode of our sex and relationships podcast "I Want It That Way" and had a lot to say about the porn industry and what kind of porn is out there. Take a listen below:
With her new site TRENCHCOATx, Stoya now gets to do exactly what she wants. "What I'm interested in is making pornography a safer space to explore," she says, "Right now the way a lot of people find pornography is through a recommendation. So someone says 'You really like romantic stories, like Nine and Half Weeks, so you'd really like an explicit version of that. You should look up Erika Lust and knock yourself out. Or, they find pornography by typing in specific words 'school girl', 'MILF', 'hairy,' 'anal' — and that's what you'll get ... or things that were tagged inaccurately."
But Stoya is trying to reverse that. What if there are things you really don't want to see on a site, like bigotry or green fishnets? What she's trying to do is give people the option to hide (or be warned) about those things they don't want so that they can explore the rest of the site safely.
"Exploration — it's one of the really cool things about sex and sexuality, and every new partner," Stoya says.
Here are some of Stoya's recommendations, based off what you may like:
1. If You Like Tattooed Women Who Look Like They're Having Fun, Plus Some Rough Scenes ...
Try: Burning Angel. "Most of their movies are pretty fricking funny too," says Stoya.
2. If You Like Seeing "Real Sex" Done By People Who Aren't Professional:
Try: MakeLoveNotPorn
3. If You Like Seeing Queer Bodies Being Represented With Purposeful Inclusivity:
Try: CrashPadSeries
4. If You Like Story Driven Porn And High Production Value:
Try: TrenchcoatX
5. If You Like Gonzo ...
Try: Manuel Ferrara. "His Raw series is gonna be right up your alley," Stoya says.
"Sexuality is so personal that regardless of whether I watch video pornography or not my specific recommendations aren't going to be useful for another person," she says. It's why she takes issue with "porn for women"— the idea that we all enjoy the same few things. It's much more about what you like. Stoya relates it to watching a movie — finding the right porn for you may just require a little bit of research. And lucky for you, there's plenty of places to look.
Images: photoniko/Fotolia; Giphy (1-4) ;fymanuelferrara/tumblr
