BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

xHamster Surveys Reveals Women Are Efficient Porn Connoisseurs

Following
This article is more than 4 years old.

xHamster, the porn site that also exists, recently completed a survey of 100,000 unique site visitors. The survey was intended to track gendered responses for statistical behavioral analysis. For the sake of brevity, it was limited to questions that were keyed to individuals who identify as men and women.

Since it's Valentine's Day, that storied Hallmark holiday that demands your attention and affection through a series of cliche gifts and actions, xHamster decided to take a deeper dive into its audience of women. Nearly 30% of xHamster's global porn viewing audience is women, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise here in the 21st century.

xHamster ran a similar survey last year, but the sample size was too small to come to the conclusions it arrived at this year, when the programming team at xHamster accidentally left the survey active for a week instead of a day. This inadvertently cracked open some assumptions about its audience, which xHamster is sharing with the world. Take from it what you want, but stats don't lie (people do, so there is likely a standard margin of error).

From a demographic standpoint, women consuming porn are younger. 33.8% of those surveyed are 18-24 years old, while the largest percentage of men (28.3%) are 25-34 years old. This reflects a generational shift in attitudes towards porn. Both men (83%) and women (69.9%) watch porn several times a week or more, and both men (77.13%) and women (77.52%) said that they feel positive about watching porn. In a survey. On a porn site.

Both men (64.1%) and women (62.8%) overwhelmingly said they spent no money on porn last year but 11.9% of women said that they spent over $1000. That number is nearly double the amount of men who said they spent that kind of money on porn in the previous year. The average woman spending on porn dishes out about $129 a year, while men averaged around $66.

There's always been a misconception about porn, that men like it better than women. While sure, only 30% of xHamster's audience is women, that's still 30%. And while men generally view porn as disposable content, women are younger and taking a more cultured approach to the medium. This is a more gender-diverse group of consumer, tuned to the social aspect of porn as much as the base quick-fix erotic nature of it.

60% of women say porn has improved their sex life (versus 51% of men) and the rest are generally neutral. More women (83%) than men (81%) consider porn a healthy and normal sexual outlet and more women (71%) than men (69%) feel that porn helps them have a better understanding of sex and sexuality. These aren't huge disparities, which is kind of the point. The women watching porn are just as, if not more, keen to the intricacies of the genre.

"Our ideal consumer — the one most likely to purchase porn — is actually not some lonely man, but young, sexually active people of all genders," says xHamster Vice President Alex Hawkins, while talking about his desire to expand the xHamster data center into a more fully realized research team. "Men, it turns out, are more easily satisfied with free content. Women are more selective, and take pleasure more seriously. This, in some ways, mirrors what we see with the new generation. They understand the relative downsides of 'free' content and are paradoxically more willing to pay. This, of course, turns everything that we think we know about the industry on its head."

So the gist is that while women watch porn with less overall frequency, they spend more on a per annum basis than men, making women once again and deservedly so — smarter

So the gist is that while women watch porn with less overall frequency, they spend more on a per annum basis than men, making women once again and deservedly so — smarter than their male counterparts. When it comes to porn consumption, women prefer quality (which is what spending would indicate) over quantity. Efficient, neat and while at a slightly higher cost, effective. They don't treat porn as disposable.

And its not. There is an entire industry based around porn, and a lot of it is understandably more pleasurable to consume for women.

Men, we're mostly single-minded savage creatures, less likely to appreciate the work and art that goes into a lot of what constitutes porn these days. From the plethora of cam models out there managing multiple social channels and building their brands, to the AAA porn stars, there is a lot of porn that skews toward women viewers rather than the throw-away mentality of men.

It'll be interesting to see how xHamster (and other sites) handle this sort of information. Mostly the focus is strictly on traffic, with some nods toward women viewers, but mostly just focusing on where sales are coming from — not who. Women are less conflicted about porn, younger and more likely to embrace an industry that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Check out my website