A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire

by Ogi Ogas

  According to a member survey, the most popular type of sexual content was couples having intercourse. The least popular was facials—a man ejaculating on a woman’s face. Sssh costs $19.95 per month. So who subscribes? Most subscribers are age thirty-five to forty-nine, though they range from eighteen to sixty-four. Most are married, though more than 70 percent of members say they view the site alone, without their partner. The average length of a subscription is three months—longer than the average subscription length to male sites—and Angie points out that Sssh has active users who have subscribed for more than a decade.

  Though Sssh and For the Girls are the most popular paysites targeting heterosexual women, there are a handful of similar sites for women, such as Candida Royalle and Seska 4 Lovers. There are also sites that sell videos targeted at women (though they often claim to target “couples”), such as Comstock Films and Viv Thomas. But the greatest growth is in new, smaller Web sites that target lesbian, bisexual, and “alternative” female audiences, such as Feck and I Feel Myself.

  So what kinds of men do women like to look at?

  WHY WOMEN SHOULD WORK AS NFL SCOUTS

  Many of the sensory cues that arouse women are not visual. A sexy voice, a masculine scent, and a sensuous touch all ignite greater arousal in women than feminine versions of these qualities ignite in men. This might be another reason for women’s general lack of interest in Internet porn: they can’t feel it in a physical way that activates their sensory cues. Or perhaps there simply aren’t enough cues to meet the threshold of the Power of And.

  Though romance novels offer an even more disembodied experience than videos, they contain a greater density of psychological cues, especially in the form of emotional details. And female-targeted stories still contain visual details. “I have consumed vast quantities of female-created (written) porn created for female audiences, written by (mostly) straight women,” shared AlaraJRogers on Salon. “And almost no one ever talks about the size of the penis. But the color and intensity of the eyes, the hair color, the general shape of the body, a brief description of the face—those are de rigueur. And occasionally discussion of the butt. Women like butts.”

  We analyzed the text of more than ten thousand romance novels published from 1983 to 2008 to determine the most common descriptions of the hero’s physical appearance. Here are the seven most frequent words describing his masculine features:cheekbones

  jaw

  brows

  shoulders

  forehead

  waist

  hips

  And the seven most common adjectives used to describe masculine features?lean

  handsome

  blond

  tanned

  muscular

  masculine

  chiseled

  AlaraJRogers was correct—no synonym for penis appears in the hundred most common physical descriptors used to describe the romance hero. If we wished to describe the ideal-looking hero, we could use the most common two-word physical descriptions: the perfect hero boasts “blue eyes,” a “straight nose,” “high forehead,” and “square jaw” together making a “handsome face.” His head is framed by “dark hair,” which accents the “white teeth” in his “sensual mouth” curved into a “crooked smile.” He stands tall with “broad shoulders,” a “broad chest,” “narrow waist,” “flat stomach,” “strong arms,” “big hands,” “big feet,” and “long legs”—though the heroine’s eye might ultimately be drawn to his “powerful thighs.”

  Brain imaging studies show that the female brain processes a man’s visual features with the same speed that the male brain processes female features. Attractive visual features trigger similar subcortical circuits responsible for sexual arousal in both men and women, but in women this automatic, unconscious reaction gets intercepted by the Detective Agency before it gets converted into conscious, sex-seeking desire. Because of the Power of And, the Detective Agency weighs other factors—especially contextual cues—before reaching the threshold for generating subjective arousal. This is one reason why almost no women masturbate while looking at a single image. It takes other psychological cues, such as a story about why this rakish man in a tuxedo is lifting up the skirt of the innocent Latina maid, before a woman’s sexual imagination takes off.

  We saw how men are aroused by the physical features of women associated with estrogen. Similarly, women are attracted to the physical features of men associated with testosterone. This attraction is especially strong during ovulation and when seeking an extramarital affair. But estrogen and testosterone signal very different qualities. Estrogen indicates a woman’s health, energy, and future reproductive potential. In contrast, some studies suggest that high levels of testosterone are associated with poorer long-term health. Moreover, testosterone levels do not indicate a man’s future reproductive potential: men produce steady levels of sperm during their entire lives regardless of whether they’re sick or starving. Even a ninety-year-old man can have kids. Though testosterone does not indicate a man’s health or fertility, the hormone is correlated with another quality of great importance to the Detective Agency: dominance.

  Many scientists view testosterone as the “male competition” hormone, since elevated levels of testosterone cause a man to become more prone to fight with other men to preserve or enhance status. Fans of a losing sports team suffer a drop in testosterone after the game, while the fans of the winners experience a testosterone rush. “My husband has a suit that, when he puts it on, turns him into a real jerk,” offered one woman upon hearing that an increase in status will cause a rise in the male hormone. “He swaggers about the room and I just try to stay away from him. I call it his ‘testosterone suit.’ ” Testosterone diverts bodily resources to physiology required for male-male competition, such as musculature and fast energy burning. It also increases sex drive.

  Deep, masculine voices and masculine scents are correlated with testosterone levels; both are attractive to women. Studies have shown that they are more attracted to the odor of sweat from dominant men than subordinate men. Faces that are rated as more masculine—chiseled jaws and well-defined cheekbones—are also correlated with high testosterone levels. Women prefer bodies that are muscular, particularly through the chest, arms, and back, without being clumsily overbuilt; these features also indicate testosterone levels.

  One of the most potent visual cues for women is unrelated to testosterone: height. Perhaps height simply serves the same role as it does in the NFL and NBA: it indicates a greater ability to outcompete other men in physical competition. “I do love tall men, especially the ones that are over 6 feet tall who look real strong and masculine,” confesses one woman on the Experience Project Web site. “For me, tall men make me feel more secure than guys who are under 6 feet. They look more dominant.” Numerous studies find that the vast majority of women prefer to date men who are taller than they are, and virtually no women express a preference for shorter men. Most women cite a desire to feel safe as a reason for their preference for tall men. “It makes me feel small and secure; which is a lovely feeling,” says one woman.

  Women also express a preference for men in uniform and well-dressed men. A marine in dress blues with white gloves and peak cap, a police officer with boots and a badge, or a well-heeled businessman in an Issey Miyake suit and Testoni loafers all stimulate female arousal. Fashion blogger Teresa McGurk speculates on why women like a man in uniform: “A dress uniform is flattering to the male figure (Ooh-YAH!). The whole demeanor of a man in dress blues, or whites, or whatever is confident and dependable. Very sexy. Since a man in uniform knows all about responsibility and duty, he could well be counted on to take out the garbage. Theoretically, at least.” McGurk’s analysis also illustrates the influence of the Detective Agency—analyzing visual details and converting them into psychological speculation about a man’s character.

  Women are far less likely to focus on anatomical details than men are, and generally show little interest in viewing
a guy’s penis—especially compared to men’s special phallic interest. One eye-tracking study found that women spend no more time looking at the penis in images of nude males than any other part of the body. You’ll find no “top 10 penises” lists by women on the Internet, though you’ll find plenty of “top 10 boobs” lists by men. Whereas most male-targeted porn sites categorize videos according to anatomical features, female-targeted porn sites often lack any anatomical categories at all. For example, the male-targeted Hot Movies.com contains video categories for Big Tits, Small Tits, Natural Tits, Tit Fucking, Mouth and Tongue, Shaving, Legs and Nylons, Big Butts, Big Cocks, Big Clits, Camel Toe, and several others. But the female-targeted HotMoviesForHer.com does not contain a single anatomical category.

  However, there is one part of a man’s body that does appear to interest many women’s brains: the butt. The gluteus maximus is a “universal cue”: it’s the one piece of anatomy that straight men, gay men, and straight women all find exciting. “[John F. Kennedy Jr.] tried to hold the ATM door for me and I wouldn’t let him,” confesses one woman on Jezebel, “because I wanted to stand behind him and check out his ass.” Women generally prefer tight, athletic butts. Interestingly, NFL scouts believe that a football player’s butt is the single best indicator of his physical strength and athletic ability. Sportswriter Michael Silver reported on what he saw at the 2010 NFL Scouting Combine: “You’ll hear scouts and coaches throwing out compliments like, ‘That guy’s ass is pretty, now.’ You’ll see write-ups lauding a prospect’s ‘big, bubble ass’ or ‘great explosion in his hips.’ ”

  Nevertheless, the appeal of butts is still modulated by the Detective Agency. Whereas plenty of men will state that breasts or butts are the most important thing, women generally take a more moderate view. On Yahoo! Answers, when someone posed the question “Do women like guys’ butts?” more than half the women responded with a variation of one woman’s response: “It’s not a major priority for a guy to have a nice butt, it’s just a nice advantage!”

  Even though most women are not as focused on sexual visuals as men, there are still plenty of women who do enjoy hard-core pornography, even if they are much less likely to pay for it than men are. What kind of women watch a lot of visual porn? Consider the AOL search history of Ms. Intuition:skin massage for stretch marks

  look ten years younger fit tv show

  fake nude jane seymour

  tap your intuition

  chakras

  pampered chef recipes

  sexy vanna white

  family nude beach

  older men younger women

  french country decor

  i am in love with him

  italian framed art

  jealousy between friends

  friends jealous after weight loss

  anna nicole smith nude

  linens & things

  labioplasty

  celebs pics

  free rape movies

  what does sex mean to a man

  how do men feel about sex

  elizabeth montgomery naked

  why are single women attracted to married men

  when will i see results of pilates

  sexy erica hill

  anal sex benefits

  june carter and johnny cash honeymoon pics

  johnny carter cash pics

  honeymoon sex

  playgirl pics

  george clooney nude

  brad pitt nude

  men in shower pics

  porn for women

  nude construction workers

  making love

  erotic nude couples

  There has been no research exploring the question of what makes a minority of women become interested in porn, but Ms. Intuition’s search history suggests one very intriguing possibility, especially when combined with female responses to OkCupid questions. One particular group of women reported higher amounts of porn viewing, larger porn stashes, greater comfort with their partner watching porn, greater enjoyment of bondage, and more interest in using the Internet for porn. Who were these women? Self-identified bisexuals.

  Ms. Intuition seeks out Brad Pitt, George Clooney, nude construction workers, and naked men in the shower. But she also seeks out naked pictures of Vanna White, Jane Seymour, and Elizabeth Montgomery. She also searches for more pornographic material overall than most searchers who search for female-targeted pornography. On OkCupid, the pattern of bisexual women’s responses to questions was distinct from straight women and lesbians—but quite similar to the responses of heterosexual men, as shown in the figure below.

  Each column represents a single question from the survey. Note how the bisexual women’s response patterns are more similar to straight men’s than straight women’s.

  In addition, the responses of bisexual women were similar to heterosexual men on a variety of nonsexual topics, such as aggression, domination, and work habits. Among registered users on the visual porn site Fantasti.cc, 38 percent of the women self-identify as bisexual. In Richard Lippa’s BBC survey, he found that bisexual women have a higher sex drive than either heterosexual women or lesbians. A smaller study at the University of Georgia found that bisexual women showed different patterns of arousal from watching pornography from lesbians and heterosexual women. In particular, bisexual women were more aroused than lesbians and heterosexual women by lesbian porn and male-female oral sex.

  Though bisexuality in women is poorly understood, one possibility advanced by scientists is that bisexual women have greater circulating levels of testosterone. This could contribute to bisexual women’s higher sex drive and perhaps influences their interest in visual porn. “I can jill off to just about anything,” explains a self-proclaimed bisexual woman on reddit.com. “Sometimes I think I watch more porn than my boyfriend. I don’t understand why so many girls hate porn—I kinda think they probably are just too embarrassed to try it.”

  MISOGYNISTIC, IMMORAL, AND SQUICKY AS HELL

  So far, we’ve reviewed the sexual cues in porn that trigger arousal in the vast majority of men and a sizable minority of women. But there’s no escaping another obvious fact about porn: it can trigger a variety of negative reactions as well, including anger, jealousy, or moral condemnation. It’s almost as if porn has “anti-cues” mixed in with the cues. Just as the sexual cues in the male brain are different from the cues in the female brain, anti-cues manifest differently in men and women. In general, male anti-cues trigger aggressive hostility, while female anti-cues trigger a greater variety of emotions.

  “I caught my husband watching porn one night when I came home early,” reports one distraught woman on reddit. “I felt completely betrayed, like he was cheating on me.” Many women, upon catching their male partner indulging in online erotica, instinctively feel a sense of betrayal. Such emotions likely reflect innate “mate guarding” software in the female brain. Whereas the male brain is designed to become jealous over physical infidelity, the female brain is designed to become jealous over emotional infidelity. Women are instinctively concerned with a man’s investment of resources in other women, and instinctively look for signs that a man is losing emotional interest. Even though porn does not represent an actual threat to a woman’s relationship, the sense that a man’s emotions are getting diverted somewhere else can trigger instinctive feelings of disloyalty.

  Perhaps the hardest situation for a woman is discovering that her partner is looking at a qualitatively different kind of female from herself. “I found these links on Jake’s browser—they were all to Asian porn sites,” writes one twenty-two-year-old woman. “I clicked on one, and it was all these slender, flat-chested Asian girls. I’m blond, somewhat big-boned, with size D cups. I was like—why in the world are you with me???”

  This is quite different from the reaction of men. “One night I caught my wife secretly looking at Web Virgins,” confesses one twenty-seven-year-old programmer. “It really turned me on. She turned beet red, which just turned me on even more.” M
ost men, including gay men, are aroused by the idea of discovering their partner watching porn. It doesn’t appear to activate the male mate guarding software, since there’s no cue of physical cheating.

  Though many women feel betrayed when their partners watch porn, they rarely feel that they are betraying their husbands by reading romance. In fact, in Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance, the women in a romance book discussion group insisted that reading romance improved their sex lives with their husbands. Even though the male brain can understand that a woman may be lost in an intimate fantasy world where she is emotionally and erotically connecting with a fictional male, as long as there are no real penises involved, men don’t tend to get jealous of a woman’s reading habits. However, men can get annoyed. “I think every girlfriend I’ve had has turned to me after watching a romantic movie and asked ‘Why can’t you be more like him?’ ” laments one young man. “I’ve never put on a Jenna Jameson movie and asked ‘Why can’t you be more like her?’ ”

  Many women feel threatened by some of the sexual acts depicted in porn, fearing that men will expect them to perform those acts. As one twenty-two-year old woman lamented, “Some of these things, it just makes you ask—do guys really want girls that do that?” Women also feel concerned that men will only be satisfied by women who have bodies like porn stars—what some term the “centerfold syndrome.” Other women fear that exposure to pornography will induce men to perform violence against women.

  Women’s brains simply process porn differently than men’s brains. Many of women’s concerns are the result of the Detective Agency’s focus on the psychological and the cultural messages it perceives in porn. In Chapter 1, we compared men and women’s divergent sexual cues to a female brain that could only taste sweet and bitter and a male brain that could only taste salty and sour. Porn and romance novels are specifically tailored to appeal to the cues of each sex—porn consists of visual cues appealing to men, romance consists of psychological cues appealing to women. When we each encounter the other’s erotica, we can only understand it in terms of our own cues.