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

by Ogi Ogas

  As revealed by online videos and stories, the black man possesses one very special quality in the imagination of both gay and straight men: dominance. But why would a straight man get more turned on by watching a dominant, masculine man have sex with his wife? What makes a man’s sexual desire overcome his sexual jealousy? The science of biology offers one intriguing answer to this question.

  Sperm competition.

  Sperm competition refers to a variety of physiological and behavioral adaptations that enable a male’s sperm to compete head-to-head with other males’ sperm in the battle to impregnate a female’s egg. These adaptations are found in a dazzling variety of species. The giant testicles of the chimpanzee, which can blast out an enormous volume of sperm, is one such physiological adaptation. Female chimpanzees have sex with multiple males while ovulating, so a male that can produce more sperm has a better chance of dislodging other males’ sperm and a better chance of his own sperm surviving future matings. Many biologists hypothesize that the bulbous head and extended length of the human penis is another physiological adaptation. Its shape is very effective at shoveling out the sperm of any rivals. Perhaps the inevitable flaccidity men experience after ejaculation is intended to prevent men from shoveling out their own sperm.

  Dogs, deer, and kangaroos exhibit behavioral adaptations for sperm competition. If males from these species sense that a female might be exposed to sex with other males, they will exhibit premature ejaculation, more vigorous thrusting, and multiple ejaculations. Mice, owls, and beetles adjust the number of sperm they release in response to sperm competition cues. The motility of their sperm and the force of their ejaculation also depend on the perceived risk of male competition for a female. Male stickleback fish will release more sperm if they see a video of another male.

  A man getting aroused by the psychological cue of cuckoldry is another behavioral adaptation. If a man believes that his sexual partner may have been with a rival, this adaptation drives him to have sex with her as quickly and as vigorously as possible. One hotwife describes her cuckolded partner’s physical response: “My steady boyfriend, nicknamed IFuckAmy, is mentally strong and physically weak. He is definitely monogamous and he picks my boyfriends—they are always physically well built and fit. He watched me fuck the same guy a few times. I can tell that IFuckAmy is jealous but when he fucks me afterwards, I also noticed that his load is strong and heavy and he cums fast.”

  In many species, the more dominant the potential rival, the stronger the sperm competition cue and the more intense the arousal, perhaps because dominant males tend to ejaculate more vigorously than submissive males. Since black men are frequently perceived as more dominant, they may activate the sperm competition cue more effectively. British psychologist Nicholas Pound even speculates that the erect penis and the “money shot” are both visual cues of sperm competition that trigger arousal. If Pound is right, this would also explain why large penises play such a prominent role in cuckold porn, especially large black penises. (It would also underscore the penis’s special role as a visual cue in the male brain.)

  Sperm competition cues may also help explain another popular genre of male-targeted online porn: group sex. On the Web, group sex porn has exploded into a variety of subgenres. There are the straightforward “gang bang” sites featuring one woman and multiple men, such as Gang Bang Squad, Gang Bang Arena, and Her First Gangbang. There are “orgy” sites such as Teenage Group Sex, Orgy World Girls, and Anal Party Orgies, which feature staged group sex scenes with professional stars. There’s a surging genre of “party” porn such as Frat House Fuck Fest, Party Hard Core, and In the VIP—sites that portray real college parties or nightclubs where girls have raucous sex in front of large crowds, often with multiple partners. A similar “reality” group sex genre features amateurs having group sex without any audience, such as Dare Dorm, Russian Orgy, and Frat House Hazing.

  Nicholas Pound conducted a series of studies using videos portraying “polyandrous sexual activity” (in other words, gang bangs and group sex). He discovered that men are consistently more aroused by multiple men than by multiple women or by a man and a woman. Another piece of online evidence for sperm competition cues in group sex porn is the marked asymmetry in the gender of group sex participants. Many Web sites feature large numbers of men but only one woman, such as 6 Buck Orgy, 10 Man Cum Slam, and 15 on 1. But the site with the highest female to male ratio is Fuck Team Five. This site’s videos feature between three and five professional actresses who often please one lucky guy. But, tellingly, the videos just as often show the Fuck Team actresses with groups of guys.

  Though threesome Web sites featuring two ladies and one man are certainly popular, Fuck Team Five is the only multi-female, one-male gang bang site on the Alexa Adult List. In contrast, there are 381 multi-male, one-female gang bang sites on the list. (There are a number of multi-female, one-male sites within a genre known as CFMN: Clothed Female Naked Man. However, this genre specifically portrays a man getting teased, dominated, or humiliated by a group of clothed women, and thus appeals to a different psychological cue: submission.)

  On PornHub, in the three hundred most-viewed group sex videos, there are forty-four videos with three or more guys and one girl; there are twenty-five videos with three or more girls and one guy. The extremes of the group sex genre are also revealing. There are dozens of “mega–gang bang” videos featuring more than one hundred guys having sex with a single woman. In contrast, there are no videos featuring a guy having sex with more than a dozen women, not even if we include CFNM porn. (Of course, this might also say something about how much easier it is to round up one hundred guys to be in porn than it is to find one hundred willing girls, especially considering that the guys would be willing to do it for free. But if you’re a straight male, ask yourself—would you pay to see one guy have sex with a hundred women?) There’s also a gender difference in sexual fantasies about group sex. Men fantasize about group sex more often than women do—and imagine larger numbers of males in group sex fantasies than women do.

  One final piece of evidence from the Internet supports the existence of a sperm competition cue in the male brain. In gay porn, gang bangs are also extremely popular. Gay men even appear to exhibit the cuckold cue. “Sometimes I fantasize about walking in on Thor with another guy. It really gets me hot thinking about it and we’ve role-played it before,” explains Rocco. “Of course, if it really happened, I’d cut his balls off.”

  SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT

  Long before the Internet, male-targeted pornography featured shrieking, shivering female orgasms. Howling moans and vocal encouragement culminate in a moment of egregious ecstasy that often seems as artificial as the one famously faked by Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.

  Why does porn contain such conspicuous signals of female pleasure? It’s certainly not for the female viewers. “I just don’t get how these women are supposed to be having orgasms because some guy shoots a big load on her face?” complains one woman. Another woman put it even more succinctly: “Yeah, right.”

  The women are moaning and swooning for the men. Female sexual pleasure is one of the most potent psychological cues for male arousal. Indeed, this may be the most common cue across all varieties of online porn. “Seeing and hearing a woman who is truly turned on like crazy has to be the biggest aphrodisiac I can think of for me,” lauds one man on reddit. “If this happens in porn, and it rarely does, I find it to be fucking amazing.”

  But true pleasure might be hard to find, according to Stephen Yagielowicz. “While I suspect that most fans believe that the girls are actually having orgasms (just as most guys believe they always give their lover an orgasm), I also suspect that many performers are thinking about the new shoes they will buy. It’s like bigtime wrestling: some believe it’s all real, from the hits to the back story. Same with porn.”

  Because of men’s desire to believe, women who lack typical male visual cues can still excite men through the energetic expression
of sexual pleasure. One example is porn superstar Sasha Grey, who crossed over into mainstream filmmaking in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. Sasha Grey is skinny, flat, and lacking in feminine curves, yet she has a large and devoted male following. This enthusiasm is apparent in the comments section on the porn star review site FreeOnes:

  “No tits, too damn skinny but god damn i will watch her vids all day.”

  “I totally am into fake Blondes with huge fake tits, but this girl knows how to suck and take a facial. Don’t know what it is, maybe she likes it that much, and it is showing . . . that might be why I am turned on by her actions . . .”

  “Sasha actually puts enthusiasm into her work. No one works it harder than she does on the set. I’d kill to be with a girl with that much energy.”

  Indeed, the surest way for a female porn star to increase her popularity is to be known for having authentic orgasms. Any casual discussion of porn actresses on forums or comments inevitably finds intricate discussions of whether favored stars have orgasms or not—and those that attain consensus that their orgasms are real, such as Sasha Grey, Nina Hartley, Chloe, Cytherea, and Jenna Jameson, tend to have the most devoted fans. Gay men are also aroused by conspicuous signs of sexual pleasure from their partner. Gay porn contains as much moaning and groaning and dirty talk as straight porn.

  On Fantasti.cc, we analyzed ten thousand comments on one hundred top-rated videos. The third most common type of comment is acknowledgment of the woman’s pleasure. For example, “She loves it!”, “Look at how excited she is,” “Would more cocks make her even happier?” (The most common type of comment is praise for a woman’s attractiveness. The second most common type of comment is variations of “What a delightful piece of anatomy.”)

  Why are men so interested in determining the authenticity of a woman’s sexual pleasure—even when the objective odds of her experiencing bona fide pleasure are low, such as when a man ejaculates on her chest? And conversely, why do men get so upset when they believe a woman is faking pleasure? Perhaps for the same reason that the male brain is designed for sexual jealousy: to ensure a woman’s fidelity.

  In order to figure out if a woman was faithful, men’s brains developed their own detective skills. But unlike Miss Marple’s chatty agency filled with a variety of sleuths, the male detective is more like an obsessive and irascible private investigator, permanently hired for a single task: determining whether a woman is cheating on him. Men are wired to pay attention to whether his partner is engaged and responsive during sex. If a woman seems apathetic or distant, that triggers suspicions. The private investigator starts asking questions. If I’m not turning her on, then who is?

  A woman’s sexual pleasure isn’t just important for long-term relationships, but also matters in a short-term partner. The more pleasure a man provides a woman, the more likely she’ll want to have sex with him again instead of someone else, even if she’s someone else’s wife and “fidelity” per se isn’t at issue. But another reason why it would behoove a man to pay close attention to satisfying a short-term lover: female gossip. “For most of human history, if Ann rejected Andy for being a bad lover, it’s a good bet that everybody in the community would find out about it. That would lower Andy’s mate value among other women. So Andy better make sure that Ann is feeling good!”

  Another genre of porn that appears to be based upon the female pleasure cue is squirting. Through a process that is still poorly understood, when some women orgasm they squirt out a jet of clear liquid, similar to male ejaculation. Since this is taken as an unfakable sign of female pleasure, squirting is quite popular with male viewers, ranking as the thirty-sixth most popular category of sexual search on Dogpile and the third most popular search on PornHub.

  It’s clear that the male psychological cue of female pleasure is so potent that men are easily convinced of a woman’s pleasure, even when objectively there’s reason to be skeptical—especially considering that more than 65 percent of women say they’ve faked orgasms. For a woman, it appears there’s no better way to elicit a man’s devotion than to make him believe he’s taken her to the heights of sexual ecstasy. Men want to believe in their own sexual prowess and that sex is a source of boundless pleasure for their partner. The male cue for female sexual pleasure is entirely analogous to the female cue for a man’s emotional commitment.

  Consider how often you might expect to hear the heroine in a romance novel say: “Oh, you sure like cunnilingus, don’t you? I can see how much you love cunnilingus! You’re just a big, dominant cunnilingus lover, aren’t you!”

  Or, conversely, how often might you expect to hear a naked guy in porn sob, “Oh, you had me at hello!”

  GIRLS GONE WILD

  Most of the men and women who produce the adult content on the Internet live from paycheck to paycheck. The rest are middle class, making somewhere between the salaries of a rookie policeman and a senior computer programmer. “Despite the new sports cars gracing the splash pages of affiliate marketing Web sites, many more folks drive Pontiac Sunfires than Porsche Carreras,” admits Stephen Yagielowicz. There’s precious few millionaires in the business, not since the glory days of the 1990s, when there was little competition and even less free porn, though even then there were very few people who struck it rich.

  But there’s one man who’s earned at least $100 million from his adult movie empire and who continues to rake in the dollars today. Amazingly, he’s achieved this success without filming any intercourse or fellatio, without hiring any actresses, and without building any sets. His movies aren’t available in stores and until recently weren’t even available for sale over the Internet. The man’s name is Joe Francis. His company is called Girls Gone Wild.

  Francis’s videos feature college-age women voluntarily disrobing for his ultra-low-budget camera crews at Spring Break spots and university parties. He built his empire hawking his soft-core porn on late-night cable infomercials. How does he get the girls to take off their clothes? He offers them a free Girls Gone Wild T-Shirt and a chance to be ogled by millions of men. Why are men willing to shell out $19.99 just to see a collection of five-second clips of intercourse-free nudity? Joe Francis’s Gulfstream jet and silver Ferrari owe their existence to the male psychological cue of authenticity.

  Authenticity is important to both men and women, but in different ways. Women focus on emotional authenticity. This is one of the primary tasks of the Detective Agency: looking for clues indicating whether a man is being honest about his level of ambition and commitment. Is he really an alpha, or is did he just learn the strategies of the Pickup Artist community? Did he really mean it when he said he loves me, or is he just trying to get me into bed?

  Men, in contrast, focus on physical authenticity. Are those breasts that big or is she wearing a Victoria’s Secret push-up? Is she really twenty-five or just dressing young? Is her face expressing genuine sexual pleasure or is she faking it? This desire for physical authenticity manifests itself in the extraordinary popularity of “amateur” or “candid” porn. Amateurs is the ninth most popular category of sexual searches on Dogpile and is very popular on search engines around the world. Why is authenticity a psychological cue rather than a visual cue? Because just as most gay men prefer a hot straight guy over a hot gay guy even if they look exactly the same, most straight men prefer a hot amateur to a hot professional even if they’re identical twins.

  There are a flood of Web sites that feature personal photos or videos taken from ordinary women’s MySpace or Facebook accounts, donated by ex-boyfriends, or captured by an iPhone in public without the subject’s awareness. For example, Watch My Girlfriend, Busty Candids, JayBee, Girls Next Door, and Real Emo. On reddit, one of the largest social news sites on the Web, there is a very popular Gone Wild forum where users post their own photos. Dare Dorm features videos of actual college students having group sex, purportedly sent in by the students themselves. (There is a gay version of this site called Dick Dorm.) Though many of these sites c
ontain nudity, a very sizable portion of amateur content is non-nude and simply features attractive women going about their lives.

  “I pretty much can’t watch professional porn anymore. Too many fake tits, fake orgams, fake moaning, almost every single fuck session ends with the guy blowing cum on the girl’s face,” complains one fan of amateur porn. “It reminds me of that scene from Ace Ventura 2 when he blows a gigantic loogie inside the hut, and then he and three other people come out of the hut with snot all over their faces . . . everything’s fake and retarded, especially the story.”

  Amateur sites often seem to offer “proof” of women’s authenticity by their very medium, such as low-resolution photos from digital cameras or blurry shots taken at a crowded beach. On Girls Gone Wild videos, the girls are frequently filmed at Mardi Gras or Spring Break, settings with too many people and too much activity to fake. Of course, objectively speaking, there is nothing authentic about a pixelated image of a stranger whom you will never meet and whose name you may never know. Indeed, there is at least the remote possibility that a professional porn star might be contacted and persuaded to engage in sex for money. An unidentified amateur, on the other hand, is far more likely to be unattainable. But this doesn’t stop men from preferring the girl next door to Playboy’s Girls Next Door.

  “All the porn stars are just fake, fake boobs, fake hair, fake orgasms,” writes another reddit commentator. “But you get one of those college videos, just some girl fucking her boyfriend, the girl loving it, her natural body, it’s like night and day.”

  There’s a related genre known as “reality porn,” which emulates the authenticity of amateur porn. The Web site Mike’s Apartment presents women who trade sexual favors for a free stay in an urban apartment. Another long-lasting and highly popular example is Bang Bus (the original source of the gay Bait Bus), where pornographers ride around California in a van, looking for girls who might need a ride. They find a remarkable number of solitary ladies willing to get into a vehicle with a bunch of strange guys—and have sex with them. Sites like these try to cash in on the male desire for authenticity.