My online poll asked this question:

Who in your home watches or uses sexually explicit material (porn, erotica, etc.)

The responses were:

• Husband – 24%
• Wife – 7%
• Both Husband and Wife – 11%
• Neither – 51%
• Who Knows? – 7%

More than 40 million Americans access a sexually explicit Internet site on any given day. About 12 million of those (30%) are women. Interestingly, combining scores above indicates only 18% of wives are using porn or erotica. The difference in the responses above and the statistics from other studies don’t tell much. First, my poll was on Facebook and Twitter and is not considered scientific. Second, I specifically asked about married people and the other research asked only about gender. Because there are more women in America living without husbands than women living with husbands, part or all of the difference in the results may be attributable to the difference in sexually explicit material use by single women and married women. On the other hand, most of the people who are my Facebook friends or who follow me on Twitter are Christians. That, too, could be reason for the difference.

Is anyone fascinated by the fact that 7% of respondents indicate that it is the wife who uses the sexually explicit material? There was another option to choose if the husband and wife both used it, so the inference here is that among the respondents, 7% live in a home where the wife uses it but the husband doesn’t. Hmm.

Additionally, 11% of respondents indicate that both the husband and wife use sexually explicit material. The short poll didn’t ask if they used it together or individually. Based on my experience working with couples, my guess is that most, if not all, of that 11% do use it together on occasion even if one uses it sometimes without the other.

The scientific study that indicated about 30% of Internet porn users are women, as well as the results from our little poll, indicate that the old view that porn is only for men is no longer valid. Millions of women are “into” porn. If you stop to think that before the Internet there was (and still is) a thriving business in “romance” novels, this shouldn’t be surprising. We’ve known for centuries that if you put a good story with it – especially one in which the female reader can place herself vicariously – a number of women will buy and read books with relatively explicit sexual encounters.

When Candida Royale founded Femme Productions in 1984,  explicit sex in visual form began to come into vogue for women. Various scientific research shows that many women react positively to video or movie porn if it includes:

• a good story,
• halfway decent acting, 
• female actors who look like “real” women (not siliconed and tattooed beyond the everyday housewife),
• female actors clearly enjoying the sex without overreacting via their actions or sounds,
• sexual encounters that aren’t degrading to women,
• handsome male actors.

Good news? Maybe 11% of the poll respondents thought so since they indicated that both husband and wife use porn together. Other guys may be reading this and wondering how they could get their wives interested in doing the same. I would love to hear the views of the husbands in the marriages of the 7% of respondents who said that the wife uses porn but the husband doesn’t.

I intend to share next week my views on whether this increasing use of porn by women, especially wives, is good, neutral, or bad. In the meantime, I very much wish to read your comments. List them below and when I feel that I’ve had enough to get a good cross-section of responses, I’ll write another blog with what I think about this. I’ll also put a blurb on my Facebook page and will also read comments that people put there. I’d be happy for you to be a Facebook friend if you wish to see more via that venue.

So, what are your views?