What the Internet reveals about sexual desire

[garbon]

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/05/02/sex_internet/index.html

The new book "A Billion Wicked Thoughts" by neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam mines some of that evidence -- including a billion Web searches, like the ones above, and millions of websites, porn videos, online erotica and personal ads -- for insights on desire.

As far as men's interest in pornography goes, what of your findings were actually surprising? Because a lot of it -- like the interest in large breasts -- is totally expected.

I'll give you the top three. No. 1 is that men prefer overweight women to underweight women. There are almost three times as many searches for fat women as there are for skinny women, and lest you think that's some way we treated the search data, this is also reflected in popularity on adult sites. There are many more video sites devoted to overweight women than underweight women. Now, I should say as a caveat that men prefer healthy weight women overall. But if the choice is between a woman with a few extra pounds or a few less pounds, most guys will choose more pounds.

Another big surprise was the age of women that men search for. As expected, the dominant preference was for young women as close to the teen years as possible, but to our surprise there was also very substantial interest in older women in their 40s, 50s, even in their 60s and 70s. In fact, there's a particular genre of porn called "granny porn," which is just like it sounds. Though it's not nearly as popular as teen porn, it's one of the 50 most popular interests among men. So clearly there's something going on there, and it's something completely not expected by conventional wisdom or the contemporary science on sexuality. [Editor's note: Keep in mind that plenty of porn searches don't include any age specification, and youth may be implied in a search for, say, "hot women."]

The third big surprise was the parts of anatomy that men prefer. It turns out that heterosexual men very much like looking at penises.

There's pretty overwhelming evidence for it: Men search for penises almost as often as they search for vaginas. There's about a thousand heterosexual sites dedicated to large penises, and large penises are a category of erotica in all the major porn video sites. We think the reason for this is because it's actually from our evolutionary heritage. If you look at all the other primates, the penis is a prominent and versatile social tool used for many different purposes -- to indicate aggression, to mark territory, to indicated sexual interest. The penis may also function as a sperm competition cue. That is a very specific hard-wired cue for men to trigger arousal -- basically if a man has a reason to think that a woman recently had sex with a man it makes him more aroused and the penis must play a role in that.

[Valmy]

Fat women?  Penises?  WTF?

[garbon]

Fat women?  Penises?  WTF?

I left out the bit about the similarities between gay male and straight male sexuality as it didn't strike me as convincing.

[Valmy]

I left out the bit about the similarities between gay male and straight male sexuality as it didn't strike me as convincing.

Gay men search for fat men and vaginas eh?

[garbon]

Gay men search for fat men and vaginas eh?

Yes and no.

[derspiess]

The only thing that really surprised me was the "third big surprise".  I would think most guys would go out of their way to avoid seeing that. 

[Martinus]

I think the results may be skewed because people attracted to "mainstream" porn can find it on a number of easily available porn websites they already know and frequent, so they won't be searching for it, whereas people who are into more niche/unusual fetishes would actively search for it. Plus there is a factor of kids/people searching for "weird stuff", out of morbid curiosity rather than actual sexual interest.

[Martinus]

Also... so straight guys also like feet? 

[garbon]

The only thing that really surprised me was the "third big surprise".  I would think most guys would go out of their way to avoid seeing that. 

http://languish.org/forums/index.php?topic=4949.msg247863#msg247863

[garbon]

Also... so straight guys also like feet? 

Do you remember fhdz?

[The Brain]

I haven't "searched" for porn since the 90s.

[Josquius]

I'll give you the top three. No. 1 is that men prefer overweight women to underweight women. There are almost three times as many searches for fat women as there are for skinny women, and lest you think that's some way we treated the search data, this is also reflected in popularity on adult sites. There are many more video sites devoted to overweight women than underweight women. Now, I should say as a caveat that men prefer healthy weight women overall. But if the choice is between a woman with a few extra pounds or a few less pounds, most guys will choose more pounds.

Yes, but I'd imagine more men prefer a girl towards the bottom end of healthy weight than the top end.

[MadImmortalMan]

Huh. I go against all those trends.

[Ideologue]

I think the results may be skewed because people attracted to "mainstream" porn can find it on a number of easily available porn websites they already know and frequent, so they won't be searching for it, whereas people who are into more niche/unusual fetishes would actively search for it. Plus there is a factor of kids/people searching for "weird stuff", out of morbid curiosity rather than actual sexual interest.

You're probably right.

There is a fair amount of "fat chick" porn, but the thing is, that shit's clearly marked.  In the absence of the fat chick tag, which after a few ten thousand surveys I have to believe is far from the majority of all pornographic media, the expectation is that the woman is traditionally hot, i.e. skinny.  You don't go looking for skinny, skinny is the default.

And this "men prefer healthy weight" bullshit.  What the fuck does that mean?  This is fat people propaganda, and I won't stand for it.

That said, sometimes I check out fat chick porn for a change of pace.  You've gotta mix it up.

The thing about dicks makes sense, as all those pornos focused on giant cocks attest.  Now, I like to see dicks in my porn--pure lesbian porn is a little boring, because female sexuality was not built with visual storytelling in mind, but I've never really cared about the size of the dick.  Maybe it's a wish-fulfillment thing for some people, like how Spider-Man may be a total nerd just like you, the reader, but we all know he's actually totally cool and can beat up the Scorpion and hold really heavy things for plot-determinate amounts of time.  I guess some guys take the identification-character thing a little farther than the "organ that shoots semen" level.  Or maybe it's just the spectacle.

Still, you'd think that standard-sized cocks might really be preferable, because chicks with no standards are hot, and size queens are not.  And in a way they might be preferable, as there's a lot of porn with relatively normal dongs.

The people trying to paint the MILF phenomenon as surprising really ought to catch up with 1999, too.

[Caliga]

Huh. I go against all those trends.