PORNO AND PORN TABOO?

For two years now, I've been typing the Sexy Friday here on Fridays and a wide variety of things have come by. From mushrooms that make you climax to color-changing condoms and from porn festivals to a sex selfie stick. Last week I wrote a piece about the best porn sites for women and that yielded some surprising insights.

In any case, our Facebook posts about Sexy Friday often get very few likes and comments. Which is striking, because we see that the same posts do generate a lot of clicks. As the administrator of our Facebook page, you can see how many people have seen the post in their feed, how many people clicked on the link, and of course how many likes and comments you have. Usually, all those factors are somewhat balanced, but with the real sex posts, that is significantly less often the case.

Those porn websites for women, for example, initially got zero likes and a few comments, while the post itself quickly became our most read post of the past week. In the statistics of Amayzine.com, I can see that the post even ranks in the top 10 of the most read pieces ever, and yet we only got 17 likes on Facebook and 19 hearts on the site. That's not much. Conclusion: people do read it, massively even, but they don't want to show that they are reading it. And that surprises me. Is there still such a taboo on sex and porn?

Among those comments was also a very special message. From a guy, a fairly handsome guy even, who looks like a pretty normal type from his photos. That comment was: “Probably written by a sad single chick of almost 30 with cats...”. Does that guy mean that if you watch porn as a woman, you must be a sad single chick? What does that say about every man on earth? Are they also sad and single? Because if there's one thing that's certain, it's that every man on earth, no matter what he says, watches porn. Isn't that sad?

A little inquiry among my own friends teaches me that indeed everyone watches porn (one said he doesn't but we obviously don't believe that). They talk about it quite openly with each other, but more in general terms. “No details, just whether you prefer to have a guy in the picture or not. Or whether you want anal or not.” Another said that since porn has become so mainstream, the fun as a conversation topic has somewhat faded, maybe some sites are still tipped but that's about it. But whatever the answers were, no one made a point that porn is watched at all and no one characterized that as sad.

I lack the sociological knowledge to give a concrete answer here now, but it struck me. Whether it's about embarrassing experiences with sex toys or the dirtiest and grossest stories from porn stars, people (women) read it in droves, but no one should know about it. But it's okay, I won't say anything. Promise.