Click for other stories garnered from the Ultimate Lesbian Sex Survey

In February 2015, Autostraddle launched The Ultimate Lesbian Sex Survey, open to all “lady-types who sleep with lady-types.” We garnered over 8,566 complete responses (89% of which were from people between the ages of 18 and 36) and now we’re sharing the results with you, bit by bit. Previously:

• How Often Do Queer Women Have Sex?
• 100 Gayest Places You’ve Had Sex
• The Masturbation Habits of Queer Women
• 50 Really Fascinating Things You Wanted Us To Know About How You Have Sex
• 26 Bits of Solid Sex Advice
• 41 Feelings You Have About Scissoring
• Here Are Your Very Queer Underwear-Wearing Habits
• When It Comes To Orgasms, Lesbians Are Nailing It
• The 100 Most Ambitious Places You’ve Had Sex
• When Did You Do It For The First Time and How Many People Have You Done It With, Huh?
• Here’s The Salacious Sex Statistics On Queer Women In Non-monogamous vs. Monogamous Relationships

How Much Smut Do Queer Women Consume?

In 2013, a Pew Research Center report on porn-viewing habits of the American people revealed that the American people don’t seem to want to talk to the Pew Research Center about their porn-viewing habits: only 25% of men and 8% of women who watch online video fessed up to watching pornographic online videos. This seems wildly improbable, but other estimates aren’t much higher — Psychology Today says that their “best guess” is that “somewhere between 8% and 20% of women online visit porn sites with any regularity.” An Australian Study of Health and Relationships in 2014 found 20% of women had looked at pornography within the last year. This doesn’t really match up with data harvested by the internet itself, like that 12% of websites on the internet are pornographic and 40 million Americans regularly visit porn sites. Or that one third of porn viewers are women and 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornography.

Dazed Digital, on the other hand, did a much larger and more revelatory survey of 10,500 men and women in 114 countries. They came up with higher numbers:

… while a quarter of respondents never watch pornography, 59% watch it one to five times a week, and 16% six or more times. Both women and men like it – around three out of five watch it at least once a week, regardless of gender. Divisions occur at the extremes of consumption: 90% of people who never watch porn are women, while 90% of people who watch grot more than 11 times a week are men. Put another way, while most women indulge at least once a week, only 4% do so six or more times a week, compared with 60% of men who watch it nearly every day or more.

When we asked our survey-takers “do you consume porn/erotica/smut in any form?”, 87% of those who answered the question answered in the affirmative. So already we’re showing numbers that are extraordinarily higher than previous research has shown. Of those who consume porn/smut/erotica, 39% did so once a week or more. But not all of that is traditional porn.

What kind of smut do queer women consume?

Dazed Digital found that “the average straight-identifying woman is far more likely to watch girl-on-girl than the average straight guy is to watch boy-on-boy.” They found “straight women’s consumption of lesbian porn outstrips men’s: only gay or bisexual women watch more girl-on-girl.” Cosmo found similar numbers. These two some of many surveys that have illuminated the less-than-direct relationship women of all orientations have with the porn they watch to the kind of sex they actually have (or want to have).

A study on the porn-viewing habits of lesbians by Irish and Canadian researchers found most of the women “didn’t care for girl-on-girl porn, saying they found the films unrealistic and clearly made by and for straight men. Instead, many lesbians are drawn to erotic films depicting two guys getting it on.” The researchers, in line with other research on this topic, affirmed that “women tend to have more erotic plasticity than men — that is, they’re turned on by a wider variety of things.”

In our survey, we made an important distinction between two different kinds of girl-on-girl porn — the kind made by queer women for queer women (e.g., Crash Pad Series, Queer Porn TV, Juicy Pink Box) and the kind made by straight people for straight people (e.g., pretty much everything else). We found the former was far more popular than the latter — and, furthermore, many queer women prefer watching straight porn or gay male porn over lesbian porn made by/for straight people.

The data we’re gonna talk about now is garnered from the 87.05% of respondents who answered “yes” to “do you consumer porn/erotica/smut in any form?” The 12.95% who answered “no” were not asked questions about specific porn habits. The 2,471 humans who skipped the question and therefore found themselves on the “what kind of porn do you like” page because they didn’t say “no,” which would’ve triggered the survey to automatically skip that page, are not included, because they are mysterious unicorns with fears, hopes and desires beyond my powers to discern. Judging by their answers on the porn-liking page, most of them do actually consume smut but just didn’t feel like answering the prior question, so it’s not safe to say that skipping the question = answering “no.” I mean, for real: they didn’t answer no. But they didn’t answer yes!. It’s not safe to say anything about them at all, so we’re just gonna pluck them out of the group altogether for the purposes of this analysis. So, take it with a grain of salt, but, regardless, these numbers do fit more or less perfectly with answers to earlier required questions about porn, so maybe a tiny grain of salt.

The data below comes from the 5,277 respondents who helpfully responded “yes” to the question “do you consume porn/erotica/smut in any form?”

So let’s talk about these numbers!

Erotica / Fan-Fic

It’s unsurprising that erotica reading is so popular amongst queer women for a few reasons. Firstly: because it’s currently more popular than ever amongst women in general. In fact, a 2012 British survey by Dottybingo.com revealed 91 percent of women having read at least one erotic book, and 43 percent said they preferred reading about sex to having it. That survey was inspired by 50 Shades of Grey, of course, a g-dawful book that began as Twilight fanfic and became one of the best-selling books of all time.

This brings me to the second reason these numbers are unsurprising: y’all love some fan-fic. Fanfic initially took off as a way for fans (mostly women) to explore male/male Star Trek pairings the show itself would never enable, and queer women have flocked in droves do the genre. In addition to reading male/male pairings, queer women use fanfic to tell stories about the female/female pairings who connect sexually onscreen at a rate of rarely to never.

In the 200 comments left in the open-ended box for this question, about half were making sure I knew that by “erotica” they meant “fan fiction.” Here’s a sampling of some of those answers:

• By “erotica” I mean fanfiction, almost exclusively
• Erotic comics are actually my favorite, but I wasn’t sure where they fit. They are usually queer but not always.
• Erotic Superhero fanfiction
• Does gay fanfiction about fictional wizards count
• Let’s be real, it’s Faberry or Quintana fanfic
• If reading, it’s gay lady fanfiction smut. If watching, it’s gay dudes being super enthusiastic with each other.
• It’s all fucking fanfiction and I am addicted, literally there have been times in my life where I would read explicit gay fanfic for more than four hours a day.

Online Video

The format of straight and gay male porn most popular amongst queer women is online video. Especially if you look at lesbians as an isolated group, it’s really the only format of erotica/smut/porn that inspires many fans amongst ladies-who-only-like-ladies. For example, around 70% of lesbians, queers and bisexuals read lesbian erotica online, but only 25% of lesbians, 32% of queers and 42% of bisexuals read straight erotica online. Although 38% of lesbians look at queer erotic imagery online, only 9% at straight erotic imagery online, compared to 22% of bisexuals and 16% of queers.

From here forward I’ll refer to “lesbian/queer porn made by/for queer people” as “Q4Q” porn” and “lesbian porn made by/for straight people”  as “Q4S” porn.

Are the numbers of straight porn watchers so high because so many survey respondents don’t necessarily identify as being exclusively attracted to women? Sort of, but that’s not the whole story. These are those numbers:

• Bisexuals, queers and lesbians who watch online video watch Q4Q porn at nearly identical rates, ranging from 66% – 67%.
• Bisexuals are the most likely to watch straight porn — 54% of them do, compared to 32% of queers and 41% of lesbians. They’re also the most likely to watch Q4S porn — 38% of them do, compared to 33% of queers and 29% of lesbians.
• Queers who watch online video are the most likely to watch gay male porn — 36% of them do, compared to around 32% for both bisexuals and lesbians.

So, although bisexual women are more inclined to watch straight porn than lesbians are, they’re definitely not the only ones watching it. Controversial sex advice columnist Dan Savage admits that his understanding of who watches what kind of porn extends only so far, lamenting that “lesbians screw up my neat and orderly porn universe.” Sorry not sorry, Dan!

I think it’s fairly common knowledge why queer women dislike fake lesbian porn, but, briefly: although not a lot of the women who took our sex survey volunteered this information on their own, there’s no shortage of lesbians online discussing their preference for straight or gay male porn (or writers looking for answers about it) offering explanations like:

• “I find lesbian porn is usually targeted for straight guys and they’re not arousing. I somehow prefer straight porn.”
• “Lesbian porn is just so fake and how long some of them have long nails UGH! overall i mainly watch straight porn. Now if its straight porn i just concentrate on the female. It can get me going like crazy.”
• “Lesbian porn is way too tacky for me and so far from the reality that I find it hard to watch. Not saying straight porn is any more real but usually not quite as tacky.”
• “Even though I prefer (straight porn) to lesbian porn, I’m always looking at the woman going “she’s a good actress. Letting him think she is enjoying it.  And lesbian porn has men written all over it; it just seems like the actresses don’t want to be doing what they are doing.”

Some quotes from our own survey-takers:

• I mostly like fat porn. If that was easier to find and made for and by queers, I would watch that, but it barely exists.
• I don’t watch lesbian porn since I can only find the misogynist videos made for straight men, which I find offensive.
• I like to watch a girl getting facefucked… I swear I’m a lesbian

So, that aside, I’m more interested in talking about why 53% of all women who are aware of and watch real queer porn also watch straight porn and why 41% of lesbian-identified women watch straight porn. See, nothing drives me nuts faster than somebody claiming that a “real lesbian” wouldn’t get turned on by straight porn — that is TOTAL BANANAS. Although many queer women who watch straight porn are attracted to men and want to sleep with them, many of them aren’t, and a woman’s preference for straight porn shouldn’t cast any doubt on her stated homosexuality.

I cross-checked a variety of factors, such as age, employment status, affinity for kink, sexual experience and gender presentation, to see if any of those had an impact on this field of preference and nothing stood out. Therefore, my theories are as follows:

• Real girl-on-girl porn costs money and free girl-on-girl porn sucks: Good porn by queer women for queer women usually requires payment (as it should!). Not everybody can afford it, wants to spend money on it, or feels comfortable doing so, and the alternative — the kind of “lesbian” porn found for free on sites like PornHub and RedTube — is lacking, to say the least. So what’s left? Straight porn! Gay male porn!
• Women Are Erotically Flexible: As discussed earlier in this post, women respond sexually to all kinds of things that are unrelated to their sexual orientation. Many of us who prefer women still get turned on by straight porn. Who knows why. It just is what it is!
• Normative beauty standards: Queer-for-queer porn tends to feature queers with a variety of body types, gender presentations, piercings, tattoos, alternative lifestyle haircuts and so forth. That’s part of what’s so incredible about it — but not for everybody. Some queers prefer porn stars who look like porn stars rather than porn stars who look like their favorite bartender or ex-girlfriend.
• Porn as escape: Many porn consumers enjoy porn that offers an escape from their real sex lives, or use porn to explore fantasies they have no desire to explore in real life. Sometimes seeing actual queers play out more explicit or taboo fantasies (such as non-consent) just hits too close to home.
• Variety: There’s a wider variety of straight porn and gay male porn out there for various fetishes or kinks a person might be into. There’s also more hardcore straight porn out there, and when queers do watch straight porn, it tends to be hardcore — 33% of lesbians and 48% of bisexuals watch hardcore straight porn, but only 12% of lesbians and 24% of bisexuals watch softcore.
• Imagining themselves as the guy: This is anecdotal, but I’ve heard so many queer women say that they imagine themselves as the man while watching straight porn. Or they like watching porn where women humiliate men.
• Masturbation videos: Many may have classified videos of females masturbating (which came up a few times in the comments) as “straight porn.”
• There’s more of it out there and it’s easier to find.

In conclusion, women are fantastic creatures capable of being turned on by a variety of video porn and if women ran the world there’d be more research about it.

Finally, I’d just like to share a few of the comments on the “what kind of porn do you watch” section to give you the full overview of what people wanted you to know they were into:

• Where’s the option for tentacle porn? Or for sex machines going nuts and giving their lady inventors endless orgasms? I’m confused (about a lot of things).
• I watch the *trailers* on queerporntv & crashpad but never the actual videos. because i’m getting over my societally & familialy induced hangup about consuming porn.
• Honestly my fave is sex scenes from lesbian shows, not actual Porn porn. Not sure how to categorize that above. I never watch actual porn.
• Machines/dildo machines
• Home videos
• Lesbian gifs, thanks tumblr
• Tumblr “romantic pornography” page is really good
• E-book in car to get bdsm scenario ideas, not to get off
• Erotic comics are actually my favorite, but I wasn’t sure where they fit. They are usually queer but not always. I read online and sometimes print (smutpeddler)
• I mostly look at solo pics and drawings of women. I have no idea who makes them.

How Much Smut/Erotica/Porn Do You Consume?

1.9% of the entire smut-consuming group consumes their smut multiple times a day. 3.6% indulge one a day, 24.6% multiple times a week, 11.7% once a week, 27.5% multiple times a month, 12.3% once a month, 16.3% multiple times a year, and a little over two percent consume it less than that.

So that’s 5.5% watching porn daily, which’s more than the 3.8% of women Cosmopolitan found when they surveyed 4,000 women (93% of which were heterosexual) about their porn-watching habits. They also found 32.5% of men watching porn on the daily, so there’s that. But Cosmo was only asking about online porn videos, our reach was larger — we included erotica and erotic imagery.

What factors influence how often you consume smut/porn/erotica? Let’s look at various relationship and sexual situations.

Clearly there’s a pretty strong correlation between how often you consume smut and how often you’re having sex. These numbers do suggest that co-habitation decreases frequency of erotic-material-engagement, which suggests that these couples are not consuming porn together.

There’s a direct relationship between consuming smut/erotica/porn and frequency of masturbation — over 90 percent of those who masturbate multiple times a week or more consume smut, compared to a bit over 50 percent of those who masturbate less than once a year.

Of the entire group — all 8,566 of you — 55.3% said porn is part of how you usually masturbate. 39.4% said the same of erotica.

In Closing

Many asked in the comments for info on where they could find queer porn made for queers. I’d like to make that happen for you, because everybody interested in queer porn deserves to feel like this commenter on You Need Help: The Quest For Awesome Queer Feminist Porn, who wrote:

“I went to queerporn dot tv and I am just sitting here crying because I’ve never seen porn with people who look like me, who look like people I would actually fuck, who fuck like I would fuck. It feels so real. I never realized that I felt so marginalized and objectified by mainstream porn, and now I feel validated. Like, it’s okay that I have sex the way I do because see, there are people just like me.”

You should read that post! Also these:

• Ela Darling On The Future Of Virtual Reality Porn: The Autostraddle Interview
• “Juicy Pink Box” Knows Dyke Sex, “All About Lesbian Sex” Knows Squat
• Holigay 2012 Gift Guide: Clit Lit for All The Special Activity Partners On Your List
• Five Solo Crash Pad Scenes For Masturbation Month
• Sinclair Sexsmith on “Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica”: The Autostraddle Interview
• Courtney Trouble Wants to Turn You On: The Autostraddle Interview
• Five Crash Pad Episodes To Help You Celebrate This Queer Feminist Porn Sale
• Queer Porn’s Nikki Hearts Is Living Her Dream: The Autostraddle Interview

Go forth and enjoy whatever kind of smut you wanna!

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