“Their genitals get aroused, but that’s not necessarily what they feel in their heads,” Bailey explains. However, when researchers measure their levels of genital arousal, women seem to equally enjoy erotica featuring two women, two men, or a heterosexual couple. Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University who has studied arousal, says when they’re asked by researchers, women say they don’t get turned on by sex scenes featuring two men. Straight women may have enjoyed Brokeback Mountain, but it was probably for the story. Unlike most men, Ogas said, most gay and straight women have an emotional, narrative component to their erotic fantasies. Interestingly, the reverse-loving gay male porn-is not quite true for women. “Many people nurse erotic fantasies of shrinking to the size of a mouse or being transformed into a furry bunny,” he said. Ogas said that when it comes to fantasy, it gets even weirder than being into people who aren’t into you. (I maintain that Oscar Isaac is going to come around any day now.) Women, for instance, are often aroused by billionaires and celebrities who are extremely unlikely to reciprocate the sentiment.” “Sexual fantasy obeys its own set of rules that have nothing to do with propriety, common sense, or even the physical laws of the universe.
“It’s amusing that you offer up the fact that lesbians will never be interested in men as a possible reason why men should not be aroused by them,” he said. This is like someone named Steve entering a lottery called “Mega Millions for Anybody But Steve.” It’s not going to happen, Steve!
I pointed out to Ogas that this is a rather irrational desire: Lesbians are the only group of women who will categorically never be interested in a straight man. “Sexual fantasy obeys its own rules that have nothing to do with common sense.” The only thing better than one nubile, personality-free woman is two of them. Lesbian porn, therefore, works for straight men by “doubling up” those visual stimuli, Ogas told me. For the book, he and co-author Sai Gaddam analyzed millions of searches, erotic stories, videos, personal ads, and other data to find out exactly what makes humans tick down there.īut to the extent that lesbian erotica is popular, it can be explained by the fact that men are most aroused by visual cues that emphasize youth and downplay drama and emotional complexity. So what is it about the sight of two women that, purportedly, sets male loins ablaze?įirst of all, lesbian porn does not rank as highly among male sexual interests as do, “breasts, butts, MILFs, amateurs,” and even women with penises, according to the research of Ogi Ogas, a neuroscientist and co-author of A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire. On Friends, Chandler and Joey give up their apartment- their apartment in Manhattan-for the chance to watch two of their straight female friends kiss for one minute. They don’t even have to be real lesbians: “ Those twins” are among the things a canonical Coors Light drinker loves. Still, the idea that straight men like it when two women make out (and more!) is so commonplace that it’s a cultural touchstone. In a Marie Claire survey of mainly female respondents, lesbian porn was the second most popular option, after the heterosexual variety. Nor is the fascination with lesbians solely a male phenomenon. Even past data dumps from the same company have purported to show that “teen” or “MILF” porn are actually more ubiquitous. Of course, the Pornhub results are far from scientific. Lesbians uniting New Yorkers and Alabamians like little else does. Lesbians trotting across the vast, great Western plains. But otherwise, it’s lesbians riding up the Eastern seaboard on the Acela of love.