If you do a Google search of “Porn for Women” many sites come up offering female-friendly videos and websites. But mostly it leads to erotic stories – like 50 Shades of Grey. We’ve both read 50 Shades (one of us admittedly has read the trilogy numerous times) with anticipation over seeing a glimpse into the world of BDSM and wild, crazy, no-kids-walking-in sex. Remember those days? Yeah, me neither.
But why is it that men prefer to watch it and women prefer to read it? I read an interview with erotica author Raelene Gorlinsky on USA Today’s website. She said, “Erotica is designed to make the reader pleasurably sexually turned on. It’s not porn, it’s not skanky, it doesn’t make you feel ‘dirty.’ So much current erotica is aimed at women readers, to give them not just excitement, but a positive and empowering view of sex.”
Psychology Today writer Maryanne Fisher says women read romance novels as a way to “have their cake and eat it, too.” They can visualize themselves in the lead female role – the every girl who snags the incredibly buff, devilishly handsome, insanely wealthy bad boy who is way out of their league. As Fisher puts it, “These books are candy for women’s brains. The reader can live vicariously through the heroine and fall in love with the hero, but without any of the consequence.”
That’s the difference between romance novels and porn. Women can put themselves in the position of the lead character and spend a few hours falling in love with a rogue who changes his ways before making dinner for her own super-hot hubby. Men watch people have sex. Women who read these books are not watching other people physically have sex. They are using their imaginations to picture something that only happens in words, not actuality.
So what do you think? Is reading romance or erotic novels equivalent to watching porn?
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