Porn Poll: What's Most Popular?

Posted by Katie Halper, Nerve.com at 1:30 PM on April 10, 2008.

The other night I was having dinner with some friends. Three were straight women and two were straight men (exciting, I know! Only in New York kids, only in New York!). Thanks to my obsessive frequent L Word references, the subject of filmed lesbian sex came up. I thought I knew about what kind of porn straight women liked. But I quickly learned that I had been wrong. I knew as much about what straight women want in porn as straight men know about what straight women want in general.

I had, up until this dinner, held the following porn preferences to be self-evident: 1) most straight women enjoyed lesbian porn 2) most straight women did not enjoy gay porn. Now, I am not saying these are innate porn preferences. In fact, I think that they reflect, to at least some extent, the way society sanctions performative lesbian sex within a hetero-normative context, which ultimately appeals to straight men; and the way gay homosexuality has not been incorporated into an acceptable heterosexual framework.

OK. Back to the dinner. My friend Sarah* complained about the way the boobs of L Word characters hit up against each other during sex. Beth and Nancy agreed. Richard and Peter and I disagreed, our assessment of boob bouncing ranging from not all offensive to "pretty hot" to "the hottest thing ever." The conversation was about to move onto Obama and Hillary when Sarah added, as an aside, "I hate lesbian porn. I hate straight porn too. But gay porn is hot." I dismissed my friend's penchant for gay man-on-man sex as atypical and fringe, and extrapolated that it reflected, at most, the porn pref of 1/6 of the of the world. I was about to resume my lecture on how hot Jeremiah Wright is regardless of his hairdo, when Beth muttered under her breath, as a throw away, "yeah gay porn is hot" and Nancy enthusiastically shook her head as she down her chardonnay. All of a sudden, the opinion i had dismissed as representing 16.67% of the population became a widely held gay porn preference shared by 50% of the world!

Based on my experience (i.e. the conversations I've had with friends and acquaintances) I had always thought that lesbian porn was the most universal porn, the porn most likely to achieve world peace by bringing together various populations, by uniting (at least some) lesbians, straight men, straight women, and trans who enjoyed lesbian porn. But now my plans for world porn peace are shattered. Do straight women enjoy gay porn? And disdain lesbian porn? Ladies, let me know! I actually need information from everyone in order to carry out an effective world porn peace campaign. So please, men, women, trans, queer, bi, flexual, lesbians, gay, straight, other, please let me know what your porn preference is.

*all names have been changed

Tagged as: sexuality, lesbian porn, porn