6 things women want from porn

It’s a not-so-secret secret that women watch porn. We may not be as open about our habits as men are—and most likely watch videos on private-browsing mode—but more women enjoy getting off to porn than you’d expect. Whether we’re in a relationship or not, going solo is a daily occurrence for many of us.

Which leads me to this: Does the porn industry not realize women watch porn? Sure, there are membership sites exclusively for women, but not all women want to dish out $20 a month for porn that usually reinforces stereotypical ideas of what female pleasure looks like. We want to visit PornHub, RedTube, and YouPorn without having to trudge through hundreds of awful videos just to find one thing that will get us off.

Pay attention to us. We want to give you our clicks and views and ad impressions—if only you’d cater more videos to our tastes and pleasures.

Watching porn that's meant for men is fine, but women deserve better. We deserve porn that's as varied as we are, and if you only have men directing and writing your videos, then they won’t be nuanced enough for our desires. Not all of us want some picture-perfect fantasy narrative, but we do need options—some sense that even one woman was involved in the creation of your video.

While it might be difficult to understand what women want in porn, the best way to figure it out is to ask us. Ask the women you put in videos for their opinions, and more importantly, treat them fairly and respectfully. There wouldn’t even be a porn industry without women—both the ones who star in your videos and those the ones watch them—so it's time to create content that actually reflects what we're all about.

I don’t know what's more offensive: the lack of options for women or what you consider “female-friendly” porn. Do you have any women working at your companies? Have you even talked to a woman? Not from the looks of current offerings. If we wanted to watch ridiculous, cheesy '90s porn, we’d just watch Showtime's "After Dark" specials.

The fact that all "female-friendly" videos fall into the same category of over-produced, delicate pornography shows a lack of understanding of female desire. Not all of us want this kind of heavily narrated porn—women are multifaceted, and what gets one woman off may do nothing for the next. When you have thousands of kinky categories from which men can choose, but only one or two for women, it’s clear you’re not listening (again with the listening!) to the women you both employ and target.

Why won’t you take our money? We'll click! We'll buy! We just want to feel like you have at least a basic understanding of female pleasure, desire, and fantasy.

Those lesbian scenes where the porn stars have super-long fake nails? All we can do is think about how uncomfortable it would be to have a woman’s fake nail shoved up our vagina. There’s no way anyone can enjoy anything sexual involving acrylic nails (nothing about those claws are pleasurable), so please stop.

Putting a video under the cunnilingus category if it only has one minute of oral, max, is just straight-up wrong. You know what kind of porn most of us like to watch? Porn where the women actually get off. Where it looks like they’re not being forced to have sex with a swaggerless dude, or forced to have fake-nail lesbian sex. We want porn where women are actually having fun and enjoying the sex. Throwing in a brief moment of cunnilingus​, then skipping straight to 5 minutes of a blow job from every possible angle is not cool—and it’s not going to get us off.

Please find a way to tweak your algorithm, and figure out that I'm a woman—because male-targeted ads are horrific.

When I’m looking for a video, I’m not interested in “putting my cock in a nearby MILF” because 1) I don’t have a cock, and 2) I’m trying to get off solo, so I don’t need to put my non-existent cock anywhere. Show me ads for good vibrators, or for membership sites actually tailored to getting me (and other women) off.

Most porn doesn’t focus on the man; videos typically include shots of his torso and maybe one shot of his face. The rest of the time, they almost exclusively focus on the woman’s face and body. But sometimes that’s for the best because the men cast in these videos are usually old and overweight, while the women are often unrealistically flawless.

Pro tip: Women want porn cast with attractive men. Lesbian scenes are on point, but man-on-woman scenes are sadly lacking in the hotness department, and overlook the fact that women are visual creatures, too.

And while we’re at it—why are there endless categories for all the female body types that turn men on, but exactly zero categories for male bodies? It would be nice if we could choose the kind of body or look that arouses us. I’m trying to get off to a Channing Tatum lookalike, not a dude with a dad bod who looks like he hasn’t showered in a week. Come on!