What Women Want 2020

Nearly 30% of the xHamster audience is women. Who are they? What do they want? And what are they doing for Valentine’s Day?!?

Well, it turns out female porn consumers vary from their male counterparts quite a bit. Women consumers are generally younger, spend nearly twice as much money per year, and more likely to prioritize their own pleasure — among other things!

The results come from an exclusive survey of over 100,000 unique visitors to xHamster over the course of a week in early February.

DEMOGRAPHICS
The female audience is significantly younger than the male audience. More than a one-third are Gen Z (under 24), and nearly two-thirds are under 34! (Men are more evenly split in age, with as roughly many over 34 as under.)

Since our own traffic stats show that women make up nearly 30% of the overall global audience for porn, this is great news. The next generation of women is more interested in porn than previous generations, and as they grow, so will the market.

Women porn consumers are also tend to be less likely to identify as “straight” or “heterosexual” than male porn consumers.

In fact, less than 50% — fewer than half of women — said they were straight (versus 70% of men). More than 30% identified as bisexual (vs 18% men), and 7% said they were lesbian.

PORN HABITS: WOMEN VS MEN
Women tend to watch porn with less frequency than men do. Just 70% say they watch porn several times a week, compared to 83% of men.

But that doesn’t necessarily have to do with desire for porn — it might be that they’re getting laid more! 14% of women who answered the survey say they’re having sex at least once a day (versus just 8% of men). 71% told us they were currently in a relationship (versus just 62% of men). And 40% said they had plans for Valentine’s Day (versus just 26% of men).

Women who watch porn don’t feel particularly bad about it. In fact, they feel slightly more positively about porn than men do.
Women who watch porn less frequently (once a month or less) are the least likely to feel positively about porn. So maybe we’re an acquired taste!

Women may make up a smaller share of the overall market, but the data shows that they’re much more likely to spend. In fact, the average female porn viewer spends an average of $129 a year on porn, whereas the average man spends just about half that ($66).

Nearly 12% of women porn fans say they spend $1000 or more on porn annually — again, more than double the number of men that do.

These numbers may come as a shock to an industry that has long discounted the female viewer. In reality, it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

WOMEN IRL
It’s not just what they watch. Female porn consumers are women who prioritize pleasure. We asked what was more important in sex — getting pleasure or giving it to a partner?

Most men and women said both were equally important. But 26% of women who watch porn answered “getting pleasure” — a number that rose to 35.8% for women who said they watched porn every day. (Just 19% of women who watched porn once a month or less said the same.)

Female consumers are still more likely than men to consider themselves submissive rather than dominant in a relationship. More than 37% of men said they considered themselves the dominant partner, whereas just 28% of women did. (The exception? Women who watch porn every day are more likely to be dominant (38%) than submissive (28%).

In fact, regardless of gender, increased porn viewing tends to correlate with a rising identification as the dominant partner.

Women also diverge from male porn viewers when it comes to monogamy. Fewer women than men were likely to rate a monogamous (or “monogam-ish”) relationship as the ideal (69% to 61%) and more likely to rank polyamory or other non-traditional relationships as the ideal.

Regardless of gender, the more frequently a person watches porn, the more likely they are to rate monogamy as their ideal form of relationship!

Perhaps we’re a type of cupid after all!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Alex Hawkins
xHamster Data Center
alex.hawkins@xhamster.com