Pleasure, bodies and risk: women's viewership of pornography in urban India

How feminists pick porn: Troubling the link between ‘authenticity’ and production ethics

“…So, yeah, I think that I do that as well, I 'jump' on someone. (Serena) Such descriptions are similar to those put forward by participants in Chowkhani's (2016) study of female porn consumers, wherein participants often described 'wish [ing that] they could be the woman on screen'.…”

Women’s Consumption of Pornography: Pleasure, Contestation, and Empowerment

“…While much of the previous literature has focused on demarcations that set apart women’s from men’s consumption, we find that women use pornography in a fairly similar way to men as reported in recent studies (McCormack and Wignall, 2017). Prior research suggests that women are able to identify more with the erotic narratives in erotica (Chowkhani, 2016; Hardy, 2009; Wilson-Kovacs, 2009) or other alternative porn categories (Neville, 2015, 2018), and therefore tend to prefer them. Our study, however, shows that women also find pleasure in mainstream pornography, including hardcore categories, even though they do not always identify with the actors and stories.…”

“…Women have as much interest as men in the transgressive and the visually objectifying dimensions of the erotic (McNair, 2013). Yet, their relationship with pornography has been described as nuanced and oftentimes paradoxical (Ashton et al, 2018, 2019; Chowkhani, 2016). For example, Smith (2007) shows that women can find both pleasure and boredom in pornographic tales.…”

Difference or dysfunction?: Deconstructing desire in the DSM-5 diagnosis of Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder

“…The nascent but growing inquiry into women’s active use of pornography (Ashton et al., 2018) as negotiated practice, with specific erotic, ethical, sociopolitical, and geopolitical contours (e.g. Chowkhani, 2016; Marques, 2018), suggests that fantasy is a key aspect of sexuality for many women. Likewise, the largest study of porn use to date (international sample of 5490 people; Smith et al., 2015) found that women aged 18–25 regularly consume more porn than do men, and for those under 18 and between 26 and 35 years of age, porn frequency use is the same for men and women.…”