Dennis RomeroWhen you think about the audience for the multi-billion-dollar, LA.-based porn industry, you usually think men.
That would be a good instinct, but not entirely correct. In fact there's some evidence that women are a big slice of the adult market partly, perhaps, because you can partake from the comfort of your laptop instead of having to BYO hand sanitizer to your favorite Hollywood “book store” (not that we'd know much about this stuff).
Now there are reports this spring the a growing number of women are experiencing a problem previously only attributed to sad, lonely men like Charlie Sheen:
Porn addiction.
The website Internet Filter Review says that nearly 1 out of 5 women are “struggling with pornography addiction.”
(That seems a little high to us. That actually number cited is 17 percent. Still … ).
The site also claims that one out of three porn site visitors are women.
Sasha Grey quit porn.; Credit: Vice Books
And women, like their male counterparts, can have a hard time recovering after getting hooked on porn because there's shame and embarrassment involved. It can be hard to reach out.
Sex therapist Emma Schmidt tells Cincinnati station WKRC:
I think it's a shame issue. I think it's shame and guilt. You don't hear people talk about it.
Still, one man's porn is often another woman's soft-core journey:
Females are more attracted to the fantasy of the story — erotica — than the male-oriented graphic physiology of getting it on, as our sister site LA After Dark recently indicated.
Pornography addiction counselor Vickie Burress tells WKRC,”A lot of pornography addiction for women starts with romance novels.”
And fantasies of Johnny Depp.
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