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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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To what extent could the difference be carried by erotica? It is widely believed that men prefer visual titillation and women prefer narrative. New media that proliferated since the '90s has much more of an advantage over books in the former than the latter domain, so it would stand to reason that more men who were at least partially in it for the porn jumped ship to the internet. I still remember being annoyed that the semi-trashy criminal fiction I read as a teenager always had to include an ill-fitting gratuitous graphic sex scene, so the proposition that it matters for large swathes of the audience seems not too far-fetched.

(...or perhaps the "men are more visual" thing extends to entertainment beyond the explicitly pornographic. Do men also prefer videos of {violence, heroism, drama} over written stories about them more than women do?)

...or perhaps the "men are more visual" thing extends to entertainment beyond the explicitly pornographic. Do men also prefer videos of {violence, heroism, drama} over written stories about them more than women do?

I have difficulty getting into the mind of the modal male here. For porn I typically prefer words over images. Words simply allow you to explore a broader and more nuanced range of concepts.

Ultimately both words and images have their place though (for both sexual and non-sexual topics) and I wouldn't say that one is "superior" to the other in a global sense.

Yeah, but not like words on a page. Its different if it's actual audio.

I have a feeling they were into the former far more than the latter..

And that's leaving aside the lack of availability of video pornography during Playboy's heyday.

Women seem to use Tumblr a lot, which had a lot of porn back in the day.

Interestingly, the surge in female sexlessness corresponds exactly to the 2018 Tumblr porn ban. This has to be a coincidence right? There’s no way it’s as simple as “femcels stopped having sex as soon as they stopped being turned on by hardcore porn on their social media feed,” is it?

There’s no way it’s as simple as “femcels stopped having sex as soon as they stopped being turned on by hardcore porn on their social media feed,” is it?

Simple sanity check: does the number of femcels match the number of regular unique tumblr users?

Also: doesn't it correspond more to COVID?

Probably part of it. Romance has always been the biggest seller in mass-market fiction by far, something like 50% of all units sold yearly are romance. I think the trend holds across most genres though.