In an all-too-rare bit of positive news for the porn industry, the results of a new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health challenge most commonly held beliefs about porn use’s effects on sexual functioning. In short, wrote Eric W. Dolan at PsyPost.org, “The study provides evidence that pornography use among women is associated with several positive outcomes.”

The study asked 2,433 women from the United States and Hungary complete an anonymous survey about their use of pornography and experiences with masturbation and partnered sex. The results show, the authors write, that “higher frequency of pornography use predicted greater sexual functioning across all outcome variables during masturbation, yet had no deleterious effects on sexual outcomes during partnered activity.” 

It’s a fascinating finding. For one thing, most studies about porn use and its effects focus on men, so this look into porn use’s impacts women’s sex lives is great. It’s a glimpse into an oft-ignored but very important segment of the porn-viewing population. (Most recent data puts women at somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of porn consumers worldwide, and growing.) 

And, whereas higher porn use is often thought to lead to negative effects on sexual functioning with partners (again, usually in men), this study has found the exact opposite to be true. “These findings challenge the common assumption that pornography is consistently harmful to partnered sexual relationships,” study author Sean M. McNabney, an adjunct instructor at Valparaiso University in Indiana, told PsyPost. 

He continued, “We also observed no association between pornography and sexual relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the latter is influenced by other factors.” 

The only negative outcomes on partnered sex that the study found were associated with “lower levels of educational attainment along with anxiety and depression”—none of which have much to do with porn.

Perhaps the study’s most interesting finding was that more frequent use of pornography was associated with “less difficulty becoming aroused, less orgasmic difficulty, greater time to orgasm, greater orgasmic pleasure, and higher percent of time reaching orgasm” during masturbation.

There’s been quite a lot of hubbub in recent years about what’s sometimes call “porn dick”—the inability of men who watch too much porn to get hard with a partner. Similarly, women are often discouraged from enjoying porn and masturbating with vibrators because they’re made to fear that they’ll “desensitize” themselves to “the real thing” when they’re with a partner. But these data seem to suggest that, while “porn dick” may or may not be real (it seems to depend a lot on who you ask), “porn vulva” is definitely not. In fact, it almost seems like using porn to explore one’s sexuality, fantasies, and sexual satisfaction is good for women’s sexual functioning. Who’d have thought?

Charts photo by Lukas from Pexels