Sexy Biz Q&A:
Sssh.com founder Angie R. on what women want
In A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire, released last month, neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam analyzed a billion web searches, a million Web sites, a million erotic videos, a million erotic stories, millions of personal ads, and tens of thousands of digitized romance novels when they set out to investigate what people search for when they're looking for sexy stuff online. Among the conclusions in their new book: Men and women search for erotic and pornographic material online pretty much equally, but women are much less -- about 98 percent less -- likely to pay for it.
I caught up with Sssh.com founder Angie R., one of Ogas and Gaddam's sources for data on what women want and what they are willing to pay for, to find out more about how her female- and couples-centric membership website is bucking the trends by catering to -- and listening to -- women.
Some of the analytics from Sssh.com were cited in the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts. Now that you have all this data from your own sites, can you share some perspective on what women are looking for and willing to pay for when it comes to erotica, erotic art, and porn?
You know, I look at my site's stats all the time and we very actively ask our members what they're looking for, so there's not a lot that surprises me. When we ask our members what they want to see when they're viewing sexual content on Sssh, the number one response is tenderness and romance. Number two is female-focused foreplay. And number three is cunnilingus. They want attractive people and a full romantic storyline, not just random sex devoid of context. Environment is important to women, so we try to take that into consideration and find great locations for our movies, you know, the kind of places you'd fantasize about having amazing, romantic sex. Women also want to see fairly high production values in the movies: We want our fantasies to be fantastic.
I knew, when we started this site, what women didn't want: Very few women want to see cum shots, you know, the traditional porn money shots, and our analytics and member surveys back that assertion up. Women pretty unanimously do not want to see facial cum shots. Sorry guys. But I was surprised by some of what they did want. Some women said they wanted us to have more close ups, and more anal sex, which surprised me, and the search results on our site back those survey answers up. They also wanted us to focus more on the man's expression during sex, not just the woman's. They wanted to see both the woman and the man experiencing pleasure together, and it was something I hadn't really thought about before.
It's valuable to be able to see those stats about what people are searching for, and to solicit information from the members to find out what they're looking for rather than always taking shots in the dark.
Yes, and one of my biggest challenges personally has been not to flood Sssh with what I want. When we talk about what are we going to shoot this week and what our articles going to be, we try to take everybody we cater to into consideration. It's really hard sometimes to step out of that box of what we want to see and make sure we're providing what our members want to see, which is sometimes very different.
How did the idea for Sssh.com come about?
One of the reasons that I even started to think about doing this was I watched this show where a woman said she was brought up being taught that masturbation is dirty and bad. When she masturbated, she would masturbate through a sheet, because in her mind she wasn't actually touching herself through that barrier. But then, afterwards, she was riddled with guilt about it. I thought that was one of the saddest stories I have ever heard. It was really upsetting to me that in this day and age anyone would believe that their own pleasure was bad for them, or dangerous or dirty, or shameful, or whatever. I wanted women to know that that's just not the case, and to create a community for them and provide content for them to counteract those kinds of messages in our society. I wanted to create a place where women could come to find what they were looking for, and to feel good about having found it.
What are the most popular sections of your site?
The movies are the most popular, then the tutorials, then stories and articles are head to head after that. Going in I expected the stories to be #1, but I guess if you give women a storyline and attractive actors, they love the video, too. I think women are actually as visually-oriented as men, but it's all in the presentation. Most sites, and most adult filmmakers, have male consumers in mind rather than female consumers, and I think they're missing the target. The members' feedback and interaction really makes Sssh and shows us where to shift our focus.
I do see a lot of how-tos and video tutorials on the site. What do you find are the big questions women have about how to get what they want when it comes to sex?
Anal sex! Women definitely have a lot of questions about anal sex. It's still one of those taboo topics, and, paradoxically, in our survey anal sex is on the top the "what don't you want to see" list and yet, farther down in the survey, it's also what they want to see more of. We get more questions about anal sex than any other topic, which was a surprise to me, so now we have lots of articles, though not many movies yet, dealing with anal sex.
Another one of the really popular features on the site is the "Ask a Man" panel. It's the only testosterone-heavy section on the site, but people love it. The panel is four guys, one each in his 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, and our members throw them questions like you wouldn't believe. It's interesting to see the variety in answers as the men get older, and also to see how a man views the questions. Just because women have lots of questions doesn't mean they're insecure, it's just that we have a lot of curiosity and not a lot of great forums for asking those questions and getting honest answers. I'm really glad women have found a place to go with those questions.
Over the last few years I've been reporting about the rise of sex-positive and feminist pornography, much of it made by women, and also about ongoing anti-porn efforts, much of it also from a feminist perspective. As a woman in the industry, and as somebody working to cater to both female audiences and couples, what would you say to feminist critics of pornography in defense of the work you do and the sites you run?
I'd say, "To each her own." I want to provide a safe place for women to explore sex, for those who want it. If you don't want it, don't join Sssh.com and don't go searching for sexual content online, and by the same token don't condemn others who do. Really, to each her own: That's the way I see it. We haven't had too much backlash regarding Sssh.com, and I do think there's an acknowledgment that what we're doing is healthy and positive and a little bit different from some of what's out there. To people who are anti-porn: If you've got questions or concerns about the industry, then please ask! Let's have a conversation. There's certainly a lot to talk about there. But a lot of what I hear is this "porn causes divorce" stuff. Well, then, why don't you make it something you do together? If I had huge concerns for my marriage about my husband watching porn, I'd want to make it something we do together. I mean, we've actually had couples join the site saying their sex therapist recommended it! We got an email from one of those couples the other day, after they had signed up for a trial membership. The husband emailed me and he said, "You have done more for my marriage, sexually, in the last 12 hours than any sex therapist has ever been able to do" and they upgraded to a full-year membership. I don't know what it was -- maybe watching the movies together, or watching some of the tutorials -- but something did it for them.
I'd say, "To each her own." I want to provide a safe place for women to explore sex, for those who want it. If you don't want it, don't join Sssh.com and don't go searching for sexual content online, and by the same token don't condemn others who do. Really, to each her own: That's the way I see it. We haven't had too much backlash regarding Sssh.com, and I do think there's an acknowledgment that what we're doing is healthy and positive and a little bit different from some of what's out there. To people who are anti-porn: If you've got questions or concerns about the industry, then please ask! Let's have a conversation. There's certainly a lot to talk about there. But a lot of what I hear is this "porn causes divorce" stuff. Well, then, why don't you make it something you do together? If I had huge concerns for my marriage about my husband watching porn, I'd want to make it something we do together. I mean, we've actually had couples join the site saying their sex therapist recommended it! We got an email from one of those couples the other day, after they had signed up for a trial membership. The husband emailed me and he said, "You have done more for my marriage, sexually, in the last 12 hours than any sex therapist has ever been able to do" and they upgraded to a full-year membership. I don't know what it was -- maybe watching the movies together, or watching some of the tutorials -- but something did it for them.
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