I'm sure a lot of the hypotheses here are correct, but history plays a role, too. Heterosexual men have been encouraged to pursue sex and women have been encouraged to eschew it. For centuries if not millennia. So there's just a significant amount of inertia.
Couple that with some likely real differences in what gets women off that the porn industry is still working out, and there will be differences in the volume of porn targeting each.
From Fight the New Drug (it's an anti-porn site but I'll use their statistics and leave out the moralizing):
"While pornography consumption for young adults has been repeatedly reported to be approximately 75% for men and 30% for women, these rates are considerably lower than those found in this study. In this study, consumption rates of men were generally consistent (91–99%) across time frames, though women’s consumption varied more widely (60–92%). Interestingly, this range in reported rates for women is consistent with the variability found in previous literature, which may be indicative of a profound impact of assessment methods (Hald et al., 2014).
Notably, 11% of women in our sample primarily consumed written pornography compared to other pornography modalities (with written pornography being 90–100% of the total pornography they consumed [...] Alternatively stated, if written pornography had not been included in this study, our consumption rate for women using pornography in the past month would drop to approximately 49% from 60% reporting consumption. A similar pattern of decreased endorsement would have occurred across all time frames.
So video and photographic pornography is targeted more towards men as the primary consumers.
You reminded me of when I noticed the sheer volume of professional straight porn that was written with the performers as step-siblings.
I found it annoying but my guess is that it’s a quick/cheap attempt to broaden the appeal to as many as possible beyond the core “man and woman having sex” enjoyer demographic.
And also that targeting men is effective like YouTube 😱 Thumbnails aimed at kids and the algorithm, and the success of titties helping garner a following. (albeit one that may be there for the “wrong” reasons)
You reminded me of when I noticed the sheer volume of professional straight porn that was written with the performers as step-siblings.
Not just siblings. Also dads and moms, uncles ... and let's be real, the "step" is there mostly for legal reasons. Basically people really seem to like incest. Not sure what that tells us about society.
I don’t think the step- relations are to hide incest. I think it’s a lazy way to create situations where two people are alone together. Otherwise you’d have to go to tired tropes like pizza delivery, or visiting plumber, etc.
and let's be real, the "step" is there mostly for legal reasons.
Is this true? I’m surprised.
When I was 12 I got a step sister that was 17-18 and I definitely had a thing for her. I always assumed this stuff was aimed at that but maybe I’m just living in my own head over here.
The step stuff I really dumb though and I have no interest in it either way. However, if they dropped the step I would be 100% out.
We're lonely. We get no physical contact. No touch. No warmth. And it's not really socially acceptable for us to seek those things, because men are scolded for emotions and vulnerability. We are scolded for anything that would enable intimacy.
And it's to such an extent that most men are so repressed they don't even realize they crave intimacy. They don't even have the vocabulary to describe their need for intimacy.
Now introduce, to such a man, a "sister."
Heavy emphasis on the quotes.
The "story" of the porn, using their family ties as a shortcut, quickly establishes that she lives with him. She bonds with him. It's socially acceptable for him to hug her, to wrestle with her, maybe even to cuddle her. And she will always be there, because her connection to him runs deeper than most "romantic" relationships can (we're still assuming this man can't articulate his own need for intimacy), so he doesn't need to worry about her abandoning him.
Naturally, this emotionally repressed man is going to look at this fictional family member, this figment of his suspension of disbelief, and say, "well I want to 🦆 her!" (I always find my keyboard's lack of profanity amusing. I refuse to teach such an innocent piece of software how to cuss.)
What he really means is that he appreciates that intimacy. And cannot really get turned on in its absence. But he can't say that. He can't admit that or even know that. Because this man is not only starved of all of the above: he can't even articulate this starvation.
Daughters? Sisters? Mothers? They all serve the same purpose as a shortcut -- "here's a person who is intimate and trusting with you by default." The familial bond is a fast, easy way to establish prebuilt trust and affection without spending 20-30 minutes on storytelling or 20-30 hours of therapy trying to convince a repressed audience that it's okay to have a deep, intimate, trusting connection with this consenting woman.
In other words, what it tells us about society isn't good.
Financial, not legal. A bunch of credit card companies and ad companies don't want to be associated with incest porn, but are fine with step-incest porn, for whatever reason. So long as the actors aren't actually related it's totally legal, and even related actors would be legal in some US states.
From what I heard about it, the issue was one of production quality.
Tons of vanilla porn in low quality, but -fetish- porn was high quality.
The family ties stuff is easy enough to ignore if you just don’t listen to the limited dialogue, so people would seek that out because it was better quality than vanilla, which led producers to think the fetish was the important part.
Well, as a sweeping generalization, women like written stories more than video porn, and men like videos better than stories. I don't think it's accurate to say guys are more into sex, necessarily, but more into pictures and videos yes.
When I was young, lived in a household with a bunch of other people and we had this absolute freak of a friend who always brought us boxes of porn magazines. He would sweep in brandishing the box then say, "And Forums, for the LADIES!". Because he knew girls liked words and guys liked pictures.