Porn in the Pavilion: vanilla sex is the favourite among viewers

The lecture Let’s talk about porn drew a full house for a third year in a row last Wednesday. But for the first time, visitors had to show their identity card at the entrance. There also were multiple security guards present in the theatre during the programme.

“Are you ready to watch and discuss porn together?”, presenter David Boeren asks the audience on Wednesday evening. “Yesss!”, the loud response comes from the packed hall.

The stage has been transformed into a living room. On the screen is a photo of a banana with two nectarines beside it. A long sofa stands between plants and two blue armchairs. Next to the sofa are posters of pornographic films, with titles such as Fantastic orgy and Talk dirty to me. On the latter poster, an actress is dressed as Marilyn Monroe.

Enthusiastic audience

Visitor Laura is sitting in the middle of the hall and laughs when she reads the titles on the posters. “So typical, really.” She’s not affiliated with the university and saw an announcement for the event online. “I had seen a video about the research at the Lowlands music festival on social media. I think the researchers were studying people’s behaviour while watching porn. So it seemed interesting to hear more about it”, says the 24-year-old.

Psychology students Maja, Maria and Zuzana are also curious about the lecture and discussion. “I read that the lecture would also be about the male and female gaze on porn. That’s what I’m most curious about”, says Maria. Maja is interested in the psychological side of the topic. “I’m curious whether that will come up.”

250,000 films on Pornhub

Researcher Samira van Bohemen is the first to present the results of her research into stereotypes in pornography. Together with her team, she studied 250,000 pornographic film titles on Pornhub and conducted experiments at the well-known Lowlands music festival.

“There was always the idea that women in pornography would mainly be passive recipients of sexual acts”, Van Bohemen explains. According to her research, that’s not always the case. “We see that in titles, women often play an active role in sexual acts. We also see this reflected in thumbnails, where women are almost always featured.”

The team also investigated what people focus on while watching porn. “What we see is that both male and female viewers look more at faces than at genitals in all cases. And especially at women’s faces. They find men’s faces less interesting.” According to Van Bohemen, this is interesting because objectification theory assumes that people mainly look at bodies and genitals.

Vanilla is popular

The researchers divided pornography into three categories: stereotypical, vanilla and anti-stereotypical. In stereotypical pornography, the man dominates and the woman is submissive. Vanilla involves an equal sexual relationship in which both people experience pleasure. In anti-stereotypical pornography, the traditional roles are reversed: the woman is dominant and the man submissive.

“The research shows that people have a strong preference for equality in pornography”, says Van Bohemen. “And they have the strongest dislike for pornography in which the woman is dominant.” According to her, this is also the sexual narrative that is least dominant in Dutch culture. “Our research shows that our culture also influences our subconscious preferences for porn.”

After the presentation, an experiment with the audience follows. Researcher Michael Giffin shows where viewers’ eyes go while watching pornographic images. A scene appears on the screen with dots indicating viewers’ gaze direction.

The audience is then invited to take part in an experiment themselves: two images appear side by side on the screen. Using an app, visitors have to indicate which image they find more arousing. “Wow, you’re a great audience”, says Giffin when he sees the responses from the hall. According to him, the results almost exactly match those of the research: equal sex, or vanilla, receives the strongest preference.

Feminist pornography

Director Jennifer Lyon Bell takes over the stage. She makes feminist and queer pornography from a female perspective. According to her, the difference between her work and traditional pornography made from a male gaze lies not only in the sexual acts, but above all in the way the film involves viewers with the characters.

Bell explains that two psychological processes play a role: sympathy and empathy. With sympathy, the viewer has feelings for a character. With empathy, the viewer experiences feelings from that character’s perspective. “As a filmmaker, you first stimulate viewers’ sympathy in your film, and then their empathy”, she explains. “As a result, the sex becomes both exciting and interesting, because viewers have built an emotional connection with the characters.”

Security

For the third year in a row, Studium Generale organised this programme in collaboration with the Spice Hub. The lecture is popular among students and tickets have sold out again this year. But for the first time, the security measures are clearly visible: visitors have to show their identity card at the entrance and multiple security guards are present in the room during the programme.

Studium Generale introduced these measures as a precaution against possible incidents. The research has also attracted criticism: a number of students felt it was inappropriate for research funding to be spent on pornography research. An opinion piece about this in the Nederlands Dagblad also led to parliamentary questions in December 2024.

Van Bohemen nevertheless believes the research is necessary. “Every day, hundreds of millions of people watch porn”, she explains. “It is a medium that is consumed far more than, for example, film and advertising. This is what people are watching. And our research shows that all kinds of social inequalities are reproduced in pornography. That is why it is important that we study it.”

Some disappointment

Afterwards, the three psychology students are enthusiastic about the programme. “Naturally, I found the psychology behind pornographic films very interesting, but I was also pleasantly surprised that there is a whole different world of ethical pornography. So that was really nice”, says Zuzana.

The hall is almost empty, but Business Administration student Raoul is still waiting for his girlfriend. She’s still chatting with the speakers. “The programme was more serious than I expected”, he laughs. He had expected extensive scenes from pornographic films to be discussed. “But it was actually a discussion about porn without porn. Honestly, there were only a few seconds of anything visible. It was really nothing much at all.”