While Fifty Shades of Grey is hardly considered an accurate portrayal of BDSM sex, it's certainly served as inspiration for women who watch porn.
Since the film's Valentine's Day weekend premiere, the research team at Pornhub has seen nearly a 40% increase in BDSM-related searches among users who identify as women. Ladies, grab your paddles.
Let's break things down a bit further.
When Pornhub broke BDSM search increases down by gender, it saw marked disparities between searches by women vs. those by men. Most notably, there's been an astonishing 219% increase in searches for the word "submission" among women, in contrast to a 46% increase among men. And searches for the term "dominate" are up 196% among women, in contrast to only 32% among men.
"Spanking" is also enjoying a serious bump -- 158% -- among women, as opposed to a meager 5 percent increase among men.
Gender-breakdowns aside, BDSM-related searches are up just over 20% in the U.S. since the Fifty Shades premiere, with terms like "flogging," "rope" and "dominatrix" showing notable increases.
You can read more about Pornhub's look into BDSM searches on their safe-for-work blog post.
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