Just an idea: Women shouldn’t have to ‘sneak in' their porn watching.

It’s the dirty little secret that we just can’t stop whispering about: porn.

We want to know everything, about everyone. What type of porn do you watch? What does that say about you? Would you care if your partner knew? What about your friends? Ooh, naughty.

But while we can’t get enough of the topic after our fourth martini of the evening, it’s yet to make its way into general conversation. Why? Because it’s taboo. It’s dirty. It’s private. It’s revealing. It’s innately personal, the raw truth of our psychological and physical desires. While porn is almost a normalised act for men, it’s still considered revolutionary for women. Why?

Listen: Mamamia’s resident pornstar Madison Missina talks about how you can watch ethical porn. (Post continues…)

A recent survey by Pornhub on ‘Women And Technology’ explored how and when women are consuming porn, with some pretty unsurprising results. For example, women watchers account for 26 per cent of Pornhub customers, with the top three female consumers being South African, American, or British. About 80 per cent of female traffic comes from their mobile phone. Yawn.

But it wasn’t these flat facts from Pornhub that caught our attention, it was this line from a write up on the survey from Australian science and entertainment website Gizmodo.

“But how does the way women access porn differ to their male counterparts?” they asked.

“Other than a standout statistic being women are far less likely to use Internet Explorer (c’mon, guys) the results of Pornhub’s “Women and Technology” survey reveals Apple products are the tech of choice for the ladies.”

Paired with a photograph of a women sneakily looking at her phone in bed, under the covers, Gizmodo was sending out a pretty clear message: oh ladies, you sly dogs! Look how clever you’re getting at hiding your porn!

First thoughts: Men probably use Internet Explorer to look up porn because, well, they don’t care. It’s porn. They’re dudes. Whatever.

Second thoughts: Using your phone to watch porn doesn’t mean you’re hiding it… it probably just means you don’t need a 13 inch Macbook LED lit screen staring you in the face when you’re trying to get jiggy with it.

In an article from The Mirror covering the same research – conducted, ironically, for International Women’s Day – they referred to the porn women were consuming as “smutty videos”. And a piece from the Daily Mail in 2015 spoke about women “confessing to a porn habit” and watching “X-rated videos”.

Wherever you look, porn is treated as a naughty indulgence at best, or a perverted habit at worst.

Sex scenes on the small and big screens. (Post continues after gallery.)

Vanessa Muradian is a Melbourne-based sexologist, writer, and women’s sexuality expert. She told Mamamia traditional attitudes towards women and porn stem from a general suppression of female sexuality in general.

“Porn is still treated as something shameful, because women’s sexuality in general is treated this way,” says Muradian. “Only now are we starting to see women exploring and reconnecting with their sexuality and younger generations being more open and less concern with how previous generations did things.”

She points out that porn is generally packaged and presented as something secret – think back to glossy mag ‘sealed sections’, or the adult section of the video store.

“Porn still very much has this ‘naughty’ filter,” she says, “so you have to go out of your way to make porn easy or part of your relationship.”

So why do so many people still view female porn consumption as unusual, or taboo?

“For so long, we weren’t considered as sexual as men,” explains Muradian, “and only recently have women found agency as sexual beings. For many years both men and women’s sexuality belonged to men.”

While Muradian acknowledges that, like everything, porn should be consumed in moderation (it can, after all, be an addictive medium) watching female-produced porn can be an extremely healthy way to explore your sexuality. She says this type of adult cinema is really moving us forward in the right direction.

“More and more women are making porn for women, or women are being treated as equal within the industry and within the storylines,” she says.

“It’s important to normalise porn so that women can fully explore their sexuality… As acceptance grows, so too does individuality and realising that every human has their own sexual fingerprint.

“Some people will like porn today, some tomorrow, some might be in it and some might decide to only tell this to their grandkids on their deathbed.”

Muradian likens the normalisation of porn to teaching your kids about drugs or alcohol – by keeping it an ‘off limits’ topic, creates fear and stigma around porn, perpetuating feelings of shame and confusion if you do happen to enjoy it.

Far from hiding our ‘dirty little secret’ on our iPhones, huddled under the covers in bed, female porn watching should be embraced and encouraged. Not your jive? No problem. But if it is? Judgement, hiding, or shame should be the last things on your mind.

Women are constantly softening their sexuality into something ‘cute’ or ‘girly’. Porn is for women. Porn is an aggressive stance of sexual fantasy and desire. So when will this stop feeling like a threat, and start feeling like something really exciting?

Go on, girls. Go get jiggy with it.

Have you felt ashamed about watching porn in the past?