Money Shot: Not on the Face
In today’s culture, a lot of people have a lot of opinions or feelings about pornography. Depending on your beliefs, pornography can be the devil, a wonderful thing or something in between. But what are your thoughts on the money shot?
What can’t be disputed is the fact that the content of today’s pornography is has changed. The advent of Point-of-View (POV) videos changed the landscape of pornography. While we are long on opinions about pornography, we are rather short on scientific data.
Enter “As long as it is not in the face.”
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A Study on the Money Shot
In 2023, Eran Shor published a study in the Journal Sexes that described his research specifically looking at the preferences of pornography viewers for how male ejaculation is filmed. This might seem an odd thing to research, but it’s not.
Many feminist theorists have stated that the prevalence of men ejaculating on women (the “money shot”) and particularly in their faces is indicative of misogyny or support of the aggression towards and degradation of women.
Dr. Shor’s research is one of the first of its kind to assess this topic with actual viewers of pornography.
He recruited over 300 people from across the world and interviewed them about their male ejaculation preferences in pornography.
His sample included men, women and several non-binary individuals who identified as straight, gay, bi-sexual, and queer.
The Evolution of the Money Shot
Before we dig into the results, let’s talk about today’s pornography.
Many feminist theorists are upset about the trend of showing male ejaculation on the faces of women. This upset is not without cause.
One study found that anywhere from 28% to 43% of the videos that were analyzed included the man ejaculating on the woman’s face.
Another study found that 45% of the videos they sampled included one or more men ejaculating on a woman’s face.
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Background on the Study
Some demographics about the participants in this study:
- Women watched pornography on average 6.6 times per month and men 14.3 times per month.
- The average age when they began to watch pornography was 13.4 for women and 12.3 for men. This is why we need pornography education for young people!
- About half of the participants were from North America but participants came from South and Central America, Europe, the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Africa.
The two main interview questions were
- How important was it for the person to see male ejaculation in a pornography video
- Where would they prefer to see the men ejaculate (where on/in the body)
Where do viewers prefer the money shot happen?
In total, 26.6% of the participants did not care about male ejaculation and 37.8% preferred to see a man ejaculate in a woman’s vagina.
Only 9% of the total sample preferred to see male ejaculation on the woman’s face and 8.2% preferred to see it in a woman’s mouth.
When it came to seeing male ejaculation at all, 58.9% of men and 37.7% of women told the interviewers that seeing male ejaculation was not important to them.
Those who did feel that seeing male ejaculation was important in pornography were more often heterosexual and the sentiment was prevalent among those participants from the Middle East.
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Drumroll please…
There was a strong preference among participants to see ejaculation in the woman’s vagina.
The authors stated that “for some, primarily among male interviewees, the portrayal of vaginal ejaculations was favored because these indicated that the woman was willing to accept the male semen, implying that she was more engaged and involved in the sexual act and there was some reciprocity and mutual respect.”
Most viewers of pornography do NOT want to see a man ejaculate on a woman’s face. In fact, many viewers of pornography do not care about seeing men orgasm, contrary to much of the content of available pornography.
Furthermore, it challenges the hypothesis that there is a cultural fetishization of the “money shot” in popular pornography. This data does not appear to support the theories of many feminist scholars about facial ejaculation.
The second interesting finding of this study is that there appears to be a disconnect between what the pornography industry is producing commercially and what people (or at least these 300 people) want to see. There is a focus on male ejaculation in pornography and a focus on that ejaculation to be on a woman’s body.
As with any research study, the results are the beliefs of its’ participants. Though the sample was rather diverse, it may not represent the beliefs of all viewers of pornography.
Reference
Shor, E. (2023). “As Long as It’s Not on the Face.”: Pornography Viewers Discuss Male Ejaculation Perceptions and Preferences. Sexes, 4, 587-600. https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5118/4/4/38
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