August 13, 1998
Web Erotica Aims for New Female Customers
few weeks ago, a Web site with an evocative name -- Purve -- began selling its own brand of sexual stimulation to anyone with a credit card and claiming to be 18 or older. By PAMELA LiCALZI O'CONNELL
The site is just another drop in the deep well of sexually explicit content that runs beneath the mainstream online world and, some would argue, occasionally threatens to drown it. But there is a twist: Purve is the first sexually explicit subscription site designed specifically for heterosexual women. And that makes its debut something of a cultural signpost.
Sites for women represent a minuscule portion of the Web's thousands of sexually explicit sites.
To date, the most apparent sexual point of view on the Web has been male, especially in the lucrative world of sex-oriented commercial sites. But statistics on Web use show that women are slowly closing the gap with men in terms of their interest in sexually explicit online material. According to Media Metrix, a research company, nearly 20 percent of female Internet users 18 and older visited a sex site in May, up from 15 percent in January, compared with 45.4 percent and 41.3 percent for men.
Although women have long been active participants in sex-oriented chat rooms on America Online and elsewhere, sites with content designed for women represent a minuscule portion of the Web's thousands of commercial sexually explicit sites.
"I have a lot of trouble finding sites created for women by women," said Jane Duvall, whose site, Jane's Net Sex Guide, reviews sexually explicit content of all kinds. "And that's a pity because the Net lets you be anonymous and look at material from the safety of your home. So it's tailor-made for women -- who wouldn't be caught dead in an adult video store, say -- to work out their sexual inclinations." Ms. Duvall said her weekly e-mail newsletter had a readership of at least 30 percent women.
"Women are interested in exploring their sexuality online, but what has clearly been lacking is adult entertainment on the scale of what is found for men," said Anne Semans, co-author of "The Woman's Guide to Sex on the Web," scheduled to be published next spring by Harper San Francisco. "To be frank, the naked pictures of men are all targeted at gay men, not women."
In researching her book, Ms. Semans said, she saw signs that more and more sexually explicit content was available for women. She found a thriving world of erotic stories, for instance, and a small but growing number of free sites incorporating soft-core pictures, chat and shopping. Indeed, Ms. Semans said, she has received several responses from women who said the Web "had already changed their lives sexually" despite the fact that there are not many sites focusing on women.
What women will pay for online will be tested by Purve, which charges nearly $100 for a one-year subscription. The site is the work of an Australian company, Images Marketing Group, which produces some of the largest sex-oriented pay sites for men, which have significantly higher subscription rates.
Purve was "designed, developed and written entirely by women," said Carla Paterson, who runs the site. Ms. Paterson was spurred to start a site for women after working for several years in the sex-oriented Internet industry and finding "there was nothing for me to look at." Purve's main page is noticeably tamer than those of many sites for men. Highlighted areas devoted to sex quizzes, erotic stories, chat and astrology are meant to set a female tone.
"We have been told by women that they like to feel like the site will be a community rather than a bunch of naked pictures," Ms. Paterson said. Of course, Purve's photo gallery contains numerous examples of the latter. So far, Purve has received "hundreds of e-mails from women saying, 'It's about time,' " Ms. Paterson said, adding that the site averaged 5,000 visits a day with little promotion in its first week. In contrast, Images Marketing's sites for men each receive nearly a half-million visits a day on their main home pages.
But Ms. Semans, for one, is not sure that a subscription model will work in this market. "Women are not used to paying for sexual materials," she said. "At least they haven't off line" in anywhere near the numbers that men have.
To some, it may seem odd to view the emergence of sex-oriented sites for women as something positive. Don't all such sites objectify the people pictured? What can be healthy about that?
A sex site of one's own is nothing to sneer at, said Regina Lark, assistant director of the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Southern California and a contributor to a zine called Her Salon, which contains a popular "Herotica" section aimed primarily at lesbians. A subscription to the site costs $15 a month.
Ms. Lark said she was "frustrated and tired of viewing sites that may appear to be for women but are really just other avenues for male enjoyment." She added, "I would much rather view erotica made by and for women than by and for men." Based on requests, Herotica plans to add a new section geared to heterosexual women by the end of the year.
Women are achieving a higher profile behind the scenes in the world of online sexually explicit entertainment as well. For example, one of the most popular sex-oriented sites on the Web, a links directory called Persian Kitty, is maintained by Beth Mansfield, a former accountant who lives in Seattle.
Ms. Mansfield takes a pragmatic view of her involvement in sex-oriented content, saying, "It's a great economic opportunity." Whether such sites for women succeed or fail, she said, is purely a matter of whether such ventures make business sense.
Most consumers of sexually explicit content are unaware that Persian Kitty is run by a woman and are incredulous when they find out.
"People are always intrigued by the fact that I'm a woman -- though less so as time goes on," Ms. Mansfield said.
"I think the day is coming that I can finally kill off the rumor that I'm a guy named Bill," she said.