MEN are not the only ones who experience a testosterone surge after watching
a pornographic film鈥攚omen do too, Austrian researchers have discovered.
Their findings call into question the commonly held view that males and females
respond in different ways to sexually explicit material, they say.
Astrid J眉tte and her colleagues at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for
Urban Ethology in Vienna asked 10 men and 10 women to watch a 15-minute
pornographic film. The researchers took four blood samples: before the film and
three at intervals afterwards. There was a significant increase in testosterone
in both males and females after the film, J眉tte said. The median increase
in men was 100 per cent, she says, and for women it was 80 per cent. Studies
have shown that the more testosterone a woman produces over the monthly cycle,
the more sexually active she tends to be, but little is known about the effects
of short-term surges in this hormone, says J眉tte. 鈥淢aybe it changes her
sexual drive or her motivation for sex,鈥� she speculates.
