When the books first came out I restrained myself from writing any blog posts about them.

I read the first one and the main thing I got out of the first book is the desire NOT to read the second or the third one. So I didn’t.

However, with Valentines day and the release of the movie all happening in the last few days I thought I should highlight something that is both obvious and odd at the same time.

The constant use of the phrase “mommy porn” to describe 50 shades of grey.

Well 50 shades IS porn for women but, despite the reams of articles, commentaries, movie reviews and blog posts nobody has yet explained exactly WHY 50 shades IS porn for women and why so few men care for it.

I covered the reasons why four years ago before all the 50 shades phenomenon happened in my book Sex 3.0

It’s all to do with the primary imperatives of men and women.

When I say primary imperative I simply mean the most effective way of passing your genes down to the next generation.

Men have one primary imperative, women have two.

Men’s primary imperative is simple:

• Have sex with lots of fertile women

With the most obvious signs of fertility being youth, beauty and curves in all of the right places (think waist to hips ratio).

This imperative does not work for women however for fairly obvious reasons.

Regardless of how many men women have sex with, they can only go through one entire birth cycle per year during which they can pass down their genes.

The number of birth cycles a men can be involved with (genetically speaking) per year is only limited by his number of willing partners.

Therefore men and women can, will and MUST have radically different genetic imperatives.

Before we take a look at women’s two genetic imperatives, let’s remind ourselves of the obvious.

What is porn for men? Well porn for men is … porn.

As men’s genetic imperative is to have sex with lots of fertile women with the most obvious signs of fertility being youth, beauty and curves in all of the right places we like to see naked women, we like to see people having sex (and pretend that we are the guy).

In short we like porn.

The authors of the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts (What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships) trawled through the perhaps the greatest dataset that has ever been available in the entire history of mankind and came to the same conclusion.

The most searched for sex related terms for men seeking porn were themed around youth.

So what about women’s sexual imperatives?

Well, I think we can all accept that women are more complicated than men but, as it turn out, not that much more complicated.

They only have one more sexual imperative than men.

As the male sexual imperative does not work for women, they seek quality, not quantity.

Don’t get me wrong, women like sexual variety too, just not to the extent that men do.

Women’s two sexual imperatives are:

• Seek strong, confident, alpha, dominant male
• Seek provision (financial security) for self and any children that may follow

In other words, porn for women is dominance + provision.

When asked what is a man’s sexiest quality women routinely answer “confidence” or some other dominant quality.

As for the second imperative, women describe high status, high earning males as a “good catch” or an “eligible bachelor”.

You may have noticed that men don’t talk this way about women. We don’t care what they do for a living or how much they earn or how much dough they have banked.

We care if they are hot or not.

Even if we get past this first consideration, the second most important thing that men care about is women’s personality. Not their bankroll or status.

Now women do not need to get their two primary imperatives satisfied by the same guy and often they won’t.

The cad + dad strategy (marry a beta male provider and hook up with hot alpha males on the side) is one extremely popular way of getting both needs met.

Getting both needs met in the same guy however IS porn for women.

Enter Christian Grey.

Bondage. Dominance. Sex.

Oh, did I mention that he happens to be a billionaire?

Dominance + Provision = Female porn.

Further Reading : Why Are Women Obsessed With Shoes & Handbags?