Until video hire stores were invented, it was acutely embarrassing for a woman to take any interest in porn. She had to go to a sleazy store in a bad part of town, and do business with a slimy creep working the cash register. Or go to a neighbourhood movie theatre that had seen better days and was down on its luck. Everybody in the theatre was a guy in a trenchcoat moving rhythmically, if you know what I mean.

Video hire places do mainly mainstream movies. So nobody notices when a woman goes into one. She can quickly pick up a naughty one, pay for it, drop it in her purse, walk out, and no one's the wiser.

But women viewing porn really took off this decade, with internet delivered to homes via broadband. There are very few sites deliberately targeted at women. And a fair proportion of those that are, are lesbian. It appears that str8 male porn is good enough for women, especially now that women directors have taken over the business. And I recall a married woman who flatted with me more than 30 years, who told me that when she wanted to warm her blood, she was happy to leaf through Playboy and Penthouse and look at the women. The only man she wanted to see, she said with a twinkle in her eye, was the one she was married to.

This century is the first one where large umbers of young women have seen close-ups of the private bits of both sexes, and sexual acts. I have no good idea where this will take us.