In this episode, Malcolm and Simone go deep on the female gooning wave — the explosive rise of erotic romance novels and smut that now makes up a huge share of what women are actually reading.

We cover the hard data: romance sales growth, reading frequency stats, and older studies showing romance readers have more (and more satisfying) sex. Simone and Malcolm explain reactive sexuality, why these books can act as exogenous priming, and why the average effect on relationships appears positive rather than destructive.

Then they break down the dominant tropes in the biggest current series — Empyrean (Fourth Wing / Iron Flame / Onyx Storm), A Court of Thorns and Roses, The Hunting of Adeline, dark mafia, and Zodiac Academy — and what the power dynamics, possessiveness, and “claiming” language actually reveal about female arousal profiles.

Also discussed: the Wicker movie trailer going mainstream, why most men and women want very different things in erotic content, the biblical case against inventing extra sexual prohibitions, and a short closer on premarital sex and the film One Night Only.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Simone Collins: Your face. What? What? What? So you can see we’ve reached mainstream. No, you, you, you haven’t read these books. You don’t understand what women are reading about-

[00:00:14] Malcolm Collins: Did you read those books? ...

[00:00:14] Simone Collins: in these books.

[00:00:15] Would you like to know more?

[00:00:17] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. We have touched on the topic of the rise of the female gooning wave, but I wanted to go deeper into both the research around it and how that wave is changing, because it’s having an, a much bigger impact on society than people think.

[00:00:35] About-

[00:00:35] Simone Collins: Excuse me, are people researching female gooners?

[00:00:39] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yes. We have many re- Simone, when you say female gooners as if they’re the rare thing, the vast majority-

[00:00:46] Simone Collins: No, I know ... are women. Look, trust me, I know. Yes. I just-

[00:00:50] Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, I know you know, because I know what you listen to at night,

[00:00:53] Simone Collins: Simone. Stop. I’m listening to the Old Testam- Oh, never mind.

[00:00:56] Yeah, that’s pretty messed up, so go on then.

[00:00:59] Malcolm Collins: I actually wanna ask it for later. Which industry makes more, this or male ?

[00:01:06] Simone Collins: Oh, no, we did this before. The, the romance novel industry makes a ton more money. Are you kidding me?

[00:01:12] Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll, we’ll see, we’ll see. It’s

[00:01:13] Simone Collins: not even- But, okay, hold on

[00:01:14] funny and funny. Yeah So,

[00:01:15] Malcolm Collins: A third- Offended you

[00:01:16] Simone Collins: would ask ...

[00:01:17] Malcolm Collins: a third of all fiction books is that people are reading right now are- ... female gooning books, okay?

[00:01:22] Simone Collins: No one reads anymore except for certain reasons.

[00:01:25] Malcolm Collins: This has gone up from 23% w- just a decade ago.

[00:01:31] Simone Collins: Oh, oh.

[00:01:32] Malcolm Collins: The romance sales industry year over year grew 24% this year in the, in the first half of the year circa BookScan And 26% of survey r- readers reported buying more than one romance book in the prior year.

[00:01:51] Now, for, I wanna get to this immediately because a lot of people on our channel are gonna jump and be like, “Oh, this is terrible. Oh, these women, their partners, how terrible is this?” So Coles and Sharp in 1984 did a study. And what they found was that readers had sex twice as often per week as non-readers.

[00:02:11] Simone Collins: There was- Yeah, that makes sense ‘cause they’re kinda just getting themselves in that frame of mind. Women have to be, like, reminded that they’re sexually interested, I think, more than men do. Men, it’s like, it’s there for the most part. Women need to be reminded that they can be sexual beings. Is

[00:02:26] Malcolm Collins: that your thing?

[00:02:26] I, I think that’s an absolutely good point. Yeah. I wanna, I wanna expand on this point after I go into it. The, the am- among housewives specifically, readers were significantly more sexually satisfied than non-readers.

[00:02:38] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:02:38] Well, you know, we, we, when you originally wrote The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, you, you looked at, you, you didn’t do romance novel readers, you just polled people about their erotic material consumption.

[00:02:49] But then you found that people who consumed erotic material who were female, like, so women who consumed erotic material, it had much more satisfying and active sex lives. Like, if you are a boyfriend, a husband, anyone who has intimate access to a woman and you want her to be a little bit more forward i- in her advances, you should get, buy, buy her the best-selling romance novels.

[00:03:14] The most perverted stuff

[00:03:16] Malcolm Collins: So she’s got perversions on her mind all

[00:03:18] Simone Collins: the time. Yes. So you need... Yes, she needs to have a dirty mind. If her mind isn’t dirty, it’s your fault, okay? This is-

[00:03:23] Malcolm Collins: And women experiment with these things with their partners. So they, the ones who do this do significantly more fantasy play.

[00:03:31] But the reason I wanted to, to put that out there to start with is it’s the same as the pornography thing, right? Like, guys who consume porn have more and better sex than guys who don’t consume porn. This has been shown in, like, multiple studies, right? Mm-hmm. You know, it’s, it, it-

[00:03:47] Simone Collins: Look, people who watch cooking shows probably have better cooking techniques and cook more than people who don’t watch cooking shows.

[00:03:54] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s, and it’s not- So ... now, I, I, I do wanna make an aside here before I go further. There is [00:04:00] clearly a type of woman and a type of man who cannot engage healthily with this type of content. Oh,

[00:04:05] Simone Collins: yeah. No, yeah.

[00:04:06] Malcolm Collins: There is a type of woman-

[00:04:07] Simone Collins: Well, there’s also people who can’t engage healthily with food or exercise, you know?

[00:04:10] Malcolm Collins: That gets one shot and goes full goon cave and never leaves her room after that, right? There is a type of guy- But did you

[00:04:17] Simone Collins: want her as a girlfriend in the first place, right? If she’s that kind of person.

[00:04:20] Malcolm Collins: I, well, you know, she might get obsessed with you if that was her only alternative. Yeah. I don’t think that’s gonna happen, though.

[00:04:27] Simone Collins: No, mm-mm.

[00:04:28] Malcolm Collins: These types of women are typically, in my experience, pretty histionic and an issue- An issue ... to date. An issue to date. Hmm. You don’t, you, you don’t want a super horny girlfriend or wife. I, I have done that before. It is very exhausting because you’ve got to remember... Sorry, go ahead.

[00:04:44] Simone Collins: You had a Friend- a Fred Flintstone moment with that, didn’t you?

[00:04:48] Malcolm Collins: What do

[00:04:48] Simone Collins: you mean by that? Someone banging on your door, “Wilma.”

[00:04:50] Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

[00:04:51] Simone Collins: yeah. Oh, sorry. I always say that with a German accent because I was once locked out of a French hotel. Let me in. And there was a German outside- Yeah ... and he was banging on the door screaming, “Wilma,” but in a German accent.

[00:05:01] It’s iconic. So and it was the best moment I ever had in Paris. Seeing German locked out of a hotel Sorry Oh

[00:05:06] Malcolm Collins: my God. Okay, anyway.

[00:05:07] Simone Collins: Carry on.

[00:05:08] But you had a girl literally trying to bang down your door to get to that-

[00:05:12] Malcolm Collins: Yes,

[00:05:13] Simone Collins: yes

[00:05:13] notably perfect

[00:05:14] Malcolm Collins: something of

[00:05:14] Simone Collins: yours But, but

[00:05:14] Malcolm Collins: guys forget when they’re like, “No, it would always be great to have, like, a maximally horny girl.” It’s like sex is majority of the work. 99% of the physical effort is the male. If your partner wants to have sex way more than you wanna have sex, that’s just a ton of extra work for you.

[00:05:33] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:05:33] Malcolm Collins: And it gets extremely exhausting. When I’ve been in, in relationships like that, you, you hear them at the door and you’re like, “No.”

[00:05:41] Simone Collins: Yeah. “

[00:05:44] Malcolm Collins: Not again. I’m trying to do my homework.” Yeah. “I’m trying to study.”

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