“It has always been difficult to get women to watch, let alone purchase, pornography, and no magazine has truly been able to crack the market when it comes to erotica for women. A magazine from the publishers of Penthouse, called For Women, tried and failed to make a success of itself in the 1980s, while Playgirl ceased printing in November last year.

The latter lives on as a website, but frankly the Playgirl site is a monument to the gay man. It boasts a membership of 40,000 – but I wonder how many of those are women. The problem is that the images, both still and moving, that the site provides are far too explicit and mechanical to excite the female mind. Women generally require a series of more subtle psychological triggers to be properly aroused.

This week, a new magazine seeks to fill the gap left by failed publications such as Playgirl – but can it really claim to be plugging into the complex sexual psyche of the modern woman? On its cover is an image of a curiously androgynous male, knelt in prayer. Is the iconoclasm of a naked male torso, facing away from the camera, in apparent religious genuflection, meant to be sexy? It appears that it is.”

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