@neil I think this could easily play a role.
My body tends to be read as femme by people who only see porn of me, but I'm very aware of my middle aged, masculine/perceived male status, communication style, and demeanour when interacting with women in general and people younger than me specifically.
My solution is to be cautious about initiating interaction and to operate a strike policy, where if I overstep or behave inappropriately with someone, I apologise then cease interaction, as it would agonise me to make someone feel threatened or uncomfortable just because I'm bad at navigating parasocial or interpersonal stuff.
That means that I chat with people in those groups less than I might otherwise, which reduces the network effect and functionally means that I see less of them to boost, even when we're both on lewd/sex work fedi.
More generally speaking, I've definitely noticed, as you mention earlier in this thread, that people tend to like/boost/comment on lewd posts (especially images) less than on non-lewd ones.
I've also found that softcore/cheesecake pics get more interaction than hard kink/highly explicit images. (I have also observed patterns about gender presentation but that's a bit of a deep dive.)
Written posts seem less susceptible, but my erotic writing nonetheless mostly goes less viral than my Stong Opinions About Social Justice, for example.