PornHub Surveys Give Clues to US Citizens' Sexual Hypocrisy

CYBERSPACE—Many have criticized tube sites for their lax efforts to track copyrights on uploaded content, but when it comes to PornHub's recordkeeping skills regarding what its users are looking for, that's a different story. PornHub's stats on its visitors' user of search words and where they're accessing the site from can provide some interesting insights into the underlying hypocrisy of many of those same users. For instance, we thought it was a bit strange that in a recent PornHub survey of the main sexual keywords being searched from each state, there were four states—Arkansas, Nebraska, Tennessee and Vermont—where the key word was "cartoon." And hey, if that's what it takes to get off in Bernieland or what was formerly Clinton Country, who are we to argue? Well, apparently the U.S. Department of State does want to argue, since in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015, in the section on Japan, the subsection "Sexual Exploitation of Children," the report states, "No law addresses the unfettered availability of sexually explicit cartoons, comics, and video games, some of which depicted scenes of violent sexual abuse and the rape of children. Experts suggested a culture that appears to accept the depiction of child sexual abuse harmed children." It's unclear who those "experts" are, but considering that, for instance, movies and television are depicting more and more murders, yet the murder rate in the U.S. is going down, so perhaps someone should pay greater attention to the scientific truism, "Correlation is not causation." In fact, it is illegal to possess child porn in Japan, but anime and the graphic arts books called "manga" are still readily available, though the UN Special Envoy on Child Protection, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, recommended that Japan ban "particular, extreme child pornographic content” even if it does not involve any actual children. Supposedly, as ComicBook Legal Defense Fund reporter Maren William wrote, such a ban would help in "finding the right balance" between free expression and child protection, but de Boer-Buquicchio "nevertheless lumped in manga and anime with exploitative images of real children." (The U.S., of course, only bans sexual drawings of children if a court deems such drawing obscene, thanks to the adult industry's win in Free Speech Coalition v. Ashcroft, though in 2008, Michael Williams was convicted not only of possessing and distributing child porn, but also for advertising that he had such material to trade—a crime even if he in fact had no such material in his possession.) Another major area of porn-related sexual hypocrisy is in the area of gay material, and considering all the press that North Carolina's "bathroom bill," HB 2, and Mississippi's "religious liberty" (aka anti-gay) bill, HB 1523, have been getting, it may not surprise anyone that three of the top five states whose citizens are looking on the internet for gay porn are in the Deep South, with Mississippians' preference being gay porn featuring black performers. "This blatant hypocrisy is just the latest example of the worst-kept secret about conservative states: They really like porn, whether it’s gay, straight, or everything in between," wrote Salon.com's Nico Lang. "Numerous studies prior to the PornHub survey have resulted in similar findings, and it’s worth asking the question: Why are red states keeping their hands to themselves? The simple answer might be sexual repression in a culture of abstinence-only education, but these rates also speak to the wider lack of affirming resources for people to explore what they like. Many cities and areas of the country don’t have a gay bar, let alone a visible LGBT community, meaning that their Web browser is forced to provide the connection they lack elsewhere." Lang goes on to note that according to Laud Humphreys' book Tearoom Trade, in the 1970s, men in repressive areas of the country (like the Deep South) would frequently hook up at rest stops and in public restrooms, and that the majority of those surveyed who did so—54 percent—were married, and many were religious, including two members of the (reactionary, virulently anti-communist) John Birch Society! And just try finding a gay bar in many areas of the South—they just ain't there! It should also then be no surprise that according to a 2009 study by Benjamin Edelman of the Harvard Business School, "eight of the top 10 pornography-consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in [the 2008] presidential election." The main conclusion that one can draw from all this is that if people were more honest about sex and their sexual (and porn) preferences, it'd be a much more honest and fun country to live in. Pictured: A scene from the sexy Japanese anime Belladonna Of Sadness.