According to data released by Pornhub, 5.6% of porn users in Mississippi seek out gay porn, compared to 2.8% in North Dakota.
On average, gay porn is more heavily consumed in states where same-sex marriage is legal than in states where it’s illegal, but every single state in the South has a gay porn use that exceeds the average in states with same-sex marriage.
For me, this raises questions about what’s driving sentiment against same-sex marriage and porn use and if and why it’s related. I can think of at least three theories:
1. There is the (barely) repressed homosexuality theory, of course. This is the idea that some people express homophobic attitudes because they fear being non-heterosexual themselves. So, out of fear of exposure, or fear of their own feelings, they are vocally anti-LGBT rights. There’s data that backs this up in at least some cases.
2. Another possibility is that both homosexual inclinations and anti-gay hatred are high in Southern states, but not in the same people. This is one version of the contact hypothesis: the presence and visibility of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people threatens the norm of heterosexuality, increasing opposition. This is consistent with data showing, for example, that white racial resentment is higher in counties with larger populations of black folk.
3. Or, it may be that politicians in Southern states stoke anti-gay attitudes in order to win elections. They may be doing so as a simple strategy. Or, it may be part of that notorious “culture war,” a politics that supposedly distracts poor and working class people from their own economic interests by getting them to focus on so-called social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
As fun as it is to snicker at the fact that the part of the country that claims a moral high ground on homosexuality is over-represented in pursuing it (at least digitally), there’s also probably some pretty interesting social/psychology sociology here.
Cross-posted at Pacific Standard.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 23
Richard Gadsden — March 26, 2015
A fourth hypothesis. Gay people living in the South are less able to express their sexuality with other people; people in more tolerant areas are more likely to have a partner. People without a partner are more likely to use porn.
J.S. — March 26, 2015
What's the evidence for the possible "theories" offered as explanation? You didn't even bother to check whether heterosexual porn viewing rates are similarly higher in the region. The higher rate of gay porn watching could be linked to the higher rate of poverty in the South, younger average age of people in the South, more hours of leisure time in the South, differing attitudes toward pornography in the South, etc. To offer up "it most likely is because they're repressed" as a reason does not seem very academic. Sociology seems to be an extremely "soft" science.
Greg392 — March 26, 2015
What's the margin of error for something like this study? (I'm at work, so I'm not going to click on the link.) I'm guessing it is based on IP address, which is notoriously unreliable. My ISP is based in a different province of Canada than where I actually live. Every site I visit considers me as being there.
So, other possible explanations:
1) There are more ISPs based out of Mississipi than North Dakota.
2) People in North Dakota are more motivated to (or more skilled at) hiding their IPs when looking for porn.
kafkette — March 26, 2015
it's always possible that i missed something but, ah— in what way is 4.13% seven percent less than 4.41%?
really. i would like to know what the source of the 7% figure might be, & if it's not in the article [which i don't think it is], what was the point, if you will, of posting the graphic.
--
edited to add: even the 5.6%/mississippi vs 2.8%/north dakota is not 7%. otoh, even if it were 7%, we're talking about extremely small numbers. 7% of 5.6% of the people in one state or another—
—it's just exhausting. the culture, it's just— it believes something & pushes around data to prop up its beliefs. constantly. not good. never.
mimimur — March 26, 2015
Could also be a difference in discourse - higher level of acceptance means same sex attraction is normal. Lower level of acceptance often means a fixation on sex, and by extension associating same sex attraction with sex rather than the wide spectrum of feelings and practises that heterosexuality is associated with.
YY — March 26, 2015
Two alternative (and in my view more plausible) explanations.
1) More Southern porn users are not as internet saavy and thus use Pornhub or other major porn sites instead of just searching for what they want using google. This would be consistent with other studies finding a higher rate of people paying (paying!) for porn in the South.
2) Given the overall more conservative population, fewer people use porn in general in this South. But there is a similar percentage of "out" gay people in the South as elsewhere, and they are unlikely to oppose porn morally. So, among the population that uses porn in the south, a larger proportion are gay.
Benedikt Heid — March 27, 2015
Hey, I normally enjoy this blog a lot, but I was wondering about the margin of error as well. Out of curiosity, I hacked in the data in my statistics program. Greg392 was right with his intuition: The difference in gay porn usage between states with legal or illegal gay marriage is statistically not significant. From my point of view, I am afraid that there is no room for any speculation as raised above in the post. The variation in gay porn usage is very likely just due to sampling error or random fluctuations in gay porn usage. You can contact me by mail if you would like to have the data set.
Andrew — March 27, 2015
The first thing I notice here is that the map is (happily) out-of-date. Same-sex marriages are now legal in 36 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. By the end of 2015, that number is likely to go to 50.
The Southern states may all exceed the national average here, but so does Massachusetts, which legalized same-sex marriage a decade ago. California and New York, both early adopters of LGBT rights laws, also appear to consume more gay porn than less gay-friendly Tennessee and Kentucky. I just don't see any correlation there that holds up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
On the other hand, a case could be made for a correlation between population density and searches for gay porn. The most sparsely populated states, with the fewest cities over 200,000 people, also happen to have the lowest numbers on the charts. Gay men are statistically likelier than the population at large to live in urban areas, and states with anti-gay political climates still have large communities of gay men in their urban centers.
(I emphasize men here, mostly because PornHub is clearly not including girl-on-girl porn in its "gay" statistics, and their audience is disproportionately male)
Southern States Lead Nation in Consumption of Gay Porn, But Why? » Antropologia Masterra — March 27, 2015
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Fiona1933 — April 8, 2015
Did they count the number of straight women watching it? It's huge amongst straight women as googling slashfic will tell you or just looking at how many fanvids of those gay guys on Spartacus there are.
Emmet Fox — May 21, 2015
Another argument is based on the notion that heterosexuality is actually not the default sexuality but instead humans are capable of multiple sexualities (à la Foucault).
However in strict environments where sex is generally treated as a 'bad/naughty' thing outside of marriage, and masturbation the same, then these may lead to the association of sex with ideas of what is 'bad'. So a teenage boy, as nearly all teenage boys do, starts masturbation with the idea of doing wrong. At first this begins with heterosexual fantasies. Later however as heterosexaulity becomes more acceptable in the conversation of males nearing adulthood the fantasies loose their association with 'bad'. However the arousal had always been triggered in line with a notion of being 'naughty' but now with that gone the arousal wanes. So the man goes elsewhere for forbidden fantasies and in an anti-homosexual environment gay fantasies fill the void. This is an argument that would also help explain why so many Catholic priests have engaged in paedophilia. For another take on the socialisation of sexuality see here https://mythsofourtime.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/same-sex-marriage-and-the-prevailing-myths-of-sexuality/
One Possibility as to Why Anti-gay People Would Consume Gay Porn | Myths of Our Time — May 21, 2015
[…] gay porn than non Southern states. These states tend to be more anti-gay rights than other states. Now the article that this has come from offers several arguments as to why this may be so and I woul… However here I have added another argument, which I believe may offer some explanation. It is based […]
Chris BSomething — March 29, 2017
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“On average, gay porn is more heavily consumed in states where same-sex marriage is legal than in states where it’s illegal”
That’s not what the data says. It says that gay porn is a greater PROPORTION of the total porn. It might be 100x more heavily consumed in same sex marriage states (for all we know from this data), but it’s slightly more highly consumed as a PROPORTION. (this BTW, is why non-statisticians should not quote statistics, because they have no idea how to interpret it).
Now why is this so? To me at least, the reason is obvious. In the bible belt a high proportion of people are Christians and don’t consume ANY porn. But if you’re gay, you’re not a Christian, therefore you make up a disproportionate amount of the porn usage. But in same sex marriage states few people are Christians, thus EVERYONE is using porn, including the heterosexuals.
I won’t address your three “theories” because they are a result of this total misunderstanding of the data, and therefore are a meaningless response to that data.
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