Few things say as much about a person as the porn they like. Your turn ons, turn offs, and kinks reflect the parts of ourselves we celebrate and keep secret.
Among the largest keepers of this, very personal and telling, information is Pornhub — one of the world’s largest online porn sites. Understanding the value of this information, Dr. Paul J. Maginn from the University of Western Australia secured a unique dataset from Pornhub on Australian porn consumption trends and patterns.
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We asked Dr. Maginn to take us through what he’s learnt about our national porn habits.
In 2017, Pornhub had 28.5 billion visits. In Australia, it was the 20th most popular website. And while Pornhub provides lots of data about porn consumption, we’ve had little visibility on what Australians are looking at city by city. That was, until now.
As a “sexademic” I’m interested in analysing the geographies and regulation of various aspects of the sex industry. My work looks at sex shops, sex work, sex toys, brothels, strip clubs, BDSM venues and, most recently, pornography.
I’m interested in online porn consumption in order to understand what we’re viewing, how we access online porn, and mapping the geographical and temporal trends and patterns in porn consumption.
In overall terms, Australians, whether they’re from the cosmopolitan epicentres, sedate suburban environs, or the political heart of the nation, have a fairly standardised set of interests when it comes to online porn.
Around the country, “Lesbian Porn” emerged as the top Pornhub category for Australians across all states. It was also the number one porn preference in the US and Canadia. In the UK lesbian porn came in third — they have a greater predilection for “MILF” and “Big Dick” porn.
“MILF” was our number two genre in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Ironically, “MILF” tied with Teen (18+) in Adelaide. The only capital city that broke with this theme was Canberra where “Hentai”, a Japanese-influenced form of porn, came in second and pushed MILF into third place.
More generally, “Japanese” broke the top ten in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. “Asian” made the top ten in Melbourne Sydney and Perth
Other than “Hentai”, the only category outside of “Lesbian” , “MILF” , “Teen (18+)” and “Threesome” to crack a state’s top three was “Anal” in Perth. “Transgender” made it into the top 10 lists for Adelaide and Brisbane, and just missed out in Perth.
Finally, “Female Friendly” porn —videos favourite and most watched by female visitors to Pornhub — only cracked the top 10 in Canberra. Australian women account for between 25 to 30 percent of Australians who visit Pornhub.
It is extremely difficult to know exactly why Australians (and others) are into particular types of porn because we don’t have systematic longitudinal research on consumption trends. All told, though, online porn consumption from Pornhub provides a window into the sexual curiosities, inquisitiveness and preferences of a largely heteronormative viewer base. It is worth noting that women account for about 25 percent of Pornhub viewers in Australia. Ultimately, what we need is more insights into, for example, why and when people consume porn, how they use porn, who do they consume it with, and how do people feel about using porn. The increase in global traffic to online platforms such as Pornhub over the last few years suggests that our interests in porn shows no signs of abating just yet!.
For more from Dr. Paul J. Maginn, follow him on Twitter and check out his podcast CarpoolXXX : Porn Performers as Migrant Community. The series explores the migration and resettlement experiences of people who have moved to Los Angeles , Las Vegas , and San Francisco in order to work in the adult entertainment industry.
Or, email him directly at paul.maginn@uwa.edu.au
