Rise in anti-trans hate leads to more demand for trans porn

The more we are hated, the more we are lusted after.

By Artemis T. Douglas and Jane Migliara Brigham

The latest PornHub Year in Review shows that transgender porn is now the second most viewed porn on the site.  This coincides with the recent vilification of trans people being more intense now than ever before.

This chart can be taken as a reliable sample of the interests of male porn users, as PornHub makes up approximately one third of the online porn market, and two thirds of its users are men.  

Last year, the category was at seventh place, with it shooting up five spots in one year.  In all likelihood, the vilification of trans people is creating demand for trans porn. 

This is not born out of some desire to engage with trans people.  Rather, it is the result of public animosity against trans people being transmuted into sexual attraction towards the very people that the public is so fearful of.

It is a phenomenon which can be explained by the transfeminist analysis that trans women are the most acceptable targets for patriarchal violence.

Or, as Talia Bhatt put it,

“She is the menace against whom any violence can be justified, both the failed man who can be beaten senseless and the failed woman who can be raped with impunity, against whom no amount of harm is unjustifiable.

Speaking in plain terms, the tranny is constructed as the union of fag and whore.”

This is why the public is so intensely interested in the sexual aspects of trans people (whether as sex objects, or when discussing what is between our legs), but has little to no interest in engaging with us as actual people.  This is not a win for diversity, it is a win for gutter bigotry.

Hatred is a common motivator of sexual interest.  If you’re angry at trans women, and want to beat them up but can’t, you can content yourself by beating yourself off to videos of them.

This is why so many gender conservatives are so fond of trans porn, so much so that where large groups of them gather, there is a noticeable increase in the rate of trans porn consumption.  

This can be seen in the fact that US states which have more restrictive laws against trans people watch trans porn at higher rates than those without these discriminatory laws.  

It can also be seen in how LGBT dating sites, like Grindr– which is known for gay men but also happens to have trans women in large numbers, tend to crash due to usage surges surrounding Republican conventions.

The rise of the trans category should be seen in light of the other top 3 categories on the list: lesbian and MILF.  From the perspective of the mostly cishet male users on the site, the thing connecting these 3 categories is that they represent the kinds of women that straight men are attracted to, but who are generally not attracted to them. 

Or, if the women are attracted to them, those three categories of women are generally forbidden or frowned upon as sexual conquests for cis, straight men

In other words, using a transfeminist analysis, the transsexual woman is made into a combination of forbidden fruit and trash to discard after you’re done with it.

From this lens, it is unsurprising that trans women– already forced into precarity and extreme over sexualization, including hypervisibility, are the subject of cishet men’s fantasies and porn watching habits.

The more forbidden and precarious we become, the more likely it is that the demand will increase.