It’s the most wonderful time of the year, when that company with an unfathomable amount of access to everyone’s personal data yassifies the numbers into a cute end-of-year roundup complete with charts and graphics. No, not Spotify Wrapped — we’re talking about the Pornhub Year in Review. And this year, it’s been reported that trans porn exploded in popularity, even as trans sex workers are increasingly losing access to the tools they need to survive and transphobia as a whole is increasing nationwide.
In 2022, porn under the “transgender” category increased in popularity by 75% to become the 7th most popular category worldwide and the 3rd most popular in the U.S., according to the tube site’s report. In addition, “FTM” searches were eight times more popular than “MTF” searches. And men viewed videos tagged as “trans” 22% more than women. However, women on “straight” Pornhub viewed the “trans male” sub-category 115% more than men, lest we think that being a chaser is only limited to one gender or sexuality. Pornhub even noted that the most searched-for gender identities were “non binary,” “gender x” (whatever that means) and “androgynous.”
Interestingly, Pornhub appears to aggregate its data for PornhubGay totally separately, and not by gender. Over on PornhubGay, searches for “FTM” grew 202%, becoming the 20th of the top 20 gay searches, whereas it didn’t rank last year.
Trans porn’s popularity appears to be in keeping with the general trends of the past few years. Last year, searches for “trans” grew 141%, with views of the trans category growing by 23%. In 2017, Pornhub also published a report specifically on the popularity of trans porn; for the most part, and for better or worse, it found that the popularity of trans porn has been steadily increasing since the mid-2010s.
This particular bump in the popularity of trans porn, in addition to last year’s growth, is of course happening at the same time that lawmakers have introduced the highest number of anti-trans and general anti-LGBTQ+ bills in history. That these two occurrences are simultaneous is probably no coincidence. Last year, an Alabama republican lawmaker who voted to criminalize doctors who provide minors with transition-related healthcare was caught liking trans porn on Twitter. And a study from Lawsuit.org additionally found that Google users in Republican states are overwhelmingly responsible for the popularity of certain trans-related porn search terms, like “shemale” and “tranny.”
