Nigeria and Pakistan are two of the planet's most anti-gay countries, so why are residents of both nations searching for so much gay porn?
As eagle-eyed Alex Park pointed out in a recent Mother Jones post, Pakistan is, according to Google Trends, "by volume the world leader for Google searches of the terms 'shemale sex,' 'teen anal sex,' and 'man f-cking man.'"
Both Pakistan and Nigeria rank in the top five for Google searches of the term "gay sex pics" and "anal sex pics." Kenya, another vehemently anti-gay nation, ranked first for both searches.
When the results of a recent Pew Research Center poll on LGBT acceptance around the globe was published last week, Nigeria and Pakistan emerged as two of the world's most brutally LGBT intolerant societies.
In Nigeria, where lawmakers recently passed a draconian anti-gay bill that seeks to not only criminalize homosexuality but gay rights as well, only 1 percent of the population said homosexuality should be accepted by society; while in Pakistan, where gay sex continues to be illegal, it was 2 percent. (It was 8 percent in Kenya.)
So why, despite this overwhelming bias against gays, do people in these two nations seem to be strangely -- and unduly -- fascinated with gay porn?
Farahnaz Ispahani, a Pakistani politician, told Park that due to societal pressure, most gays in Pakistan are still in the closet and turn to pornography "because they can't live their lives openly." She added that, as a result of a lack of an open conversation about gay identity in Pakistan, some men may have physical relationships with others of the same sex without considering themselves gay.
“The gay scene here is very hush-hush,” Ali, a member of an LGBT support group in Lahore, Pakistan, told the New York Times last year. “I wish it was a bit more open, but you make do with what you have.”
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