Secretly consuming porn in the privacy of one’s hotel room after declaring it a “public health crisis” is exactly the kind of hypocrisy we’ve come to expect from the Republican Party.
Online porn search results are a unique way to discover the kinky inner workings of the general public’s desires. According to data compiled by Pornhub, during Donald Trump’s D-list Republican National Convention the Cleveland area experienced a 204 percent increase in Muslim/Arab action searches and a 421 percent increase in searches in the “gay-hunks” category, while the term “Trump” saw a 648 percent increase. The biggest traffic change occurred in those over the age of 65 with a 10 percent increase in site visits.
“Trump would have given P.T. Barnum a run for his money if he was doing this 150 years ago,” says Nina Hartley. “It’s par for the course, when a bunch of people are in one place listening to a consolidated or organized media presentation it gives them ideas. They may also feel like they can do a porn search without someone walking in on them in their hotel room.”
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A legendary adult actress with a career spanning over three decades, Hartley has grown accustomed to the public’s fluctuating sexual preferences so these statistics fail to surprise. Given the numerous Trump XXX parodies, people’s curiosity is piqued. Still, for a party that’s branded porn a “menace” that must be stopped in its platform—despite the fact that the highest rates of porn consumption are in GOP states—and opposes equal rights for members of the LGBT community, it’s more than a little two-faced.
“These statistics are hysterical considering the GOP has declared a war on porn,” says Xhamster.com spokesman Mike Kulich. “They’re all in one place and the porn traffic spikes and they’re searching for Trump!”
“These people are the biggest hypocrites!” adds porn star Sydney Leathers. “They’re the same party that insists porn is a public health crisis, yet data shows tons of them are watching porn during the Republican National Convention. They obviously don’t practice what they preach, but we all knew that. It doesn’t surprise me at all that searches for Muslim porn and gay male porn were up during the convention.”
The Muslim-oriented searches may indicate not just curiosity but also an interest in taboo subjects—given that Trump has been virulently anti-Muslim, from his proposed travel ban to his 9/11 lies. And in porn, similar to the way “interracial” signifies black man/white woman scenes (not just any interracial coupling), the term “Muslim” also has a stereotypical connotation.
“In porn search terms, Muslim means a woman who is covered up and of Middle Eastern descent,” explains Kulich. “Anytime there is something like a religion that is taboo about sex there are going to be the guys that want to watch it.”
In this case, there is a supply and demand issue.
Female porn stars are plentiful, with more available women than jobs, but when it comes to Muslim women—or women willing to be Muslim on camera—the prospects are thin.
A Pakistani-Muslim woman who displeases her father, dresses in an inappropriate fashion according to her husband, or marries a man she loves without her parents’ approval can live in fear of being murdered by her own family and friends for the “dishonor” she has brought them—as in the recent case of Qandeel Baloch, who was strangled to death by her own brother. Each year 1,000 women in Pakistan die in these horrific “honor killings.”
As a first-generation American from Pakistan, porn star Nadia Ali barely escaped such atrocities, yet the Women of the Middle East actress has experienced a shocking amount of racism from the very beginning of her career in adult entertainment to the present day.
“My agent told me I wouldn’t get many bookings unless I put the [hijab] on. I’d just be a regular brunette brown-eyed girl. To be popular I had to wear the scarf,” says Ali. “I refused in the beginning. When I refused I wasn’t getting booked much but when I became willing to do it, that’s when I started to get a lot of bookings.”
Nadia Ali had a busy year planned with plenty of work, travel, multiple bookings, autograph signings, and appearances. That is no longer the case because, according to Ali, those bookings have been cancelled due to the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment post-Trump. “They said it would be a problem if I were to come dance at their clubs. People called threats into those clubs, saying there’d be a problem if they brought me in,” says Ali. “I was booked for the whole year feature dancing at different locations and they cancelled all of them because of racism. It’s upsetting and shocking to me that in 2016 we’re still dealing with this.”
While Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric may encourage party members to indulge in the taboo genre of Muslim porn, it’s also creating a racially tense environment for its performers.
But Ali says it’s not just Trump supporters who are to blame for these new developments—the media is culpable as well. “Anytime I do interviews, they always use the word ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ in the headline, but when it’s another girl they’re not going to use the word ‘Christian’ or ‘Orthodox’ in the headline. It’s to get clicks. I understand that, but we need to be aware of what we’re doing.”
