Conservatives, Religious Consume More Porn
Ah, the sweet sweet smell of scientifically-proven hypocrisy. A nationwide study of anonymized credit card receipts from the adult industry revealed that while online pornography is wildly popular everywhere, it has a lead in conservative and religious states.
This bit of insight prompted the Harvard Business School's Benjamin Edelman to muse:
"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by."
Utah is the biggest consumer of online porn, averaging 5.47 adult content subscriptions for every 1000 home broadband users. At the other end of the spectrum is Montana, with a chaste 1.92 naughty subscriptions per thousand.
8 out of the top 10 porn consuming states went for McCain in 2008, except Florida and Hawaii, one of which was the home state of the Democratic candidate and the other of which was, well, Florida, where all the crazies live.
States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."
I challenge even the most jaded homo politico to choke down the above paragraph without raising an eyebrow. No wonder Fred Phelps & co are so active: if they let up on the hate for just one minute, it's back to masturbating furiously in front of PersianKitty.com.
Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers [NewScientist]
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Posted to Hot Stuff, In the News on 27 February 2009
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: conservatives, porn consumption, religious
3D iPhone glasses. Why?
Self-hatred is a bitch huh?
Sweet indeed! Sweet nectar of the gods!
My guess is that the outspokenness is an externalisation of their frustration at the inability to control their own compulsions despite assumed conflicts with their personal belief system.
They attempt to change other people's behaviour because they are unable to change their own (much like ex-gay proponents).
Meh, it's to be expected from a group that in general suppresses their basest instincts (whether or not you agree with the necessity or reasons for the suppression).
Upon reflection, it's possible that this tells us the OPPOSITE of what you might expect.
What if the blue states are the ones that are so repressed they cannot bring themselves to view porn, while red states are partying it up in the bedroom with wild abandon?
It wouldn't be the first time hypocrisy was discovered in blue state philosophy (eg. blue states claim to 'care' about the poor, but they give far less to charity than red states -- though that may be an artifact of the philosopy that "the government" is the solution rather than personal giving).
DoorHold: I would have to say I think this is a product of repression by the red states not the blue. It seems far more logical that the states more open to sexuality (The "Liberal" states more open than say the "Conservative" ones (Quotations because, really what state is truly a fully Conservative or Liberal one)) would have less revenues in pornography. Consider, if you have an obsession with that which you can not physically indulge, you are far more likely to pay to watch someone else do it - simply because you desire that gratification so much. Now while some of us in the Blue states might love porn as well (I'm totally not admitting that I love porn here...but I do) it is far more probable we are happy and comfortable with our sex lives, than say the gay man living next door to the GodHatesFags family down south.
The repression you speak of in Blue states is seemingly fictional. I personally don't see that being a factor playing any sort of role in the mass psyche. When it comes to the topic of sexuality (meaning sex in general etc...) the blue states are observably far more open minded in a social context. This is simply observable in the culture of the red states. The repression of sexuality is undoubtedly in the red states far more predominantly than in the blue.
DoorHold: I would have to say I think this is a product of repression by the red states not the blue. It seems far more logical that the states more open to sexuality (The "Liberal" states more open than say the "Conservative" ones (Quotations because, really what state is truly a fully Conservative or Liberal one)) would have less revenues in pornography. Consider, if you have an obsession with that which you can not physically indulge, you are far more likely to pay to watch someone else do it - simply because you desire that gratification so much. Now while some of us in the Blue states might love porn as well (I'm totally not admitting that I love porn here...but I do) it is far more probable we are happy and comfortable with our sex lives, than say the gay man living next door to the GodHatesFags family down south.
The repression you speak of in Blue states is seemingly fictional. I personally don't see that being a factor playing any sort of role in the mass psyche. When it comes to the topic of sexuality (meaning sex in general etc...) the blue states are observably far more open minded in a social context. This is simply observable in the culture of the red states. The repression of sexuality is undoubtedly in the red states far more predominantly than in the blue.
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