Porn, Politics, and Religion: A Simple Theory

By Daniel Miessler on February 28th, 2009: Tagged as Culture | Psychology | Religion

sexy_nun
Image from Matlus G.

Recent analysis of online porn subscriptions has revealed that the most conservative states are the biggest porn consumers, and the more liberal states are less so.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama

8 out of 10. That’s awesome.

And there’s a simple reason for this: conservatism is often linked to strong religion, and religion suppresses, and therefore maligns, natural human desires. To put it simply, much of the porn content out there is custom-made to fill the holes that religion created in human sexuality.

If you view sex as normal and healthy (like most liberals) then a lot of the porn out there simply doesn’t resonate with you. It’s downright uninteresting (or lame). But if you think it’s all filthy and evil then you end up with a set of perversions that require an outlet. This also explains why priests and pastors have so much trouble with sexual misconduct. ::

  • cooperati

    This is an example of what was originally termed “the vice of the english”, by french prostitutes, who found the prim and proper society had twisted, or “bent”, their clients.

    I first heard of the concept in french, but I can't find the spelling, or even any references to it. It's a branch of abnormal psychology that is a sociologically a mechanical result of not just religious extremism, but merely extremism in general.

    (Enter isolationism, and you get a rather increased effect.)

    -=T=-

  • cshsus

    If you actually read the primary source which you are citing, you would know that the author of the paper says that there is actually very little difference at all between the states! All of the interesting conclusions are based on very very small differences that for the most part aren't statistically significant. Further, all the results are purely correlations with no way of determining the cause. Correlation does not imply causation. The study was not able to determine who was actually consuming the pornography. Perhaps it is the liberal citizens in the “repressed” states that must resort to internet pornography. Also, the study only examines pornography that was paid for by credit card. This means that the results of the study are not representative of pornography consumers as a whole.

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    He did say there was little difference between the states, but he still mentioned the differences in his paper. He even went on to guess at the reason for the differences, and ended up right where I did:

    “One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more,” Edelman says.”

    If there were no data to base this on he wouldn't have made such comments. He was just being careful to state that this was only one data point.

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  • Brandi

    Lmao. Wow. That's not even a logical statistic retard. States vote differently every year, and it doesn't even make sense. You can't look at a state who voted republican and be like omg, all the republicacns sit around and watch porn.

  • Brandi

    Lmao. Wow. That's not even a logical statistic retard. States vote differently every year, and it doesn't even make sense. You can't look at a state who voted republican and be like omg, all the republicacns sit around and watch porn.


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