In its own bizarre, disheartening way, porn in Russia represents an intersection of societal ills. What politician will take up their cause? He or she will simply risk ridicule in a political atmosphere that already smacks distinctly of Iran, minus the drinking ban. Porn is OK to consume (well, sort of, considering Russia’s obsessive banning of porn sites) but the people who make it are not OK to defend. One can argue that few workers in general are empowered in Russia, but porn actors are particularly disempowered because they are so uniformly looked down upon. ‘Illegal distribution’ remains banned, but nobody knows what ‘legal distribution’ is supposed to be.” Omnipresent piracy and lack of any kind of visible porn industry community actually interested in defending its rights further contribute to exploitation. As Bob Jack, an ex-adult film director, told the entertainment weekly Afisha: “In Russia the rules of the game on the market are still not established. They’re treated by western companies as just another type of cheap labour.Īs people with experience in the industry also point out, Russia’s extremely vague legislation bans the illegal distribution (and production) of pornography, but doesn’t really define how pornography could be distributed legally. Bizarrely, or, perhaps, not so bizarrely, Russian porn actors are now a resource for export. But as people involved in the industry have told journalists, any Russian who wants to have a career in the industry must go abroad. Porn starring Russians is in demand in Russia. Most people prefer to watch the kind of sex that is, on one level or another, relatable to their immediate experience. In the Netherlands, they search for “Dutch”. There is nothing weird or nationalistic about this. In demandĬonsider this: the most popular search term for Russians last year was actually “Russian”. But the way Russian porn stars are treated is no cause for laughter. It’s tempting to use Russian porn habits as another punchline about a country whose government is frequently an expert at self-caricature. And because Pornhub is kind enough to keep track of country statistics too, we found in 2014 (the same year Crimea was annexed and sentiment against “the decadent west” reached a fever pitch) that Russians were searching Pornhub for “anal” more than anyone in the world.Ģ015 was no less interesting for Russia and porn – that was the year we found that “My Little Pony” was the porn search term that had the biggest increase in popularity in Russia, with anal taking a backseat but still retaining a position in the top ten searches and remaining the most popular category. According to Pornhub’s insights team, people spent 4.3 billion hours on the site last year alone. Pornhub, the biggest pornography site on the internet, provides helpful statistics to let you figure out just how big the porn phenomenon is.
Russia, where reactionary conservatives appear on every TV channel, is no exception. If opponents and fans of pornography can agree on one thing, it would probably be this: lots of people like to watch porn.