Gay Porn and Russia Leading Up to Sochi

Our friends over at the Sex.com blog ran a really interesting infographic yesterday which proved to be extremely illuminating concerning Russia’s pornographic viewing habits, especially with all of the controversy that has been swirling around leading up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

The writers at Sex.com dug deep into their site statistics and procured this study about the top search terms on the Russian version of their website, and well, the data speaks for itself.

(You can click on the infographic to make it larger and easier to read FYI)

The Russia government has come under a lot of scrutiny as of late due to their backwards laws deeming overt displays of homosexuality as punishable by law. Though actually being gay is not punishable, the laws are defined in such a vague way that it becomes extremely unclear what is or isn’t against the law. There have already been people arrested in Russia for protesting these laws leading up to the Olympics.

The writers at Sex.com do a very thorough job of actually breaking down the different results, but the most interesting fact here is that, out of the Top 10 search results, 4 of them are for porn showing homosexual acts. Nobody has ever denied that there is a large LGBT community in Russia, just as there are everywhere in the world. It is startling to see these numbers given the violence and mistreatment surrounding the Russian gay population.

Or perhaps it makes complete sense? Perhaps people, unwilling to get into trouble with their government, are turning to the internet and pornography to express their sexuality.

I really like watching the Olympics. This year however, I’m having a more difficult time supporting them and am less excited than usual.

Though I love watching all of the different countries compete in a variety of different events, its hard to really get into it with all of these anti-gay sentiments floating around in Russia and the rumours of mass-corruption leading up to the event.

I want to try and ignore all of the controversy and just focus on the sport, but I’m finding it impossible to look past.

For more information and for a more thorough breakdown of the different findings, check out the Sex.com post about their infographic here.

What do you think? Does the controversy surrounding the Olympics alter your enjoyment of the event itself, or are you able to separate the politics from the sports?