Why Is Gay Porn So Popular in Pakistan?

Earlier this month, the Pew
Research Center published results
of a public survey of gay tolerance
in 39 countries worldwide.
The numbers are fairly unsurprising:
While a high proportion of
respondents in Western Europe and
North America answered "yes" to the
question "Should society accept
homosexuality?" few respondents in
the Middle East and Africa agreed
with them.
Among the least tolerant nations
surveyed was Pakistan, where only 2
percent of those surveyed said
society should accept homosexuality.
That statistic might be unsurprising,
considering that gay sex is illegal
under the Pakistani penal code. But
what is surprising is how those views
compare to Pakistani search traffic
around gay-porn related terms.
As of this writing, Pakistan is by
volume the world leader for Google
searches of the terms "shemale sex,"
"teen anal sex," and "man fucking
man," according to Google Trends.
Pakistan also ranks second in the
world (after similarly gay-intolerant
Kenya) for volume of searches for
the search term "gay sex pics."
In its report, Pew noted that
countries exhibiting the highest
levels of gay tolerance are largely
secular, whereas nations where
religion is central to public life-such
as Egypt, Nigeria, and Pakistan-tend
to reject homosexuality.
But in Pakistan, what's even more
peculiar is that the highest number
of hits for some of these terms,
including "shemale sex," come not
from Pakistan's cosmopolitan
centers, but from Peshawar, a
bastion of conservative Islam, lately
known in the West as a
counterterrorism frontline.
Farahnaz Ispahani, an expert in
Pakistani minorities at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for
Scholars and a former member of
Pakistan's parliament, says that
homosexuality is a taboo subject
throughout the country.
In major cities such as Lahore and
Karachi, gays can develop a network
of allies outside their tribe or family,
but in conservative Peshawar, gay
identity is more complicated. Part of
the popularity of gay porn could
stem from the fact that even highly
observant Muslim males often have
physical relationships with men
without considering themselves gay,
she says.
"The real love they can have that
most of us find with a partner, they
find with men," Ispahani says. "They
mostly see their wives as the mother
of their children."
At the same time, she says,
persecution of minorities, including
gays, has reached an all-time high in
Pakistan, and discussing
homosexuality openly in public is
virtually forbidden.
"Religious extremism is at a height
today," she says. "Hindus are being
forced to convert, Christians are
being burned alive-there's very little
personal safety for those seen as 'the
other.' So what do gay Pakistanis do?
They turn to pornography because
they can't live their lives openly."
Shereen El Feki, author of the recent
book Sex and the Citadel: Intimate
Life in a Changing Arab World, says
the discrepancy between perceptions
around homosexuality and its
apparent reality in Pakistan is
consistent with her own findings in
the Middle East, where, in recent
years, the dialogue around sexual
identity has been co-opted by
fundamentalist clerics.
"Islamic conservatives, whether
they're actually in power or the
governments in power are trying to
placate them, they will tend to go to
very narrow definitions of Islam,"
she says. "One of the easiest ways to
do this is to come down hard on the
role of women, and particularly
around sex and homosexuality."
Long before the rise of Islamic
conservatism, El Feki says, the Middle
East and India had a literary tradition
which celebrated gay love, but in
recent years, that openness has
been forgotten.
"You find in most civilizations in the
Global South a much more open
approach to homosexuality-
irrespective of its status in religious
and theological doctrine-than you
find today," she says.
"So very often, any attempt to open
a dialogue in the Arab region is
branded as some 'Western
conspiracy' to undermine traditional
Arab and Muslim values. The reality
is that long before the West was
talking openly about homosexuality,
Arabs in particular were writing
about this very frankly. Our history
has come to be rewritten by Islamic
conservatives."