Note: I watched My Little Pony porn for the sake of research. It is not my thing, and I have Pony Traumatic Stress Disorder now (and can’t even take credit for that phrase). You can honor my sacrifice by liking, sharing, tweeting, donating, or sending Tom Hiddleston to my house with a bottle of whiskey and a box of jelly doughnuts.
There is much to learn about Russian porn trends from Pornhub’s 2015 year in review stats. We are first going to first zero in on the elephant in the room. No getting around it. It is too massive.
We must talk about My Little Pony (MLP) porn.
MLP porn is surging in popularity in Russia:
MLP up 133 points! And as Pornhub told us in the summer of 2015, MLP porn is most popular in Belarus. Russia is a close second. Ukraine rounds out the top three (is this what conservative religious people mean when they say that Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine are “as inseparable as the Holy Trinity”? No?).
Bronies and Pegasisters, i.e. adults in the MLP fandom, are mostly based in the UK and the States. But considering the size of the fandom, it was natural that it would find a niche in Russia. Lurkmore, the sardonic Russian alternative to Wikipedia, has a good page on the subject for Russian-speakers. As Lurkmore notes, the positivity and cuteness of MLP was a driving factor in its popularity.
“The Dostoevsky-reading Russians are into positivity and cuteness?” some of you are asking.
Sure they are. They just don’t like to admit it. This is one of the factors that ensures that the MLP fandom flies under the radar in Russia – that and the state’s monopoly on popular culture (whatever can’t be co-opted is ignored).
As rule 34 reminds us, if it’s on the internet, someone is probably getting off on it. A huge fandom in particular will inspire pornographic content.
When I reached out to Russians active in the MLP fandom, they were loath to discuss porn. I also noticed that the explicit section of a popular MLP forum in Russia (I’m not talking about Russian imageboards, they tend to have less rules) is like a “gated community.” The content is there, but they don’t let just anyone wander by and gawp at it.
As Sophie Kleeman wrote at Mic, the greater MLP fandom finds cloppers (i.e. fans who are into MLP sex stuff) embarrassing.
As Kleeman also pointed out, the rise of MLP porn can be tied to millennial nostalgia. As we millennials mature, we gaze back fondly on the stuff that made childhood special. And by “gaze back fondly” I mean that we pornify it. Besides MLP, Disney porn and Simpsons porn are obviously a thing.
Russian millennial nostalgia definitely exists. Most has to do with late Soviet era cartoons, with some occasional Western influence. But is there anything else going on?
Sergei (totally not his real name), who’s into MLP but not into MLP porn, told me the following (translated from Russian):
“I think [Russia’s] “gay propaganda” laws and all of this outward “conservative morality” or however you call it, the stuff that’s always in the press, is actually causing people to be more curious about the far-out stuff. It’s like the more people are pressured on the outside, the more unusual stuff they want to try when they’re alone.”
This, I’m sorry to say, brings me to Stalin.
An authoritarian regime aims to intrude upon people’s personal lives. Personal lives are suspect simply because they’re, well, personal – i.e. they diminish the authority of the state. Some of the mechanisms of intrusion, such as the willingness to use people’s personal lives against them, as perfected by the Stalin regime, are rusty but still in place today.
And as Afisha recently pointed out, notions of sexual freedom went with notions of other freedoms under Stalin. Russia, of course, did not properly deal with the legacy of Stalin, especially its lingering after-effects following the collapse of the USSR.
I believe that Russia’s recent swing to the right, with its gleeful mocking of Western-style personal freedoms, is an expression of anxieties and doubts that have not been put to rest alongside Stalin himself, and have continued to fester in the subconscious. Yet even as they beat their chests and scream about “traditional values,” Russians are not getting more socially conservative inwardly.
I would compare the growing popularity of MLP porn with the enduring popularity of state-approved Russian pop stars. On one hand, you have firebrand MPs screaming “BAN GAY PROPAGANDA,” and on the other hand, grown men in lipgloss and enough sequins to make Liberace weep dance across the television screen every day.
As this parody article on Russian singer Philip Kirkorov points out – the stuff these not-at-all camp performers produce can be summed up as “Wind Beneath My Peacock Feathers.”
Is consumption of MLP porn even all that weird when compared to this cultural dissonance? And does it not fit perfectly into a greater narrative about a relatively new country swinging back and forth between various extremes like a confused teenage boy?
Meanwhile, did the love scene in “Avatar” kind of turn you on? If it did, and if you’re also into explicit stuff, MLP porn could also be FOR YOU.
Most of it caters to people who like hentai. Some to people who like to see regular porn stars with colorful hair/accessories going at it while occasionally saying lines of franchise-relevant dialogue. Some of it can perhaps be enjoyed by hardcore furries (I’m not a furry, much less a hardcore one, so I don’t want to make any categorical pronouncements). Some of it is probably being watched for laughs. Etc.
MLP porn is a novelty. Novelties have a habit of losing popularity. But considering that Russia’s, um, pseudo-conservative bend is ongoing, it will be interesting to see if 2016 brings us any new unexpected trends.
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Now that ponies are out of the way: Some people have assumed that Russians searching for Russian-themed porn is an expression of growing nationalism/pornographic import substitution. Yet Brazilians frequently search for “Brazil”, the French will search for “French”, and so on. It’s important to remember that porn is often about relating to the people you’re watching. And what can be more relatable than people who scream “HARDER” in the same language as you do?
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I was also recently asked to address the popularity of “mom” porn or “MILF” porn in Russia, which is also not at all unique.
Playboy’s Dr. Justin Lehmiller wrote in 2014 about how all of this has little to do with guys being hung up on their moms. A lot of this may have to do with women’s changing status, but as Lehmiller also points out, plenty of guys are just interested in an experienced woman who knows what she wants, i.e. they’re interested in a woman who won’t be shy about showing them how to please her.
Most men really like getting women off. It makes men feel confident and awesome. Cultural and political quirks aside, Russian men (and ladies, for that matter) aren’t that different from anyone else when it comes to sex. They like to give and receive pleasure.
I’m sure if Stalin had stuck around for long enough he would’ve found a way to fuck up this basic biological instinct too, and Russians would be getting their groove on with barrels of battery acid as opposed to with each other, but he didn’t, so let’s drink to that.
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