Canadians Love to Pretend They Don’t Watch Porn

Most Canadians say you'll never catch them in this position. Image via Creative Commons.
According to a new Forum Research poll, Canada is full of prudes. Or, perhaps, liars.

The pollster asked over 1,600 Canadians about their pornographic proclivities and Canadians, generally, responded with an, “Ew, no.” Unsurprising, given that they were being asked what kind of porn they watch by an inquisitive, seemingly-horny robot, but even still, an unnervingly low number of Canucks copped to accessing the spank bank in the last year, if at all.

What’s more is that a frightening number of Canadians actually support slapping restrictions on how consenting adults get ahold of their wank material—a fact that certainly won’t be lost on the fringe members of Canadian parliament who actually think a UK style, internet porn filter is a good idea.

Anti-porn wackos aside, let’s jump into the results of Forum Research’s latest poll so we can delve into the psyche of Canadian porn lovers.

Porn Denial, by Region

Probably out of shame, or perhaps unwillingness to discuss intimate sexual preferences with an automated voice over the telephone, only 16 percent of Canadians confessed to watching smut in the past year. The rest said they stayed away from filth, or preferred not to answer.

If that sounds like utter bullshit, it could be that us hosers are actually just tight-asses.

In nearly every demographic, a majority of Canadians said they hadn’t viewed pornography in the last year. Yes, even those you would expect to be the most inclined to popping on a pair of headphones and loosening their belt—18 to 34 years olds, men, and Quebecers—said they hadn’t checked out porn in the last 365 days.

That Quebecers are so puritanical might come as some surprise, considering that online porn giant MindGeek, formally known as ManWin, runs such smutty servers as PornHub, RedTube, YouPorn, Brazzers, and a host of others. Their North American corporate headquarters are in Montreal. Some estimates put the value of the Canadian porn industry at around $1 billion.

The most liberal provinces were, surprisingly, Manitoba and Saskatchewan: those were the only provinces where the majority of the respondents didn’t say they shied away from the sections of the internet devoted to sex. I suppose it makes sense that the flattest provinces are also the most inclined to take a trip to the bone yard—the prairie-folk heavily Google such family-friendly terms as ‘testicles,’‘rough sex,’’fisting,’and ‘beastiality.’

26 percent of the Canadians polled refused to answer any of the prying robot voice’s questions. Even if we decided to take that whole 26 percent and count them as definite porn watchers, we only end up with 42 percent of Canadians who willfully admit to lovin’ skin flicks.

Even those that confessed to engaging in hand-to-gland combat sound prudish. Of the mere 169 respondents who said they viewed pornography in the last year, only a third said they watch it once a week or more. Ten percent of those asked, mostly women, said they watch porn once a year or less.

Of the sliver of those folks who said they partake in Friday night delight, more than a quarter do so with someone else. Though, most do it alone.

In a pretty good effort to figure out how many Canadians may be closet cases, the poll also asked Canadians whether they watch porn featuring men and women, men only, women only or, D, all of the above!

Of the men, 13 percent admitted that men-only porn is featured in their porn diet. Women were a little less adventurous, and only nine percent said they enjoyed a little lez action.

Hilariously, zero percent of Canadians living in the western half of the country said they watched dudes-only porn. Heading eastward, 15 percent of Ontario and 30 percent of Atlantic Canada said they did.

So, either the Atlantic is full of man-on-man loving ladies, or gay dudes. Either way: good job, b’ys.

God Versus Porn

The demographics of porn connoisseurs breaks down, unsurprisingly, by party lines and crucifix-clutching religiosity.

On the political side, the Tories were the least likely to have taken in a dirty film in the last year—14 percent said they had, while the Liberals weren’t far off, with 15 percent, and the NDP not far ahead, with 17 percent. Nearly a quarter of those filthy Greens, on the other hand, said they indulged.

In fact, those hippie environmentalists can hardly be stopped—more than half of them who admitted to enjoying pornography, say they took the matter into their own hands more than once a week.

The pollster also asked whether Canadians thought pornography was “harmful to society.” Distressingly, half of the respondents—812 people—said that it was, indeed, a plague on our otherwise white linen moral fabric.

Conservatives were most likely to feel this way, but all four federal parties clocked in around the same level of disapproval—yes, even the Greens.

What makes that so alarming is that it could give rise to the contingent of whacky social conservatives hidden in the Harper government’s closet. Right-wing puritans like Joy Smith.

"In this massive fight against child exploitation, human trafficking and the sexualization of our children, porn is the mass groomer and driver of demand,” Smith said in a November press conference that illicited such public responses as “really?”and “wake the fuck up!”

But Smith wasn’t just tilting at windmills—she has an actual proposal to install mandatory porn-blocking software into all of Canada’s WiFi routers. To turn off the software, you would likely need to call your internet service provider. Yes, those calls would be very awkward.

Forum, at the behest of this journalist, even asked Canadians what they thought of that proposal: and most agreed.

In fact, more Canadians favoured a law to make porn harder to access than thought it was harmful to society. Which is confounding. Even 41 percent of 18 to 34 year olds thought it was a good idea.

And, of course, 60 percent of Conservatives endorsed the idea. The number drops to about half for the NDP and Liberals, and roughly 40 per cent for those smut-loving Greens.

Only a third of Canadians opposed the idea.

That proposal may find its way into actual legislation, and Canada wouldn’t be the first country to experiment with it. The United Kingdom introduced similar laws, but the opt-in model has been a complete failure (Smith wants an opt-out model.) Iceland, on the other hand, banned physical pornography in 2010, and it has floated similar proposals to limit access to online porn. Smith has already taken a page out of the Nordic Bible in helping to craft Canada’s new paternalistic sex work legislation.

Forum also asked respondents which kind of Christian god they follow—and, as you might expect, the more colourful brands like the Evangelicals were less likely to take-in a boob flick, while the others were a little more liberal.

But it was the Catholics who were the horniest devils, with 15 percent saying they watched porn in the last year. Atheists, of course, were a little more liberal: nearly a quarter said the same. Nearly half of the non-religious folk had some one-on-one time with their laptops at least once a week. Probably on Sunday.

Bible-thumpers also listed late-night “research”as a societal ill; with a solid majority of Christians, Protestants, and Evangelicals all agreeing that porn is harmful. That number goes up to 84 per cent for Evangelicals, and as low as 31 per cent for the non-believers. The trend is about the same for the porn-blocking software—only the godless ones were predominately opposed the idea.

Thank god for those atheists.

Juking the Stats

Admittedly, Canadians may have trouble fessing-up to the automated pollster who calls them at home.

"We pride ourselves as Canadians on our open-mindedness, but even with the anonymity guaranteed by the IVR survey method, it would appear there is substantial under-reporting of pornography use,” says Forum Research president, Lorne Bozinoff.

So maybe it would be better to turn to a report put together by porn-purveyor PornHub, the world’s most-visited online nudie site, to figure out just what Canadians are into.

While the adult content clearing house doesn’t publish just how many Canadians visit their website, website-ranking service Alexa reports that three of the top 50 websites visited from Canada are porn. And, according to the analytics firm Comscore, Pornhub receives over 3.7 million unique visitors in Canada per month, which accounts for 10.6% of the country, and that’s just one porn site! So clearly, there’s a bit of underreporting going on when it comes to Canadians denying their own love of porn.

Over 70 percent of Pornhub’s Canadian visitors are male. And, Canadian visitors to Pornhub also frequent Ashley Madison—the premier “dating site” for married people to cheat on their spouses.

“What a lot of Canadians agree on is that Lesbians, Teens and MILFs are the best,” writes PornHub. “What is interesting, without necessarily coming as a surprise, is that Lesbian is the most popular of the three.”

On Pornhub, Canadians spend somewhere around 10 minutes per internet-porn-safari, and only need to visit about nine pages before they’re satisfied.

For reasons I don’t personally understand, hunters search for things like “yoga,”“massage,”and “casting,”as well as the usual fare of “babysitter,”“milk,”and “teacher.”

Quebec, by the way, is really into “smoking” porn. They also search for “Quebec” pretty heavily, probably to find some public sex scenes shot in a Montreal park, or just to capture a bit of Quebecois dirty talk. And some 0.1 percent of Canadian Pornhub views come from perverts watching videos on their Nintendo Wii. Yes, their Wii.

All the searches drop off, however, whenever there’s a big hockey game on, or when it’s Canada Day. Because, you know, we’re Canada. @justin_ling