The Sociocultural Landscape

A preview of chapter 9 of The Gender Framework exploring the world of the trans-identified young person

The Sociocultural Landscape

9.3 Pornography

In recent years, clinicians report that exposure to pornography has provided a pathway to transgender identification among teens. The proliferation of smartphones offers unrestricted and unprecedented access to internet resources, including online pornography. A 2023 report from the Children’s Commissioner of England and Wales found that “the average age at which children first view pornography is now 13 years old. Substantial proportions of young people surveyed who had seen pornography viewed it at a much younger age than 13—27% by age 11 and 10% by the age of 9.” The impact of this has yet to fully unfold (Rathod et al., 2022), and the role of pornography in transgender identification is complex and little studied. Unsurprisingly, the impacts seem to vary considerably between males and females.

The painful and degrading sex acts that are now omnipresent in hardcore pornography may be very frightening to some girls, potentially causing some to disidentify with their biological sex. There is mounting evidence that young males are acting out what they see in hardcore pornography with their female partners, with a 2024 survey finding that nearly two-thirds of women reported being choked by a partner during sex. 40% of participants stated that this had occurred between the ages of 12 and 17 (Orenstein, 2024). With reference to child-on-child sexual abuse, the Children’s Commissioner of England and Wales has reported that:

I found references to specific acts of sexual violence commonly seen in pornography in half of the interviews carried out following these cases of sexual abuse. Additional review of some of these cases found children suggesting direct links between pornography exposure and the harmful sexual behavior exhibited. (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2023, p. 7)

As the journalist Eleanor Mills (2024) observed:

That for me is the crux of why so many girls are transitioning. They have grown up in a world of performative femininity, pestered by their male peers for porn-style sex, objectified and then seen as vanilla and uncool if they aren’t up for the full porn-shebang. Often this is wrapped up in “sex-positive, my body, my choice” rhetoric, which has normalised painful sex for women. In a porn-warped culture, deciding not to be a young woman feels like a sensible and self-protective alternative. (Mills, 2024)

An interesting feature of the new cohort presenting with gender distress in adolescence is the overrepresentation of heterosexual females compared to earlier cohorts. Historically, it has been males who were most likely to present with gender distress, but sexologist Ray Blanchard states that the tiny number of females presenting to gender clinics in the 1980s and 90s were overwhelmingly masculine-presenting lesbians who identified as male. Some of the new cohort of heterosexual girls report a desire to transition in order to pursue sexual relationships with gay men. Commentator Helen Joyce has written about how erotic “slash” fanfiction may be driving this phenomenon, and her observations are backed up by a growing population of detransitioned females who acknowledge the role of slash in the development of their trans identity ( Joyce, 2022).

Slash is a genre of fanfiction in which young people, predominantly girls, share romantic and often pornographic stories about relationships between their favorite male characters from books and television shows. According to Joyce, popular pairings, or “ships,” include Kirk/ Spock from the Star Trek universe and Harry/Draco from the Harry Potter books. Joyce summarizes the issue as follows:

It’s common to worry about the porn that teenage boys are looking at, and what that is doing to the way they treat their female peers, and what that does in turn to create in those girls a distaste for womanhood. But the route to trans identification that goes via what those girls are reading and writing, whether that’s gut-churningly misogynistic and explicit “straight” porn about well-loved children’s characters or erotica centred on idealised, feminised mis-portrayals of gay men, probably matters at least as much. Don’t just ask what your sons are looking at; ask what your daughters are writing and reading. (Joyce, 2022)

The male characters in these stories are often portrayed as highly feminine, suggesting that some young women may be seeking refuge in fantasies about idealized homosexual men who are perceived as “safer” or more “accessible” than heterosexual men. As Joyce put it: “This fanfic is often described as “gay,” but it really isn’t: it’s by straight women, for straight women. One of my interviewees had shown some of these stories to gay men, who found them not erotic, but hilarious.”

While much has been written about trans-identified males calling themselves lesbians and identifying into single-sex lesbian spaces where they are unwelcome, less has been said about the equally unwelcome presence of trans-identified females in spaces reserved for gay men. In both cases, same sex attracted people have faced unacceptable accusations of “transphobia” simply for asserting that they do not wish to include people of the opposite sex in their dating pool. Professionals must be clear with trans-identified people of both sexes that a trans identity does not legitimize this kind of boundary violation.

In the case of boys, some commentators have referred to the phenomenon of “pornography-induced dysphoria” (Gluck, 2020). In 2022, the well-known adult content platform Pornhub released its data on the most frequently searched terms. This data revealed a significant surge in popularity for the term “transgender,” which is now the United States’ third most searched category. This rise reflects a 75% increase from the figures recorded in 2021 (Pornhub Insights, 2022). A distinct subcategory within transgender pornography known as “sissy porn” centers on a humiliation fetish where men partake in “forced feminization,” encompassing activities such as dressing, applying makeup, and engaging in sexual submissiveness. Google Trends data highlights that searches for “sissy porn” have experienced a tenfold surge in the United States since 2010 (Google Trends, 2023). An even more specific subset is referred to as “sissy hypno,” an abbreviation for “sissification hypnosis.” This entails a form of guided meditation that instructs men to visualize themselves as females (Gluck, 2020).

As with girls, a justifiable reluctance to be identified with the gendered stereotypes often embedded in pornography may underlie the adoption of a transgender identity by some males. Some male detransitioners have suggested that their initial identification as transgender was partly a response to societal expectations associated with traditional notions of masculinity, particularly as portrayed in certain aspects of the pornography industry (Boyce, 2022). For these individuals, identifying as transgender represented a way to renounce what they perceived as “toxic masculinity.” They believed that by transitioning, they could escape the pressure to conform to these stereotypes and expectations.

While these connections between pornography and transgender identification are suggestive, further research is needed to understand the impact of widely available pornography on a whole host of societal phenomena. While conversations about pornography can be awkward and uncomfortable, clinicians treating gender-distressed patients must endeavor to understand whether consumption of such content has played a role in their development of a transgender identity.

Christina Buttons is an Investigative Reporter at the Manhattan Institute

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