Out With A Whimper

And a Little Bit of Banging

It’s my last post of the year, and I have absolutely no interest in looking back on our year of Wednesdays.

If I look back, I’d be forced to relive the contentious election season that ended with the party of hate and division electing an actual felon who promised more hate and division. Unlike his promise to lower grocery prices—which he’s already said was optimistic at best—he’ll keep this one because it’s the only way he knows how to operate.

Looking back on the politics of sex this year would also force of us to look ahead to next year when the party of hate and division will be in control of all three houses of the federal government and much of the federal court system as well.

We can’t remember the women who died after being denied miscarriage care because of strict (and poorly written laws) without worrying about the body count for next year. We can’t remember the SCOTUS decision that punted the mifepristone case back to the lower court without realizing that the new Justice Department will have no interest in defending our right to medication abortions. (Trump promised this week to leave mifepristone alone, but we know how he is with promises.) We can’t celebrate the success of the HPV vaccine in lowering cervical cancer without freaking out about the guy who wants to get rid of the Polio vaccine. (Trump promised to leave that one alone too but repeated the vaccine/autism link in the same press conference, which is not encouraging.) We can’t even look back at Harrison Butker’s anti-woman graduation speech with any kind of schadenfreude because the party of misogyny won, the Chiefs are doing well, and as far as I know he’s still married.

So rather than looking back on the politics of sex, I thought I’d look back on just the sex with one of my favorite annual roundups: Pornhub’s Year in Review. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the distraction from the real world that I needed. Instead, it was a reminder that the real world is made up of Harrison Butkers.

This year searches for “tradwife” went up 77%, and searches for “traditional wife” were up 34% (because not everyone is cool enough to combine words). Syeda Khaula Saad at Betches watched a lot of tradporn so you and I didn’t have to. She says that it’s exactly what we’d expect: “It’s basically a woman with huge boobs in a 1950s-style dress cooking something in the kitchen until her husband comes home and f**ks her from behind. Obviously, there’s some variety, but… they’re always in some sort of apron, and they’re always in the kitchen.” Is this how we all imagine June Cleaver in 2024?

Trad wasn’t the only kind of wife porn viewers were interested in this year, though. Searches for “amateur wife,” “cuckold wife,” “wife swap,” and “wife threesome” were all up from last year. Even more popular than any of those were searches for “Mormon wife” which were up by 71%. Overall Mormons were a triple X hit with searches for “Mormon missionary” up 68%, “Mormon sex” up 92%, and “Mormon threesome” up a whopping 122%. People were also—not surprisingly—fascinated with those special Mormon undergarments we’ve heard so much about. (I have not seen the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, but they certainly are an interesting PR machine for the Church of Latter-say Saints.)

It also wasn’t just wives: all things traditional, modest, and demure gained popularity this year. Searches for “demure” went up by 133% after the world learned the word from a TikTok trend. Searches for “modesty” rose 77% while searches for “traditional sex” and “traditional clothes” went up 27% and 34% respectively. In case we had forgotten that all of this is happening on a porn site, searches for “modest MILF” went up by 44%. Who said there’s no irony in porn?

Thankfully, it’s not all aprons and Mormons. Hentai continues to be the top search, we remain obsessed with lesbians, we like big butts, and we want to watch anal.

Still, with its focus on traditional gender roles rather than funny kinks like furries and animated porn (both of which were very popular this year), the Pornhub roundup was not the distraction from politics that I’d hoped it would be.

I suppose we’ll have to wait for “What We Stuck Up Our Butts, 2024 Edition.” That’s always a crowd pleaser.

In the meantime, have a great holiday season and non-trad new year. See you in 2025.