Pakistan leads world in gay Google searches

Despite a recent global survey by the Pew Research Centre describing Pakistan as one of the world’s least tolerant countries when it comes to homosexuality, the country leads the world in Google search terms relating to gay sex.

At the time of writing, Google Trends puts Pakistan as the world leader in searches for “man fucking man” and “shemale sex” by a wide margin, and the country appears high in rankings for related search terms.

Same-sex sexual acts are illegal in Pakistan, where the legal system has long been influenced by the Islamic traditions of the majority Muslim population. However, according to numerous reports homosexual behaviour is common and not traditionally tied to notions of a ‘gay’ identity.

The Google data appears at odds with the results of the Pew survey on acceptance of homosexuality, which named countries mostly in the Middle East and Africa as the least tolerant.

Although results vary across specific search terms, there seems to be little correlation between where countries appeared in the survey and the corresponding prevalence of gay-related Google search terms.