In 2022, what was the top searched phrase for pornography? The most recent report on Pornhub claims that it was hentai. This phrase appears to be gaining popularity since it was the most prevalent one the previous year. What exactly is hentai, and why does it appear to appeal to so many people?
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According to Pornhub, hentai is a type of Japanese manga and animation that features aggressively sexualized characters and sexually graphic imagery. That’s to say, it’s a type of pornographic animation.
Although it hasn’t gotten much academic attention despite its apparent popularity, I do have some information that can help explain why this pornographic genre is so appealing.
How Many People Have Fandoms for Anime or Cartoon Characters?
One of the things I asked individuals if they had ever dreamt about cartoon or anime characters was part of the poll I did on 4,175 Americans’ sexual desires for my book Tell Me What You Want. Based on my research, I discovered that 27% of participants have previously dreamed about this, and 4% claimed they daydream about it frequently.
Therefore, even if a considerable portion of individuals seem to have fantasized about hennai, just a tiny percentage do it on a regular basis. Thinking about this is intriguing because hentai is such a common search word. Because fantasies are harder to find and require deliberate searching, they may appear disproportionately in porn searches when they aren’t as popular.
In comparison, even though there is a lot more threesome porn available, threesomes—a desire that virtually everyone has experienced at some point—do not rank as well in searches. There is just less need to hunt for it because it is more easily accessible and publicly posted on pornographic websites. I mention this only to warn you not to read too much into the top search phrases, since they may not provide as much information as we would want regarding the predominance of a certain sexual interest.
Most Hentai Fantasies: Who Has Them?
My data indicates that there are notable variations in hentai-related desires based on gender and sexual orientation:
One percent of heterosexual women claim to often dream about this, while 12 percent of them have experienced it in the past.
This fetish has been experienced by 27% of heterosexual males, and 3% of them claim to fantasize about it frequently.
Lesbian and bisexual women report having this desire 26% of the time, and 4.5 percent of them say they think about it frequently.
Of homosexual and bisexual males, 39% have experienced this fantasy at some point, and 8% report having it regularly.
Forty percent of transgender and nonbinary people report having experienced this fantasy in the past, and eight percent report doing so frequently.
As you can see, males and people who identify as gender non-conforming are considerably more likely than women to dream about hentai. Similarly, those who identify as non-heterosexual are more prone than heterosexual people to dream about this.
A plausible rationale for the observed disparities in gender and sexual orientation might be because people’s preferences for different fantasy topics vary widely. For instance, straight women often have more thoughts about love and romance and less fantasies regarding forbidden subjects. They are also the most likely to admit that they frequently (and frequently as the object of desire) show up in their own dreams. Therefore, dreams involving themselves and real-life partners that are more grounded in reality may appeal to heterosexual women more than fantasies involving other groups.
The Reason So Many People Find Hentai Fantasies Appealing
Additionally, I discovered that several psychological features and characteristics were associated with dreams with a hennai theme, which suggests something about the popularity of these attributes.
It seems logical that those with vivid imaginations generally experienced more hentai fantasies—these people fantasized about nearly everything! Therefore, these fantasies can just be the result of a wandering mind for certain people.
Less extroversion, or being less gregarious and outgoing, and less conscientiousness, or paying less attention to detail, were also associated with having hennai fancies. This makes sense intuitively. Your dreams can reflect your reduced desire for social connection in real life. Conversely, a greater variety of fantasy content becomes available to you if you’re less concerned with specifics (those with high conscientiousness, on the other hand, typically have highly detailed fantasies that closely resemble the actual world).
Additionally, there was a correlation found between hantai fantasies and higher levels of anxiety, avoidant attachment style (i.e., discomfort with intimacy), and neuroticism (i.e., high stress levels). While fantasizing about a fictional partner may offer the emotional distance avoidantly attached people need, fantasizing about a fictional character may offer some comfort to anxiously attached and neurotic people by removing stress and anxiety from the situation.
There was a correlation found between having more BDSM fantasies overall and having dentai fantasies, indicating that these thoughts might occasionally serve as a means of communicating BDSM desires.
Along with having more dreams about prohibited acts in general, these desires were also associated with having more fantasies about nonconsensual activities (such as exhibitionism and nonconsensual voyeurism). Therefore, hentai may provide a way for certain people to pursue sexual interests that are unsafe, prohibited, or impractical in the actual world.
Finally, and maybe not unexpectedly, those with hentai fantasies also tended to dream more about other imaginative scenarios, including having sex with robots or aliens or in space.