From hentai to transgender content: How Russians’ Pornhub preferences have changed over the past five years

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The world’s most popular porn site, Pornhub, publishes annual statistics on user preferences, including country-by-country data. The Insider examined Pornhub’s reviews over the past five years as they relate to Russia, and also spoke with sex educator Sasha Kazantseva about why Russian users in 2025 have shown heightened interest in banned transgender content.

2021: Hentai and “Russian”

In 2021, Russia ranked among the top 20 countries by Pornhub traffic. According to the site’s data, the most-watched category in the country was hentai. The most popular search term was “Russian” (in Cyrillic), followed by “hentai” and “MILF.”

Compared with the rest of the world, users in Russia at the time watched a disproportionately large proportion of solo female videos, hentai, and lesbian “scissoring” scenes. Globally, this fit into broader trends: for the second year in a row, “Japanese” content led worldwide, lesbian porn ranked second, and hentai placed fourth overall.

2022-2023: A patriotic upswing

Beginning in 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia disappeared from Pornhub’s top 20 countries by traffic. However, it continued to appear on category maps. In both 2022 and 2023, the most-watched category in the country became “Russian” — porn in which performers speak Russian. This occurred amid the isolation of the Russian internet, the increased use of VPNs, and broader audience fragmentation. On a global level during the same period, the “lesbian” and “ebony” categories rose to the top, and interest increasingly shifted from genre-based categories to identity- and scenario-driven themes.

Notably for the Russian case, in December 2022, the authorities in Moscow enacted a law fully banning so-called “LGBT propaganda,” significantly expanding grounds for blocking content and imposing fines related to non-heteronormative sexuality. While this shift is not directly reflected in Pornhub data, the broader context became increasingly significant.

2024: Anal

In 2024, Russia’s Pornhub map changed again: anal sex became the most-watched category. This coincided with a wider shift that saw anal sex rise to second place worldwide, while MILF became the most popular overall category for the first time in several years. In this respect, Russia ceased to look like an outlier and visually aligned itself with trends that were unfolding internationally.

This shift also occurred against the backdrop of a ban on the non-existent “international LGBT movement,” which Russia’s Supreme Court designated as extremist in November 2023. Human rights advocates warned at the time that any public expression of LGBTQ identity would fall into a legal risk zone. Soon afterward, the first administrative and criminal cases related to LGBTQ issues began to appear.

2025: A transgender turn

The most striking turn came in 2025, when Pornhub listed transgender content as the most-watched category in Russia. Globally, Pornhub explicitly labeled 2025 the year of “diverse desires”: the “lesbian” category returned to first place worldwide, while transgender content rose to second by views, showing the fastest growth in nearly all regions.

Sex educator and LGBTQ activist Sasha Kazantseva told The Insider that interest in trans content on porn sites is linked to the fact that authorities across the globe are using transgender people as a political scare tactic.

“The growth of interest in trans porn is a global trend and not unique to Russia,” Kazantseva said. “In my view, the reason for this growth across different countries is the same: trans people have begun appearing much more frequently in the information space due to sharp repression in the U.S., Russia, the UK, and elsewhere. Figures like Trump and Putin constantly remind everyone about trans people, using them as a political bogeyman. Naturally, this new and emotionally charged topic is reflected in search queries. I can compare this to the rise in searches for ‘porn with Ukrainian refugees’ that began in 2022 — the context and causes of both interests are equally horrific.

When Pornhub released its 2025 ranking, many media outlets contrasted interest in trans porn with Russia’s declared ‘traditional values.’ But in my view, these are two sides of the same coin. With the boost in trans themes, people in Russia did not become more interested in how transgender identity works, how trans people live, or what problems they face. The interest spilled out precisely into porn — that is, into the zone of objectification.

There is nothing wrong with fantasies about certain people or practices. But when an entire group of people begins to exist for society only as a category on porn sites, that’s pretty grim.”