While over half of adults in the United States watch pornography, most aren’t quick to talk about it — much less what they enjoy to watch. However, what they may not bring up in conversation shows up in the data, and that data reflects American politics.
On PornHub, the number one searched term of 2025 was “Latina” in the United States.
Prior to Trump’s first stint in the Oval Office, “Latina” didn’t even broach the top twenty. But the popularity of this term has risen over the past decade.
It’s hard to forget the derogatory way Trump spoke about Latin Americans in his first presidential campaign, when he called Mexican immigrants killers, criminals, drug dealers, and rapists.
Trump kept up this approach in 2025, with an executive order on immigration titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and a White House Instagram post calling immigrants “murderers, drug lords, dangerous prisoners, the mentally insane, and… wife beaters.” Whether or not a majority of Americans support Trump, porn habits suggest they have internalized his message.
These pornography trends may have to do with a psychological concept called the Erotic Equation.
According to the Erotic Equation, attraction and obstacles equal excitement. Basically, the more taboo something becomes, the more likely it is to be eroticized.
An already-existing fetishization of Latin Americans has been exacerbated by the increase of anti-immigrant sentiments in U.S. politics and society. This explains why “Latina” became the number-one searched term on PornHub in 2025.
Another example of this is the United States’ second most-watched category in 2025 PornHub data: transgender.
Prior to Trump announcing his second campaign for office in 2022, “transgender” never even appeared on the U.S. list of popular categories in PornHub’s annual data. Moreover, that same presidential campaign included “President Trump’s Plan to Protect Children From Left-Wing Gender Insanity.” He also gave speeches that referred to transgender individuals as “sick” and “deranged.” To make matters worse, he promised to cease “all programs that promote[d] the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
Anti-trans legislation has reached unprecedented heights in recent years.
In 2025 alone, politicians proposed and considered 1,022 anti-trans bills in the United States. Accordingly, “transgender” pornography has attracted a larger audience than ever before.
The human impulse to be sexually excited by the culturally taboo is nothing new. This conversation doesn’t often happen in the open. However, it seems all the more relevant to discuss this topic given the American impulse to sexualize groups while simultaneously persecuting them.
Porn may be an uncomfortable subject to broach, but if something goes unacknowledged, it can never be addressed.
Featured image via Deon Black on Unsplash
