Pornstars and social-political environment

Looking at what factors determine whether a young woman will become a pornstar, we first examined geographical factors and the determinants of distance in particular. We established that geography does account for a certain part of the determination, the closer a girl is born to a main porn production centre, the bigger are the chances that she will become a pornstar.

Now this determinant wasn't perfect in many ways, in spite of strong negative correlations between distance from porn production centres (Los Angeles, Miami, New York) and porn star ratios per state. There must therefore be other determinants. 

The political colour of a State can say a lot about the set of values of its people and also explain why the main porn production centres are where they are. Values, especially those social values that you express in an election, can have a large impact on whether some women are going to chose to become pornstars. Dominant political stances on issues such as religion, gender equality and sex can be constituent of an atmosphere more or less prone to develop the ambition of embracing the porn career amongst young women. We're going to try to break down the different social and political variables that encourage or discourage women from the porn industry.

The control, or lack thereof, of women's bodies and human sexuality has been a political issue since the beginning of civilisation and still is today. What is acceptable in the social sphere, what is lawful and what is obscenity are all questions that can only be answered through social debate, and therefore a certain political ideology. And indeed, as we shall show, the dominant political ideologies have concrete consequences on what makes a State prone to porn.

A quick glance at the following 2 maps should give you an idea of how porn follows political and indeed social values, as expressd in politics. The first one shows the 2012 election results per State, the second shows the States in which the porn ratio is under or over average.

2012 US Presidential election results. Blue = Dem. Red = GOP.

Pornstar ratios >average = Blue, pornstar ratios <average = Red

For 16 States, the Political affiliation does not match the pornstar ratio. 6 States were Republican in spite of having high pornstar ratios (Arizona, Alaska, Georgia, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska), while 10 States voted Democrat in spite of having low pornstar ratios (Minnesota, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut). Yet, for 34 States (2/3 of them), there seemed to be a link between political values and porn star ratios.

This lead to the assumption that girls who come from States with more liberal backgrounds should be more prone to become porntars than girls from conservative States.

We tested this on the State level within the USA, and indeed, it was possible to determine a few strong tendencies.

First of all, there are clear correlations between the degree of liberalism (data is percentage of people considering themselves as either "Liberal", "Moderate" or "Conservative" in a Pew poll from 2015) and the porn star ratios. These correlations are positive, meaning that more liberal states produce more pornstars than more conservative ones. The exact correlations between liberal values and porn star ratio was of R² = 0.39 (Pearson = 0.15). 

At the same time, conservative values were negatively correlated with pornstar ratios to a slightly lesser extent, with correlations of R² = -0.29 (Pearson = 0.08). If you then also split the people considering themselves as "moderate" 50/50 between liberals and conservatives, the correlations are even more convincing: Liberal + 50% of Moderates R² = 0.33 (Pearson = 0.11) and Conservative + 50% of Moderates R² = -0.35 (Pearson = 0.12).

We found close to no correlation: R²=0.07 (Pearson = 0.02) between Moderates (%) and porn star ratios.

If taken all together, as a ratio of liberals/conservative (measuring the importance of liberal values within the State), correlations with porn star ratios amount to R²=0.34 (Pearson = 0.12). These figures were used for the scatterplot beneath.

Scatter with 50 US States. Vertical = Pornstar ratio, Horizontal = Liberal/Conservative ratio.

So the social-political environment explains approximately 10-15% of why some girls are more prone to become pornstars than others. The top 10 most liberal states represent 22.6% of the US population but nothing less than 38% of the pornstars. The top 10 most conservative states, on the other hand represent 11.4% of the US population but only 6.9% of the US pornstars.

If you go more into details, and break the states into different social-political categories (Very Conservative, Conservative, Moderate, Liberal, Very Liberal) to measure where the difference really takes place, you obtain some of the following figures.

• Liberal states produce up to 2x  more pornstars than Conservative states.
• Very Conservative States have very low pornstar ratios, approximately 25% inferior to the rest of the USA.
• The difference between Moderate States and Very Conservative States (9.2) is 2.25x larger than the difference between Moderate States and Very Liberal States (4).

This implies a few things. First of all, that there is a conservative threshold under which women are considerably less prone to become pornstars. All states where there are 2 conservatives for 1 liberal (cf vertical bar in scatterplot), porn production will be considerably smaller and the number of women becoming pornstars considerably lower. These states are situated in the South and in the Midwest.

Second teaching: once passed the conservative threshold, it doesn't make that much of a difference how liberal the place you live is. The more liberal, the more porn-prone, that is true, but to a much lesser extent than what could be expected. This also explains why the correlations aren't stronger. Some of the most porn-prone states, like Nevada (#1), Florida (#3), Arizona (#5) and Alaska (#7), are Moderate or very lightly Liberal States.

Third lesson : Considering the inertia power of the liberal ideology, leading to the fore-mentioned conclusion, it is actually surprising that Very Liberal States do not have higher pornstar ratios than they do. They're only slightly higher than Liberal States and Moderate States. This could mean that at the other end of the political spectrum (Very liberal, progressive values), there are also sociol-political forces working against the development of porn. These could for instance be feminism and/or socialism who would consider porn to be, respectively, an expression of a patriarcal society objectifying women and an expression of sexual exploitation of unpriviledged, poor women by a capitalist, sex-crazed society. This effect is particularly visible in the North-East, including New York.

This figure shows the political spectrum in regards to porn. It seems like only liberalism can really be the basic political set of values behind a sturdy porn production.

Socialism, that was measured through an index accounting for poll results and voting results of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary, showed no correlation, neither negative nor positive with the porn star ratio. Knowing that socialist ideas are often held by Liberal people (Liberal and Socialist ideas are correlated R² = 0.64 and Pearson = 0.40), and that Liberalism is correlated with pornstar ratios ( R² = 0.39, Pearson = 0.15), there should logically be a positive correlation between socialism and pornstar ratios. Yet, this is not the case, which proves that socialism as such has a negative effect on porn. You could even argue that also is a Socialist threshold: in States were socialists represent 25% (Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachussets...) or more off the population, there can't be any porn development and pornstars will be less prone to come from these states.

So the 2 main ideological schools that oppose porn are Conservatism (Religious, Traditional, Patriarcal...) and Socialism (Feminism, Social Justice...). If you add up the number of socialists and the number of conservatives within each state and correlates this with pornstar ratios, a R² = -0.36 Pearson = 0.13 correlation appears. This means that states that are either very conservative or very socialist, or both (like Idaho, New Hampshire or Wyoming, for instance) are less prone to produce pornstars.

Considering the 2 thresholds (Conservative and Socialist) only 22 states can be considered porn-prone (in light Blue), while 29 other States are not porn-prone (in dark Blue, "S" indicates it's due mainly to Socialism).

This is the scatter plot for the PornStar Ratio and the added percentages of Conservatives and Socialists.

So Liberalism, both economic and social seems to be the best political background for porn. If you are born in of the 22 States that can be considered Soft Liberal or Moderately Liberal, you have a 50% larger chance of becoming a porn star than in any of the 29 other States. These 22 states produce 77% of the US pornstars in spite of only representing 56% of the nation's population. 

That liberalism is the political set of values that produce the most pornstars is as such not surprising. The idea that freedom prevails as long as nobody else is hurt fits very well to the porn industry.  No real porn industry can blossom in an area where "Live and Let Live" is not the dominant way of thinking. Liberalism is probably also more sexually permissive than both conservatism (and indeed religious conservatism) and socialism to a certain extent, allowing for the idea of becoming a pornstar to grow in the minds of young women. Now, even more progressist values, such as socialism; do also produce non negligeable amounts of pornstars, but to a lesser extent than liberal values. This could be due to feminist approaches, notably. Both liberal and progressist/socialist values produce more porn stars than conservative values, who tend to be much less permissive in sexual matters, as you can see in this table.

TOP 5 MOST	Pornstar Ratio
	Average	Median
Liberal States	23,3	15,6
Socialist States	11,9	9,5
Conservative States	8,4	8,4