Homophobic Pakistan Tops Search for Gay Sex Terms (VIDEOS)
A new analysis of Internet search terms published by Mother Jones found an irony in the majority Muslim country of Pakistan because while the Asian nation is homophobic, it topped searches for gay terms in the Web such as shemale sex, teen anal sex and manf***king man.
Mother Jones cited the previous results of a Pew Research Center study of gay tolerance in 39 countries in saying that Pakistan in intolerant of gays based the low 2 per cent response of Pakistanis that society should accept homosexuality.
Gay sex, after all, is considered illegal under the country's penal code, and violators face long jail terms as punishment.
But Mother Jones' analysis of Google Trends said Pakistan is number one when it comes to search for key words that refer to gay sex, while it is second to Kenya, another gay-intolerant nation, in searches for the terms gay sex pics.
Shemalesex as a term was the most-searched key words in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, known to be a conservative stronghold of Island and a frontliner in the war on terrors.
Farahnas Isparhan, an expert in Pakistani minorities at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former legislator, pointed out that the irony of gay terms topping Internet searches in because of religious extremism wherein Hindus are forced to convert to Islam and Christians are burned alive.
"So what do (gay Pakistanis) do? They turn to pornography because they can't live their lives openly," The New York Post quoted Ms Isparhan.
She explained that while in major Pakistani cities such as Lahore and Karachi, gay males often have a network of similarly oriented people outside their tribe or family, gays in conservative areas such as Peshawar have to be more crafty in hiding their gay identity.
She added, while Muslim males often indulge in sex with other males, despite such behaviour, they don't classify themselves as gay.
"The real love they can have that most of us find with a partner, they find with me ... They mostly see their wives as the mother of their children," Ms Isparhan explained.
Shereen El Feki, who wrote the book Sex and the Citadel" Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, said the dichotomy in Pakistan when it comes to gay life is similar to her findings in the predominantly Islamic region of the Middle East where discussions on sexual identity are dominated by the views of fundamentalist religious leaders.