Once more I have a ton of interesting stuff cluttering up my browser, so it’s time to clean up.

First off, we have a little naughtiness : the Global Internet Porn Habits database from PornMD.

Via that handy interactive infographic, you can find out what the top ten porn searches are for almost any country in the world, and have fun speculating as to what this reveals about their national character, the repressiveness or permissiveness of their cultures, and just exactly what kind of perverts they are growing over there anyway.

Fair warning, though, it’s quite addictive, and you can easily lose a lot of time cast a prurient eye over the nations of Earth seeing what people there are “into”.

One thing I immediately noticed is that a lot of nations have a very high percentage of gay-related searches in their Top Ten. This makes sense to me, as there is still a great deal of the world in which gay men are isolated, with no way to get in touch with each other that is safe, and for such gay men, Internet porn might well be the only way to express their sexuality.

Certainly, when I was a gay youth in small town Canada, porn was my only safe outlet.

That’s not the fun stuff, though. The fun stuff is country-specific.

Like India. It has, as it’s number 3 search, “Indian aunty”. How intriguing. I know that in Indian families, the “aunties” wield a fair bit of power and influence. Childrearing is often quite communal. Could it be that a lot of Indian men have their sexual awakenings in the care of their Aunties?

South America, on the other hand, forces one to learn a little Spanish or Portuguese. For example, I learned that in Chile, the number 3 search is “Gordos (gay)”, which means “fat”.

So apparently, in Chile, they like their gay men fat. Mental note : visit Chile ASAP.

But, by far, the result that puzzles me the most is “straight (gay)”. Sounds like a classic oxymoron, right? But then I remember that there are gay men with a strong fetish for straight men, and hence there is porn starring supposedly “straight” guys having sex.

Seems awfully complicated and confused to me, and the obvious question, namely “how straight can these guys be if they are boning gay dudes?”, remains. But hey, whatever floats your bobber, man. No judgment.

Then we have this charming little tale of swift justice.

Seems that rowdy Irish group the Dropkick Murphys were performing in New York City when, via a complicated route I will not bore you with, a skinhead fan of theirs got on stage and started doing a Nazi salute.

Whereupon the lead singer of the Murphys, a certain Ken Casey, promptly kicked the ever-loving shit out of him in front of thousands of screaming fans.

Now, this is clearly assault. Casey is clearly in the wrong here, legally speaking. He delivered a savage beating to a man who was no threat to himself or his people. Surely, security could have handled this fellow in a more legally acceptable way.

But good luck, Mister Skinhead, on getting a jury to see it that way.

It’s not technically fair, but if I was the racist jackhole in question, I would not go getting a lawyer and planning to sue Casey and the Murphys for everything they are worth just yet.

It is highly unlikely that you will find much sympathy within the legal system for your poor, beat down, busted up Nazi self.

But maybe you were just doing it to be funny. Maybe you are no Nazi. Maybe you were just drunk.

Too fucking bad. Some shit, you can’t come back from like that.

Then there’s this interesting bit of speculation about the role of single-gender workplaces in rape and the abuse of women.

As usual with Jezebel material, I feel the article is on to something, something valid and real, but does not quite have the right grip on it.

They are right that single-gender environments tend to foster a feeling that the other gender is not real or valid. To a lesser extent, that is also true of any monoculture. Similarity breeds contempt.

But gender unity in particular produces some very disturbing feelings towards the opposite gender. Furthermore, I think single-gender environments actually promote a kind of regression into the pre-adolescent, homosocial, schoolyard mentality that inevitably leads to one kind of action to threats from the presence of the outsider : bullying.

Much of what I have seen and read about the abuse women face in hostile work environments strikes me as pure bullying. We don’t see it as that because we are even more blind to adult bullying that we are to childhood bullying, but the exact same dynamic creates the exact same teasing, tormenting, humiliating, and punishing type behaviours.

Rape, in that context, could be see as the worst form of bullying. It sends the unmistakable message that to the dominant group, the opposite gender is only valued for their sexuality^[1], and everything else about them is offensive to the dominant group.

Thus, institutional rape as seen in the American armed forces and the Steubenville case. The homosocial dynamic would prefer none of the other gender in their territory at all, but if they are forced to accept a minority gender presence, they will respond by bullying that gender in an attempt to rectify the situation by driving them away, or at least punish them for disturbing the dynamic.

And if the victim(s) cannot leave (because this is their school, their job, etc), then what you have is the potential for an extremely destructive dynamic that will escalate and escalate until the unthinkable happens and it turns into serious violence or even rape.

This also explains “hazing” scandals. In that case, the offense is not being the wrong gender, but simply being new to the existing dynamic.