Quote (NatureNames @ 17 Aug 2022 15:30)
I think this could be explained for a variety of reasons. I have an idea why this data might be appearing this way.
First of all, a google search for "shemale" or "femboy" does not necessarily constitute approval or enjoyment. Republicans are highly focused on these topics lately for religious, political, legal, and social reasons. Republican leaning media is often talking about these topics in a manner of disdain and contempt. The high number of searches could just be the sheer amount of concern and curiosity and discussion about the topic. This doesn't mean republicans are looking for porn.
Are some of the searches for porn? Certainly. But the data isn't showing that.
I'm guessing most people didn't actually read the article in OP's link but near the bottom it talks about the data source. I'll quote a part of it:
"It should be noted that data from Google Trends is on a 1-100 “popularity score” scale which is a comparative score of all 200+ DMAs for which Google Trends provides data. The values in the dataset reflect aggregations of this popularity score, not raw search counts (which Google does not provide)."
Google Trends as describes themselves:
"Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time."
So the data on those graphs is not showing the number of searches. It's just showing which searches are trending over time. And like I said, you don't have to look far on a republican-leaning media source to find these topics in discussion. Obviously it's trending among republican or conservative media and it's not about seeking porn.
Just a theory.
Good point in that google searches don't equate sexual enjoyment. Worth looking into the well known pornographic site that releases geographic search data, which might be better since the primary purpose of that data is centered around sexuality.