A year later, Trump's rumored 'Pee Tape' might have dampened enthusiasm for golden showers
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the infamous Trump dossier -- and with it the moment we all learned about the so-called "Pee Tape."
The detailed dossier, which was meant to show collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, included a brief story about Trump visiting a Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow. He supposedly booked a room previously visited by Barack and Michelle Obama and employed, "a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him." The supposition is that Vladimir Putin or Russian intelligence has a tape of this.
This brief bit of kink is pretty much the only thing that people remember from the dossier, despite the fact that it also includes some truly damning (though still unverified) stuff. A year out from its release, the "Pee Tape" still swirls around our collective consciousness.
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For the past year, watersports (as this kind of kink is often labeled) have been mentioned in more newspapers and televisions shows than ever before. Many outlets have felt the need to explain golden showers to their audiences. And the jokes continue to rain down.
But has this dossier had any impact beyond giving us a disturbing visual of Trump that we just can't shake? Has it increased curiosity or interest in watersports?
Immediately after the dossier went wide on Jan. 10, 2016, interest in the golden showers shot up on porn sites. Pornhub, the internet's largest porn site, reported an extremely high shift in searches for the term "golden shower." In the days after the dossier, searches increased by 289 percent.
This isn't incredibly surprising. Porn interest seems to go with the cultural interest, although this big of a spike is notable.
But it doesn't seem like that initial surge in searches led to any long-term increase in watersports interest. In fact, data that we received from xHamster on last year's porn trends showed quite the opposite. According to their research, the searches in the watersports category were much slower than in the previous year.
In this chart, where the grey line shows 2017's interest and the orange shows 2016's, you see the same spike in January as Pornhub's data, but with a big drop and lower searches throughout the year.
(We asked for the same data from Pornhub, but they did not provide it by the time of this writing.)
This stagnation may not be all that surprising when you consider the context of Trump's rumored tryst. The "Pee Tape" is often portrayed as either a tongue-in-cheek joke or a depraved act. Not the best way to promote inclusivity or tolerance of a specific kink that is pretty harmless, if very slightly unhygienic.
The negative attention the Trump narrative has brought to watersports probably didn't encourage many people to explore any curiosity they may have had. In fact, such stigmatization could have had the opposite affect and driven some away from any personal association with golden showers. At the very least, curious people would have some trouble getting that image of Trump out of their heads.
I'm not saying we shouldn't kink-shame Trump, I'm saying that it's unfortunate so much of the press around this has had such a joking tone that might shame others' kinky inclination.
As the saying goes, "Don't yuck their yum."
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Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't global. According to Pornhub's 2017 year in review, a number of other countries have shown growing interest in golden showers.
Japan, for example, showed a 198 percent increase in searches for "pissing."
On Jan. 9, 2017, very few of us could have predicted that golden showers would play such a big role on the cultural stage. And, even though Trump has denied indulging in any of this, the idea has struck a real, lasting note.
In one scenario, you can credit this bizarre turn of political news for casting watersports out into the public sphere, and maybe letting others find something they enjoy in a sex-positive way. In another scenario, the ridicule and off-handed derision that was splattered on the act could have made people more ashamed of an aspect of their lifestyle.
Data about how kink habits have changed since then might be inconclusive, but that still shouldn't stop people from have a good, consensual time.
Topics Donald Trump Politics
I have done neat stuff all over these United States from sailing lessons on the Puget Sound to motorcycle maintenance on the backroads of upstate New York. My professional experience extends from newspaper reporting in the mountains of Eastern Oregon to fixing espresso machines throughout Kentucky. I also have kept a cat alive for 10 years.
