Luxembourg loves porn, lots of it in fact. In July 2025 alone, Pornhub.com was searched more often than Amazon.de in the Grand Duchy. While consumption is undeniably high, the conversation around porn remains clad in a heavy dose of stigma and good old Luxembourgish shame, at least, according to our interviewees. For many of us, porn was never just about curiosity or pleasure. It shaped how we perceive our queer sexuality, often becoming the only space to explore desire, see ourselves reflected, and learn what formal education refused to teach. While porn consumption among young people is high, with a recent study by the Luxembourgish National Youth Service (SNJ) finding that 58% of 12- to 17-year-olds and 79% of 18- to 30-year-olds consume porn in some capacity, international research shows that queer youth consume even more porn on average than their heterosexual peers.

Yet mainstream porn comes with heavy baggage: much of the content we consume is steeped in heteronormativity, misogyny and narrow views of sexuality and bodies. To discuss how porn shaped the identity of Luxembourg’s queer community, queer.lu spoke to three young queer people about their relationship to porn.

“If you or your partner doesn’t have a strong libido for a while, you start thinking: Am I actually enough? Am I desirable? You start thinking that you somehow have to be treated like a person in a porn scene.”

Young, confused and self-educated

“Secretly, I realized, okay… I kind of like it when there’s no woman involved,” says T (26). Their self-discovery, like that of many queer youth, was heavily influenced by porn and the lack of available resources.

“It was something that got passed around in boys’ circles,” they say, recalling how it did not do much for them.

As they got older, their appetite for curated content that reflected their own desires grew. “Around 17, I started making my Tumblr blog spicier,” they explain. Eventually creating a separate blog just for porn, their own curated gallery of sorts. “I’ve seen so many things through porn that I hadn’t come across otherwise. I kept thinking, ‘Wow, I didn’t know this was actually a thing, but it’s crazy that it exists.’” 

Interestingly, for T, pornography took a back seat once they moved from Luxembourg to Berlin. What might otherwise have remained a niche online experience became tangible through the city’s club culture and queer dating in a big city. “If you live in Berlin, it’s really just a matter of time. With enough clubbing experience, especially if you go to Berghain, KitKat, or Whole Festival, you’ll see things you might have only ever seen in porn, but never in everyday life,” T explained. “I went to that festival once and literally saw a guy being fisted by three other guys at once, and I was just like, damn!” For T, without the luxury of Berlin’s nightlife these self-exploratory ventures would have remained accessible exclusively through porn. 

Yet while the clubs offered an unexpected, immersive form of sexual education, school provided almost none, even about the basics. “I was told, ‘Hey, porn isn’t real,’” T says, recalling the only time porn came up in biology. “At that point, I thought: ‘Honey, it’s a bit too late for that.’” Left to navigate queer sexuality on their own, T turned to books, shows, and conversations with others. “I took charge of my own education,” they added.

For Steven (29) too, formal education left gaps which porn filled later on. “That’s how I learned what I like and don’t like in sex,” he says. “At school, you get taught that a penis goes into a vagina. When it comes to men, it’s through porn that we learn how it works.” 

Porn offered him a template of what gay sexuality could mean, a way to explore desire and identity. “I think it really pushed me further,” he reflects, “the fact that I was gay and couldn’t act on it in real life triggered my interest even more. For me, it wasn’t porn that was scary, it was my sexuality.” 

For both T and Steven, porn became the educator they never had. This is common among many young queers, going beyond education and into self-exploration. Studies show that porn can help queer minorities normalize non-heterosexual practices, offering opportunities to learn new positions, techniques, and explore fantasies. Yet relying solely on mainstream depictions of sexuality, rather than structured sex and gender education comes with limitations and risks.  

“It’s kind of funny that I’m talking openly about porn now, because I have to say, it was a long-standing taboo for me,”

The patriarchy ruined everything, including porn.

It’s no surprise that in a society dominated by patriarchal structures and norms, porn is steeped in them as well. S, 27, reflects on the difficulties of navigating mainstream porn as a young queer person.

“I remember talking with friends about what sites they’d go on,” they recall. “I had no idea where any of it was.” Once they first sought out porn, it quickly became clear that finding content which resonated was even harder. “I went on some sites, and once I saw certain things, it scared me off a bit.”

Their first exposure to lesbian porn came via Tumblr: “The first time I saw two women together was through that kind of content. At the same time, I was like, hey, but this is made for men.” Already struggling with societal perceptions of bisexual women, the male gaze in lesbian porn added to that difficulty. “As a bisexual woman, you’re not taken seriously. You’re told that you like men more than women. […] So, if even straight men find it hot, am I really queer then?”

Mainstream porn largely prioritizes male desire, any type of representation therefore remains skewed. On Pornhub, only 38% of visitors identify as female (Pornhub’s 2024 report). The lack of representation is even more evident, as lesbian content is relegated to being one subcategory, lacking any nuance. Gay male porn, on the other hand, has dedicated pages with numerous subcategories. It’s clear that in the great scheme of porn, we’re not all the same. 

For S, mainstream porn was not an option for long, while it lacked the portrayal they sought, ethics became another concern. They recall watching an interview with a porn actress: “She said, ‘When we started filming the scene, it was all discussed, that we’d do this act and that act. But then suddenly something else happened, anal, even though it hadn’t been agreed on, and of course she was in pain, because there’d been no prep or anything.’” That uncertainty made them reconsider their own consumption: “That doubt… It kind of ruins the mood. It makes me feel bad that I’m even taking pleasure in it.”

As a result, S started seeking out alternative, more curated content: “Amateur porn, well, at least hopefully, means that everyone involved knows it’s being filmed.” They also describe seeking out content made by women: “the male gaze is so obviously present in everything else.” Adding that: “once you’re aware of those patriarchal structures, you can’t really watch that kind of content without thinking about them. Even if no one is actively being harmed.”        

Steven also worries about ethics, particularly with regard to big age-gaps. “I always ask myself if that content goes into the direction of paedophilia or not, it’s a bit of a conflicting idea.” 

“It’s a bit ambiguous,” says Steven. “If it’s a 60 year old, with an 18 year old, that looks 16, then I’m really like, oh”. The same uncertainty that kept S from consuming mainstream content, raises questions about age and consent with him: “Maybe they are really younger than 18 sometimes”, underlining how difficult it is to know what we are consuming. This content is a common currency in porn, some sites and series specialize in videos focussing solely on smaller, younger-looking guys who interact with older, bigger guys. This takes another dimension, when the performers not only look young, but are often barely 18.

Age-gap content is particularly popular, Pornhub declared MILF their most viewed category in 2024, their 2025 pride report showed that Twink was the most popular gay porn category in most of Europe and Russia. 

Steven’s concerns are not unfounded, especially in the age of “community porn”, spread through platforms like X and Telegram, it is easier than ever to be exposed to questionable content. It is exactly in this case that for T, community porn shows its strengths, discussing the possibility to hold problematic people and content directly accountable: “I realized that people like that get actively cancelled on Twitter when they’ve shown problematic behaviour, especially when there are porn actors involved who, like, use extremely young-looking guys as their film partners, and you’re left thinking: is that person even 18?”  T questioned. “People like that get cancelled, and when I become aware of it, I can actively decide not to consume that content or not to follow that person.”

While social media can create accountability within porn, it’s also making us consume porn like never before. Studies show that global porn consumption has skyrocketed in the last decade, and while sexual arousal and curiosity remain key drivers, many resort to porn as a temporary way of lowering stress and loneliness. It’s increasingly important to not only consume porn ethically, but mindfully.

Porn has been proven to influence our self-perception and body image. For some, like T, mindful porn consumption has therefore jumped to the forefront. Not just when it comes to how much we consume, but also how we process it. Over the years, they have learned to be more aware of their consumption, noting how easy it is to get caught up: “You scroll from video to video, especially on Twitter, where everything moves super-fast.” For them, this is part of developing a broader sense of conscious consumption, which expands beyond porn, to know when to step back. Sometimes, that means turning away from porn altogether. Without porn, “you also get a completely different relationship with your body. There’s a different kind of stimulation than simply watching our screen.” Pointing to their head, they add, “because there’s a lot stored in there.”

Today, while T has a self-proclaimed healthy relationship with both their sexuality and porn, they recognize the unrealistic expectations porn can create. “Porn can often make you feel somewhat prudish or reserved sexually,” they explain how the portrayal of sexuality in porn can intensify insecurities. “If you or your partner doesn’t have a strong libido for a while, you start thinking: Am I actually enough? Am I desirable? You start thinking that you somehow have to be treated like a person in a porn scene.”

It is clear, then, that an open conversation around porn is necessary to examine why we consume it, and how we can do so safely and ethically. But why is this discussion so limited? In Luxembourg, for example, BEE Secure offers training and tools for healthier online behaviours, including educational material about why and how we consume porn. But the discussion remains largely reliant on small initiatives, teachers still decide what is taught in sex education.

For Steven, it’s clear that the general taboo status of porn in Luxembourg influenced their own relationship towards adult content. “It’s kind of funny that I’m talking openly about porn now, because I have to say, it was a long-standing taboo for me,” Steven admits. Until recently, he tried to hide that he watched it. “Even now, as you get older, I have people I talk to about it, but I still feel like there’s a barrier at some point. It’s still kind of seen as perverted.”

Part of this shame, Steven says, is cultural. Having lived between Luxembourg and Portugal, he noticed a stark difference. “I find that in Portugal, there’s a much greater openness to talk about sex. In general, you hear it on TV, on the radio, people joke about it, it’s more deconstructed.” Reflecting on Luxembourg’s more conservative climate, he adds: “I think in Luxembourg, it’s more stigmatized.”

“People like that get cancelled, and when I become aware of it, I can actively decide not to consume that content or not to follow that person.”

No more taboos around porn 

Porn is more than just entertainment, it can mean self-discovery, education, and exploration. Like most things in life, porn is not one size fits all. None of our interviewees could escape it, whether introduced by friends or discovered alone. It played a crucial role in how they engaged with their own sexual desires and identities.

The issues surrounding porn are real and need to be addressed – not to prevent its use, but to foster open, informed and honest dialogue about mental and physical health.  Destigmatizing pornography and encouraging honest conversations about why and how we consume it are essential steps not only towards a healthier relationship with porn, but also towards our own view of sexuality.

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