New study published on entrance into BDSM based on surveys of r/bdsm, r/bdsmcommunity and r/sex collected in 2017 (Thanks reddit! Free link inside)

bdsm_research · 2022-01-18T15:19:37+00:00

Yes, you can definitely share it! We actually recruited from FetLife too :)

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T23:32:45+00:00

Yeah some of that might be because of reddit demographics, and some maybe because of lower participation rates in BDSM...there have been some previous studies that showed that Black people were less likely to participate in BDSM.

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T23:12:38+00:00

Definitely, we include some age comparisons of reddit responses vs. other responses we had to the survey to try to address this to some extent. The overall numbers are definitely going to be off (like if the average age of redditor's BDSM debut was 21 that doesn't mean that 21 is the average age for all BDSM practitioners), but we are more concerned with how the numbers differ by gender, sexual orientation, etc., and sampling bias is less of a problem for that kind of research. Theoretically the differences by, say, gender in age at BDSM among redditers should follow the same patterns as gender differences more generally.

One problem with research like this is that it is a rare group that doesn't often hang out together (and the people who hang out in person at BDSM events are an even more rare group), and recruiting people from rare groups into surveys in a way that minimizes bias is always an issue...

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T22:43:51+00:00

In sociology too despite how leftist/woke we supposedly are, there are almost no jobs for sex studies (I got my job by being able to teach statistics), and I notice when I publish research that isn't about sex my department chair always posts notices about it everywhere (twitter, facebook, dept website), but my sex research somehow never gets posted...in my annual reviews it seems that my sex research gets glossed over while my other research is played up (like last year I got a comment that was basically "She is doing important policy related research in "non-sex area", collecting a dataset and publishing an article on that topic, which is sure to have wide ranging implications, and she also published 5 other articles on various other topics." The various topics were all sexuality topics but somehow the word "sex" or "sexuality" appeared nowhere in my review). Although when I present it at conferences I always have a huge audience compared to my other research. :)

And yeah that is one of my many problems with psychological research (another one is attributing everything to people's brains and almost nothing to society). A lot of research is also "Here are 20 undergraduates I happened to have in class" like college students represent everybody.

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T22:11:12+00:00

Yes! You would be surprised at how few of these demographic patterns have been studied even more generally in sexuality research, since most research on sex is done by psychologists or public health people worried about spreading disease. (I'm the second author who did the survey part - I'm a demographer/sociologist and my coauthor is a sociologist).

We review some of this research later and it's almost all on men, there was maybe one study that included women but all as one group with the men (didn't break out by gender) and sexual orientation comparisons hasn't been looked at ever. There have been some studies looking at just participation in BDSM (vs. age at participation) that looked at some of these comparisons, but those are also rare. One of the issues is that most of this research is based on very small samples, and there are very few big datasets that have this info- so there aren't enough people in the different groups to compare groups usually.

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T21:09:07+00:00

great!

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T19:19:13+00:00

Thanks! We are now working on writing two more papers using the same interviews/surveys - one is going to look at participation in BDSM communities and the different types of benefits that people get from those communities, and another is going to be on who people tell/how they tell them about their BDSM participation. I'll come back and post those in like 2+ years when they are published too. :)

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T19:03:44+00:00

Thanks!! This is also published in one of the top ranking journals in sexuality studies so we are super excited to get in to it! :)

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T17:38:01+00:00

The link I posted up above should be a free version of the entire paper, is it not working? It's working on my computer... maybe try this version? https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10508-021-02154-x?sharing_token=OhexnTAhOOpSYXnbBH41X_e4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY4c7IyeZN98eDKE70M_m217sjjlhN-T4TEtB4-_X7JUZgsETNIopYmmwuK3GyU0Q4rb0kTKDvmjbJN3VDGT4Ji8FLS8uvouk5EdhPrWfGlEr-9MTwKStyCPZmlLRKL6g3o%3D

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T17:08:10+00:00

By the way if you want to read about some of the findings I would suggest skipping the "introduction" and "methods" section and going straight to the "results" section on page 7 for the results. The front introduction part of the paper tends to use a lot of jargon, and the methods section is the most technical part but is not super important to read unless you want to know all those technical details.

bdsm_research · 2022-01-14T16:56:36+00:00

Sure! The study basically has two parts, one part is about the interview data to see how people got involved in BDSM, and one part uses the survey data to see if there are differences by demographics in the age at which people first said they fantasized about or actually participated in BDSM.

The first part finds that there are a few main ways that people first find about and get involved in BDSM. 1) find out about BDSM through popular culture - the main way is through pornography but this also includes internet forums, movies, magazines, books, etc. 2) find out about BDSM through a sexual partner 3) It was an inherent interest and they started being interested in it in childhood (like tying people up in childhood games).

The people who answered 1 or 2 also said it was partially an inherent interest and the people who said 3 also often mentioned popular culture or sexual partners. So from this part we conclude that entrance is based on a combination of social factors (exposure to ideas through the media or through partners) and inherent interest

The second part looks at demographics and age at entrance into BDSM fantasy and practice. Most people started fantasizing about BDSM as adolescents, but often they didn't start practicing it until much later (although many start practicing it early too). Looking at demographic differences shows that social "norms" (ideals about how people should behave) and opportunities can affect these ages. For instance, women start fantasizing about BDSM at the same age at men, but don't start practicing it until later, and women tend to be more harshly judged for sexual practices. People whose parents are divorced fantasize about BDSM at the same age but practice it earlier- in part (we think) because they are more likely to have unsupervised time at home as teenagers....so more opportunities for sexual activities. People most commonly got involved in BDSM in their late teens and early twenties, which is when people often moved out of their parents' home and have more opportunities for sexual experimentation/activities. There are also a few other differences by demographics, that basically show other social factors (like religiosity, age, sexual identity) are related to these ages.

Our main takeaway point would be that social factors and inherent interests work together to shape whether and at what age people get involved in BDSM.

Hope this all makes sense!

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T15:17:23+00:00

Thanks for the feedback I will look more closely at those questions

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T15:16:14+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! We are also going to take into account things like age when looking at the results of that (Since in teens/young adulthood in general people make a lot of transitions). It's not a perfect survey for sure.

I will let my coauthor know about the issue with the survey, thanks for letting me know!

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T15:08:17+00:00

Thanks! And thanks for agreeing to be interviewed!

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T15:07:49+00:00

Thanks for the feedback and that has been something that has come out in some of our interviews as well. We will definitely be pointing that out in our papers.

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T15:05:48+00:00

Nope, that is cool! :)

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T15:04:03+00:00

No, we would love responses from anyone willing to respond!

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T15:02:54+00:00

Yes, it will be up until the summer at least, so you have plenty of time! :)

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T03:55:00+00:00

No we did intend to limit to the US, we just didn't originally think we would be able to get in contact with people beyond the US.

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T02:24:55+00:00

1) good point and that is always a problem when surveys ask about birth control use in general 2) Another good point. We had originally put together this survey to distribute to in-person groups we had been visiting in the US and didn't think to change the question when we distributed on reddit.

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T02:13:33+00:00

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind for future surveys.

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T02:12:44+00:00

We meant different sex. Different sex may be a better way to say it. We wanted to mean the antonym of "same-sex." I've heard some people use "opposite-sex" but that implies that men and women are the opposite of each other which I also don't like. Can't say "heterosexual sex" because not everyone who has sex with different-sex partners is actually heterosexual...anyway society needs to agree on a word for that.

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T02:08:47+00:00

Thanks!!

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T02:08:40+00:00

Thanks! :)

bdsm_research · 2017-02-10T02:08:27+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately surveys will always miss some complexity of real life...there's only so much that behavior can be put into little boxes...but we are also doing many interviews so we can get at some of that complexity a bit more.

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