Why did you become interested in BDSM or other kinky sex?

[Doctor Pervert]

This isn't something I keep track of, people come and go and although some say they are trying to go kink free most of the time they seem to come back.
As for those I lose contact with, who knows?

 

[Truthfully]

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I test your remarkable patience yet with one question. Gays and lesbians march in Pride parades, trying to convert what once was a shameful secret into something that one can publicly admit with pride. (Though the vast majority of gays in the world still stay in the closet, if the statistics findable with Google searches are to be trusted.)

How about kinky people: how common is it to be publicly known in one's social circles to be kinky, or is it more typically a carefully guarded state secret? If it's a secret, is it an accepted status quo, without any remarkable aspirations to change the attitudes of the general public, as gays and lesbians are doing?

 

[Doctor Pervert]

I'd say this really varies a lot with location, my time in the San Francisco bdsm scene which is pretty open probably skews my views somewhat. What you see online is not representative of the wider social communities. I don't hide my kink but it's not something I discuss either unless someone asks. But that's just me, I don't feel the need to explain myself to others in many regards, not just kink so take from that what you will.

I believe there are movements similar to gay pride in some kink circles, but again that's not something I get involved in myself. Socially, as with many niche interest groups kinky folk tend to hang out with other kinky folk simply because of the shared experiences. That's predominantly what happens at a munch, keeping in touch with the local peeps.

 

[Truthfully]

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This has been a most fruitful discussion. Lamentably we were unable to clarify a couple of interesting and relevant points. Namely, how common statistically is among kinky people:

- a constant feeling of shame
- the decision to (try to) quit being kinky

However:

I guess I give up on the question about "staying in the closet", because... how many people "stay in the closet" about their masturbation or porn use? Quite many. So perhaps the question is not even relevant, how many kinky people openly tell their friends about their sex life.

 

[Doctor Pervert]

That's it in a nutshell, it's not an openly discussed topic for that reason.

I'll give you one thing to ponder on though.

Ten or so years ago when the first 50 Shades book took off something interesting happened. While the book itself and subsequent movie was rubbish from the kink bdsm perspective what it did do was send a flurry of people, mostly women searching online for sites like this.
The huge success and hype surrounding it opened up a lot of discussion on the kink/bdsm topic in the general population, it seemed an awful lot of people were curious to see what goes on.
That surge of interest lasted for a couple of years and site statistics reflected this, submissive female new membership outpaced males which otherwise never happens.
To me this was another confirmation of my long held belief that a very large proportion of the population have a kink interest, they just need a trigger to let it out.

 

[Truthfully]

Ten or so years ago when the first 50 Shades book took off something interesting happened. While the book itself and subsequent movie was rubbish from the kink bdsm perspective what it did do was send a flurry of people, mostly women searching online for sites like this.

The movie was a huge hit among women, and I witnessed this also in my social surroundings. My interpretation of it back then was the same theory, with which I unsuccessfully opened this discussion: women saw in the movie the hope of finding something more to spice up their boring sex lives. The 50+ % of women who seldom orgasm in ordinary sex, if they ever have in life. The motive being not getting much of their current ordinary sex life, and therefore being curious about what is described in the movie. Not because of primary interest in the stuff itself, but because of poor satisfaction with what they currently have. They saw hope in the female sexual emotions described in the movie, and were ready to ignore the fact that it was produced with very unusual methods. That is why women liked the movie: it is women who are bored with their current sex lives. In fact, sex generally.

However, this discussion offered no confirmation that such a motive would often drive people to be curious about BDSM. Unless this movie example finally does so.

> submissive female new membership outpaced males which otherwise never happens

Aha, is their a gender ratio among kinky people? Any news concerning that?

 

[Doctor Pervert]

My theory is/was that women were attracted to the book as a way to openly investigate something they were already interested in but had no idea how to get involved. As per my previous argument that the kink is already there, but social norms prevent them getting involved in it. The book was such a popular success it was easy to be seen as "just curious" by buying and reading it.
In this respect it provided a public shield because it had widespread acceptance and this allowed for a long period of cover for women to look further, such as online sites like this. This correlates with the huge spike in new memberships I mentioned.

As for the gender ratio, online it is very skewed male over female, here the ratio averages around 3 to 1 active members. In "in person" bdsm situations, socially this is not the case. Anecdotally, from my own experience there it seems to be close to a normal 50/50 ratio.

However I have noticed that over the past few years there is a noticeable difference in the age group demographics on this site. The youngest members here, say those born from 1 Jan 2000 onward, seem to be close to 50/50 M/F ratio. Older than that is where the split really occurs. This I attribute to the younger females being much more comfortable with online porn and using sites like this is not seen as anything odd by them or their peers. The same isn't the case generally for older women.

 

[Truthfully]

As for the gender ratio, online it is very skewed male over female

Is it equally popular to be dominant or submissive? Is there an approximately balanced ratio between those?

And then, with that answer in mind: are men and women equally probably dominant or submissive? Or is one gender over-represented among dominants or submissives? (This gets a bit tricky statistics-wise: if 75% of online participants are males, then the neutral expectation would be that 75% of dominants are males, and also 75% of submissives are males.)

As for the normalness of a 50-50 ratio, generally the ratio is not such in the online sex scene. Also in real life men are perceived as the sex-seekers, and this perception is not fully unfounded statistically. Even in a relationship, men would prefer to have sex twice more often than women.

 

[Doctor Pervert]

Is it equally popular to be dominant or submissive? Is there an approximately balanced ratio between those?

Impossible to answer properly due to the huge numbers of scammer Domme accounts. These are often bots so they ruin any kind of statistical analysis.
As a general rule there are more subs than doms in both male and females by quite a wide margin. Overall my personal experience is of at least a 5:1 sub to dom ratio, it may be more but I don't think I've seen it much less. In short there always seems to be way more subs seeking doms than can be supplied.

 

[Truthfully]

there always seems to be way more subs seeking doms than can be supplied.

Would you describe this as a matter of orientation, not enough people are "natural doms", or a matter of skills and confidence: it is not easy technically to do the job well, nor a light decision to take such responsibility for other people?

 

[Doctor Pervert]

Basically yes. For whatever reason there just are more people who identify as submissive, there are of course a proportion of switches too but this doesn't impact the overall bias.
It's not really a choice (switches aside), you just feel more drawn or comfortable in one role or the other. Perhaps to some extent the pressures of day to day life could explain something voiced by many submissives, they just want to give up control and let someone else decide things for them.
Maybe a deep seated feeling from the long days on the savanna when all you had to do was follow what the leader said. None of this new age "thinking for yourself" nonsense, lol...

 

[Truthfully]

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I tried to find the typical or average duration of a BDSM session by the Google method, without remarkable luck. But I landed on a page that made a surprising yet familiar statement:

"The scene is about connecting with your partner and having fun. Sometimes it's about sexual pleasure too."

The Anatomy of A BDSM Scene: What Happens?

submissiveguide.com

In some discussion (was it also in this thread, but certainly in one of your own threads) you made a timid suggestion that perhaps BDSM can be also nonsexual, in some rareish cases. That page turns it upside down, and insinuates that sexual pleasure is the "sometimes", not the norm. Not sure how seriously this is intended to be taken, though.

 

[Merlin]

[...]The 50+ % of women who seldom orgasm in ordinary sex, if they ever have in life. The motive being not getting much of their current ordinary sex life, and therefore being curious about what is described in the movie. [...]

You seam very obsessed with the idea that women hate their sex life in general ... Can you provide the study that shows your 50%+ claim? I know btw the cases you describe exist but from my experience we are nowhere near 50%, and for most women I know that could not orgasm at all (in my experience caused mainly from parents demonising masturbation) they do orgasm once they get older.
Might your idea exist ? yes, sure, but it is really an exception in the bdsm scene
To the ratio, as @droptokon said online it is clearly more men than women, with also way more subs then Doms (for any gender)
My real life experience is different there. The more subs than Doms seams to be true too but the ratio is way closer to 50/50 with even women often being more than men, when it comes to genders. So dependant on where, you can have even something like 60%+ women.

To 50 shades of abuse ... I don't see the connection you try to construct there, it is by far not the first book aimed for women describing "good sex"
50 shades follows at its base a veeery common trope for women novels.
Rich, powerful, charismatic, strong man/vampire/pirate/werewolf/whatever meets boring, bland, average girl with no real characteristics (perfect to put yourself in to) and he falls in love with her and she changes his life forever.
There were cheap novels sold in kiosks like that even when I was born and earlier
I often feel that this is the "power fantasy" for women, comparable of the men reading super heroes and action stuff.
The Bdsm side is really not portrait in any good way and is showing an abusive relationship.

The books and movies clearly made some people look more into bdsm but simply by being so famous not so much by the text itself in my experience...

 

[Truthfully]

You seam very obsessed with the idea that women hate their sex life in general ... Can you provide the study that shows your 50%+ claim?

Not "in general". A significant minority of women are absolutely obsessed with sex. I wrote in Google "how many percent of women orgasm in sex", and this is the first link that Google gives:

Determinants of female sexual orgasms - PMC

The pursuit of sexual pleasure is a key motivating factor in sexual activity. Many things can stand in the way of sexual orgasms and enjoyment, particularly among women. These are essential issues of sexual well-being and gender equality. This study ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This link does not even function for me, maybe their server is down, but this is what Google quotes from that page:

"More than 90% of men usually experience orgasm in their intercourse; among women, this proportion is only around 50% (Darling, Haavio-Mannila & Kontula, 2001; Kontula, 2009)."

Similarly, if you do a Google search for how often men and women want sex in a relationship, you will be told that men's average wish to have sex is twice more often than women's average wish.

 

[Doctor Pervert]

You should take studies like this with a grain of salt. Research based on surveys that rely on self reporting are one of the most unreliable methods out there.
Women tend to lie or misrepresent things in surveys 50% less than men which can easily skew results in sex related surveys. Of course this statistic is also gleaned from information gathered from surveys that rely on self reporting.

The moral is, as always, 67% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

 

[Truthfully]

It takes some imagining not to see how common it is that men try to get sex from women who don't want to engage in it. There is a difference in willingness. What would be the motive of a woman to lie that she has difficulty having an orgasm? The social expectation is the opposite, being able is the normal and the expected and honourable. Also the fact that a woman is said to need some 15 minutes to reach orgasm, man can have it in 1-3 minutes, and the average duration of sex is not much more than 5 minutes. Do the math, all this evidence points towards women not achieving orgasm as often as men in their sex life.

 

[SilverBlue]

Which reason led you to try BDSM or other kinky sex for the first time ever?

It would be great if you also mention your gender -- as some of these reasons might be more typical for men than women, or vice versa.

We just have our own little fantasies or fetishes that we eventually may want to try out ourselves. We might have to wait until we're comfortable enough with our partner to bring up the subject of BDSM or kinks. It may be us or our play partner that initiates "experimentation" but I doubt that many people try BDSM or kink simply because vanilla sex or whatever, isn't doing it for them anymore. It just takes a while to know a partner's likes and dislikes to be willing to try something new. It looks like the others here have said similar things.

For me, I had a "relationship" with an older partner who was dominant in the bedroom (in a "take me from behind, grab my throat and fuck me against a wall kinda way) and he wanted to explore more of that side of his sexuality with me. I'd had teenage fantasies of being in a submissive situation (not going into the details here) so I agreed that we could try out some bondage. Neither of us were "uninterested" in sex, we just had compatible kinks so why not test them out?

For most people it starts with that first step, that first toy or whatever to test the waters. However, as I said, it helps having a partner with compatible kinks. We may keep them private as some kinks and fetishes may gross out some people and make us feel ashamed for having them. Whether we have a play partner or not, the internet gives us some anonymity to explore kinks without judgement or reprisal which is why sites like this exist. They enable us to seek out like-minded people and realise that we aren't weird just because we get turned on by exhibition or spanking or whatever.

namaste.

 

[Truthfully]

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One more question:

Ordinary sex is typically between two partners in a committed love relationship. There are exceptions, of course, both casual and commercial, but they are the minority.

How about kinky sex? A "dom seeking more subs" is not a committed love relationship scenario. Is it typically a commercial arrangement, where the dom takes money for the services to subs?

How typical is it that kinky sex happens between persons who are not in a committed love relationship with each other, dating and planning a possible future together? (And the opposite of this question: how much of kinky sex happens between the partners in a committed love relationship?)

 

[Truthfully]

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How about you, Merlin, any insight on this one more question:

Ordinary sex is typically between two partners in a committed love relationship. There are exceptions, of course, both casual and commercial, but they are the minority.

How about kinky sex? A "dom seeking more subs" is not a committed love relationship scenario. Is it typically a commercial arrangement, where the dom takes money for the services to subs?

How typical is it that kinky sex happens between persons who are not in a committed love relationship with each other, dating and planning a possible future together? (And the opposite of this question: how much of kinky sex happens between the partners in a committed love relationship?)

 

[Merlin]

How about you, Merlin, any insight on this one more question:

Ordinary sex is typically between two partners in a committed love relationship. There are exceptions, of course, both casual and commercial, but they are the minority.

How about kinky sex? A "dom seeking more subs" is not a committed love relationship scenario. Is it typically a commercial arrangement, where the dom takes money for the services to subs?

How typical is it that kinky sex happens between persons who are not in a committed love relationship with each other, dating and planning a possible future together? (And the opposite of this question: how much of kinky sex happens between the partners in a committed love relationship?)

Sex is typically between 2 people that agreed to have sex ... often there can be love and other times not... i am pretty sure married people statistically have more sex than unmarried ones. Do they all love each other? unlikely.
The numbers for cheating are very unclear and depend on a lot of things but about 25-30% of partners seam to cheat (men and women at more or less the same rate) so a lot relationships seam to be not very committed. ( I don't think in all cases both cheat ... so overall we talk about at least 40% or more)
Commercial sex exist in many places not only in a BDSM environment... prostitution is old and look at onlyfans ... i would question the seldom part there. There are tons of swinger clubs that are non kink too ...

To the kinky side , some Doms have multiple subs, some subs have multiple Doms, some are married, quiet a lot i know are monogamous... quiet a few are in love

There is a big trend on the internet to milk desperate men, so a lot Dommes want money online, simply because they are in the minority and use that.
In real life i see it a lot less, but yes it still exists there too, clearly more for women selling it but not only them. A Dom or Domme selling their service makes them a Prostitute (and i don't see Prostitutes as something bad). The rates are not higher than vanilla ones.
Most real live BDSM couples don't pay anything to the other one...

The only difference i see between a lot vanilla and BDSM is that people tend to be more direct and open about it. Your idea that BDSM means "no love, for money, no commitment" is nonsense as soon as you get to be with real people and not online.