BDSM Subtypes And Their Prevalence

survey results

I’ve recently dived deep into the world of BDSM, and found people have way different preferences around what might look, from the outside, pretty similar. For example, me making a niche cnc orgy only to find the other ladies who attended had widely different ideas for what their ideal cnc orgy would look like.

So I made a BDSM survey to try to find out the organic clusters. I collected nearly 200 questions describing various aspects of bdsm dynamics. I asked a bunch of friends, posted the list online and asked people to contribute elements that I might have missed, and I drew from my preexisting work around fetishes to try to make sure I got a good sample.

Then I had people take this survey, and I did factor analysis on it. This is basically just a method of seeing how people naturally cluster. Like, if you say “I am the life of the party”, I know you’re more likely to answer yes to “I have a bunch of friends”. This indicates there’s some underlying trait here that we’re picking up on with related questions all being correlated.

So, if we run this on my data, what natural clusters do we get? There’s lots of ways to do factor analysis and ways to interpret it, but after trying a gajabillion methods, this was what seemed both the most comprehensive and coherent to me.

I tried to keep the questions focused on different dynamics of power. I tried to not include questions that are too concrete (e.g. “whips are sexy)”, but rather focused on tone, method, and narrative.

If you’d like to take the survey and see your results before you get primed, the link is here.

Let’s go through them one by one.

This is about psychological power for the purpose of anguish - confusion, blackmail, mental control, but with the emphasis on dark emotions such as fear and shame - e.g. being tricked into choosing something horrifying.

This is contrasted with

which is about psychological power for the purpose of arousal. There’s absolutely still a power element here, but generally the purpose is to force some sort of sexual context onto the sub - such as hypnotizing them into being an eager slut, or conditioning them to have orgasms on command.

Willing Submissive features the sub really wanting to submit - being grateful for the dom’s orders, being innately driven to please the dom, actively attempts to serve the dom. This is a super voluntary subtype (you can see elements of this in the movie The Secretary).

Lifestyle seems to be a mix of formality and betterment. You might see collars and leashes and ritualistic rules outside the bedroom in this dynamic, but it comes with an undercurrent of betterment for the sub. Rules are instituted to honor the dom, but also to help the sub, and the dom tends towards a caretaking, sometimes parental role.

You can find noncon elements in many of the other dynamics, but this item is about the core of noncon - the sub doesn’t want it. Perhaps the opposite of the ‘willing submissive’ - this is about coercion, force, despair, and dawning horror. The dom works ‘against’ the sub, and there’s no ‘secretly wanting it’ anywhere to find. Unlike the ‘dark mindfuck’ which focuses more on confusion and shame, this is more about despair and hopelessness.

A staple of many a kink.com porno, Forced Pleasure is about pinning a sub down and jackhammering orgasms into them. This dynamic features a sub who ostensibly shouldn’t or doesn’t want to get off, but the pleasure is wrenched out of them anyway. This has an undercurrent of intensity and borderline discomfort, such as ‘too many orgasms’, mild erotic torture, or continuing when raw.

Sexy humiliation focuses on embarrassment. Who’s my ‘good little whore’? Writing ‘fuck this hole’ around a hole, forcing the sub to demonstrate how horny they are despite their blushing resistance, and generally humiliating them for their true slutty nature.

Like sexy humiliation, but more about being a loser than about sexuality. This is about degradation - involving insulting the sub, forcing them to demonstrate how much of a failure they are, putting them through disgusting scenarios - this style of humiliation is designed to amplify sensations of worthlessness.

A classic staple of the BDSM world, this dynamic focuses on pain. The dom hurts the sub - and, unlike the noncon dynamic, this typically features some undercurrent of cooperation, where the sub is understood to gain something from the exchange (such as but not limited to service or accomplishing something hard).

This is the disney channel romance of BDSM; the dom’s role is a protector, and functions as a strong, comforting guide for the sub’s journey into sexual ‘giving in.’ This dynamic focuses heavily on safety, romance, and love. ‘Daddy’ vibes likely are a member of this type.

Who’s domming who, here? This is nearly an inversion of the traditional dynamic, and focuses on the dom serving the sub. While the Indulgent Dom is similar to Tender Protector in that they are both sweet and caring, the Indulgent Dom functions more as a worshipful service role. The sub demands treats and gets them; the sub is spoiled, indulged, ravished with love and sex exactly how they want it.

This focuses on power dynamics around others, with a subcurrent of objectification. The dom shares sub with others, the sub is forced to have sex with strangers, the sub is used as a transactional object. Slave auctions are an aspect of this dynamic, as well as kinky gangbangs.

You probably know this one - bondage! Maybe less of a dynamic and more of a specific kink, this focuses on physical restraint to varying degrees, and can include variants like sensory deprivation or bodily control (e.g. a drooling gag). This also tends to (but not necessarily) includes an undercurrent of voluntary sub participation.

A dynamic of a primal nature, this one is about some warm, wild, aggressive instincts. Chase and capture, growling and struggle, animalistic vibes. Don’t think, just bite.

On the far side of the Tender Protector, we have callous - defined by the dom’s detachment of lack of caring for the sub. This is full dom selfishness - the dom uses the sub for their own pleasure, no matter what the sub might be feeling about it. The sub is an object, not-a-person, disregarded.

The initiatory power dynamic relies on the sub’s desire for sex as a method of controlling the sub. The sub likes fucking the dom, is proud of their sexuality, happy to be a slut, and enthusiastically does what the dom wants in order to be able to have sex with them. While the Willing Sub sees the dom maintaining control via the sub’s desire to be of service, the Initiatory dynamic sees the dom maintaining control via the sub’s sex drive.

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All right - so there’s the 16 types.

As of writing this, ~13k people have taken the survey, mostly distributed on my social media and fetlife (with some mild virality, as people have shared the survey with their friends).

Overall, the biggest gap between female doms and male sub ratings was sadism, willing sub, and tender protector (preferred more by the doms), and shared, sexy mindfuck, and callous (preferred more by subs).

The biggest gap between female subs and male doms was dark humiliation, willing sub, and initiatory (preferred by the doms), and shared, indulgent dom, and tender protector (preferred by the subs).

These ratings I’m calculating looking at true doms and true subs - or people who answered both a strong interest in dominating/submitting, and an aversion to the opposite.

Switches, in general, scored roughly in the middle of both doms and sub scores for most of the types - with the exception of Tender Protector and Initiatory, where they scored higher than either truesubs or truedoms, and Callous, Dark Mindfuck, Dark Humiliation, and Lifestyle, where they scored lower than either truesubs or truedoms.

Here’s the same chart, but split out by males and females, cis and non-cis.

I’m defining the groups here by assigned gender at birth. I would do transwomen and transmen, but the groups on my chart includes those who are nonbinary or any other gender, and I didn’t want to assign a gender incorrectly. So it’s just a big umbrella group for “anything but cis”

This demonstrates a regular trend elsewhere in my data - sexually speaking, in many ways non-cis males and females share sexuality with each other more than they do cis men or women.

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This wasn’t strictly a Good At Sex post, but it’s adjacent. For the rest of the series - a data-based guide from an autistic slut on how to more efficiently blow ladyminds - check out the posts below.

1. Starve Her Brain

2. Women’s Sexual Subtypes

3. Men Are Werewolves

4. The Marketplace of Sex Acts

5. Sex as a Status Game

6. Misjudging What Women Want

7. Seduction Via Narrative Reinforcement