This has been the best categorisation of BDSM subtypes I've seen that actually described the specific dynamics I enjoy and gave me a better understanding of them! It's also given me ideas for how to communicate these desires and improve my sex life. THANK YOU!
Could you provide a breakdown of how many participants in total were submissive males, submissive females, dominant males, and dominant females?
This adds to 7700 while a figure of 13k survey completions was cited in the article body - is there a reason for that (or is the raw data available to view?)
One thing I thought about, and your numbers confirm (which I have seen elsewhere):
Male doms and female subs are roughly matched numerically, but male subs outnumber female doms 6 to 1. Even male switches outnumber female switches 5 to 3; thus the ratio of men interested at all in submission to women at all interested in domination is about 2 to 1.
Femdom is thus much more likely, ironically, to be a male kink than a female one, and femdom images represent male sexual fantasy, which feminists oppose. It's counterintuitive given the imagery, but it makes sense.
You haven't accounted for the fact that there are 1000 more men than women in the sample.
Going by proportions - approx 5% of women are truedoms and approx 17% of men are truesubs. So the real ratio is 3.5 to 1 femdom to malesub. That's still disproportionate but nowhere near as much as you suggested.
Following the same recalculation, dom+switch women are 63% of the sample, sub+switch men are 77%. So the ratio of males:females who could theoretically enjoy femdom is only 1.22 to 1.
Sorry, I couldn't scroll past without correcting that... Femdom is still a primarily male interest but not to such levels as you have suggested. And going by "truedom/sub" interest, there is also a top shortage for female subs.
I would be interested to see if these ratios have changed in the months since the survey was released. This is the only survey I have seen with an absolute majority of female switches, usually it follows something of a 5/35/60% dom/switch/sub proportion. The numbers here in the comments also only add up to 7700 while a figure of 13k completes is given in the post body.
Nah, science is all about correcting each other (well, not *that* way, except maybe here).
It's been a few months, but I think I intentionally didn't correct for the larger male sample size, as the fact that there's an excess of men to women also affects the dynamics--the guys will have to share or go alone. There's an excess of malesubs not only because women are less likely to be dominant, but because women are less likely to be kinky as well!
I think my theory was I was matching up doms to subs and switches to switches (and assuming heterosexuality and monogamy, which is probably not true given that we're talking kinksters here; I didn't want to go through the further mathematical exercise of gaming out different levels of polyamory).
The other thing I didn't address is whether people have more of a preference for playing one role with one gender or the other. The very limited data I have seen (basically, comments on a tiktok video and reddit questionnaire) suggests sub to men, dom to women is about 50-70% of the switch population, its inverse 10-15%, switching to both about 10%, with the rest scattered among the various other possibilities, but if there's a better source of data I'd love to see it.
Just a thought, the quiz seems to focus heavily on BDSM as a sexual enterprise - either for purposes of arousal or as a way to have sex. Which is fine, for a lot of people who 'do' BDSM that's pretty much the case. But not all - I've known a few asexuals who are very kinky, instead viewing it (depending on their kink) as either a means of (non-sexual, emotional) intimacy, sensations, pushing their own boundaries for emotional thrills, or otherwise, with no sexual component at all. I remember one woman I knew who was extremely asexual, but very much enjoyed being presented in sexual-appearing ways, knowing others would become aroused by her body and submission, but in a totally non-sexual way. An asexual man I knew was extremely into primal play, but viewed it as (as best I could understand, I could never quite grasp it) a way to be in contact with his 'inner animal' and not be bound by the constraints of society for a time. It's plausible though speculative that non-asexuals also experience BDSM in this way either in part or in whole.
I wonder how much these clusters would translate within that context?
I get that people enjoy BDSM-esque things in nonsexual ways, but I have to draw some line at the 'type of thing' I'm trying to study. I've been asking about fetishes for years, and the exact way you ask about people's relationship to a fetish is really important. I agree that choosing specifically sexual enjoyment does eliminate asexuals, but any other definition will include asexuals *and* a bunch of other things I'm not trying to measure.
For the purposes of what I'm studying, nonsexual interest in BDSM isn't what I would include in BDSM.
It would be separately interesting sometime to look at intense nonsexual play; I think you can find lots of this at e.g. tantra retreats, regional burns, and generally psychedelic spaces.
Oh, yes, I'm sure you are aware of that - I apologise if I came off as saying you didn't. And I agree, examining that side of things becomes an utter nightmare real fast. Just from a concept standpoint alone it's a mess to crisply define things well enough. I'm not sure how you could.
Why not ask switches for two data points per question? Would it be great to see how switches cluster when subbing compared to "truesubs," and when domming compared to "truedoms"? Or even just how self-similar their interests tend to be between roles.
I am a bisexual dominant man and these results are very interesting to me
The first thing that caught my attention was the submissive men's strong libido, it seems they tend to find things more erotic, while surprisingly dominant men don't seem as erotic as the rest of the group, could this be Is it because some men fake dominance just for the sake of women?
In your survey, you were also asked about education and political orientation, how much are these variables related to dominant and submissive roles?
In my personal experience, sexual submission has a positive correlation with being anxious in both sexes and a positive correlation with being intellectualism and liberalism in men, so I wouldn't be surprised if a higher level of education is related to the submissive role in men.
Interesting to see this, and I'm sorry I didn't see it several months ago when you posted it, because you probably have some interesting perspectives.
She has a post showing that everyone leans left, but people with traditional-gender-role-dissonant kinks (female doms, male subs) learn further left. There's a wide range of people's behaviors, but the few polls I've seen say that gender-role-consonant switching in bi people (dom to women, sub to men) is more common than its reverse or to no connection at all.
In terms of personality type, submission is correlated with higher neuroticism (as you say), higher extroversion, and lower agreeableness. Ironically the studies with the largest sample sizes (outside of Aella's of course) are Internet surveys that aren't in the literature.
Where would the bratty submissive fit into this paradigm? The sub who not only resists but even taunts, though secretly trying to get into "trouble" to encourage more dominance attention? Think a Burton-Taylor dynamic.
I am not sure but I think a combination of tender protector or primal and sadomasochism or bondage should give you something that would describe bratty dynamics best in this setting.
Love the categorization & all the hard work that went into this. Very interesting!
I was saddened to see that all trans and nonbinary people were lumped into “non cis AFAB” and “non cis AMAB”. As a trans man, it’s hurtful to be reduced to the sex I was assigned at birth. Also, this data isn’t statistically useful for trans folks because “non cis AFAB” could refer to several different gender experiences. I do understand and appreciate the desire to not misgender anyone, and that good intent is why I want to share that there are more effective ways to gather data on trans folks. You don’t even need to ask for sex assigned at birth.
Here’s one way to do this; the first question would ask if the respondent is cis, trans, or intersex; the second would ask their gender identity, with choices of man, woman, and nonbinary/other. (You could include transmasculine & transfeminine as gender identity options to be even more inclusive, though that might be too granular.) This way, you can compare data easily between trans men & cis men, or all men & all women, or nonbinary genders & binary genders…
ty for feedback! I would ideally not like to lump all non-cis together, and when I can I separate them out (see most of my other fetish research posts). In this data specifically, it's a combination of presentation (graphs can get overwhelming/hard to parse if you start throwing in additional categories), and data size (if separating out subcategories starts to pull the bin sizes down, you get lower confidence and then I have to do more things to the charts).
Well, they seem very... uneven. Forced Pleasure, for instance, should "obviously" (note the scarequotes) be a subtype of a larger type of "control over pleasure" which is instead awkwardly spread between Initiatory, Noncon, and being just lost in the abyss (where, pray tell, should a voluntarily-worn chastity belt even _be_ in this scheme?). Bondage is a specific kink that could probably pop up in a number of the other dynamics.
An interesting grouping. I would add a 14th, "Pet" as I see myself. A submissive, as I am now, who does not need to be controlled as I am domesticated to the lifestyle and I have lived it full circle, domme to slave and chosen to be a "pet" who's purpose is to be the entertainment, and as the exhibitionist, who submits or compiles to a life that has gone beyond a preforming desire and taken it to a lifestyle. To become a pet is to understand what the dominant side requires of an owner and what is required of a submissive and be willing to play the game in the supporting role as a pet
This survey was really hard to take. There are a ton of questions where the thing seems *nice*, ("dom says sweet, romantic, loving things" etc) and a relationship dynamic that I might enjoy, but not something that would make my dick hard. When I took the survey I first time I answered no preference to all of them. The second time I started rating them according to how much I thought I'd like them about halfway through. There are also a bunch of questions where I can't tell wtf you're talking about - "dom worships sub", "dom ravishes sub with love and sex", "Dom dominates on a sacred, spiritual level, touching sub's soul". Maybe I have to be 1000 times more woo for that last one to make sense. And, at least as far as I can remember, it's not specified whether the questions refer to something that's a fiction or a reality.
As compared to your other surveys this one was confusing and weirdly uncomfortable.
Maybe this is just me, but it seems that there is the possibility of considerable overlap here. E.g. if you're into noncon and forced pleasure, a certain amount of dark mindfuck is inevitable.
This has been the best categorisation of BDSM subtypes I've seen that actually described the specific dynamics I enjoy and gave me a better understanding of them! It's also given me ideas for how to communicate these desires and improve my sex life. THANK YOU!
Could you provide a breakdown of how many participants in total were submissive males, submissive females, dominant males, and dominant females?
We had ~800 male truesubs, ~1000 male truedoms, ~2600 male switches, ~1000 female truesubs, ~130 female truedoms, and ~1600 female switches.
How does that break down by cis vs noncis? [I will do anything with this data if you bother to provide it!]
This adds to 7700 while a figure of 13k survey completions was cited in the article body - is there a reason for that (or is the raw data available to view?)
One thing I thought about, and your numbers confirm (which I have seen elsewhere):
Male doms and female subs are roughly matched numerically, but male subs outnumber female doms 6 to 1. Even male switches outnumber female switches 5 to 3; thus the ratio of men interested at all in submission to women at all interested in domination is about 2 to 1.
Femdom is thus much more likely, ironically, to be a male kink than a female one, and femdom images represent male sexual fantasy, which feminists oppose. It's counterintuitive given the imagery, but it makes sense.
Hang on.
You haven't accounted for the fact that there are 1000 more men than women in the sample.
Going by proportions - approx 5% of women are truedoms and approx 17% of men are truesubs. So the real ratio is 3.5 to 1 femdom to malesub. That's still disproportionate but nowhere near as much as you suggested.
Following the same recalculation, dom+switch women are 63% of the sample, sub+switch men are 77%. So the ratio of males:females who could theoretically enjoy femdom is only 1.22 to 1.
Sorry, I couldn't scroll past without correcting that... Femdom is still a primarily male interest but not to such levels as you have suggested. And going by "truedom/sub" interest, there is also a top shortage for female subs.
I would be interested to see if these ratios have changed in the months since the survey was released. This is the only survey I have seen with an absolute majority of female switches, usually it follows something of a 5/35/60% dom/switch/sub proportion. The numbers here in the comments also only add up to 7700 while a figure of 13k completes is given in the post body.
Nah, science is all about correcting each other (well, not *that* way, except maybe here).
It's been a few months, but I think I intentionally didn't correct for the larger male sample size, as the fact that there's an excess of men to women also affects the dynamics--the guys will have to share or go alone. There's an excess of malesubs not only because women are less likely to be dominant, but because women are less likely to be kinky as well!
I think my theory was I was matching up doms to subs and switches to switches (and assuming heterosexuality and monogamy, which is probably not true given that we're talking kinksters here; I didn't want to go through the further mathematical exercise of gaming out different levels of polyamory).
The other thing I didn't address is whether people have more of a preference for playing one role with one gender or the other. The very limited data I have seen (basically, comments on a tiktok video and reddit questionnaire) suggests sub to men, dom to women is about 50-70% of the switch population, its inverse 10-15%, switching to both about 10%, with the rest scattered among the various other possibilities, but if there's a better source of data I'd love to see it.
What other surveys have you seen?
Just a thought, the quiz seems to focus heavily on BDSM as a sexual enterprise - either for purposes of arousal or as a way to have sex. Which is fine, for a lot of people who 'do' BDSM that's pretty much the case. But not all - I've known a few asexuals who are very kinky, instead viewing it (depending on their kink) as either a means of (non-sexual, emotional) intimacy, sensations, pushing their own boundaries for emotional thrills, or otherwise, with no sexual component at all. I remember one woman I knew who was extremely asexual, but very much enjoyed being presented in sexual-appearing ways, knowing others would become aroused by her body and submission, but in a totally non-sexual way. An asexual man I knew was extremely into primal play, but viewed it as (as best I could understand, I could never quite grasp it) a way to be in contact with his 'inner animal' and not be bound by the constraints of society for a time. It's plausible though speculative that non-asexuals also experience BDSM in this way either in part or in whole.
I wonder how much these clusters would translate within that context?
I get that people enjoy BDSM-esque things in nonsexual ways, but I have to draw some line at the 'type of thing' I'm trying to study. I've been asking about fetishes for years, and the exact way you ask about people's relationship to a fetish is really important. I agree that choosing specifically sexual enjoyment does eliminate asexuals, but any other definition will include asexuals *and* a bunch of other things I'm not trying to measure.
For the purposes of what I'm studying, nonsexual interest in BDSM isn't what I would include in BDSM.
It would be separately interesting sometime to look at intense nonsexual play; I think you can find lots of this at e.g. tantra retreats, regional burns, and generally psychedelic spaces.
Oh, yes, I'm sure you are aware of that - I apologise if I came off as saying you didn't. And I agree, examining that side of things becomes an utter nightmare real fast. Just from a concept standpoint alone it's a mess to crisply define things well enough. I'm not sure how you could.
Why not ask switches for two data points per question? Would it be great to see how switches cluster when subbing compared to "truesubs," and when domming compared to "truedoms"? Or even just how self-similar their interests tend to be between roles.
I am a bisexual dominant man and these results are very interesting to me
The first thing that caught my attention was the submissive men's strong libido, it seems they tend to find things more erotic, while surprisingly dominant men don't seem as erotic as the rest of the group, could this be Is it because some men fake dominance just for the sake of women?
In your survey, you were also asked about education and political orientation, how much are these variables related to dominant and submissive roles?
In my personal experience, sexual submission has a positive correlation with being anxious in both sexes and a positive correlation with being intellectualism and liberalism in men, so I wouldn't be surprised if a higher level of education is related to the submissive role in men.
Interesting to see this, and I'm sorry I didn't see it several months ago when you posted it, because you probably have some interesting perspectives.
She has a post showing that everyone leans left, but people with traditional-gender-role-dissonant kinks (female doms, male subs) learn further left. There's a wide range of people's behaviors, but the few polls I've seen say that gender-role-consonant switching in bi people (dom to women, sub to men) is more common than its reverse or to no connection at all.
In terms of personality type, submission is correlated with higher neuroticism (as you say), higher extroversion, and lower agreeableness. Ironically the studies with the largest sample sizes (outside of Aella's of course) are Internet surveys that aren't in the literature.
Do you have a list of the exact items associated with each BDSM factor? And ideally also, do you have a correlation matrix for all the items?
Where would the bratty submissive fit into this paradigm? The sub who not only resists but even taunts, though secretly trying to get into "trouble" to encourage more dominance attention? Think a Burton-Taylor dynamic.
I am not sure but I think a combination of tender protector or primal and sadomasochism or bondage should give you something that would describe bratty dynamics best in this setting.
Love the categorization & all the hard work that went into this. Very interesting!
I was saddened to see that all trans and nonbinary people were lumped into “non cis AFAB” and “non cis AMAB”. As a trans man, it’s hurtful to be reduced to the sex I was assigned at birth. Also, this data isn’t statistically useful for trans folks because “non cis AFAB” could refer to several different gender experiences. I do understand and appreciate the desire to not misgender anyone, and that good intent is why I want to share that there are more effective ways to gather data on trans folks. You don’t even need to ask for sex assigned at birth.
Here’s one way to do this; the first question would ask if the respondent is cis, trans, or intersex; the second would ask their gender identity, with choices of man, woman, and nonbinary/other. (You could include transmasculine & transfeminine as gender identity options to be even more inclusive, though that might be too granular.) This way, you can compare data easily between trans men & cis men, or all men & all women, or nonbinary genders & binary genders…
Thanks again for the work that you do!
ty for feedback! I would ideally not like to lump all non-cis together, and when I can I separate them out (see most of my other fetish research posts). In this data specifically, it's a combination of presentation (graphs can get overwhelming/hard to parse if you start throwing in additional categories), and data size (if separating out subcategories starts to pull the bin sizes down, you get lower confidence and then I have to do more things to the charts).
I have to admit these groupings look not quite natural to me, but then again... my tastes are probably unusual-ish.
How would you group them differently, or which ones are very out of the norm ?
Well, they seem very... uneven. Forced Pleasure, for instance, should "obviously" (note the scarequotes) be a subtype of a larger type of "control over pleasure" which is instead awkwardly spread between Initiatory, Noncon, and being just lost in the abyss (where, pray tell, should a voluntarily-worn chastity belt even _be_ in this scheme?). Bondage is a specific kink that could probably pop up in a number of the other dynamics.
Hi Aella, I wrote a post that might interest you. If you agree, would you please signal-boost it?
https://justanogre.substack.com/p/kink-is-not-weird-sex-vanilla-dating
An interesting grouping. I would add a 14th, "Pet" as I see myself. A submissive, as I am now, who does not need to be controlled as I am domesticated to the lifestyle and I have lived it full circle, domme to slave and chosen to be a "pet" who's purpose is to be the entertainment, and as the exhibitionist, who submits or compiles to a life that has gone beyond a preforming desire and taken it to a lifestyle. To become a pet is to understand what the dominant side requires of an owner and what is required of a submissive and be willing to play the game in the supporting role as a pet
Could you describe the Archetypes ?
This survey was really hard to take. There are a ton of questions where the thing seems *nice*, ("dom says sweet, romantic, loving things" etc) and a relationship dynamic that I might enjoy, but not something that would make my dick hard. When I took the survey I first time I answered no preference to all of them. The second time I started rating them according to how much I thought I'd like them about halfway through. There are also a bunch of questions where I can't tell wtf you're talking about - "dom worships sub", "dom ravishes sub with love and sex", "Dom dominates on a sacred, spiritual level, touching sub's soul". Maybe I have to be 1000 times more woo for that last one to make sense. And, at least as far as I can remember, it's not specified whether the questions refer to something that's a fiction or a reality.
As compared to your other surveys this one was confusing and weirdly uncomfortable.
Maybe this is just me, but it seems that there is the possibility of considerable overlap here. E.g. if you're into noncon and forced pleasure, a certain amount of dark mindfuck is inevitable.