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>tabooness

Oh, ok. I thought you said something else for a second.

This is interesting... but please be aware publishing data on these things changes it, since the fetish community is full of weird little edgelords who poop themselves in fear (rather than as part of some mutually agreed upon sex game) when they realize you weren't kidding when you told that cutie in Bloomington that Armin Meiwes did nothing wrong and that next time you don't want to just dry fire their wonder nine.

And if you really want to have fun, do as Kinsey did and have them flip a coin and only be truthful if it's heads, then double your sample size to compensate. That's how you gather truly useful data that will keep you entertained long after your IRB certification expires ;-)

Do you have any references to that Kinsey thing? I would just love to read a methodology section including that
The technique is called randomised response. Differential privacy formalises it as well
Yeah, I don’t understand why doubling the same size would compensate for instructing half the group to lie.
What I think GP is describing is this. Say you want to survey people about something that they may feel social pressure to deny (e.g., cannibalism fantasy). You have people come in, you give them a fair coin, tell them to go into an unmonitored closet and flip the coin (only the respondent sees the result), then come back out. If they flipped heads, the question they should answer is, "Have you ever drank water?" If they flipped tails, the question they should answer is, "Have you ever fantasized about cannibalism?"

If you get 55% "yes" responses, you know that about 10% of people answered yes to the cannibalism question.

You know that 50% were answering "yes" no matter what, so if you double the percentage above 50%, you get the people answering "yes" to the cannibalism question.

The Kinsey trick is brilliant.
Then why was I downvoted? Kink shaming is not cool :/
It wasn't me! I only downvote with a counterargument comment buttressed by a link to evidence, and I wish that was a thing.
It’s been a persistent issue for me, on other sites too - trying to be better about paying attention to the comms rather than those kinda things but I’ve had a few times here lately I circle back to a convo to downvotes after I said something elsewhere.

People love to abuse their access lol :/

And at the very top of the list? Oral sex (for either gender). Can't say I'm shocked. A certain Monty Python scene comes to mind: https://youtu.be/zXT_IOt81Xs

(and... fingering vaginas? Isn't that just foreplay?)

[flagged]
What exactly are you trying to say?
Or he is man (says so in his profile) and was just wondering?
> > (and... fingering vaginas? Isn't that just foreplay?)

A good % of women can't orgasm from penetration. As a guy you want to be the person responsible for her cumming (and not leave her to do it herself) so gotta use either fingers or tongue.

It's basically in line with the survey that the blogger did.

Yes, but the chart was about “fetishes” and I didn’t really consider that as one, but I guess I also note now that it has “missionary position” so I guess…
The real trick is using both fingers and tongue at the same time. Sadly, this is something I did not discover until I was in my 30's.
Try two hands (one to penetrate, one to stimulate) and the tongue next time.
(comment deleted)
The first woman I fell in love with (but not the first woman I was with) could only get off via oral, so I learned that one early.

Fortunately for me, she was only so happy to return the favor orally, and at great length (but rarely to completion... I couldn't exactly complain, though, she was HOT!)

Ended up with one of the rare birds who could actually cum via PIV sex, and what do you know, she's not as into the oral... sigh

There are many outliers. For instance, about 30% showed interest in "teens under 18" (which is different from "pre-puberty teens" by the way), but it's ranked 85% on the tabooness score. Another fetish with 30% interest is "thighs" which is only 15% on tabooness.
I have a hunch that societies generate strong taboos specifically in response to things that are widely appealing to individuals but that are somehow considered harmful to the whole.
Well, sure, but they also have strong taboos to things that are icky to most well adjusted individuals...
Ickyness correlates well with risk of disease transmission.
Why the fuck would liking thighs be a taboo? Though of course even blow jobs and vagina play weren't seen as 100% clean cut either in the poll, so this sampling includes some puritan backwater people... I think they counter "missionary position" as slightly taboo too?
Any survey is going to include people entering random shit for the lulz, so you wouldn't get 100% for "is water wet".
i don't think anyone who had ever met me would describe me as having a puritanical attitude toward sex but i would have been in the 10% of respondents that don't find blowjobs arousing

i don't mean i think they're dirty or naughty or something, they just aren't what i'm into

i've received blowjobs from partners who enjoyed giving blowjobs, recently even, but it isn't something i'd suggest a partner do with me, unless i know it's something they like a lot

human sexual response is pretty varied, maybe more varied than you imagine

>but i would have been in the 10% of respondents that don't find blowjobs arousing

Perhaps, but the survey is about what is considered taboo - and BJs are like still 5% taboo. What's up with that?

That said, not finding them arousing should be a taboo itself, it's like not liking chocolate, what kind of weirdo doesn't like chocolate?

i don't like chocolate either

just kidding, i love chocolate just like everyone else, please don't send me back to the hospital

tabooness was one of the dimensions, the other was what percentage of people found the act sexually exciting in fantasy, and i thought that was the one you meant

i agree that the 5% taboo is probably a question of people being puritanical, or expecting others to be puritanical

pretty sure oral sex was illegal under sodomy laws in most us states during part of the 20th century

The survey demographics state that many respondents were (claimed to be) under 18, and there was a statistically unusual spike at 18, implying many under-18s lied about their age.
It'd be hard to tease out, but I suspect most of the taboo associated with liking "teens under 18" would be for adults interested in teens under 18; presumably not many would consider it taboo for a 16 year old to be interested in other 16 year olds (which would be some of that 30%).
I think that the results that lay well off the regression line are fascinating. Seems to suggest a mismatch between people’s interests and society’s acceptance of those interests (not to suggest popular interest implies something should be accepted).
Hmm, I'm not sure it makes sense that they should align. Something might be interesting to many but shunned because of societal concerns if it were practiced widely.
This chart's data looks so impossible to me that I'm not putting any faith in it.

More than 1 in 5 people taking the survey reported interest in "receiving oral sex from animal"? More than 1 in 50 people admitted to having a pedophilic interest in "pre-puberty children", and just as many have a desire to execute someone?

Edit: I suppose, even more incredibly, its rather >1 in 50 people are aroused by the concept of executing someone...

Given how any small town would have the know-and-avoid "local pedo" back in the day, as Louis CK used to joke, it might not be impossible! Those scum are sure a lot! Now sure I believe 1 in 50 admitting to it though...
> Those scum are sure a lot!

Far more than we'll ever know. I am convinced most of them get away with it, and far more manage to keep it in the realm of fantasy. I'm not sure I really want to know the real number.

I guess I'm going to be the guy who objects to someone being called scum just for having a thing for kids and never actually acting on it.
It's like people think that someone just woke up one day and decided to be that way.
Does it matter? Would a serial killer be any better if "genetics" made them do it?

In fact, that would make them more of a beast (as sometimes such people are reffered as), not less. Beast are what they are, they're not what they "chose" to be either...

I sure don't agree with unlawful punishment or cruel torment as punishment of course, whatever the crime - as some people think somebody being like that gives them a free ride to kill/torture them. I think those people are also sick, and just finding a convenient widely agreed target for their violent urges...

Would a serial killer be just as horrible for fantasizing about murders without ever murdering, or helping others murder? Of course not. That doesn't mean they are harmless either. But stigmatizing thoughts to the point where you can't ask for help with the thoughts seems like a recipe for problems.
How are we assuming that the whole town knows someone’s thoughts if they never act on them?
> be just as horrible

I don't get the utility of making ontological statements about people including serial killers. Maybe someone who does find utility in them could chime in and explain it.

Constructed counter-examples tend to be exaggerated to bring out the inherent contradiction.
By definition you must murder to be a serial killer, so in that regard they are incomparable to pedophiles, who only require an attraction without acting on it. Interestingly a significant part of sexual abuse of children appears to be committed by people (mostly men) as a crime of opportunity, without them being primarily or exclusively attracted to children.
That is arguing semantics. The point was about the difference between urges and actions.
"Would a serial killer be just as horrible for fantasizing about murders without ever murdering, or helping others murder? Of course not. "

Sure, because they simply would not be serial killers, if they have never killed.

So yes, it is important to make the clear distinction between people who have done horrible things and those, who have fantasies about it and not mix them all together.

Part of what makes us human is impulse control.

I might feel the urge to beat someone - but only if I would let that part of myself go, then there is a real problem as then something happened.

With pedophiles it is of course a bit more tricky. Would you let someone close to your kids, if you knew they have fantasies about sex with them, but so far he has showed restraint?

"But stigmatizing thoughts to the point where you can't ask for help with the thoughts seems like a recipe for problems."

Yes, there was the famous incident, where one pilot decided to suicide himself and the whole plane with him. Smart populistic politicians reacted by saying they need a new law that says psychotherapists who treat pilots, must inform the authorities when the pilot has dark thoughts. Awesome way to hinder people from getting therapy as they could never open up if they know it might lead to their job being taken away.

Therapies must be and remain confidential to have a chance of working.

>Would a serial killer be just as horrible for fantasizing about murders without ever murdering, or helping others murder?

No, but nobody said it would be "just as". It would still be creepy as hell though, if one did it all the time.

And you never know until they're dead themselves if they'll pass into action either. Sure, this is the case with people not fantasizing about murders too -- they can still commit murder. But fantasizing makes it sound quite more likely. It's also one of the creepiest ways for someone to think of you (as their fantasy murder victim)...

Your use of "any better" has the same semantic content as the use of "just as" would have had.
Nope.

"Any better" was used in the context of the question whether being an X person who does X because genetics is better than being an X person who does X by choice. To which I replied that it's not "any better" (both result in many people being murdered horrifically).

"Just as" was used in the context of the question whether fantasizing about X is "just as" bad as doing X. To which I replied that it's not "just as bad", but it's still a bad/creepy thing.

So not the same "semantic content" at all given the context.

I believe I replied to a wrong interpretation of your comment. I thought your point was the people who only think about it are just as bad as people who act.

Instead, uppon rereading, I think your point was that "they can't help it, they were born that way" isn't an excuse. I agree there, though the footnote should be that people who "can't help but feel that way" shouldn't be so demonized for just their thoughts that they can't ask for help.

“some people think somebody being like that gives them a free ride to kill/torture them” is exactly why it matters.
Well, having such a constant "thing" in your thoughts qualifies I think. Actions matter more, but thoughts matter too. I means that's how you see other people. And that they'd might even just act on it if it wasn't for law and repercursions!

Now, a normal person sure can e.g. in anger have a momentary revenge fantasy of killing somebody thats being a jerk, but that's not the same I'd say as a constant urge for something like that. Then it's part of personality.

The important question here I think is: is it under the person's control. If it's not (and it seems plausible to me that it's not as other more normal sexual preferences like homosexuality and heterosexuality are to a large degree not) then they can hardly be held responsible for it.

If someone is unlucky enough to be born attracted to children and they control themselves such that they don't act on those urges then I'd consider that quite admirable.

I'm not sure this holds up logically.

If someone can't control something, then the "admirable" quality of controlling it would be impossible. If they do control it (admirably) then it's by definition under the person's control. If what you mean is that the desire is not under their control but refraining from acting upon it is, then is it admirable for someone to repress their homosexuality in, say, Iran? Or is that just a matter of survival? In that case, don't we say it's admirable for someone to have the courage to be themselves in the face of enormous risk, and that repressing individual sexuality is a violation of human rights?

The difference, of course, being that homosexuality doesn't imply non-consensual acts; no one is hurt by it. It could be that some pedophiles refrain from molesting children because some internal moral standard tells them it would hurt the child, but it seems more likely that they only refrain when and where they could get into trouble for it. Just looking at what an outlier "teens under 18" is on that chart... it's as popularly a fetish as "lips" or "thighs" (Y-axis), but it sits way out in the taboo area near bestiality. That's gotta be because it's illegal. Almost everything right of 70% is illegal, and its position correlates roughly to "how illegal is it".

> It could be that some pedophiles refrain from molesting children because some internal moral standard tells them it would hurt the child, but it seems more likely that they only refrain when and where they could get into trouble for it.

By that logic, the majority of heterosexual men only refrain from rape because they could get in trouble for it?

Rape is more about desire for control and power over the other, not about sensuality and sexuality. So no. Mere sexual desire is not enough.

A sizable chunk of heterosexual men (and possibly women), on the other hand, would indeed have sex with available women at every opportunity, if they could not get in trouble for it - you know, like the stigma of adultery, divorces, and stuff.

I wrote:

>> some pedophiles refrain from [...]

So no, not the majority of men, just the majority of rapists (or potential rapists) would rape if they could. According to the survey, interest in "violating another's consent" sits at around 17%.

The majority of men don't have to "refrain" from pedophilia, because the majority aren't sexually interested in children. Similarly, the majority of men aren't interested in raping people.

> the majority of men aren't interested in raping people.

I'm confused. You're saying they are interested in sex, but not in rape, with their object of attraction. Okay. So does the same apply to pedophiles? Is the majority of pedophiles also not interested in raping anyone?

In pedophiles the "object of attraction" can't ever consent, so merely wanting to have sex with it is already giving in to thoughts of non-consentual sex. Whereas heterosexual men can be interested in sex with women but not in rape (and most are).

To map it out:

heterosexual men:

(a) interested (or acting) on consentual sex with adult women: fine

(b) interested (or acting) non-consentual sex with adult women: bad

pedos:

(a) interested (or acting) non-consentual sex with children: bad

It's not symmetrical, as there's no (b) option in the second case. Pedophilia is always about non-consentual sex (that is rape), whether acted upon or not.

(In heterosexual men rape is mostly about power. In pedos, it can be about both power and desire, but that desire is still by definition a rape desire, as it can't ever be consentual).

You seem to be confusing desire with what is attainable. If a man can't find a woman that would consent, does that mean he now desires rape, when before he didn't?
I'm saying the opposite: in the case of children, it's not about "attainable" vs "non attainable", as there's no sense of a "consenting child". The mere pedo desire is desire for a subject unable to consent, that is pretty much equivalent to a rape desire.
One can desire something thats not possible. As an analogy, one might desire to be able to jump of a mountain and glide gently to the ground (without any equipment): that doesn’t imply that someone who desires this wishes to die just because humans can’t fly and attempting to fly would be fatal. They desire that not to be the case (even though it is).
That's a fine point. I guess I presuppose that a sexual interest in children includes an interest in violating another human's sovereignty. (Thus, all pedophilia is to the X-axis right of "violating consent" on the taboo scale on the chart... because it includes violating someone's consent and goes further than that in violating someone who can't consent).

But I mean, the mundane fact of wanting to have sex with someone you can't have sex with (for any number of reasons) doesn't mean you're going to rape them. Or woild ever want to rape them. Why? Because you want to have sex with them under the condition that they want to have sex with you. Consensual sex is the kind of sex you crave and want to have. Sex is, obviously, different and better if both parties consent to it, to you, because you're not a rapist.

So my contention is that potential rapists are the subset of men who aren't concerned with consent (not those who just desire someone they can't have). And pedophiles are a subset of that.

In other words, you're assuming that attraction means someone would rape; I'm saying that an abnormal and antisocial impulse to violate someone's rights is a prerequisite for most rape, not simply attraction.

> If what you mean is that the desire is not under their control but refraining from acting upon it is

Yes, this is what I mean.

> The difference, of course, being that homosexuality doesn't imply non-consensual acts; no one is hurt by it.

Indeed. There is no moral imperative to refrain from that which doesn't cause harm.

> It could be that some pedophiles refrain from molesting children because some internal moral standard tells them it would hurt the child, but it seems more likely that they only refrain when and where they could get into trouble for it.

To me it seems likely that the majority of pedophiles (who have the thoughts) make at least some effort to refrain from molesting children, because I believe that most people care about others and want to do right by them as best they can. In many ways this is no different to anyone refraining from forcing themselves upon someone they are attracted to but who isn't interested in them, which is of course a commonplace and unremarkable occurrence. The difference of course being that if someone is exclusively attracted to children then they may find it difficult to find an outlet for their desire, which could make this more difficult for them.

> Actions matter more, but thoughts matter too

How often do you watch and enjoy media where people are being constantly murdered? Are we terrible people because we enjoy John Wick?

And what's with this "constant urge" bullshit? Do most people want to constantly fuck every second of every day?

You're doing a lot of post-rationalizing something you've already decided.

> Do most people want to constantly fuck every second of every day?

Depends on your age and gender, I suppose. For most 15 year-old boys, the answer is yes, they do want to constantly fuck every second of the day.

>How often do you watch and enjoy media where people are being constantly murdered? Are we terrible people because we enjoy John Wick?

Does enjoying John Wick means fantasicizing of you killing actual people in any kind of a realistic setting? Or just enjoying the plot and action on the screen?

Do people enjoying John Wick have an urge to do killing themselves but just control it? Or are just watching a movie, the same way they'd watch a sci-fi film or superheroes in spandex, and not think much about it afterwards?

>And what's with this "constant urge" bullshit? Do most people want to constantly fuck every second of every day?

Why, does it have to be "every second of every day" to be considered constant?

Because once a day/week/month or at every time you see a child is not enough to qualify as such?

But if we're being pedantic about "constant" (whose dictionary definition and use includes usages not "every second of every day", such as "he's in constant trouble with the police"), they do say that people think about sex a lot: twice an hour for college age men it says here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-sexual-continuum...

The survey does not claim to represent the general population. Many participants were recruited from places like FetLife, which you'd expect to lean heavily towards kink:

https://aella.substack.com/p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey

But the results are still interesting for comparative purposes, as well as the opinions of how the general population views each kink. For example, it's kind of remarkable that pedophilia is considered worse than cannibalism, "meatslaves" and "woundfucking", both new words I learned today.

After reading this comment, I'm convinced we need a NSFW flag.
I would have thought the title of the article would have been sufficient to prevent you clicking it in a work context :/
>For example, it's kind of remarkable that pedophilia is considered worse than cannibalism, "meatslaves" and "woundfucking", both new words I learned today.

The first is considered as something very real, quite widespread, and very common danger.

The others are see as very exotic/extreme fringe. So it's not exactly considering e.g. cannibalism "less taboo", it's just that this and the others you mention seem to unreal and rare to warrant serious consideration. If there were cannibalism stories in the news with the same frequency it would be just up there with pedophilia

Do people generally take “cannibalism” to mean murdering someone and then eating them, or just eating human flesh? I thought the latter is the normal sense of the word, and in that case I don’t think it holds a candle to pedophilia.
Generally, people don't give up their meat freely. There was a weird case in germany where a guy was dying and gave his body to a cannibal. They still arrested and charged him

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes

I really don't like that this case is always put forward as the poster child of our community. We generally do not feel represented by this case.
You mean the casual eating of another person's flesh you buy at the grocery store?

Yes, that's pretty tame...

Or, in the real world, funerary cannibalism.
Just because someone is on Fet doesn't mean they are in kids or dogs. There are lots of "just here for some experimentation" or "just had a divorce, need to party" or "20 somethings wanting to be edgy for a few months so they can say `I did that thing`" types of people that pop in and leave in a few months and don't really build the community. They seem like normal vanilla folk who wanted to give it an honest go, which makes me think surveying Fet doesn't mean "extreme kink" is over-represented because of it.
It's surely still going to be overrepresented compared to the general population.
No. I don't see how "surely" is meaningful when Kinsey demonstrated the entire population is kinky a/f with much larger, rigorous surveys four decades ago.
Kinsey's results were pretty much entirely made up, as his victims coming out over time have proven.
OK, wait. If he made everything up, what were the victims for?
He abused kids and then wrote whatever he wanted about their reactions. Wrote some absolutely crazy leading questionaires that he doctored the answers to anyway.

Was a close friend of Marion Zimmer-Bradley's husband, Walter Breen, which is actually pretty easy to find in writings but is scrubbed from the internet very effectively.

> scrubbed from the internet very effectively.

that sounds a lot like conspiracy talk to me like when people talk about how the united states government scrubs articles about free energy, moon landing conspiracies, and lizard people from the internet so that the citizens don't know the truth.

putting aside GDPR and the right to be forgotten that is law in most of europe how does one scrub controversial things from the internet when we can find things like Mormon secret religious ceremonies are on youtube.

It's pretty easy to browse through the writings and find their shared writings, but I don't have an index to boylove dot org or whatever nor do I want to search for it again.
You don't think there is a progression to sexual proclivities?
If you explain what you mean I could comment but I don't know what you are getting at.
Not that surprising. Pedophilia is probably the biggest taboo in western society right now. In some cases worse than murder.

Consider that pedophilia is maybe the only instance of a "thought crime" in western democracies. That is: you are guilty of a crime if you possess depiction of child pornography that comes from your own imagination (like lolicon). We have several TV shows (real and fiction) that focus on "child predators" in the same way that crime stories focus on murderers. I am also not aware of any mainstream work with a pedophile with any redeeming feature, but there are many works with sympathetic murderers (ex: Dexter).

And a lot of "anti-privacy" laws use child abuse as an excuse: not murder, not arson, only terrorism comes close. Pedophilia is put on the same level as mass murder!

Note that some fetishes in that list are pure fantasy, "transforming" and "dragons" for example. You can roleplay your fetish, it doesn't have to be real, especially if it is a crime, but even fantasy pedophilia is taboo. I would have liked to see "age play" in the list though, it can be borderline pedophilia (adults acting as children), but with less stigma associated with it.

I would have liked to see "age play" in the list though

There's "rapid age regression" at 70,3

> I am also not aware of any mainstream work with a pedophile with any redeeming feature.

The 1998 movie "Happiness" attempted to depict the plight in a humanizing way.

https://youtu.be/_t-kjZ1cxoE

that movie is seriously a mind fuck ... if you like super crazy movies with sexual undertones (and overtones), check out Sorry to Bother You and Endless Poetry
In the 30 years since I left college, I've seen two people from my old circle of friends turn into sex offenders.

One molested his stepdaughter (and had to endure prison during the worst of Covid).

The other (from my nerd/hacker peer group) got busted with several CD's containing hundreds of MB's of child porn. He got someting like 18 months in prison and was able to return to his job, which was a low-level programing job for state government.

I think it's imporant to not dehumanize the people who do this because of rather shocking frequency with which it happens.

So yes, I admire Dylan Baker for having the courage to play that character straight instead of some abstract, unreal monster. At the very least he deserved an Oscar nomination.

Note to begin with… I didn’t intend this to be a wall of text when I started but that’s who it came out… sorry about that :-p But as it’s a WoT I’ll throw in a quick tl;dr: Sex and kink while great fun together, are not mutually inclusive.

Anyways, on with the WoT!

> I would have liked to see "age play" in the list though, it can be borderline pedophilia (adults acting as children)

It’s no more “borerline pedophilia” than “BDSM is abusing women”, or “pony play is sex is animals”

The Pedo thing gets brought up all the time but (speaking as a little - which is just one of my kinks) we don’t want to sleep with kids, we (well me, I should say we as that comes across as I’m speaking for everyone, but I’ve spoken to enough people also in this kink to get a general feel of what others enjoy too, but this is more the AB side of ABDL - Adult Bady/Diaper Lover, who those unaware of the terms) want to enjoy the freedom that comes shutting off the adult world for a few hours.

What my partner gets out of it is that she gets to be the loving caregiver and the authoritarian at the same time (we have always been a kinky couple with her “taking the lead (in more ways than one ;-)) in the bedroom).

She enjoys the power exchange that comes with it. This ranges from the simple things like choosing what I get to eat, ordering for me when we go out to eat, restricting alcohol consumption (little ones don’t drink beer after all), setting me a bedtime (and taking the measures necessary to make sure I stay in bed ;-)). To the more “extreme” things like taking control of one our most basic bodily functions, choosing when and how I get to relieve myself. Which leads onto the DL side of things.

Not all ABs are DLs, not all DLs are ABs but the two do often intersect. We stumbled into “diaper play” before the AB play because we are both into bondage (I like being tied up, she likes tying me up). I really enjoy being tied up, and one of the things I found annoying about it was the breaking of the scene for restroom breaks. I would be all nicely bound just swimming in subspace and BAM, I need a piss (and if I’ve had a beer or two and I break the seal, I’m pissing off to the loo often). This was annoying for both of us, I loved the binds, and she loved taking her time learning intricate rope bondage which takes time to apply esp if you’re trying something new. You spend all that time doing something for it only to get torn down because nature calls…

Well while venting her frustration about this at the local munch someone recommended to her “just put him in a diaper before tying him up, that way if he has got to go he can just go!”. So we started using them as “scene extenders” and you know what they say about not knocking things until you try them? Well yeah they kicked me in the butt… I found them rather comfortable to wear and enjoyed the humiliation of wearing and eventually having to use them.

During the post play aftercare, I would often still be wearing the thing while we cuddles and talked esp if had yet to be used for it’s intended purpose (heck decent quality adult diapers ain’t “cheap” and if you don’t want leaks you want decent quality!) so might as well make the most of it before disposing of it and as I said, I found them comfortable and humiliating at the same time, she was getting off on the longer play seasons (so was I) and control they gave her.

As time went on I wore them more often, even outside of our “play sessions“ because put them with a form of locking clothing (started with a simple chain and padlock around the belt loops of a pair of jeans, but progressed into specialised items such as locking diaper covers) and she could control when and where I used the restroom even while out and about.

She always liked the caregiving that came with aftercare after a scene. Subspace can be a wonderful high and I often need some time to come back to reality. After talking about our antics at one of the munches we got the p...

If you even decide to respond to a poll like this you're already in a bubble
The survey was taken on a fetish website, and read it. I'm sure there is some mix of people who actually feel those things, and trolls just messing around. But you're right to not put any faith into it. Blasting out any kind of Internet survey it's just asking for useless results.
Some of these seem to back up some things I was seeing in the Ashley Madison breach.

I was surprised to discover quite a lot of men saying they were interested in crossdressing, and quite a lot of women interested in their male partners crossdressing. A bit under 20% here, and without much skew towards either gender. I would have expected it to be more of a male-centric fringe activity, instead of what it actually is. (Perhaps because I'm not into it myself)

> More than 1 in 5 people taking the survey reported interest in "receiving oral sex from animal"? More than 1 in 50 people admitted to having a pedophilic interest in "pre-puberty children", and just as many have a desire to execute someone?

Fucking hell this chart made me chuckle, and then go silent in horror, as I worked my way from top left to bottom right.

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Since Ashley Madison caters to people wanting to cheat, it would self select for people with taboo-, thrill-, or risk-seeking tendencies. So not sure (and sure hope) this could be extrapolated to the population as a whole.
its a poll whose participants consist pretty much entirely of people who follow a pornstar on social media, so I'm not sure you should take it as conclusive on anything other than what her fans like
A huge chunk of the "female" profiles on Ashley Madison turned out to be (suprise) bots. I wouldn't read too much into any of that data.
I'm curious at how the questions were phrased as well. It's one thing to express interest in watching pornography with multiple people in it versus wanting to go out and participate in an orgy themselves. I don't think this quite excuses things like execution, but would change some of the other answers quite a bit.
She goes into it a bit here: https://aella.substack.com/p/my-kink-survey-design-methodolo... but one key bit from it is here (this is quoted on the linked page, from the survey itself:

“Our sexual fantasies are different from what we do in real life. I'm going to ask about some things that might seem cruel if actually done; being aroused by a taboo erotic fantasy does /not/ mean you would violate consent in real life. Please answer according to your ideal fantasies, even if you would never actually act on it.” (slightly later) "A good test is "have you searched porn of this thing", "have you masturbated to fantasies about this thing", or "have you asked a sexual partner to participate in this thing"

So someone who has masturbated to fantasies involving orgies or animals or execution would likely be included.

Alfred Kinsey did research suggesting that ~8% of men and ~3.5% of women had engaged in beastiality at least once. Based on that I wouldn't be surprised if 20% have at least fantasised about it.
The results look like something 4chan might create.
> reported interest in

reported interest in fantasy about x

I'm surprised that cuddling is rated more taboo than various actual acts of intercourse? I feel like I could do as much cuddling in public as I wanted when I was a teenager, but never attempted anything more extreme. Maybe they changed the definition of the word while I wasn't looking, though.

I have a feeling that these are results that don't mathematically hold up if you did head-to-head comparisons. People are just making up a % taboo and they don't really mean it. I suppose if you consider the margin of error +/- 10% though, maybe it all works out.

(This sort of thing always looks like sorting to me. There are two kinds of sorts you can do; a radix sort or a comparison sort. The radix sort, where we place everything in its correct position one at a time, requires O(n) questions of the survey respondents. The comparison sort, where you compare two options and pick the "less" option, seems more accurate to me, but requires O(n log n) questions of the respondents. It makes so much more sense to me, but nobody ever does it. That said, I'm not sure how you deal with inconsistencies and how to average out the data provided by multiple respondents. I know that election theory sort of covers this, but they seem to always pick methods that looks like my radix sort, with the hope that the results would be the same as the overall winner winning each pairwise election. If someone has an article that would make this all make sense to me, I'd love to read it. It's something I think about a lot but get stuck on.)

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"Enthusiastic consent" viewed as more taboo than "doggystyle position", "cunnilingus", "blowjobs" or "fingering vaginas"? Also "romance" and "cuddling" as more taboo still? Quite disappointing and sad if true!
>"receiving oral sex from animal" That's like the most basic kink for women, the animal being usually a dog. I can't even remember all the women that have shared this "secret outrageous fetish" with me, from my experiences it's not uncommon at all. Also psychopaths and other predatory humans exist in huge numbers, 1 in 50 is probably an underestimate. Consider yourself lucky that you have successfully lived on a sheltered environment most likely all your life.
> and just as many have a desire to execute someone?

Having dated someone who was aroused by this in the past year, I'm surprised its that common. I'd never heard of it before dating her, other than the Dahmer, Meiwes cases etc.

Again I think this is probably over-represented in this study due to the sourcing of participants.

"maggots/flies".....what does that even mean, in a sexual context?

I'm not even sure I want an answer, to be honest. People are weird!

I truly and sincerely am glad the old creepypasta of Maggot/Blowfly Girl has started to fade out of common consciousness...
> Also, general reminder, I use the terms ‘fetish’ and ‘kink’ loosely. I know some people have particular definitions for it, but I don’t care.

I do think having and knowing the definition of fetish is meaningful: "a form of sexual desire in which gratification is strongly linked to a particular object or activity or a part of the body other than the sexual organs".

She'd need a separate graph for missionary sex if she adhered to that definition. Like trying to do math without the number zero - you drown in special cases.
That's a technical definition from the early to mid 20th century. It has zero currency with the public and I'm not even sure it sees a lot of technical use any more.
I posted links to this survey on my social media, primarily twitter and reddit, with some indirect advertising on fetlife and discord; these made up 74.4% of my results. Another 22.4% reported ‘other’ from the list of sources. The last 3.2% came from telegram, tumblr, and facebook; these categories have low enough sample that I’m not going to include them on graphs in this blog post.

I'm not sure this is representative of anything other than "people who follow Aella and are interested enough in the topic to fill out a self-report survey".

You'll have that bias in any study about non-mainstream sexuality. Most people are vanilla or don't express their sexuality (although that did change with 50SoG, but the influx of people "educated" by it is a scourge on the BDSM community), many cultures (particularly religious fundamentalists) shame sexuality entirely, and even among the progressive crowd it's not really an everyday topic you can run surveys with...

The advantage of Aella's research is the sheer mass of people she draws in. Way more than a lot of research, and the mass eliminates trolls, religious fundamentalists and idiots that plague "popular research" aka yellow press surveys.

Isn’t this textbook yellow journalism?
It's a little sensational but I feel like she's pretty up front about the limitations. The problem with representativeness is admitted, not really engaged with (I'd expect a more thorough study to compare with older results with better understood biases and extrapolate from there), but it's not hidden either.

I think the main problem is actually that Aella herself is not a faceless researcher but a somewhat controversial online personality who used her own brand to find participants. So for example anyone who blocked her on twitter probably didn't have a chance at taking this, even if they are also likely to be closer to kink communities than the average twitter user who wouldn't even know of her existence.

what is controversial about her
No? Yellow journalism would be to use these results for headlines like "1 IN 50 AMERICANS WANT TO RAPE BABIES".
Log transforming this data isn’t far off.
What do you mean by “log transforming”? Are you bothered by the log plot? You really should not be: it’s done for one purpose, make the bottom more legible, as she wrote explicitly. Look at any scientific journal and you’ll find loads of plots with log scales. And at least in my fields, no mention of “log transforming” anything.
My issue isn’t the scale itself, my issue is the scale used for _this_ data.

I don’t know exactly what kind of reply you are expecting to your second sentence.

> the influx of people "educated" by it is a scourge on the BDSM community

Rarely have I encountered a bigger bunch of insufferable judgemental assholes than in the "BDSM community". They seem more interested in judging what is "true BDSM" than anything else. Reminds me of early black metal community and stuff like this, where it's not really about the topic you're organizing around but more about rebelling against the perceived "mainstream".

yeah because every ten minutes some guy† walks in the door and says 'oh wow you mean i can actually rape and abuse young women‡ and get away with it, bdsm is super awesome, i am so glad i finally found a bunch of people like me'

and the people who are already there, who are not in fact like him†, have to kick him† out unless they want their friends to get raped and abused, and also experience guilt by association

this extremely frequent phenomenon results in a lot of energy being spent on gatekeeping because the alternative is degenerating into a rape gang

sometimes it results in kicking the wrong people out because the gatekeepers make mistakes

______

† not always a guy or a him

‡ not always young women, though often

That's not even what I'm talking about; it's the "lol they just read 50 shades of grey and are now interested in bondage but they're just p0sers, we're the real kvlt!"
that's a book about intimate partner abuse tho, so it makes sense to be leery of people who got their picture of bdsm from it and then wanted to get involved
That's pretty far from the biggest objection I've heard from the BDSM community about the book. Pretty much universally they have an issue with the way the book treats consent, and thats a real, real, big thing you need to get right when engaging with BDSM.
I have to disagree. I have found the BDSM community here in Spain to be nothing but welcoming and open-minded to newbies like me.

I also haven't seen any other newbies come in like they know everything and own the place. Everyone is super cautious with one another, consent is paramount and the more experienced people are patient guides, not elitist at all. Nobody is obsessed with doing things "the right way" (with some exceptions of very ceremonial things like traditional shibari), and definitely not being judgmental about it, it's more a journey of self-discovery.

I was surprised because what you describe is exactly what I expected.

> They seem more interested in judging what is "true BDSM" than anything else.

I agree and know a couple of these people as well, but my post was not aimed at these, nor at legitimate BDSM newbies.

It was rather aimed at those who got all their ideas about BDSM from 50SoG, but have absolutely zero idea about basic stuff like consent, safety and after-care. Like, if you don't know what you're doing and unwilling to make at least some basic research, you can seriously damage another person - emotionally, mentally and physically.

> I posted links to this survey on my social media, primarily twitter and reddit, with some indirect advertising on fetlife and discord; these made up 74.4% of my results. Another 22.4% reported ‘other’ from the list of sources. The last 3.2% came from telegram, tumblr, and facebook; these categories have low enough sample that I’m not going to include them on graphs in this blog post.

So, mostly, this tells us about the compiler’s social media bubble?

Exactly. Aella's statistics can be entertaining (especially when she sources them from Twitter), but their treatment should probably end there.
> Aella

People are taking this seriously? SMH

Not surprised the woman who runs "polls" about sexually abusing dead animals has a correspondingly perverted audience.
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I follow the author on Fetlife and remember when she was fishing for people to fill out a survey.
> sex with your own dead body

That's one I've not heard before!

It’s not something you can achieve often, to be fair.
> It’s not something you can achieve often, to be fair.

Anything is possible with sufficiently good VR.

So the things people like are not considered taboo. People think they are "normal" and expect others to be normal too.
Why do people use the annoying sub stack subscribe interstitial? Just stop.