“Real or virtual” is part of the series on BDSM
and society
Introduction
Is virtual BDSM fake? How can the internet be
of assistance to the leather lifestyle? How do kinky people live? Are they open
in their role or underground?
This time we take a look at the results of a
small survey in order to find out something more about BDMS in regard to
relationships and the internet.
Poll on Kink-in-Real-Life
In a recent
opinion survey that I performed in the BDSM scene I asked a sampling of kinky
folks: "Which is the challenge for your BDSM-lifestyle today – finding a
suited partner, living with how you are, keeping your development going, online
BDSM or other issues?"
Relationship challenges
In reply, over
5o percent of the interviewed kinky folk deemed relationships the greatest challenge.
Persons with a medium appearance, or (severe) overweight more often had a
troublesome relationship or even none at all. Persons of medium age (midlife)
more often had relational issues as younger or older persons. They also more
often had a vanilla partner. Good looking persons and switches seem to have fewer
problems or are better in managing them. There was not found any relevance with
regard to gender or sexual orientation.
Showing the kink
About one
third lived their BDSM openly, leaving two thirds of the questioned with
publically hiding their kinky urges. I found no differences with regard to
being monogamous or polyamory, nor regarding sexual orientation. Transsexuals and
woman more often show their BDSM urges in public.
None of the
persons with a vanilla spouse or partner was able to openly show their kinky
urges, which makes it likely that there is pressure from their partner to keep
it hidden. Whether a person’s partner knows about their kinky urges or not
seemed not of great influence on their relationship, but this may be a
coincidence.
Online BDSM play
Around one
third of the interviewed had some form of online BDSM scenes, with bottoms weighing
in at 66 percent and tops and switches at 17 percent each. I assume that online
play offers great possibility to try things out in an anonymous and save way.
Remember that an alarming 1 on 3 kinky persons expressed to have experienced a
consent violation while being with ‘offline’ contacts, which is not very
encouraging to put your health and safety at stake (see: http://theclothedlie.blogspot.de/2013/05/bdsm-and-public-acceptance.html).
Of those
involved in online play, about the half of them was a novice in BDSM. The more
experienced a person gets in real play, the less interest they show in online
play. Of course all persons used the internet for information, communication
with or searching for partners. Overall online sexual acts or BDSM was not seen
as fake or inferior, but as limited by its virtual character; most of us, eventually,
need skin on skin.
Technicalities
This survey
had a limited number of participants so it likely is not significant for the
whole BDSM population. Yet, as it is all based on true, reliable information
from existing persons, it nevertheless shows us interesting things.
As I
interviewed all the persons in a conversation, I was able to gather a lot of
extra information, so here we go:
Sexual
roadmap
Gender:
females (50%), males (41%), ts/tv (9%)
Sexual
orientation: heterosexual (64%), bi-sexual or same-sex (36%)
Relationships
Current relation:
Good (50%), None (32%), Difficult (9%), Bad (9%)
from which monogamous
(77%), polyamory (23%)
BDSM
preferences
BDSM
Position: Bottom (41%), Switch (36%), Top (23%)
Urge: Sub (45%),
Fetishist (23%), Sadist (14%), Maso (9%), Dominant (9%)
Skills: Experienced
(41%), Medium (32%), Novice (27%)
Plays: Regularly
(36%), Infrequent (36%), Never (18%), Seldom (10%)
Comments
(1) The
stunningly high 50+ percent figure of kinky persons having problems in the
relational sphere, confirms the analysis I offered in my former blog on ‘BDSM
and public acceptance’ from May, that "it is thought that almost 85% of
the people that are not in the BDSM lifestyle do think that there is something
wrong with kinky persons." In half of the cases of the troubled relation,
there is a vanilla partner. In 75% of the cases the kinky person is a
submissive, whereas the gender plays no role. Particularly the group of persons
of medium age seem vulnerable to getting involved in a midlife crisis, where it
is to be seen if this is BDSM related at all.
Preliminary
we could conclude that medium aged submissives are more vulnerable to having a
not so good relationship or none at all, compared to other kinky persons.
(2) Those that
are into BDSM often start with gathering information online and from books and find
groups of people that can offer support. The more experienced one gets, the
less interest is shown in chatting or exploring the topic; real meetings are
then favoured over online contacts. An exception is made when the partner does
not know about their BDSM urges. In general two thirds of those who play out
some form of BDSM over the internet hide their urges from their partner.
(3) A small
number of persons had problems with being as they are. This had partly to do
with their past (broken relationships, religious trauma) or had to do with the
transgender or polyamory issue. So seen; most interviewed persons had not
problems with being kinky, as such. For those who had problems with kink as
part of their lives, such problems were more of social nature, as of a sexual
nature.
Conclusions
Concluding
we can say that the internet partly took over the function of local BDSM
support groups and is well suited to find others kinky persons, gathering
information on BDSM and online purchase of play tools. It is of course less
suited to gather actual physical BDSM experience or learning technique; for
that we need to go out in the wild and meet, practise and learn with and from
others.
One major
issue not investigated in this blog is the alarming number of wanna-be’s and
fakes on the web, or the lack of manners in online chats. After all, with our ‘friends’
on social media platforms, more often as not, we do not have any warrant for
the accuracy of the supplied information. I am sometimes under the impression
that fantasy is taken for real and is mixed up in stories in a way that goes
against the sound and sane parts of our BDSM creed.
Not able to
do a survey with thousands of people, I opted for a quality approach with real
people involved in the real thing. The results may not be quite representative
for the mass, but it is at least the reality of those that I questioned and as
such the real deal (for them).
For all of
you I wish that you belong to the happy 50% that are living their BDSM urges in
an accepting environment and within a functioning relationship. For the less
lucky, keep on searching for people that will support you, offer you practise
or technical development and help you to stay safe and cool.
Greetings
from the statistical office of the Dominions
Court
Sir Cameron
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