{"id":28673,"date":"2014-11-14T07:24:22","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T12:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28673"},"modified":"2014-11-28T15:07:52","modified_gmt":"2014-11-28T20:07:52","slug":"either-kink-is-now-pretty-much-mainstream-or-quebec-is-a-hotbed-of-kinksters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/11\/14\/either-kink-is-now-pretty-much-mainstream-or-quebec-is-a-hotbed-of-kinksters\/","title":{"rendered":"Either kink is now pretty much mainstream … or Quebec is a hotbed of kinksters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Reason<\/em>, Elizabeth Nolan Brown<\/a> reviews the findings of a recent survey on what kind of kinks are no longer considered weird or unusual (because so many people fantasize about ’em or are actively partaking of ’em):<\/p>\n

Being sexually dominated. Having sex with multiple people at once. Watching someone undress without their knowledge. These are just a few of the totally normal<\/em> sexual fantasies uncovered by recent research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine<\/em>. The overarching takeaway from this survey of about 1,500 Canadian adults is that sexual kink is incredibly common. <\/p>\n

While plenty of research has been conducted on sexual fetishes, less is known about the prevalence of particular sexual desires that don’t rise to the level of pathological (i.e., don’t harm others or interfere with normal life functioning and aren’t a requisite for getting off). “Our main objective was to specify norms in sexual fantasies,” said lead study author Christian Joyal. “We suspected there are a lot more common fantasies than atypical fantasies.” <\/p>\n

Joyal’s team surveyed about 717 Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois men and 799 women, with a mean age of 30. Participants ranked 55 different sexual fantasies, as well as wrote in their own. Each fantasy was then rated as statistically rare, unusual, common, or typical. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the statistics also show where men and women differ in some areas:<\/p>\n

Notably, men were more likely than women to say they wanted their sexual fantasies to become sexual realities. “Approximately half of women with descriptions of submissive fantasies speci\ufb01ed that they would not want the fantasy to materialize in real life,” the researchers note. “This result con\ufb01rms the important distinction between sexual fantasies and sexual wishes, which is usually stronger among women than among men.” <\/p>\n

The researchers also found a number of write-in “favorite” sexual fantasies that were common among men had no equivalent in women’s fantasies. These included having sex with a trans woman (included in 4.2 percent of write-in fantasies), being on the receiving end of strap-on\/non-homosexual anal sex (6.1 percent), and watching a partner have sex with another man (8.4 percent).<\/p>\n

Next up, the researchers plan to map subgroups of sexual fantasies that often go together (for instance, those who reported submissive fantasies were also more likely to report domination fantasies, and both were associated with higher levels of overall sexual satisfaction). For now, they caution that “care should be taken before labeling (a sexual fantasy) as unusual, let alone deviant.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would be interesting to see the results of this study replicated in other areas — Quebec may or may not be representative of the rest of western society.<\/p>\n

Update, 28 November<\/strong>: Maggie McNeill<\/a> is not impressed by the study at all.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a bigger problem, which as it turns out I\u2019ve written on before when the titillation du jour<\/em> was the claim that fewer men were paying for sex:<\/p>\n