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This foray into kink research started with a failed attempt to win a Fulbright to study BDSM in Germany. I was a sophomore at NYU just starting to learn about sexuality and was learning German to fulfill my foreign language requirement. I knew about the history of sex research conducted by Magnus Hirschfeld and the thriving scene in Berlin. Probably for the best that I wasn't award the Fulbright, though I was a semi-finalist. I still had a lot of exploration of my own interests and forays into the community.
What drew me to this world was less the sexual acts but indeed the sense of community. Workshops, mentorships, online forums, and an explicit set of social expectations. Perfect for an awkward nerd like me, actually!
As part of my capstone project at Teachers College, Columbia University, I began a research project on the topic of BDSM and Consent. Consent was a fraught issue back in 2016-18, especially with the #MeToo movement and various high profile cases involving politicians and celebrities. I wanted to explore how the consent practices I saw used in the kink community could translate to the "mainstream" world.
This work has been presented at various academic conferences throughout the country, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and the International Academy of Sex Research.
Consent is much more than two people in bed together, saying yes or no. There are many variables at play all at once. For example:
What have you learned about consent negotiation in the past?
What limitations are present?
What gender norms are currently salient?
What are the power dynamics at play?
What framework are the two of you using?
I wanted to look at consent as an individual/relational concept as well as a societal/communal one. This framework arose after a mixed methods iterative approach, as you can see below.
Method
280 individuals participated in this study. Participants were recruited on social media sites, such as online kink and BDSM community groups on Reddit and Fetlife. The survey was hosted on Qualtrics.com.
There are many ways to cook an egg, and there are many ways to explore how people in the kink world practice consent. You can see some of the methods I used above, but I will outline my main attempts here:
Multivariate regression
Canonical correlation analysis
Stepwise regression
Qualitative interviewing and thematic analysis
The papers I am writing are still in progress, so stay tuned!
Exploratory Factor Analysis
I asked six questions about kinksters' experiences in the BDSM community. To simplify the analysis, I performed an exploratory factor analysis. A parallel analysis in R shows we have three factors within these six items. Investigating the loadings, I determine the nature of these factors.
“My involvement in the kink community has…
Growth
… been generally positive.”
… improved my sex life.”
Communication
… taught me to communicate my desires more effectively.”
… taught me to communicate my limits more effectively.”
Positive Consent Education
… taught me the importance of consent.”
… provided opportunities for me to learn about consent.”
Multivariate Regression
With ten outcome variables, I ran ten simultaneous multiple regressions, using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) in SPSS. This type of analysis accounts for correlations between outcomes. As you can see, it gets messy, but it did produce interesting results.
After running this first analysis, I received feedback from my participants that informed my second model. Freund's scales and sexual violence scales from the 80s reduce BDSM to medical terminology and made participants feel like they are assumed to be deviant and violent.
Gender.
Women and nonbinary individuals were less likely to assume consent.
Women and nonbinary individuals also endorse having more reasons they consented to unwanted sex than men.
Nonbinary individuals also have a less indirect behavioral approach and perceive that they have more behavioral control than men. Women are more aware of consent than men.
BDSM identity.
Practicing BDSM is associated with less assumption of consent after controlling for all other variables in the model. Identifying with BDSM alone is not enough to explain better consent attitudes and behaviors.
Kink community involvement, whether measured in years one has practiced BDSM or in positive attitudes toward the community and that the community has benefited one’s consent education, are associated with better consent attitudes and behaviors.
Interestingly, years of involvement in the community is not associated with any of the outcomes, while years one has practiced BDSM is associated with lower levels of assumption of consent and higher levels of awareness of consent.
BDSM orientation.
BDSM orientation only significantly predicted two variables of consent. Switches were significantly more likely to assume consent compared to tops. Meanwhile, bottoms significantly endorsed more reasons to consent to unwanted sex.
Canonical Correlation Analysis
The fun thing about canonical correlation analysis is that if you know you have a bunch of predictors and a bunch of correlated outcomes, CCA will produce canonical functions, which are sets of predictors with sets of outcomes. This is a cool way to deal with a multitude of variables.
Analyses were performed in SPSS. There is 56.7% variance shared between the variable sets. The first function explained 27.74% of the variance, while the second explains 23.12% of the remaining variance left over after the first function has been considered, and the third function explains 15.82%.
Explanation of the canonical functions below.
Stepwise REgression
I ran a four-step multiple linear regression to examine the relative contributions of gender, heterosexuality, and BDSM identity and experiences on a variety of sexual consent attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. I did this in 4 steps in R:
The main demographic factors of interest– Gender (Man or Woman, as we did not have sample size to examine nonbinary individuals separately), BDSM Role (Tops/Dominants/etc vs. Bottoms/submissives/etc vs. switches), and sexual orientation (straight vs. non-straight).
An interaction term between Gender and BDSM Role was added, but it was then removed, as it did not significantly contribute to the variance explained by the model.
Added Years in BDSM Community and Years practice BDSM.
Kink community variables were added to the model.
An initial examination of results showed that three consent outcomes, Likeliness to Use Coercive Tactics, Positive Attitude: Establishing Consent, and Relationship Length Norms, were not significantly predicted by the previous sets of predictors. Thus, attitudes toward sadomasochism were added to the models, and the other six outcomes were rerun without these three.
You can see where gender, power dynamic, and sexuality play a role. One's internalized kink negativity also plays a role in a few of the consent outcomes. Lastly, the kink community constructs from the EFA also significantly predicted some of the consent outcomes.
I am still in the process of writing up these results, so stay tuned!
Community Conversations to Create a Culture of Consent
Ten of the 280 participants entered their email addresses in the survey and agreed to participate in the hour-long semi-structured interviews. I performed thematic analysis in NVivo.
Here are the main themes that arose:
Beat-a-Bear Workshop
Andy & Lars
(Conversio Virium)
Beat-a-bear workshop, a "hands on" roleplay of consent in kink, facilitated by me & Lars at Columbia University's YesFest, a day dedicated to affirmative consent.
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