Fetish tabooness vs. popularity
aella.substack.com
aella.substack.com
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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)...
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
By that logic, the majority of heterosexual men only refrain from rape because they could get in trouble for it?
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.
>> 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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
That entire special[1] is side-splittingly funny. One of my favorite comedians. Comedy!
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.
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
Yes, that's pretty tame...
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.
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.
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.
There's "rapid age regression" at 70,3
The 1998 movie "Happiness" attempted to depict the plight in a humanizing way.
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.
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 push to try the AB side of things from some friends (who we didn’t know were into it) because it sounded like we were pretty much 90% the way there and they felt we would find it fun! So again, not knocking it till tried, we did and yeah it was like fitting that last puzzle piece and everything just clicked.
But we have been talking around the elephant in the room. Sex. We were sexually attracted to each other long before we discovered age play or even diapers, but we were both into kink before we met, I’m attracted to her mind (both in and out of the bedroom) and her body, I’m not sleeping with my “mother”, I’m sleeping with my partner, who just so happens to be my best friend, the person I want to share life with, the person I can be silly with too.
Sex and kink are not mutually inclusive, we rarely have sex while in little/caregiver headspace but even when we do, she isn’t picturing me as a child but me as me.
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.
“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.
reported interest in fantasy about x
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.)
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.
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".
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.
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.
I don’t know exactly what kind of reply you are expecting to your second sentence.
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".
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
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.
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.
So, mostly, this tells us about the compiler’s social media bubble?
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
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?
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
That's one I've not heard before!
Anything is possible with sufficiently good VR.
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".
(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.
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
[1] - https://twitter.com/aella_girl/status/1543653487233351683?la...
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 ;-)
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.
People love to abuse their access lol :/
People are taking this seriously? SMH
I'm not even sure I want an answer, to be honest. People are weird!
It is... literal, not a metaphor.
It is a subset of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formicophilia