Category: BDSM surveys

This is the eighth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say which types of BDSM toys they had spent money on since their interest began.

A further article will look at what dominants and submissives and switches said about their spending on toys.

What we like play with

The survey asked people to say which of the  following types of toys they had spent money on:

• Bondage – 84%
• Impact play – 82%
• Other – 64%
• Medical play – 37%
• Play piercing – 31%

I did not ask for more detail of what “Other” might be. I may follow this up sometime, especially as there seems a difference here in the responses I got from each side of the Atlantic.

US vs UK

UK respondents said they were a little more likely to buy stuff for tying people up and beating them than said people from the USA. 86% of UK respondents said they had bought bondage gear (81% US) and 85% of UK respondents had bought stuff for impact play (79% US). But US respondents were more likely to spend on “Other” BDSM stuff – 70% vs the UK’s 62%.

Gender differences

Women respondents were less likely to have bought bondage materials (82% vs 88% of men) but were more likely to have bought stuff for play piercing (33% vs 27%) and medical play (39% vs 33%).

BDSM Orientation

Top/dominant respondents were more likely to have spent money on any area of play. Bottoms/submissives were least likely (other than in medical play). Switches were the second most likely group to have spent money on each area of toy choice, other than medical play.

BDSM Component

There was a big difference in the popularity of play piercing between dominants/submissives and the other two groups. Whilst only 24% of dominants/submissives had bought stuff for play piercing 42% of masters/slaves had needles and 47% of sadists/masochists had bought sharps.

Sadists/masochists were the only group more likely to have spent money on impact toys rather than bondage.

The dataset

Up to 385 people answered this question. 304 said they were from the UK, 122 from the USA and 25 from other countries. 239 respondents said they were female and 192 said they were male. 206 said they were bottoms/submissives, 150 said they were tops/dominants and 94 said they were switches. 286 people said they were dominants/submissives, 93 said sadists/masochists and 71 masters/slaves.

Other BDSM and Money Articles

• BDSM and Money – first results
• I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending
• BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important
• Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them
• What people said their income was
• What we spend on kinky clothing – US vs UK
• What we spend on what we wear – dominants, submissives and switches

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey

This is the eighth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. It details some of the answers given by the 41 pro-dom/mes who answered the survey. It’s a small group so this is really just for interest only. I might try to do a larger survey some time on this community. It’d be great to get comments from people in this line of work.

Income

The survey asked people to say which quintile of US or UK income they fell into.

The most common response for Pro Dom/mes answering the survey was the second quintile (“More than £13,000 or $11,000 but less than £20,000 or $29,000”), which they were much more likely to fall into than the population as a whole, and a little more likely than all the people who took part in the survey.

Sexuality

six out of ten of the pro dom/mes responding said they were bisexual. Only one respondent said they were homosexual. The rest declared heterosexuality.

More than half said they were Tops/dominants. One in five each said they were either submissive or switch. Half said they were sadists/masochists, a third dominants/submissives and a fifth that their dynamic was Master/mistress and slave.

The top three BDSM components were, first to third, control, bondage and fetish. Pain came fourth.

AZ quarter of the sample offered pro-sub services in addition to pro-dom/me services. Four out of ten also offered other sex worker services.

Relationships

A third said they were not in a relationship and a similar (slightly lower) proportion said that their BDSM relationship was their only relationship.

Play

Three-quarters say they play in private and just less than that play in public.

Just over half have sex with people they play with.

BDSM Spending

In a list of nine areas of leisure spending  BDSM came top in order of importance by this group ahead oh holidays, family events and eating out (second, third and fourth).

Nearly three-quarters had spent money on tattoos and just under two-thirds had spent money on body piercings.

Two thirds had spent money on dungeon hire and a third on other people’s pro services.

Nearly all had spent money on shoes and boots and around two-thirds had spent money on latex/rubber (the least common type of fetish wear bought).

The dataset

41 people who said they were pro-dom/mes answered the survey. 27 said they were from the UK, 12 from the USA and two from elsewhere.  31 said they were female, eight male and two other. Two were excluded because their answers appeared to be falsified.

Most said they were in employment – 11 saying they worked up to 34 hours per week and 18 saying they worked 35 hours or more.

Other survey articles

• BDSM and Money – first results
• I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending
• BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important
• Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them
• What people said their income was
• Fetish clothing – a US/UK spending comparison
• What we spend on what we wear – part two; Doms, subs and switches

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey

This is the seventh article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say which types of fetish clothing they had spent money on since their interest in BDSM began.

This article looks at what dominants and submissives and switches said about their spending on different types of fetish wear.

What we like to wear

The survey asked people to say which of the  following fetish wear items they had spent money on since their interest in BDSM began:

• Other – 70%
• Shoes and boots – 67%
• Symbols of ownership – 58%
• Corsets – 57%
• Leather – 49%
• Latex/rubber – 32%

It appears that, in most areas bottoms/submissives are more likely to have spent money on fetish clothing than either tops/dominants or switches – but only just: Across all items listed an average of 59% of bottoms/submissives had spent money on something, compared with 58% of tops/dominants (so near it makes no difference). Switches were a lot less likely to have purchased fetish wear of any kind – only 44% had.

As seen in the list above “other” fetish wear is the most likely purchase area reported by all respondents. HoweverTops/dominants were equally likely to have spent money on “symbols of ownership” (72% – just ahead of their likelihood of spending on “other” – 71%). The most likely spending area for switches was “shoes and boots” (55%) and bottoms/submissives were most likely to have invested in “other” – 78%.

Tops and Dominants

Female dominant respondents spent more widely on fetish clothing than did the men who answered the survey. An average of nearly three-quarters of women said they had spent on fetish wear, compared with just over half of men. Women tops/dominants were more likely to have spent on fetish wear than men in every area listed.

Women tops/dominants were more than twice as likely to have spent money on corsets than men and three times as likely to have bought latex/rubber wear.

Symbols of ownership were the most popular area of spending recorded by male tops/dominants (70%), whilst women tops/dominants who responded rated them third, after corsets and shoes & boots.

Switches

As with Tops/dominants, female switch respondents were more likely to have spent money on each area of fetish wear listed. On average 31% of male switches had spent money on fetishwear, compared with 55% of women of the same orientation.

 

The biggest difference was in “corsets” where 48% more women than men had made a buy. 34% more women had also purchased fetish shoes or boots and 27% more had bought latex or rubber wear.

However, only 8% of male switches reported buying rubber, compared to 35% of women – this means female switch respondents are more than f0ur times as likely to have rubber or latex in their wardrobe.

Bottoms/submissives

Bottoms/submissives who responded said they were slightly less likely to have spent on BDSM clothing than Tops/dominants and slightly more likely to have spent than had switches. an average 49% of male bottom/submissive respondents said they had spent on fetish wear since the beginning of their interest in BDSM, compared with 61% of women.

The most likely spending area for bottom/submissive respondents was corsetry (a third of men and three-quarters of women). Women were also much more likely to have spent money on shoes and boots.

Bottoms/submissives are the only BDSM orientation where male respondents were more likely to have purchased some items than women.

Men were slightly more likely than women to say they had bought leather clothing (men – 49%; women – 43%).

But men were much more likely than female respondents to say they had bought rubber or latex items at some point (men – 44%; women – 32%).

Level of spending on fetish clothing items

As with the previous post on spending on clothes (a USA/UK comparison) I tried to calculate an average amount spent on each clothing area by taking the midpoint of each range I’d asked people
to say their total spending on an item fell into (other than the top range “more than £/$10,000”, where I just used £/$10,000) and then dividing the total of reported spending by the number of people who’d said they’d spent money on that type of clothing to give some sort of average spend per person. I didn’t analyse this sample into US/UK respondents, so the figure used bears no relation to spends in either UK pounds or US dollars – all one can say is that it gives a relative measure of the amounts all respondents said they had spent on different types of fetish clothing.

Switches spent less than either tops/dominants or bottoms/submissives in every area except one – rubber/latex and in that area switches spent really big – more than three times as much as they did on the two areas they rate joint second (Leather and Other). For tops/dominants rubber/latex was the clothing type they had spent the second most on (shoes and boots cam first – 9% ahead). Bottoms/submissives spent most on “other”, 4o% more than their second biggest spending area – latex/rubber .

The dataset

Up to 384 people answered this question. The sample breaks down as follows:

People could choose not to answer the questions – so totals don’t always add up.

Other survey articles

• BDSM and Money – first results
• I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending
• BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important
• Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them
• What people said their income was
• Fetish clothing – a US/UK spending comparison
• Pro-Dom/mes – what they said about money

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey

This is the sixth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say which types of fetish clothing they had spent money on since their interest in BDSM began.

Further articles will look at what dominants and submissives and switches said about their spending on clothes.

This article is about US vs US kinksters who responded to the survey. When it comes to what we spend on what we wear the respondents had a lot in common – and a couple of surprising differences.

What we like to wear

The survey asked people to say which of the  following fetish wear items they had spent money on:

• Other – 70%
• Shoes and boots – 67%
• Symbols of ownership – 58%
• Corsets – 57%
• Leather – 49%
• Latex/rubber – 32%

Overall,  British respondents were more likely to spend money on BDSM clothing than people from the USA (The UK mean for spending on BDSM Clothing was 59%, the US mean was 52%), with the exception of leather – where the USA was 2% more likely to have spent on leather (not a big difference really).

Brits seem to like their shoes and boots more than Yanks: just under two-thirds of Americans have spent money on fetish footwear whilst just over three-quarters of British respondents said they’d spent in this area.

The most striking difference was in Latex/rubber. US respondents said they were a lot less likely to have spent money on latex/rubber than their UK equivalent: Less than a quarter (22%) of people who said they were from the USA had invested in this area, whilst more than a third (37%) of UK respondents had spent on latex/rubber.

However people who spend on rubber spend big. I tried to calculate an average amount spent on each clothing area by taking the midpoint of each range I’d asked people to say their total spending on an item fell into (other than the top range “more than £/$10,000”, where I just used £/$10,000) and then dividing the total of reported spending by the number of people who’d said they’d spent money on that type of clothing to give some sort of average spend per person. To enable comparison I converted $ to £ at the date of writing (26 July 2015 $1=£0.64). Not only do exchange rates rise and fall, but buying power in the US tends to be larger than in the UK, or so I’m told – so these figures are very debatable.

What they show is that people who said they had bought latex/rubber wear spent an awful lot more on it than survey completers said they spent on any other area of fetish wear. Rubberists, since their interest in BDSM started, said they had spent an average of £739 on rubber and latex clothing (£795 for UK respondents and £682 (equivalent = £1,066) for USA respondents. That’s  56% more than the next highest spending category (Other).

The dataset

Up to 384 people answered this question with up to 104 saying they lived in the USA and up to 261 saying they came from the UK. Respondents from other countries were included under “all” in this analysis but otherwise excluded.

Other BDSM and Money Articles

• BDSM and Money – first results
• I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending
• BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important
• Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them
• What people said their income was

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey

This is the fifth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say which income quintile they were in. 457 people answered this question.

General

The black line on the chart below shows the level you’d expect each bar to be at if the respondent’s answers had been similar to the distribution of income in their country of residence. If the bar falls below or above this line it shows that the respondents to the survey were more or less likely to report a particular level of income than the population as a whole.

So, BDSM & Money respondents are slightly less likely to fall into the lowest income group and slightly more likely to fall into the second lowest income group.

Gender

Male respondents to the BDSM & Money survey were much less likely than the population  to fall into the lowest income group and much more likely to fall into the highest income group.

Women were less likely than men to fall into higher income groups and more likely to report lower incomes – I believe this reflects continuing income inequality across populations. Women respondents were most likely to report being in the £13,000-£20,000 (£11,000-$29,000) band.

Tops earn more (and less) than bottoms

I looked at income distribution broken down by BDSM orientation (Tops/dominants, switches or Bottoms/submissives) . A similar proportion of all orientations appear in the mid income group as you would expect from the population as a whole.

Broadly, a similar proportion of switches fell into  each income group as the population, with slightly fewer being represented in the second highest income group.

There were distinct differences when it came to those who said they were either tops/dominants or bottoms/submissives.

Tops/dominants told us they were less than half as likely to fall into the bottom income group than the population as a whole. So, this group was less likely to say it was really poor. However, tops/dominants were not more likely to say they were rich! They are pretty close to the 20% expected population in each group except the second lowest income – where they are 7% (roughly a third) more populous than you would expect. This quintile contains 21% of male tops/dominants (pretty much as you’d expect) and 38% of female tops/dominants – way more than you’d expect.

Bottoms/submissives on the other hand are about a quarter (25%) more likely to say they are in the poorest income group – but they are also the most likely to say they are in the top income group too (23%). Gender makes quite a difference: 24% of male bottoms/submissives say they fall into the top income group. as against 18% of women.

The dataset

457 people answered this question 305 were UK residents, 124 from the USA and 28 from other countries. Otherwise, the sample split down as follows:

A note on quintiles

I used US and UK government data to work out five income groups into which 20% of the country’s population would fall. The first group represents the lowest 20% of incomes, the 3rd represents the 20% of people whose income was grouped around the midpoint (median) and the 5th represents the group with the highest incomes, starting at either £43,000 (uk) or $62,000 (US). so the data above shows how much less or more likely the respondents to the survey said they were to fit into their national income groups, split into 5 equal bands. If the survey sample had been completely similar to their national demographic then each band would contain 20% of the respondents.

These figures are likely to have changed since I started the survey. I’m aware UK mean income has dropped significantly.

Other BDSM and Money Articles

BDSM and Money – first results

I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending

BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important

Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them

 

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey

This is the fourth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say how much they had spent, since their interest in BDSM began, on tattoos and piercings.

Hands across the sea

There is little difference between the likelihood that US or UK citizens would spend money on tattoos or permanent piercings, just that US respondents were a little more likely to have both. Around a third in both countries have either or both.

Gender differences

Women in the survey appeared considerably more likely to have spent money on tattoos or permanent piercings than men.

26% of men had spent money on tattoos and 42% of women (if you exclude people who earn money from BDSM the proportion of women who said they had spent money on tattoos went down to 35%; for men it stayed the same).

16% of men had spent money on permanent piercings. The proportion was much higher for women: 40% of women had spent money on piercings (if you exclude people who earn money from BDSM the proportion of women who said they had spent money on piercings declined to 30%; for men it stayed the same – 16%).

Almost all of those who had spent any money on piercings or tattoos had spent £/$500 or less. Women were slightly more likely than men to have spent more on than £/$500 on. tattoos.

BDSM Orientation

Only switches said they were more likely to have spent money on permanent piercings (36%) than tattoos (32%). However, across all orientations the difference is low between the two types of body modification.

The dataset

390 people answered this question. 263 said they were from the UK and 104 said they were from the USA. 165 said they were male and 208, female. 131 said they were tops/dominants, 82 said they were switches and 178 said they were bottoms or submissives. Other options were available for country of origin or gender but I’ve not included them in the analysis.

A note on currency

I’ve made no attempt to align spending between US or UK respondents – it’s not just a question of interest rates changing, it’s also that $ seem to buy more in the US, generally, than £ do in the UK – so the figures are only of very general interest. I also reckon some respondents spoofed the figures – which is regrettable.

Other BDSM and Money Articles

BDSM and Money – first results

I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending

BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important

BDSM and money survey – what did people say their income was?

 

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey

This is the third article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. It looks at just how important the 123 (85 men and 38 women) Top/dominant  respondents thought BDSM was is in their order of priority for non-essential or “leisure” spending (we left out items like food, energy, housing costs, etc).

The question listed nine areas of spending and asked people to rank them in order of importance, I then gave a rank  of one a score of 9, rank two – score 8,right down to the last ranked (ninth) item having a score of 1.

 

Overall tops and dominants put BDSM spending higher up their priorities (third rather than fourth) than did all the respondents to the survey. Tops and dominants rated BDSM as their third priority after holidays and family events and just ahead of eating out.

Gender Gap

Male and female tops/dominants who responded had really different views on the place of BDSM in their spending priorities: 26% of women said BDSM was their first leisure spending priority as opposed to just 5% of men.

39% of male tops/dominants put BDSM in their top three priorities for leisure cash, compared with 58% of women.

The Professionals

I was asked on fetlife what effect excluding people of all genders who made an income from BDSM would have. The answer is “a lot”:

The percentage of males saying BDSM is their first priority for leisure spending remains the same (5%), whereas for women it drops to 9% when you exclude people who get an income from BDSM. The proportion of “amateur only” women ( 🙂 ) putting BDSM in their top three leisure spends becomes 33%, whilst for blokes it’s 44%.

42% of women who make money from BDSM put it first on their list for spending and 82% put it in their top three “leisure” spending items.

Other BDSM and Money Articles

BDSM and Money – first results

I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending

Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them

BDSM and money survey – what did people say their income was?

 

 

 

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey

This is the first article detailing results from my BDSM and money survey. I collected responses between December 2013 and March 2015. 476 people took part, mainly recruited through BDSM websites, including fetlife, strangely normal and fetbook.

This article sets the scene: In the coming weeks I’ll write more detailed articles about the things people said concerning their BDSM spending. Other articles on the survey are linked at the bottom of this page.

Who took part?

Of the 476 people who took part:

• 67% came from the UK, 27% from the USA and 6% from elsewhere
• 53% were female, 43% male and 5% expressed another preference
• 64% said they were heterosexual, 6% said they were homosexual and 31% said they were bisexual.

What kind of BDSMer?

When it came to BDSM, participants said they were:

• 33% Tops/dominants, 46% bottoms/submissives and 21% switches
• 21% Sadists/masochists, 63% Dominants/submissives and 16% Masters/slaves

Money and spending priorities

I asked people to say which UK or US income quintile they fell into. The least populous response contained 18% of the sample and the most populous 22% – so the response broadly reflects the population as a whole.

Looking at areas of BDSM spending, the most popular three clothing categories were:

• Other – 70%
• Shoes and boots – 67%
• symbols of ownership – 58%

When it came to toys the top three are:

• Bondage items (84%)
• Impact play items (82%)
• Other (64%)

The percentages above relate to those who said they’d spent any money on any of these categories at any time.

When it comes to body modification, 35% had spent money on tattoos and 30% on body piercing.

BDSM as an Income

We asked whether respondents made any money from BDSM products or services. 17% said they had.

Of those, roughly a fifth said BDSM was their main source of income and a similar number said it was an important secondary source.

The top three paid activities were pro-domme (38%) and other sex worker, and making BDSM toys (both 21%).

How important is BDSM spending?

Only 13% of respondents said BDSM was their first spending priority (out of nine, excluding essential household expenditure like housing costs, food and energy). 15% rated it second and 13% third.

Across the sample as a whole family events took top priority, followed by holidays and eating out. BDSM was the fourth most important item out of nine. So, the people who took part take their BDSM pretty seriously.

The surveys

Please note that these surveys don’t have properly constructed samples – they are drawn entirely from people who see my posts on BDSM websites and choose to take part – all one can say is that they represent the views of the respondents themselves and not the BDSM community as a whole.

BDSM and Money – more articles

• I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending
• BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important
• Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them
• What people said their income was
• What we spend on what we wear – US vs UK
• What we spend on what we wear – Dominants, Submissives and switches
• What Pro-Dom/mes said about their spending