What to Understand About People Who Enjoy BDSM and Kink

Recently, researchers at several institutions including Northern Illinois University surveyed experienced BDSM players to determine how bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism sessions affected them. The kinksters showed no negative effects at all. Instead, they reported a pleasantly altered state of consciousness similar to what people experience during other enjoyable activities — a mindset involving reduced stress, a more positive outlook on life, and increased sexual arousal. The researchers concluded that far from threatening mental health, BDSM actually contributes to it.

The new study is just one of many over the past 25 years to show that BDSM players have no psychological problems unique to their kinky play, and are no more likely than the general population to suffer from psychiatric problems:

• Italian researchers surveyed the sexuality of 266 Italian men and women, aged 18 to 74, who were involved in BDSM. The researchers also surveyed 200 demographically similar men and women who did not play that way. The two groups reported similar feelings about their sexuality, but the BDSM players reported less sexual distress and greater erotic satisfaction. The researchers said they hoped their study would “reduce the stigma associated with BDSM.”
• A Los Angeles investigator administered standard psychological tests to several hundred BDSM aficionados and concluded they were mentally healthy.
• Australian researchers surveyed 19,370 Aussies aged 16 to 59. Of the 2.2 percent of men and 1.3 percent of women who called themselves committed to BDSM, all tested psychologically healthy and reported no disproportionate history of childhood sex abuse or any sexual trauma.
• Northern Illinois University scientists took before-and-after saliva samples from 58 BDSM players, measuring their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. After BDSM scenes, their cortisol levels decreased significantly. BDSM play reduced their stress.
• Dutch researchers gave standard personality tests to 902 BDSM players and 434 controls. The same proportions of both groups tested psychologically healthy. Overall, the kinksters were “less neurotic, more conscientious, more extraverted, more open to new experiences, less sensitive to rejection, and showed greater subjective well-being.” Those who scored most mentally healthy were the doms, followed by the subs, and in last place, the conventionally sexual (vanilla) controls.
• Researchers at Idaho State University asked 935 kinksters what BDSM meant to them. The top answers were personal freedom (90 percent), adventure (91 percent), self-expression (91 percent), stress relief (91 percent), positive emotions (97 percent), and above all, pleasure (99 percent).

BDSM players represent a cross-section of the population—the people next door, mentally healthy and typical in every respect, except that they find conventional sex unfulfilling and want something more exciting and intimate.

Officially Mentally Healthy

No one knows when humanity discovered BDSM, but ancient Greek art depicts what looks like it. In 1905, without research that would be considered mandatory today, Sigmund Freud declared that “sado-masochism” signaled severe neurosis. For more than a century, mental-health professionals agreed. The first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I, 1952), classified sexual sadism as a “deviation.” The DSM- II (1968) pathologized masochism. And the DSM-IV (1994) listed BDSM as a psychiatric disorder.

But in 2013, based on 21st-century studies, the DSM-V removed BDSM from its list of mental illnesses, calling it just another way for psychologically normal, healthy people to play.

BDSM is not just mentally healthy. It’s popular.

In 2015, Indiana University researchers surveyed a representative sample of 2,021 American adults. Many said they’d tried elements of BDSM: spanking (30 percent), dominant/submissive role-playing (22 percent), restraint (20 percent), and flogging (13 percent).

In 2017, Belgian scientists surveyed 1,027 Belgian adults. Almost half (47 percent) admitted experimenting with BDSM; 13 percent said they played that way regularly; and 8 percent were committed to BDSM sexuality.

Google BDSM and any city, town, or rural area. You’ll find BDSM groups and clubs almost everywhere. BDSM is a minority pleasure, but players are a larger minority than most people guess. One reason: BDSM has a long history of being stigmatized. Many, if not most, kinky folks don’t broadcast their involvement, so their friends may not know. Which contributes to perpetuating the stigma.

What 50 Shades of Grey Got Right—and Wrong

Compared with real life, in fantasy, BDSM is even more popular. In the Belgian study just mentioned, 69 percent of participants admitted BDSM fantasies, some quite extreme.

In 2011, a unique window into the popularity of BDSM opened with the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. The eventual trilogy of novels followed Christian Grey, a brash young billionaire dominant (dom, top) and Anastasia Steele, his initially naïve lover, as she becomes his submissive (sub, bottom), at first hesitantly, then willingly, and finally enthusiastically. By 2019, Fifty Shades had sold 150 million copies worldwide in 50 languages, the only book to ever to sell that many copies that quickly. The Fifty Shades film series has grossed more than $1 billion. And when the trilogy hit the best-seller list, hardware stores reported an unusual surge in sales of rope.

Fifty Shades got one aspect of BDSM horribly wrong: It depicted Grey as the product of horrendous child abuse and implied that it propelled him into kink. Actually, BDSM players are no more likely than anyone else to have suffered child abuse or sexual trauma.

Otherwise, James depicted BDSM quite realistically:

• Communication. Before Grey touches Steele, they discuss their play in great detail.
• Contracts. Grey hands Steele an extensive contract proposal and they discuss it point by point. Steele agrees to some clauses, modifies others, and nixes a few. Not all BDSMers use contracts, but many do.
• Limits. Grey quizzes Steele on the hard boundaries she can’t conceive of crossing and the soft limits she might cross under the right circumstances. Both players declare their limits and pledge to honor the other’s.
• Safe word. Grey tells Steele she is always free to invoke their safe word, the “stop” signal that immediately suspends play. No matter how abusive some BDSM scenes may look or feel, subs always retain total control over the play. That’s the great irony of BDSM: It looks like the doms control the subs. Actually, it’s the other way around.
• Intimacy. Steele is astonished by the depth of self-revelation involved in BDSM, and how emotionally close it brings her to Grey. Committed BDSM players often say that kinky intimacy goes “way beyond sex.” In fact, committed BDSMers often say they feel sorry for lovers who don’t play that way because vanilla sex is neither as intimate nor as satisfying as BDSM.

It's well past time to retire the stigma against BDSM. It's just another normal, psychologically healthy way to enjoy erotic play.

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