I just took the survey, answering with complete and total honesty, and
> Your kink equivalent is Mother Theresa (2nd percentile)
LOL! I mean, I know I'm vanilla (a rich, complex, and expensive spice, I'll have you to know), but if Mother Theresa represents the 2nd percentile, who's the standard-bearer for 1st?
My serious point is that I strongly suspect that people towards (ahem) my end of the spectrum are likely to be under-represented among the takers of the survey. The people most likely to take a survey about kink are the people most into, well, kink. I don't know how any survey design, no matter how good it is in a vacuum, can square that circle.
(I say that with all possible respect for Aella and her work. I've followed her blog for ages - her essay about growing up within, and trying to shed, a fundamentalist upbringing is one of the best things I've ever read - and sexology research is fascinating. I just don't know how you can draw robust conclusions from survey data, given the social pro- and in-hibibitions most people have inherited.)
When your survey on kinks is primarily shared by kinky people and on places like fetlife (the kinky social media), I would assume that the sample is somewhat biased.
I think it's prob slightly biased towards kinky people, but it wasn't primarily shared across fetlife. Most of the responses came from viral videos of people sharing their results on Tiktok.
...Which makes me doubt the honesty of their answers. TikTok is a platform designed to encourage show-offs and attention seekers. "Oh me? I'd fuck anything! I've done the Karma Sutra with my house, but it's, like, sooo boring and vanilla"
have you tried contacting onlyfans and other sites to integrate a pop-up ad that just randomly loads asking people to just answer one question and then you could maybe gather information that way? similar to those quick YouTube surveys that pop up instead of ads sometimes?
You could maybe work out a discount deal or even see if maybe your data could be useful for their business and you could reach out to other sites like cam or video sites.
Maybe there could be a sexual census where all porn sites for one week a year do a major push to get people to take the full survey, maybe giving people free stuff for the effort.
Very interesting, thanks! I had heard that “kinktok” was pretty big, but I assume the streams cross on TikTok a lot more than in dedicated kink spaces. There’s still a bias towards people who are open about sex, but I am not sure that group is actually any less vanilla than people who keep it private.
I saw a bunch of your older surveys and was impressed at the quality of the questions, but the places I saw them were always kink-adjacent, and I am glad you are getting a lot more reach.
I do survey research, and there's ways of addressing the concerns the author raises with survey techniques.
It's still interesting and they're right that these types of things (rare, taboo) are sometimes actually best studied with biased samples sometimes in some ways, with lots of anonymity. However, there are ways of addressing these concerns in "normal" samples (list randomization is an example; https://www.svri.org/blog/measuring-taboo-topics-list-random...), especially if they're large enough, and with trying to weight things.
There are anonymous surveys that are carefully sampled; I'm not sure people would trust those less than something like the linked survey. If you used the right questions, you could also probably try to reweight the sample for other behaviors.
This comes across as a criticism and maybe it is but I tend to think the more information like this the better, so I still think of it as a net good thing. It's just difficult to make much of things like percentiles in the absence of a very strong rationale for what you're comparing against, either in terms of a comparison population or in terms of what is being compared. Is an overall kink score meaningful? What about an overall sadomasochism score? Relative to who?
You never really know your population, but sometimes you can get enough information to get a good enough sense of where your sample is in context.
Is list randomization applicable to a survey with ~100 sensitive questions?
From your link "In basic terms, list randomization aggregates a response to a sensitive question alongside responses to non-sensitive questions, thereby masking the respondent’s specific answer to the sensitive question. By randomizing lists with and without the sensitive question, researchers can identify prevalence or incidence of the sensitive item within the population or differences between groups (for example treatment and control), but not attribute the sensitive response on an individual basis. If respondents believe that their sensitive answer is not disclosed to the interviewer, they may be more likely to report private behaviors, such as experience of violence."
100 questions would be a lot, yes, unless you had very large samples, which isn't unheard of in today's age.
I suspect it would work better to combine the items somehow.
Alternatively, you might be able to somehow use a subset of the 100 as a kind of anchor, to see how distorted a differently designed sample was, and possibly reweight things.
For example, if you were really serious, you might be able to identify, say, 5-10 items with a lot of variance in the population, and ask about them using list randomization, and also maybe directly to determine how people endorse the items differently if asked indirectly versus directly. Depending on what you did with that, you could then use those items as weighting variables for the other 90-95 items in another sample. In the very least you'd be able to compare the samples to see how different the distributions are on the anchor items.
You can make arguments about base rates here, but if nothing I think this gives decent data for comparative frequency. As in, it seems unlikely that any one particular fetish is overrepresented compared to others.
There are negative values of kinkiness in that survey results. Before Mother Theresa are Bambi, Samwise Gamgee and Captain America. The most kinky character is Willi Wonka.
What specifically about that section did you want to share? Based on what I've read, the only defense is basically "she never said she was going to help people so you can't be mad".
That short section of a wikipedia article could not be described as a comprehensive defence against the detailed criticisms levelled at her, especially those from Hitch.
I have seen an attempted rebuttal around her behaviour, specifically responding to that book, but I suspect that piece was more an apologetic than an objective defence.
Aella being open about her own experiences has been a huge inspiration. She gets a lot of hate, but somehow she lets it roll off her.
For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream. The idea that we have to choose one partner for life is so indoctrinated into the fabric of society. It was wonderful discovering that there are a whole community of people who live happy lives without this.
Aella’s surveys help people make grounded and informed decisions about baseline behaviors. Most people don’t want to talk about their true feelings, and when they do, they usually dress it up to make it socially acceptable. Polling large numbers of people is at least one antidote.
Dismissing a multi-millenia multi-cultural fundamental norm as "indoctrination" severely downplays the collective learning of uncountable generations.
There is a common view of cultural norms as at worst tyrannical or at best random and arbitrary, rather than the sophisticated and curated product of billions of human lives.
Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions. Base human psychology and sociology must bow to their intellect and are theirs to shape as they choose.
> For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
> Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
> Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
> Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
> For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
> Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
> the collective learning of uncountable generations
Wisdom in one context can be foolishness in another. To live a good life it is necessary to re-evaluate the actions of your forebears and determine if it is still applicable to your modern context. That doesn't make someone a "social iconoclast", it makes them wise. Our ancestors did the same thing to their ancestors. Homo sapiens is 300,000 years old, and our societies have changed a lot since then, and will continue to change.
Note that I personally have no desire to be anything other than monogamous, but I know several people (both young and elderly) who are successfully polyamorous. I also know people who have catastrophically failed at polyamory; but then, of course, I also know people who have catastrophically failed at monogamy.
As far as I'm concerned, normalizing polyamory will strengthen monogamy. It seems like some people out there just aren't cut out for monogamy, and in a monogamous world they inevitably become cheaters. Let the polyamorous people remove themselves from the monogamous dating pool and you will exclusively remove people who would otherwise be compelled to cheat.
I like this take. Already you see specialization of dating apps toward different relationship styles, with Hinge more focused on Monogamy, Tinder on the casual/singles crowd, and Feeld for the nonmonogamous.
I agree this is decidedly positive for the monogamous folks. There is now less risk of them connecting with and falling in love with someone who isn’t a good match.
In your example, there’s a group of people who aren’t cut out for monogamy and are a problem for society no matter what. But I think there’s a much larger group of people that could do it in a society that offers them strong support and reinforcement, who will fail and flounder in a society that leaves them free to make choices.
In my culture, neither divorce nor cheating are socially acceptable. Now, I’m happily married to my wife. But I’m also aware that I had better do everything I can to make my marriage happy, because that’s it. My social standing would be devastated if I got divorced. People would be talking about me in hushed tones 12,000 miles away.
> In your example, there’s a group of people who aren’t cut out for monogamy and are a problem for society no matter what.
To be clear, in my example, polyamorous people are only a problem for society because that society has decided that polyamorous people are a problem. I am advocating for basing our societal mores on reasonable consideration from first principles rather than simply tradition.
> But I think there’s a much larger group of people that could do it in a society that offers them strong support and reinforcement, who will fail and flounder in a society that leaves them free to make choices.
While it is certainly possible to argue against the notion of such-and-such freedom, this appears to be making the following argument: "it is possible to imagine that greater individual freedom will result in undesirable collective outcomes, therefore, all of our traditional restrictions on individual freedom are necessary and may not be challenged." I find this argument to be unconvincing.
The support for this argument that you have given is of the general form: "I am incentivized to be a good husband because I would suffer socially if I were not; therefore, monogamy incentivizes positive relationships." I will counterargue that in a society where divorce is met with social ostracization, this disincentivizes being a good spouse, because you know that your partner is stuck with you even despite your bad behavior. My in-laws are proof of this: my mother-in-law refuses to divorce for religious reasons, despite the fact that my father-in-law is both abusive and a proven cheater. Her misery and guilt over her husband's infidelity does not benefit society in the least. And lest you think that this is a problem of society failing to properly ostracize the husband, rest assured that his children refuse to speak to him and he does not care in the slightest.
>
To be clear, in my example, polyamorous people are only a problem for society because that society has decided that polyamorous people are a problem
Any problem for the society is like that. You can say robberies are a problem only because society decided it is. That's how society works - there's no some external source where it could be checked, so the implication that it's arbitrary baseless decision because it is social is wrong - all rules of thd society are such, so if you want to have any rules at all, those would be the ones you'd have. It's impossible to have a society where everyone derives their morals from the physical laws anew all the time.
> To be clear, in my example, polyamorous people are only a problem for society because that society has decided that polyamorous people are a problem
I’m pretty sure that no kid has thought to themselves “I wish my parents had a bunch of unstable relationships with many different people.” That’s not a social construct. Monogamy is one of the most universal practices, embraced by different, unrelated cultures that differ along many other dimensions. How did all those different societies reach the same arbitrary “decision?”
> will counterargue that in a society where divorce is met with social ostracization, this disincentivizes being a good spouse, because you know that your partner is stuck with you even despite your bad behavior.
Empirically, American subcultures in where divorce is taboo, such as Asians, Mormons, etc., are more successful—e.g. their kids have higher economic mobility—than other Americans. Indeed, divorce as a phenomenon has largely affected the lower classes. In affluent WASP circles divorce may not be as openly condemned the way it was, but it’s still taboo in a way that it isn’t among, say, Appalachians.
> I’m pretty sure that no kid has thought to themselves “I wish my parents had a bunch of unstable relationships with many different people.”
You're begging the question. Polyamory doesn't imply instability any more than monogomy does. I know people who have been in decades-long poly relationship.
What I do see happen often in poly and poly-adjacent communities, especially those with children, is that children become a more communal responsibility, somewhat mimicking the effect of larger, multi-generational households you see in Asian and Hispanic communities, which usually leads to higher stability and better outcomes.
>You're begging the question. Polyamory doesn't imply instability any more than monogomy does. I know people who have been in decades-long poly relationship.
It’s doesn’t logically imply it. But statistically they are much more unstable. There’s studies that show 90+% of open marriages end in divorce.
The study you're citing doesn't actually have a methodology that one can interrogate about how it reached this figure, and there's some fairly common patterns like opening a marriage in response to infidelity, that would create a misleading correlation between open marriages and unstable ones.
That's vastly different from entering into a relationship with the intent to be non-monogamous (and perhaps already having multiple partners), but is probably much more common, because, for whatever reason there's less of a taboo on sleeping around while married than on having multiple committed romantic relationships.
That’s entirely possible. It’s also entirely possible that something about starting a relationship monogamously and then transitioning has some kind of protective effect vs starting poly.
We don’t have enough data to tease out the cause. We can only say that open marriages, for whatever reason, are less stable than closed ones.
There is also, you know, just paying attention and drawing our own judgements from what we see with our own eyes.
Not that normal marriages are sunshine and rainbows. But I have yet to see a poly marriage with kids that wasn’t deeply disturbing. Though of course the primary folks said everything was fine.
Asian and Hispanic families are built around nuclear families (more strongly than even in the west). In my language, we have a whole set of words you don’t have in English for identifying relatives through marital relationships. (E.g. different words for maternal aunts versus paternal aunts.) It’s all highly structured around the assumption that marital relationships are durable.
It’s not just a nuclear family, but the nuclear family is still the foundation of the larger structure. Everyone is precisely situated in relation to durable marital bonds between two specific people. It’s not some free for all. Yeah, the cousins all play together and the aunties cook dinner together, but there’s no ambiguity or imprecision about who is married to whom.
Asian multi-generational family structures are often invoked to justify fatherless children raised “by the community,” etc., and it drives me nuts. There is nothing liberal about us—we have some of the most rigid marriage norms and gender roles around.
Reevaluate is fine, but I mostly see something like "oh it's all social construct" (somehow this implies it's worthless or even worse, oppressive) and that is considered enough to forego further consideration of comparative benefits. That's not evaluation, that's just hubristic dismissal.
> There is a common view of cultural norms as at worst tyrannical or at best random and arbitrary, rather than the sophisticated and curated product of billions of human lives.
Examine any of these “fundamental norms” and see that they were not so fundamental after all. With their narratives built to enforce cultural norms today, not genuinely explore lessons from the past.
My grandma will _insist_ that homosexuality simply didn’t exist when she was younger. This is the “sophisticated” product you speak of - a blatant denial of reality.
Note that these cultural norms evolved prior to modern birth control, STI testing/treatment, and peak population.
Birth control is a radical invention and it is shocking that it hasn’t led to even more rapid cultural change than it has.
One also needs to separate generalized cultural knowledge from individual knowledge. As people mature, they should tend to individuate and discover “what works for them” vs “what works for society”.
That individual knowledge can be bootstrapped on cultural knowledge, but ultimately we may each need to reject aspects of our culture in order to discover our unique path.
> That individual knowledge can be bootstrapped on cultural knowledge, but ultimately we may each need to reject aspects of our culture in order to discover our unique path.
But we’re not unique individuals. We’re 8 billion copies of two sexes of human animal, and pretty much everyone falls into a handful of archetypes and social roles.
Seeking to collapse the unique contexts and interplay between 8 billion individuals is incredibly dangerous, leading to things like command-and-control economies, socialism, and genecide.
The information surface area and processing power of 8 billion people far exceeds the few bits representing your “handful of archetypes and social roles”.
Anyone who believes that Western civilization has been largely functional should soundly reject these ideas and agree that individuation is a fundamentally Good Thing.
Western civilization is literally in the middle of wiping itself out. People have become so individualistic and self-absorbed that they cannot even perpetuate their own civilization and need to import people from the Middle East and Africa to avoid disappearing. The phrase “jump the shark” comes to mind.
I think that’s more of a confounding correlation. America had birth rates above 3 when it landed a man in the moon. And Europe was “highly developed” before birth rates started collapsing in the 1970s. Several highly successful American subgroups, such as Muslims and Mormons, still have birth rates above replacement.
And Asia has its own distinct issue, which is that development coincided with population control evangelism from the west.
As far as I can tell, it's one of the more robust sociological correlations that has been established worldwide. Fertility rates are dropping on every continent, and the drops are strongly correlated with economic development. See links below, they seem pretty damning.
And yes, it begun in the second half of the 20th century, but I don't think that makes it spurious.
I wouldn't be surprised if western cultural influence played a meaningful role, but I can't imagine that explaining the entire phenomenon.
As you might know, Malthus was quite concerned about the issues of overpopulation. His solution was to educate women. This seems to be working surprisingly well !
I seem to remember that he practiced what he preached (not only as the first ever professor of economics, but also as a pastor), and has founded at least one school for women, but annoyingly I can't seem to find the source any more ??
Of note also : by the end of the 19th century the (neo-)Malthusian feminists had already embraced ideas that he disagreed with like contraception and for some even abortion.
You’ve mentioned Mormonism twice now as an example of successful monogamous societies but it should be noted that the growth rate of the church has become negative. I’d be amazed if the LDS church is still around in any meaningful way 30 years from now. It’s hardly meaningful now.
Only if you define “rights” and equal treatment in rather libertarian way. Americans’ ideal family size is the highest in decades. Almost half of women (46%) ideally want three or more kids: https://news.gallup.com/poll/511238/americans-preference-lar.... But the American ideal of “equality” is giving women the choice to be treated like childless men in the workforce. And America’s idea of “rights” is allowing women to abort pregnancies, rather than the “right” to social and economic support for having children.
Is it individualization that's done that, or rentier capitalism?
Individuals in the western capitalist society spend most of their time making capitalists of all sorts exceedingly wealthy, rather than spending most of their time on themselves.
Give us 4 - 6 months off a year like our ancestors had, and we'll have plenty of children
While I agree with the central point, just wait until you see the data in China, Japan, and South Korea. It makes the US look damn healthy by comparison.
Asia has a distinct problem. For the last 50 years, western countries pushed the idea that population control was the only way for these countries to advance economically. My dad was involved in these efforts, supporting USAID projects in places like Bangladesh. And they were successful in bringing down birth rates. But you’ve now got two generations of people who were raised with the almost religious idea that having kids will hinder economic development.
I was having lunch with some of my dad’s USAID friends, and someone joked whether my wife and I were thinking of having a fourth. Then someone reflexively said “well nobody needs four kids.”
> Dismissing a multi-millenia multi-cultural fundamental norm
This norm was not evenly distributed. Generally, if you were a peasant (and especially a woman), you were expected to adhere to the norms rigidly. While those with means or power frequently got to flaunt them or even started their own religions to get around them[1]. To me it just looks like another lever of control for the powerful over the "plebs".
> Dismissing a multi-millenia multi-cultural fundamental norm as "indoctrination" severely downplays the collective learning of uncountable generations
At many points in time this quote could easily apply to monogamous marriage, men having multiple wives and/or concubines, and consanguineous marriage.
> There is a common view of cultural norms as at worst tyrannical or at best random and arbitrary, rather than the sophisticated and curated product of billions of human lives.
> Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions.
Some of the cultural norms you named there are millions of years old and show little variance across cultures and time. Others only a few millennia old at best and show very high variance.
I don't want to plagiarize, but I can't think of a better descriptor of the cultural zeitgeist than "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (St Paul)
> Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions.
It's important to recognise that western organised religion stomped on a great many multi-millenia gender roles and cultural traditions about the globe via colonisation.
Promoting what might made right as "the norm" severely downplays the alternative collective learning of uncountable generations.
> It's important to recognise that western organised religion stomped on a great many multi-millenia gender roles and cultural traditions about the globe via colonisation.
Sure, but let's be honest that the majority of humanity stabilized around a man and woman having children in a monogamous relationship, with a minority practicing polygamy. The rest were tiny outliers numbers wise.
That's not quite the blank slate that some people imply humans are, imho.
Polygamy has been widespread throughout history, eg:
In accordance with the marriage-customs of the Egyptians the priests have but one wife, but any other man takes as many as he may determine; and the Egyptians are required to raise all their children in order to increase the population, on the ground that large numbers are the greatest factor in increasing the prosperity of both country and cities.
Diodorus Siculus
It's been widespread throughout the western christian church also - Popes weren't the only ones with multiple families.
> What grinds my gears about this is that it’s always some white American invoking the moral sanction of unspecified black and brown people.
What grinds my gears is the sheer number of idiots that assume the internet is made up of white American males.
Some of us were tagging along on logistics runs and meeting the Minangkabau, the Bugis, the Fore, and many many other people in the 1960s.
To the best of my recollection Paul Gauguin wasn't hanging out in Tahiti for the grinding monogamy.
Still, it's hard to bame people in a post missionary world for having culturally blinkered views formed by the pinhole of white saviour pamphlets.
Yeah, but polygamy specifically is one of the things that western society has tried to wipe out for pretty good reasons. It’s usually horrible for women and children.
> Some of us were tagging along on logistics runs and meeting the Minangkabau, the Bugis, the Fore, and many many other people in the 1960s
See my point about small populations. Indonesia has 278 million people, of which the Minangkabau comprise 8 million. What’s the gender norms of the dominant Javanese culture? Are they accepting of polyamory?
And white travelers like Gauguin really have little insight into foreign cultures. Sex tourism is much more a legacy of colonialism than monogamy.
I was raised Catholic and I would summarize the faith as it was passed to me as an exercise in envy. Even the premise of your quote is the same: "Your puny ways of life are vain and laughable, because you do not want to listen to me and do as I tell you". Pad this into a few verses, flower it up with medieval language - and your God is speaking. Discussion not welcome, because only I, as a believer, can understand the arcane nuance of my verses. Bow down and submit.
Referring to the other comment about human morals evolving - religion is evolving as well, although it learned to cover it up. Catholicism is my favorite here, because it's perfected the art of bullshitting itself. For example, divorce is not allowed - but if you look for "evidence" that the partner has misled you into a marriage, then we call it "Marriage never happened" and boom - your not-a-divorce has been granted. Abortion suddenly in the spotlight? It's because our understanding has evolved and it's only now that we see that it's never been acceptable. And so on.
> Dismissing a multi-millenia multi-cultural fundamental norm as "indoctrination" severely downplays the collective learning of uncountable generations.
I agree in this case, but only because I think marriage is an institution that we’ve learned needs (sometimes strong) active endorsement and it’s pro-social.
My view is that cultural norms are at worst tyrannical and at best the essence of being human.
> Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions.
This is just true. But this is all of us: we all have a relationship with society around us and dismiss parts of it. As we should.
Is it a norm? I view all forms of having more than one significant other as being forms of poly. Office spouse, mistress, side boyfriend, sexting other people, etc. I think poly relationships are very common.
If you want to quote from the Bible:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
So even looking at porn or thinking sexual thoughts about anyone else is engaging in a poly relationship. By that standard, nearly everyone is in a poly relationship.
There is a difference between what things are common weaknesses and what things are social ideals. Just because sloth is not unusual, doesn't make it culturally acceptable.
> looking at porn or thinking sexual thoughts about anyone else is engaging in a poly relationship.
It is a poly relationship in your heart, which a step in the direction of an actual poly relationship.
That seems overly reductionist and devalues the entire concept of polyamory. Thoughts and actions are not the same and can not be treated as the same. Your viewpoint veers into thoughtcrime territory.
Well sure. Christianity invented thoughtcrime. Before Christianity, the essence of religion was observing the appropriate rituals at the appropriate times, with Christianity it became what you truly believe in your heart of hearts.
Interestingly, Catholicism sees the former (doing the bad thing but agreeing that it is bad and that you should stop) as pretty normal, but the latter (deciding the thing is okay) as heresy, the sort of thing that could get you the bell, book, and candle.
It seems logical. Analogy: I want to be healthy but I am imperfect so I will end up over eating or skipping my workout. Versus: I embrace being unhealthy and fat as part of my identity.
In one, you try to be better but aren't always successful. In the other, you've embraced the bad.
To complicate things, there's then "being a hypocrite as a preliminary stage of changing oneself". If I know a behaviour is condemned by my principles/faith and yet I still do it, then so long I am working towards change, I'm still resisting that thing, it's... well, not all good, for sure, but it's something. And you can work with that.
Well you don't have to use that passage to know that's exactly what the Bible teaches--"For all have sinned..." Rom 3:23.
Or, later in the same letter, Paul speaks about his own struggles:
“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Rom 7:18-19
I see where you're coming from, but it's more like trying to sell people a vaccine before they die from a preventable disease (eternal death). It's hard to argue that people at risk should be made aware of the cure's existence.
> I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream.
I've only ever met one single couple where true polyamory worked over the long term, and they just celebrated 20 years together. They are an odd awesome couple that are extremely well matched. [They don't have kids.]
I even worked for Kink[dot]com (NSFW) for 4 years and I've thrown hundreds of sex parties with hundreds of people going bonkers all night long (and often into the next day). I've tried it myself in a few relationships and I'm happy that people experiment with it.
But, I strongly doubt it'll ever be mainstream. I'm pretty convinced at this point that it'll always remain a fringe fantasy for the majority of the population. Especially outside of the bubble of certain very small parts of the world.
Polyamory seems to be a tremendous amount of work that also requires a high degree of emotional maturity. You are balancing multiple intimate, emotional relationships with other people. I doubt that most people with the fantasy are interested in maintaining the reality for a very long time.
Critics frequently express the notion the polyamory is precisely the opposite of emotional maturity i.e. willing or being able to commit to a single other person (which inherently does mean a certain sort of sacrifice, not having a cake and eating it too style).
And yet there is much precedent for having a village raise children.
Many couples see the death of one partner, many couples lack a full and complete skill set to teach children all that they might want or need to to know, etc.
Leaving communities and extended families out of the picture is some post WWII idealised nuclear family fantasy.
It's not a fantasy in a good way: most parents (even in stable relationships) would prefer to have more support than they get. Communities are getting weaker as third spaces disappear, and people are far more likely to have to move far away from extended family (or have extended family move far away from them). The reality of the modern world is that the two parents and paid caretakers are often all that's available.
> And yet there is much precedent for having a village raise children.
But are all those other people on the same 'level' of attachment for the child, or is there a 'hierarchy'?
Further, not that having community is bad, but it can 'devolve' into tribal/clan thinking, which is probably not good for society as a whole (can lead to nepotism, which is generally highly correlated with corruption) and something the West is relatively unique in 'breaking out' of:
If having no parents is awful, single parentage is rough but barely navigable with money, and two parents seems to work pretty well… why would three parents not continue the pattern? Why shouldn’t a throuple be as much an improvement over a couple as a couple is over a single?
More people in a relationship introduces a larger surface area for interpersonal conflict. Communication is always hard even for two people, not to mention jealousy and the challenge of learning to live with another. It becomes exponentially harder when a third person is added.
That just adds to the chances of instability between parents. 2 parents is essentially a stable maximum
I blame “The Ethical Slut” for a lot of the strange ideas people have around non-monogamy.
It gave people a whole bunch of rules and ideals for polyamory to replace their rules and ideals around monogamy. Rather than freedom, it’s just trading one dogma for another.
The Esther Perel approach of couples consciously co-creating their uniquely ideal relationship structure seems much healthier and applicable to broader society.
> I've only ever met one single couple where true polyamory worked over the long term, and they just celebrated 20 years together.
I recently found out that some elderly friends of mine have been in a polyamorous relationship for almost a decade (we should note that there is inherent bias in finding successful polyamorous relationship, since the social stigma means that people are likely to hide it).
This couple has been married for 50 years and raised two children. When the wife retired, she decided she was done having sex for the rest of her life. The husband still wanted to have sex, so they agreed that he would get a girlfriend (a widow of the same age bracket). By all accounts it appears to be working out for all involved.
I can, even as a man. As women get older, sex can become extremely painful for a variety of reasons. Who knows, maybe her partner was also very large sized. So yea, if it isn't bringing you enjoyment any more, why do it?
Out of curiosity, when you say "couple" do you mean a literal couple where both partners have other partners, or couple as in a throuple/fourple/etc?
I'm not poly so idk if people use couple beyond the literal sense of Exactly Two. (I also don't know if poly people actually say "throuple" or if that's just something the rest of us made up to amuse ourselves, lol.)
I haven't met many monogamous couples under a certain age that have had things work out well either though.
My parents will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next year. I am pretty sure if they were younger there is no way they would not have got divorced. They are not unhappy but they are so different that there is no way one would not have thought they could do better if the early part of the marriage had been lived in modern times.
For me, being single is the ultimate form of being poly. I am committed to all the shorter relationships I have yet to experience in my life.
I have had several chances to be in true poly relationships but there has always been at least one, really annoying person with nothing else going on than being poly. Then every topic of conversation is about being poly and that is when I check out.
The idea of poly being mainstream is ridiculous because it is hard to find a single compatible person in time. True poly just multiplies the amount of incompatibility.
Something I think I've noticed is that our modern culture assumes exclusivity after the first date; contrast with (my very poorly understanding of), say, the Victorian era, where multiple suitors were common. People end up turning to poly because we don't do that early multiple-suitors period.
I have not encountered any expectations of exclusivity after a first date.
There is sometimes an assumption that you are not banging other people once you start sleeping w someone but even that is usually best left to confirmation.
I haven't seen any convincing arguments that polyamory does not reduce to a harem system[1]. 8000 years ago, 17 women successfully reproduced for every man who did[2]. In cultures with polygamy, this can be an advantage in warfare as there is a large body of excess young men to use as cannon fodder. But you could hardly argue that this compatible with the stable sorts of cultures most of the users of this site are more comfortable in. Giving men from the bottom 95% band of attractiveness access to reproduction via monogamy seems necessary to unlock the amount of productive labor needed for a technological society.
> I haven't seen any convincing arguments that polyamory does not reduce to a harem system.
I haven't seen any convincing arguments that it does in humans. If women and men are equally polyamorous, that actually means more sex available broadly speaking, and when you aren't dating to reproduce or settle down forever, your standards can be looser as well.
Now, I don't believe polyamory will ever be dominant, or even mainstream, I just despise the "loser need sex for cohesion" argument.
The harems are already here. The most attractive individuals among both men and women get a lot of attention from people attracted to them, and thus have their harems and can sleep around a lot (if they want to).
Say the "successful on Tinder" group of 5%-er men who go to the gym nonstop, and have won the genetic lottery. There is also the "influencer" group of women with countless thirsty men in their DMs. Not every woman manages to become an influencer, but many are extremely beautiful.
Are people in these harems happier being delulu than in some monogamic relationship? I'm not really sure.
Industrialized society has managed to deliver lots of high quality products by replacing the human component with machines... relationships are something entirely between humans however, so they are hard to improve with industrialized processes. Until robotic girlfriends/boyfriends arrive of course :).
Women have strong biological incentives to have fewer partners, even with birth control - they are far more susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases, for one, as well as violence, and more partners means more risk of any one partner being a problem on that front. And all it takes is one.
If resources are constrained, it’s a toss up if it’s better to have one dedicated partner with a strong bond, or multiple partners with weaker bonds. Depends I imagine on a lot of other dynamics, and if there are kids involved.
There certainly are dynamics where many weaker bonded partners is worth the risk, or prostitution wouldn’t be the world’s oldest profession.
For an example of what a society like this looks like now, there are a number of Muslim societies (and a few hidden corners in the US) that legalize polyamory.
Notably, they follow pre-birth control setups and are male centered (one man, many wives), and do indeed exclude large swathes of men from the economy and relationships.
One woman, many husband type setups are quite rare outside of nomadic/pastoral communities.
As to with birth control? Harder to say.
Many<->Many setups seem to have a lot of historical precedent, but mostly in societies without strong property rights (nomadic tribal) as they tend to be unstable over time and unpredictable. No large scale societies exist like that I am aware of.
> The idea that we have to choose one partner for life is so indoctrinated into the fabric of society.
I used to think this and remember my friends and I starting to have this idea that marriage is a social construct in high school and college as we tried on our philosopher hats. A little later I read an interesting book called Sperm Wars [1] that largely tried to line up the results of scientific papers and behavioral surveys with attitudes and narratives about sex. They had what was a compelling argument for me that the cultural ideas behind monogamy are a social rationalization for what we’d be largely doing anyway. In other words, they argued that from as far as they could tell, we tend to have serially monogamous pairings, and the culture and religion views on marriage are just after-the-fact explanations for it, not the primary cause of it. There are, of course, lots of other species on our planet that also tend toward serial monogamy, and don’t have the same social constructs that humans do.
Of course, worth mentioning that arguing in favor of de-stigmatizing polyamory does not imply stigmatizing monogamy. If people are naturally monogamous, and therefore produce social structures that reflect monogamy, then it means there should be no fear whatsoever in de-stigmatizing polyamory.
I've seen women and men with a 'hierarchy' of partners, and they all know it (these were typically D/s relationships as well, so it was at least consentual [0])
I've also seen cases where people just like to have a routine to go through. My partner and I are no longer practicing poly, but even when it started they were, aside from special occasions, just a one night a week thing. It worked out well because it was a night I worked late, so we couldn't do anything anyway.
But there were times it was a little unbalanced one way or another, really though as long as you can communicate, it can get worked out.
As far as procreation/etc, Aside from Mormon and other polygamous cultures/religions, it doesn't NOT work out.
Or, I've seen scenarios where a polyamorous relationship allowed couples to have children where they could not otherwise.
I think harem builders create lots of animosity tho.
Hehe aren’t laws and all ‘institutions’ social constructs, by definition? ;) If economic and legal institutions summarized marriage, then I’d lean toward it being a social construct. But what about religious marriages, marriages for love, secret marriages, pre-law marriages, marriage traditions in all countries globally, some of which don’t have marriage laws, pair-bonding and cohabitation without legal marriage, etc.? I guess I feel like people choose partners and intimacy, regardless of laws, and the book I read convinced me that humans gently tend toward having one partner at a time, but obviously not always, and obviously among a wide distribution of behaviors.
I won’t claim without data that polyamorous couples do worse on divorce rates, but most people’s mental story of polyamory is a couple decided they want to be polyamorous, and then one feels insecure and the other one leaves them for the third.
Polyamory doesn’t spark disapproval so much as skepticism.
I thought this would be the default case too, but it's surprisingly nuanced.
One red flag is anyone wanting to open a monogamous relationship that isn't more-or-less rock solid. Polyamory isn't something to try if you're uncertain about your current monogamous partner.
The ideal case is for someone to go into the dating pool as openly polyamorous. But this will take a couple more generations, I think. Most people don't have the opportunity, because the idea that we need to choose a single partner has been hammered into us from the moment we were born. So I'm sympathetic to people who want to put in the work of exploring whether polyamory is possible within the bounds of an existing relationship.
The most important thing is communication. There will be misunderstandings, but at no point should someone feel like something is being hidden from the other. That's different than respecting each person's individual relationships – one is underhanded, the other is a social contract.
It seems inevitable though. You can’t simultaneously be invested in a relationship and indifferent to its nature. This article points out a ton of issues and largely suggests just awkwardly independently dating other people as safer. Like “if you agree that everyone’s free then everyone’s free”. But… no that sounds dumb to me. I would not bet on such myriad bonds holding up in times of difficulty. Surely it can happen. But I just don’t buy it as a sensible strategy
Monogamous divorce rates are ~50% first marriage, ~60-70% second marriages, ~70-74% third marriages. People are already polyamorous, just masking it due to social convention and signaling.
I'm not sure your conclusion follows from your data. Sequential monogamy isn't polyamory. There seems to be strong evidence that, given autonomy, most people aren't monogamous for 20+ years, but it doesn't follow that they'd stay with their first partner if there wasn't a social stigma against leaving them even if they could have sexual relations outside of that relationship.
My hypothesis is that most people are generally monogamous, but not to the same person indefinitely, and that transition is either marked by divorce/breakup if socially monogamous, or an odd transition period where they haven't really broken up with their last committed partner but have functionally done so if they're polyamorous.
I've certainly seen both ends of this specific spectrum work for those involved, but it seems about as general as anything else about human sexuality.
It's not just serial monogamy, it's also infidelity, having an emotional relationship with someone without it turning into infidelity, etc. Agree the single data point alone wrt divorce rate does not lead us to my thesis, but in aggregate, it appears humans are not made for long term aggressive monogamy. That is what I meant by "People are already polyamorous"; they already want to or do love (or some other combination of relationships stronger than platonic friendship) more than one person at a time.
But I'm not sure even that follows. Most of the folks I know who got a divorce or cheated on their partner generally weren't in love with both people at the same time. Obviously it's hard to ever get an true answer on some of this, since it's hard to definitively say if you're in love with someone or not, but almost by definition, infidelity in monogamy isn't polyamory. I just had a friend who was in a polyamorous/open relationship go through a bitter divorce because of the way that a new partner was brought into the group and feelings of betrayal and infidelity that that caused.
Polyamory isn't some sort of magic flag that makes things not infidelity, and most outwardly monogamous people who are in relationships with multiple people aren't closeted polyamorous people, they're just selfish/abusive partners.
Some animals have lifelong monogamy where they have one fixed breeding partner (many birds). Some animals have couples cooperate and raise offspring for a breeding season and then look for another partner in the next season, others mate for multiple seasons.
Cheating on someone or even being an advantageous position where you can have more than one lover with your partner(s) having no recourse isn’t the definition of polyamory these folks are working with.
As a woman who’s been extremely successfully poly for almost a decade, I feel like I fight against the grain whenever I am able to explain how well it works for myself and the other women I’m with…with various relationship styles in there.
It’s sad how skeptical and dismissive folks are, and how unwilling they are to see how it can work for some, but not all.
The lessons of radical honesty and communication skills that come from practicing polyamory can improve monogamous relationships as well. I feel it’s just too challenging for some.
I don't think its surprising that people aren't deciding what turns them on based on population statistics. I'm no expert, but the consensus of what I've read and heard is that by and large people aren't deciding what turns them on, period. They may choose to constrain their behavior or not act on certain desires based on what society finds acceptable, but that does not really change their sexuality.
However, if you feel alone, ashamed, afraid to reach out to others, etc, having a sense for how common certain kinks are can be extremely useful information. The objective of these statistics isn't to tell you what sexual behaviors are good or bad based on popularity... the very definition of a kink is that it is uncommon.
I'm not poly, but if I had to guess, the resurgence of that is the pendulum swinging back the other way against how atomized social media has made us. Many people, myself included, don't many or any friends. Poly is one way of closing that gap for those who are open minded and searching for deep familial like bonds.
The coming advent of genetic engineering will make poly more interesting as it be possible for more than 2 people to be biological parents. In fact, we see this already in popular sci fi like The Expanse.
As far as I'm concerned this whole "culture war" is just short termism vs long termism.
You can be childfree, polyamorous, body positive, whatever, and enjoy your youth.
In older age, your 50s and 60s onwards say, your health, your partner, your family become the basis of your life. It's the ultimate "fuck around and find out".
> For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream
Extremely bleak. The /redscarepod people, for all their minuses, are more than correct on this. I don't see any way out of this for the West, at least not in the short term.
Because I’m curious whether this is a pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive social construct. It’s a purely utilitarian question: could a bunch of polyamorous people successfully survive in their own third world village? Would they raise healthy kids that would be able to create civilizational progress? I don’t know the answer to that, hence the experiment.
I’m personally curious if our cultural obsession with JS devs is pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive. The logical way to test this would be to send a bunch of JS devs to a Bangladeshi village and see if they survive.
In other words, you can’t really test a lot of social constructs in isolation.
JS dev is a specialized trade that fills a social function within a larger society that needs many different kinds of jobs. Does polyamory serve such a specialized social function? Does society need any poly people at all? Like, if the world is ending and we need to send a 500 people to Mars to preserve humanity. What fraction of poly people do we need to bring to ensure the success of the mission?
> Memetic reproduction need not coincide with biological reproduction.
For a couple generations, maybe. But if the meme is extremely detrimental to the evolutionary fitness of its hosts, eventually adaptations conferring resistance to the meme will become common. Like how sickle cell is more prominent in places where malaria is common, because it confers resistance.
> if the meme is extremely detrimental to the evolutionary fitness of its hosts
This phrase is doing so much work, the rest of your comment was able to retire in the Bahamas. Sounds a lot like the argument that gay people don't exist because they don't reproduce.
Sexual behavior was traditionally constrained by the requirements of survival—you needed a certain number of children to help till the fields and avoid starvation, so people subordinated personal desires to necessity. Today the risk of death is removed, so people do what they want—and "what they want" is therefore subject to greater selective pressure.
Your picture of the human condition predates the agricultural revolution. That doesn't mesh with your idea that evolution happens in the blink of a couple generations.
I'm happy that people are happy. Choices also have consequences. Choosing one partner for life is likely a relic of the evolutionary selection process.
Quite the opposite! Much work had to be done to force both husbands and wives into monogamy over the course of thousands of years. If anything, our evolutionary instincts are the other way around.
I read both posts. I'm not buying the conspiracy theory that monogamy is a psychological operation to lure men into a sense of duty and to accept responsibilities. However, if it is true, then the writer builds a strong case against polygamy or polyamory. The writer indicates that rulers of ancient civilizations struggled with apathetic hedonistic polygamous or polyamarous men.
Indeed, making men willing to work hard to provide for their family has been pretty awesome psyop. I really can't see any downsides if civilized society is the ultimate goal. I can just imagine how it feels when the ruler has a big harem and you don't really have a realistic chance for creating a family, but I don't think it makes you work harder once you realize it.
>Choosing one partner for life is likely a relic of the evolutionary selection process
If anything, it's a relic of the Abrahamic faiths and their influence over Western cultures. Many other cultures have practiced polygamy since antiquity.
> If anything, it's a relic of the Abrahamic faiths and their influence over Western cultures.
What? Monogamy was already mandatory in Western culture (meaning classical Greek and Roman culture) before there was any influence from Judaism. And Jewish scripture is explicitly polygamous.
Monogamy in Christianity is obviously the result of the influence of Western culture on Christianity and not the other way around. For Judaism that is not so obvious, since it, unlike Christianity, at least predates Classical Roman culture.
Meanwhile, in the third Abrahamic faith, Islam, monogamy is not even an element of the faith today.
Roman monogamy was perhaps largely administrative. When a man eventually became a citizen through his military service he was only allowed to confer that citizenship to one wife and bloodline.
Given how radical their “immigration” system already was it would have been untenable to allow citizenship for multiple wives.
First, that's a funny thing to say because Abraham himself had a concubine (Agar), who bore him a son (Ishmael). And his grandson Jacob married Leah and Rebecca.
Second, traditional polygamy was never akin to modern polyamory. It included contract/commitment, not short-term engagements.
The government needed to give them a sense of duty and responsibility to save them from apathy (see the comment linking to the twitter thread and read the first 2 posts)
There was a wonderful passage in American Gods about this phenomenon:
-----
"Remember," she [Easter] said to Wednesday [Odin], as they walked, "I'm rich. I'm doing just peachy. Why should I help you?"
"You're one of us," he said. "You're as forgotten and as unloved and unremembered as any of us. It's pretty clear whose side you should be on."
They reached a sidewalk coffeehouse, went inside. There was only one waitress, who wore her eyebrow ring as a mark of caste, and a woman making coffee behind the counter. The waitress advanced on them, smiling automatically, sat them down, took their orders.
Easter put her slim hand on the back of Wednesday's square gray hand. "I'm telling you," she said, "I'm doing fine. On my festival days they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation. They wear flowers in their bonnets and they give each other flowers. They do it in my name. More and more of them every year. In my name, old wolf."
"And you wax fat and affluent on their worship and their love?" he said, dryly.
"Don't be an asshole." Suddenly she sounded very tired. She sipped her mochaccino.
"Serious question, m'dear. Certainly I would agree that millions upon millions of them give each other tokens in your name, and that they still practice all the rites of your festival, even down to hunting for hidden eggs. But how many of them know who you are? Eh? Excuse me, miss?" This to their waitress.
She said "You need another espresso?"
"No, my dear. I was just wondering if you could solve a little argument we were having over here. My friend and I are disagreeing over what the word 'Easter' means. Would you happen to know?"
The girl stared at him as if green toads had begun to push their way between his lips. Then she said, "I don't know about any of that Christian stuff. I'm a pagan."
The woman behind the counter said, "I think it's like Latin or something for 'Christ has risen' maybe."
"Really?" said Wednesday.
"Yeah, sure," said the woman. "Easter. Just like the sun rises in the east, you know."
"The risen son. Of course -- a most logical supposition." The woman smiled and returned to her coffee grinder. Wednesday looked up at their waitress. "I think I shall have another espresso, if you do not mind. And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship?"
"Worship?"
"That's right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and at dusk?"
Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, "The female principle. It's an empowerment thing. You know."
"Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name?"
"She's the goddess within us all," said the girl with the eyebrow ring, color rising to her cheek. "She doesn't need a name."
"Ah," said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, "so do you have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon, while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into the sea-foam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?"
"You're making fun of me," she said. "We don't do any of that stuff you were saying." She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was counting to ten. "Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, ma'am?" Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had entered.
They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another customer.
"There," said Wednesday, "is one who 'does not have the faith and will not have the fun.' Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers-by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let's see -- I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favor here -- this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets."
Her green eyes looked at Wednesday. They were, Shadow decided, the exact same color as a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. She said nothing.
"We could try it," continued Wednesday. "But I would end up with ten fingers, ten toes, and five nights in your bed. So don't tell me they worship you and keep your festival day. They mouth your name, but it has no meaning to them. Nothing at all."
Tears stood out in her eyes. "I know that," she said, quietly. "I'm not a fool."
-----
Just as in the book's depiction, your parent comment has managed to confuse a practice that a culture older than Christianity imposed on it with one that Christianity imposed on the older culture.
That passage is fascinating in that it itself confidently makes statements about history that are based more on supposition than evidence.
For starters, it’s true that the name “Easter” probably comes from a Germanic goddess, but in most other languages the name of the holiday is related to Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover. (As a holiday, Easter is directly descended from Passover, as that’s when Jesus died.)
The English name for Easter derives only indirectly from the pagan goddess, because Germanics used the name Easter for the springtime month of April. Similar to how Good Friday took its name from the day of the week, not because it had any relation to the worship of Frigg.
Easter eggs aren’t a “fertility ritual” either—they came to Easter via Persian New Year celebrations.
> That passage is fascinating in that it itself confidently makes statements about history that are based more on supposition than evidence.
It's not making statements about history. Elsewhere in the book it states that the Ancient Egyptians traveled to America, which is why Thoth has a presence there. It's a fictional world.
> [Easter eggs] came to Easter via Persian New Year celebrations.
Is this something we know? I had the impression that Easter eggs were attested for the Kievan Rus.
I haven't read the book yet, only watched the series, but reading it I can't help but think that Ian McShane as Wednesday was absolutely spot on casting. I really can't picture anyone else in the role now.
Protection with non primary partners and STD testing (I'm a fan of monthly, YMMV). Some people take further steps (PrEP) depending on your activities and risk appetite. HIV transmission rates in hetero sexual activities is very low (<1% per unprotected sexual exposure) [1].
Infidelity rates in "monogamous" partnerships are already substantial (~10-25% depending on study) [2], poly only changes the honesty and logistics.
In my experience poly folks are way more ready and able to talk about this than mono folks. Regular testing and using barriers seems to be the baseline, while the nominally mono folks don’t deal with this because why should they, they’re monogamous!
Do people really use protection that often in the heat of the moment?
I'd say the primary use case would be sex work, outside of that I know a freakin ton of people who aren't slightly interested in missing out on the full experience.
You’re comparing a monogamous relationship where there is a 10%-25% chance that one of you will have at least 1 extra partner, to a situation where at least one of you is regularly seeking out new partners. All else being equal the risk of contracting an STD is going to go way up.
And there are other STDs to worry about than just HIV. Numerous drug resistant bacterial infections are on the rise.
If the increased risk doesn’t bother you, that’s cool, but you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
> where at least one of you is regularly seeking out new partners
This isn't always the case. My sample is a bit biased as I rarely interact with cishet folks outside of work, but in my circle, quite a few nonmonogamous folks are quite stable with the 1-3 partners they have for years or decades at a time. As others point out, scheduling is a real limiter and unless you're just doing one-night-stands, it's easy to get "polysaturated" where, yeah, that boy looks cute but I don't have time for him. But what I can do, that I couldn't in a monogamous relationship, is come home and gush about the cute boy I flirted with.
I’m not pretending the risk doesn’t exist. The data demonstrates the risk is low when safe sex is practiced. Practice safe sex and get tested often if you have multiple partners regularly.
Of all the monogamous people I know who have cheated on their partner, they are not practicing safe sex based on my inquires (but all have lucked out so far not getting pregnant or STD). I extrapolate out accordingly based on public STD health reporting and infidelity rates across the broader population.
The data shows monogamy is aspirational, from a sexual perspective. Poly folks are more intentional about safe sex, at least in my experience.
Of course, having no sex or being in a strictly monogamous relationship where you’re 100% positive no one is being unfaithful is the lowest risk activity. But with 40% of pregnancies unintended annually in the US, infidelity rates, STD stats reporting from state public health systems, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I am a scholar basing my thesis on the data.
(hard to take the monkey out of the human, we are simply fancy mammals)
> Of all the monogamous people I know who have cheated on their partner, they are not practicing safe sex based on my inquires
> I extrapolate out accordingly
> I am a scholar basing my thesis on the data.
Those statements are entirely contradictory. Your methodology is not even remotely in the vicinity of scholarly.
>The data shows monogamy is aspirational
If 75-90% of monogamous relationships are successfully monogamous, I’d hardly call that aspirational.
> But with 40% of pregnancies unintended annually
Without know how many of those are monogamous couples, that statistic is useless.
If you want to get pretty close to the actual risk difference, take a look at the difference in STD rates between single and married people. Even adjusting for age, race, and income, single people are astronomically more likely to contract STDs than married people.
Polyamory is mainstream already and has been for some time. People just lie about it. Observably speaking the winner takes all high value men ploughing their way through the hookup marketplace while middling men settle for some combination of either sharing a woman, settling for a discarded older less fertile women, or picking single mothers with limited options at best dynamic is already operationally equivalent to old polygamous societies.
Minor point as the main body of the article doesn't attempt to answer it, but:
> Why are there way more women interested in submission than men interested in dominance?
In my anecdotal experience, there are more everyone interested in submission than dominance. And the gap between male subs and female doms is even greater.
not a response of the article - just a contribution to the conversation here: anyone into kink should be able to understand there is a complex relationship between constraint and freedom. Yes monogamy is as a constraint, but that constraint creates a space of freedom, in which people can reveal themselves honestly while minimizing any sense that anything revealed good or bad will be judged relative to alternative partners.
Not everybody needs that, not everybody needs monogamy to create that dynamic, but it would be mistake to think that monogamy doesn't offer anything for thoughtful liberated people in exchange for the constraints it requires
The entire process was a series of tiny, painstaking tradeoffs. Each time I decided to make a question into a scale, this boosted the total time it took to complete the survey by a few seconds. And I had to care about those few seconds.
In the end, the average time it took users to complete the survey was 40 minutes. This is really long for a survey! You really have to get people to care about it in order to finish.
So: How do I get them to care?
I decided to give users a score at the end — How freaky are you compared to others?
> But this meant I needed to define fetish categories, and there is no good research on this anywhere. I had to invent them.
This is a problem I see in many different domains. There will be lots of research papers, lots of small-scale categorization, but nothing that truly categorizes the whole subject.
Are kinks really that rare? Like, don't most people have something that turns them on, in some way? Or does this article only refer to a very specific definition of "kink" past a certain degree of "freakiness"?
If someone is turned on by cuddling or emotional bonding, are those kinks? I personally consider cuddling a kink. So does hugging, or holding hands, or whatever.
Is this not a popular sentiment? Are kinks only things like vore..?
Kink (regarding sexual preferences) is formally defined in various dictionaries as including a component of being uncommon, unconventional, etc. Holding hands, cuddling, and emotional bonding (along with kissing and various kinds of caressing) are probably among the most common sexual preferences on earth, so for kink to retain its semantic meaning they kind of have to be excluded. What you describe are sexual preferences, and perfectly valid ones! Just not kinks.
That said, when people are casually or intimately discuss their sexual preferences, sometimes "kink" will be used as a substitute for the more cumbersome and clinical sounding "sexual preferences", so as long as contextual cues are good you are generally fine to give your preferences (when you are comfortable doing so).
Kink is a fairly wide spectrum, because it turns out all kinds of random stuff turns people on when you are looking at large groups. Honestly, the kind of work the author/researcher is doing could go a long ways towards actually settling on some kind of formal delineation that isn't completely arbitrary (but still somewhat arbitrary of course). I gather vore is fairly unusual as far as kinks go, with things like spanking, foot fetish, leather, latex, etc, being more common but still not seriously appealing to the majority of people.
The clinical sounding thing doesn't actually sound quite right to me. "Kink" for me includes things that cause arousal for other reasons that aren't necessarily that. For example I have kinks that have absolutely nothing to do with penetration or even being in the context of any sort of sexual activity. They're just things I like in that way.
Kinks and sexual preferences both include things that don't directly relate to sex. Not sure if this helps to clarify, but all kinks are sexual preferences but not all sexual preferences are kinks. Kind of like how all squares fit the classification of rectangles but rectangles are never squares by definition. As far as I can tell it is mostly about what is common and expected vs less common and less expected.
It's not the most important distinction in the world IMO in common conversation. To social scientists and such like the author it is of course a fascinating distinction to dig into.
If squares can be rectangles, rectangles can be squares, by virtue of happening to be a square that is also a rectangle. However not all rectangles are squares.
I suppose I get the point you're trying to make, but the bar of exactly what makes something a kink or not is something I don't really understand.
I feel like she points out a lot of reasonable constraints. I don’t think she really overcomes many of them. You just won’t get a reliable survey on such things. But that’s ok. A sample of Vore fforumers is probably just as interesting as Vore festishists. I don’t think it needs to generalize at all.
There is basically never a perfect survey, but there is a lot of value in taking pains to not bias your sample (it allows you to tentitiviely draw certain types of conclusions that you otherwise absolutely cannot). Biased sampling happens constantly, it's a matter of degrees and often opinion whether a study should be considered able to draw a certain conclusion.
IDK, it sounds like the author has taken quite a few steps beyond what your average social scientist does.. the vast majority of social science (and a fair bit from other categories) is insanely biased because its participants are 100% students at a specific college or region. Yet this is treated as perfectly acceptable because it's part of the norms of academic research.
Like I said she acknowledges them but I don’t feel she really addresses them sufficiently to make different claims. It’s just not possible in a group this niche.
Frankly I don’t believe that fetishes are anything but learned associations so it’s kind of silly to imagine the findings will generalize.
She gets close to this idea in her survey design but I feel like she doesn’t acknowledge this overall. Like, cake sitting. Dumb as hell. But sure I can see how it would lead people to shame or sensory triggers that they have learned on a second order to be arousing. And that after this they’ve become dependent on that specific thing even.
I mean the survey tried to be "equal" across the board, but as a gay man it wasn't really...
There were plenty of questions specifically directed at "enjoy doing this to a woman" but no "enjoy doing this to a man" equivalent.
Ie "Assume you're answering for scenarios that involve your preferred gender;" doesn't really work when one of the answers involves "into a vagina". Perhaps it would've been better to generically phrase it as "into your partner's vagina/anus" or something.
Plus I find it interesting that most of the "kinksters" I know (from the furry/pup/gay community) will often loudly & proudly claim to be into something when it's really only something they may have tried once before, or only do on occasion. I think there's definitely a lot of posturing involved.
score is 67.09 aka "The Joker" (90th percentile). Hmmm, I suppose most people do find cat boys/furry stuff weird, then...
sample data based on clinical porn addicts isn't good representation of spciety, and thats one of the reasons why I ignore any """""research""""" she does.
> Your kink equivalent is Mother Theresa (2nd percentile)
LOL! I mean, I know I'm vanilla (a rich, complex, and expensive spice, I'll have you to know), but if Mother Theresa represents the 2nd percentile, who's the standard-bearer for 1st?
My serious point is that I strongly suspect that people towards (ahem) my end of the spectrum are likely to be under-represented among the takers of the survey. The people most likely to take a survey about kink are the people most into, well, kink. I don't know how any survey design, no matter how good it is in a vacuum, can square that circle.
(I say that with all possible respect for Aella and her work. I've followed her blog for ages - her essay about growing up within, and trying to shed, a fundamentalist upbringing is one of the best things I've ever read - and sexology research is fascinating. I just don't know how you can draw robust conclusions from survey data, given the social pro- and in-hibibitions most people have inherited.)