Techno-Puritanism / The Pragmatist’s Guide Book Series by Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins Full Text for LLMs and AI

TPG 47.4.7 · 36,805 words · 2.8 hr read · Great Chatting Again

Cataloging Voting (part 7 of 7)

In his research for A Billion Wicked Thoughts, computational neuroscientist Ogi Ogas took the time to analyze 15,000 Harlequin romance novels to find the most common professions of these books’ leading male love interests. Ogas found the following professions, in order, dominated: Doctor, cowboy, boss, prince, rancher, knight, surgeon, king, bodyguard, and sheriff. These are all professions associated with status, confidence, competence, and dominance over others. You don’t see many romance novels featuring builders, programmers, marketers, and the like. This prevalence of romantic love interests with dominant professional positions is also seen in romance novels on Amazon.com, which feature 415 millionaires, 286 billionaires, and 263 sheiks as leading male love interests.

Glance over at the Japanese anime-style porn to your left. This particular section of our Hall of Arousing Art also skews more toward gender parity than you might expect given the genre’s reputation (m14% vs. f13%). However, when you consider the size and gender breakdown of subsets like the yaoi doujinshi community (a subgenre of homoerotic self-published art, primarily created by and for females), this seems less surprising. While here, let’s also marvel at the unexpectedly robust rates of erotic video game and VR pornography consumption among men: 15% of our male respondents reportedly consume VR porn and 15% also play erotic video games.

As we drive by the live action porn exhibit of our Hall of Arousing Art, you may be surprised by its relatively small size. Our survey results suggest that 47% of women and 19% of men do not consume any live action video pornography (i.e., pornographic video that includes real people and is not animated), which we think is higher than a lot of people might expect (especially when it comes to males). In our interviews with individuals who fall into this category, it became clear that many men cannot watch live action porn without becoming distracted by thoughts of the actors’ lives, the actors’ families, etc.—leading them to prefer animated pornography filled with only fictional participants.

An Ode to Fanfiction

We find fanfiction to be an amazing source of information on female sexuality. It presents unique insights into the deepest, most personal aspects of a person’s arousal pathways because it is rarely produced with any commercial motivation and instead is often primarily created with the goal of stimulating its creator. Fanfiction is furthermore unrestrained by that which is realistic or even physically possible.

Fanfiction—content written about characters from an established media property or in an established media universe—is often highly sexualized (50 Shades of Grey started as a Twilight fanfiction). Currently, about 79% of fanfiction writers are female. Even the earliest manifestations of fanfiction, such as the Star Trek fanfiction distributed in zines in the ’70s, skewed female (think: 90% female). The strong skew toward female authors and readers, the non-commercial nature of fanfiction work, and the intense sexualization pervasive in fanfiction make this genre a superb bellwether of unusual arousal pathways that cannot be explained through socialization. Should we identify 10,000 fanfiction stories about being enveloped in a cloud of tickling feathers but fail to see this odd scenario heavily represented in male focused erotic art, we might safely infer that this tickling feather cloud scenario is triggering a predominantly female arousal pathway (this is just an example, not a real phenomenon).

Fanfiction.net is a great place to find fanfiction if you are into that kind of thing (we can’t get enough of them). Fanfictions provide uniquely powerful insights into how other people see the world.

Note: While we will talk about fanfiction as an art that skews female, you shouldn’t take this as an indication that there are no communities for written erotic works by and for males (see: nifty.org).

Arousing Dioramas

We see your necks craning for something not yet revealed. We think we know what it is. “What,” you are wondering “is specifically in erotic material that arouses people?”

Great question. We created a list of everything we thought might conceivably arouse people, then asked our survey’s respondents to indicate whether or not they found each of these things to be personally arousing. We tried to be as exhaustive as we could conceivably be in our study’s list of sources of arousal, which lead us down a lot of . . . uncomfortable internet rabbit holes, but we think this is about as thorough a list as you will find—and we looked. That said, we must admit this list is only tied to consumption of erotic material. We will explore actual sex acts and specific turn ons later on in this raunchy tour.

To take a look at how our male and female survey respondents reacted to various arousing triggers in erotic material, we will now drive you through the diorama portion of our Hall of Arousing Art. Take a look at the subjects behind the glass, and please don’t blink, as we will have to drive rather quickly to get past all these scenes in a timely fashion.

| Sources of Arousal in Erotic Materials | F | M | | --- | --- | --- | | A man of high wealth | 48% | 8% | | A woman of high wealth | 10% | 27% | | A man of low wealth | 18% | 3% | | A woman of low wealth | 11% | 23% | | A man who is sophisticated | 35% | 6% | | A woman who is sophisticated | 18% | 36% | | A “trashy” man (someone whose portrayal is aggressively aimed at demonstrating a lack of appropriate demeanor) | 21% | 6% | | A “trashy” woman (someone whose portrayal is aggressively aimed at demonstrating a lack of appropriate demeanor) | 13% | 51% | | A married couple | 34% | 38% | | A couple that is dating (i.e., They are in a relationship, but not married.) | 46% | 40% | | A couple that is in love | 51% | 33% | | Participants who are strangers | 44% | 49% | | Solo masturbation | 48% | 58% | | Mutual masturbation | 31% | 36% | | A group of more than two people having sex | 45% | 48% | | Two men having sex | 21% | 7% | | Two women having sex | 35% | 66% | | A man and a woman having sex | 78% | 75% | | Vaginal intercourse | 81% | 83% | | Anal intercourse | 40% | 56% | | Fellatio | 49% | 67% | | Cunnilingus | 49% | 53% | | Sex with breasts (through pressing them together) | 33% | 51% | | Sex with feet (through pressing them together) | 8% | 16% | | Feet | 6% | 9% | | Sounding (putting something into a urethra) | 4% | 3% | | An overweight woman (BBW) | 13% | 21% | | An overweight man | 2% | 1% | | An underweight woman | 5% | 14% | | An underweight man | 2% | 4% | | Bukkake (lots of semen) | 13% | 18% | | Scat (feces) | 2% | 2% | | Urine | 8% | 10% | | Popping (popping things) | 1% | 0% | | Transformation (a person changing from one thing to another) | 16% | 5% | | Vampires | 21% | 7% | | Werewolves | 14% | 2% | | An android | 7% | 8% | | An alien | 13% | 8% | | A giant (the fictional race) | 8% | 7% | | A dwarf (the fictional race) | 2% | 8% | | Goo people | 2% | 4% | | People made of food | 0% | 0% | | Furries (anthropometric animals-e.g., a girl with cat ears and a tail) | 5% | 5% | | Half human half animals (Nagas, Centaurs, etc.) | 7% | 4% | | Biological relative incest | 11% | 14% | | Step relative incest | 20% | 27% | | Rough gangbangs | 24% | 22% | | A pregnant subject | 5% | 11% | | Gerontophilic material (an elderly subject) | 0% | 3% | | Interracial subjects | 35% | 36% | | A giant penis (longer than two feet) | 7% | 4% | | Giant breasts (larger than a quarter of total body weight) | 4% | 17% | | Breast inflation (breasts that are getting larger) | 3% | 3% | | An individual being forced to do something “evil” | 11% | 11% | | Sadomasochism | 18% | 18% | | The sexualization of a character from children-targeted pop culture (e.g., a cartoon character) | 8% | 9% | | The sexualization of a character from adult-targeted pop culture (e.g., a character from a young adult romance novel) | 11% | 16% | | BDSM | 29% | 37% | | Sex toys | 53% | 39% | | Forced male submission | 9% | 14% | | Voluntary male submission | 16% | 20% | | Male dominance (with a voluntary partner) | 46% | 40% | | Male dominance (with a forced partner) | 16% | 19% | | Forced female submission | 17% | 29% | | Voluntary female submission | 32% | 40% | | Female dominance (with a voluntary partner) | 17% | 28% | | Female dominance (with a forced partner) | 8% | 15% | | Male-on-female violence | 9% | 7% | | Female-on-female violence | 5% | 5% | | Female-on-male violence | 6% | 6% | | Male-on-male violence | 3% | 1% | | Absorption | 1% | 1% | | Getting pregnant | 10% | 10% | | Getting someone else pregnant | 4% | 13% | | Giving birth | 4% | 1% | | Menstruation | 5% | 2% | | Switching genders | 8% | 3% | | Feminizing someone else | 7% | 4% | | Masculinizing someone else | 2% | 1% | | Bimbofication (someone transforming into a bimbo) | 1% | 6% | | A bimbo (an oversexualized female) | 10% | 17% | | A stud (an oversexualized male) | 14% | 5% | | A housewife | 27% | 46% | | A traditional husband | 25% | 8% | | A slutty person (someone whose portrayal is aggressively promiscuous) | 31% | 50% | | A nerd (someone who is portrayed as physically weak and bookish) | 23% | 39% | | A corporate type | 26% | 21% | | An extremely muscular woman | 1% | 15% | | An extremely muscular man | 16% | 7% | | Blood | 3% | 4% | | Cutting/piercing | 4% | 1% | | Female crying | 14% | 13% | | Male crying | 4% | 1% | | Insects | 1% | 1% | | Oviposition (eggs being put inside a female) | 3% | 1% | | A woman being implanted with a baby that is not hers genetically | 2% | 0% | | A man being implanted with a baby | 2% | 0% | | Tentacles | 5% | 8% | | Life draining | 2% | 3% | | Causing physical pain | 13% | 17% | | Humiliation | 15% | 20% | | Mind control | 11% | 14% | | A person portrayed as disposable | 8% | 8% | | A person being dehumanized | 11% | 13% | | A person being betrayed | 11% | 8% | | A slave (or a person owned by another) | 16% | 22% | | Vore (something consuming something else while it is still alive) | 2% | 3% | | Snuff (someone dying) | 3% | 4% | | Foot focused material | 6% | 5% | | Drawn futa (a penis on a female body) | 7% | 8% | | Live action futa (a penis on a female body) | 5% | 5% | | Trans subjects | 10% | 9% | | Uniforms | 14% | 17% | | Latex or PVC | 7% | 13% | | Guro (extreme images like a girl with her face peeled off) | 2% | 3% | | Gore (extreme violence) | 0% | 2% | | Race play (race play references intentionally racist roleplay) | 2% | 3% | | Cuckolding | 11% | 17% | | Infidelity of a married individual (cheating wives/husbands) | 21% | 19% | | Being dirty | 10% | 11% | | Voyeurism | 23% | 35% | | Caregiver/Little | 7% | 6% | | Father like roleplay | 8% | 7% | | Mother like roleplay | 4% | 15% | | Sibling like roleplay | 5% | 17% | | Rope bondage | 23% | 23% | | Tight full body constraints (e.g., a tight bag or mummification) | 5% | 7% | | Bestiality | 6% | 2% | | Human doll (a person acting like an inanimate object) | 6% | 5% | | Necrophilia | 1% | 2% | | Amputees | 2% | 1% | | Petplay (someone pretending to be an animal that is a pet) | 6% | 3% | | Pony Play (someone pretending to be an animal that is a beast of burden) | 1% | 2% | | Thoughts of yourself as another gender | 6% | 3% | | Thoughts of yourself | 39% | 23% | | Thoughts of displaying your genitals in public | 5% | 6% | | Thoughts of yourself being sexually irresistible | 27% | 14% | | Thoughts of yourself being sexually desirable to a large number of strangers | 18% | 15% |

Having fun? Stay buckled in and keep your hands inside the vehicle. We’re coming up to a really tasty stretch.

Wealth & Sophistication

As we whir past this dizzying array of arousing triggers, take note of the sexy dioramas that inspire the most rubbernecking from our passengers. Your fellow explorers appear to be uniquely enchanted by the scenes we pass that depict high-status men. Perhaps this comes as no surprise after we pointed out that most of the male leads in the romance novels are also high-status men, but is it not interesting that male passengers seem to be more interested in high-wealth males as well?

Our survey results suggest that a man is about as likely to fantasize about a woman of low wealth as he is to fantasize about a woman of high wealth (23% to 27%) and a woman is WAY more likely to fantasize about a man of high wealth (18% to 48%). That said, you can look at this data a bit differently and say that while both men and women fantasize about women of low and high wealth at around equal frequency (in women this is 11% to 10%), both men and women fantasize about men of high wealth at around 2.5X times more often than men of low wealth (in men, this is 3% to 8%). Erotic material for men and women alike seems to gravitate toward high-wealth males.

You would expect to see the same thing when we look at the rates of consumption for erotic material featuring “sophisticated” versus “trashy”[[64]](#_ftn64) participants, right? Well, hold onto our courtesy seat back handlebars, ladies and gentlemen, as you’re in for an unexpected bump: Men and women fantasize about sophisticated members of the opposite gender at about the same rate (m36% to f35%); however, while men certainly fantasize about sophisticated women, they fantasize about women they perceive as trashy even more (51%)!

We cannot help but notice some exasperated eyerolls emanating from a few of our female passengers as they observe their male partners’ interest in some of the less classy female dioramas in our Hall of Arousing Art. Our study suggests that women fantasize about trashy men less than sophisticated men, but not by a huge margin—21% vs. 35%—and they fantasize about trashy women less than sophisticated women (13% vs. 18%).

In general, women appear to prefer a sophisticated participant in their fantasies regardless of that individual’s gender, whereas men seem unusually turned on by participants of both extreme high and low levels of sophistication . . . but ultimately prefer trashy women.

Popular Pairings

Our findings tied to preference for couples who are dating (whether or not the couple is in love) versus strangers was wholly uninteresting to us. Each gender prefers each at about the same rates, with women being slightly more likely than men to include a couple in love within their erotic fantasies (f51% m33%), which we assume has more to do with the ease of depicting love in the mediums females consume more often (romance novels) when contrasted with those males consume more often (live action porn).

Please keep your hands away from the windows as we roll up the protective glass panes. Excellent, thank you. We’re now getting into a splash zone full of surprises. Speaking of which, you might be startled by how much both females and males include masturbation in their erotic fantasies—solo (f48% m58%) and mutual (f31% m36%).

Given the extent to which people at least pretend to get their panties into a bunch over orgies and threesomes, you may also be bemused by how often both females and males in our study included groups of more than two people having sex in their fantasies (f45% m48%). Ready for another curveball? Female respondents in our study included two women having sex in their erotic fantasies more often than two men having sex (35% to 21%). Men, on the other hand, rarely cast two men having sex in their erotic fantasies (7%) but reported fantasizing about two women having sex at almost the same rate at which they fantasized about a man and a woman having sex (66% to 75%). In fact, our stats have women featuring a man and a woman having sex in their erotic fantasies at higher rates than men do (though not at statistically significantly higher rates: 78% to 75%).

While it is unsurprising that men and women fantasize about vaginal intercourse frequently and at about the same rates (f81% m83%), it is somewhat interesting that the same can be said about anal intercourse (f40% m56%). Despite the social stigma of anal sex being something all men want and all women loathe and sometimes begrudgingly give out as a “gift” or concession, our data shows women fantasize about anal sex only 29% less than men do.

In for another surprise? While men include fellatio in their erotic fantasies more often than women do (m67% f49%), the numbers were still far closer than we expected based on common social tropes. This trend is not isolated to women: Men actually fantasize about cunnilingus at even higher rates than women (well . . . slightly higher, m53% to f49%).

Curious to know where men and women diverge on the sexual fantasy front? Men are disproportionately interested in material with breasts and feet: In our data, we found a pretty large gender difference in erotic fantasies of sex with breasts (f33% to m51%) and sex with feet (f8% to m16%). Oddly, this suggests both men and women fantasize about foot sex more than they fantasize about feet (f6% vs. m9%), though perhaps a power exchange dynamic contributes to that difference. We are not, however, concerned about overreporting foot-related arousals, as our study shows foot kinks at a slightly lower rate than other studies. This is a good sign for our data, as one of our biggest concerns was that it would overrepresent unusual kinks given that all the participants had to opt into a survey about sex. Much to our delight, the results we got consistently report unusual arousal patterns at around the same rate of other studies, suggesting our fear was not manifested.

Gird your loins, ladies and gentlemen, as we are arriving at the sounding diorama. Sounding entails putting something, usually a metal rod, into a urethra. Both men and women fantasize about sounding at far higher rates than we anticipated, f4% vs. m3%. You may not think those numbers sound high, but to put them in context 0.7% of Americans are Buddhist, which thereby implies that there are 500% more Americans who get turned on by sounding than there are Buddhist Americans. For every one American Buddhist you have met, you have probably met five people secretly into sounding.

Plump Proclivities

Those of you inclined to rotundities and sitting in our ample, double-wide seats might be wondering how weight played out in our findings.

Let’s start with a shocker: Men include overweight women in their erotic fantasies at a rate of 21% contrasted with only 2% of women who include overweight men in their fantasies.

In for another plump surprise? Men also fantasize about overweight women at much higher rates than they fantasize about underweight women (21% to 14%), as do women (13% to 5%).

Simply put, men prefer overweight women to underweight women; however, women also prefer curvy women to underweight ladies (just less than men do)—and almost nobody desires overweight men in their fantasies.

Random Kinks

Time to pull up your splash guards. Both our male and female survey respondents reported fantasizing about Bukkake (a person being covered in more male ejaculate than any one male could reasonably produce) at higher rates than we anticipated (f13% to m18%). To put that in context for you, 12.1% of Americans are non-Hispanic blacks, and multi-racial blacks make up 14% of the US population—the percent of the US population that finds Bukkake arousing is higher than the percent of the population that is black. If you talk to a random American, the probability that they watch and are aroused by bukkake is higher than the probability that they are black.

Almost none of our study participants found popping to be arousing (that is, popping things like balloons or pimples—f1% m0%) or scat (feces—f2% m2%), but despite Number Two falling out of vogue, our study participants expressed an unexpected amount of enthusiasm for urine (f8% m10%). We find this fascinating. What makes urine more than 400% more likely to cause arousal in someone than feces? We genuinely have no good theories on this one.

What our passengers might find shocking is our findings may represent a tamer population—at least vis-à-vis other studies. Researchers who have focused specifically on more rare kinks have found that men experience higher rates of arousal tied to scat and urine than women. When crafting theories on human sexual development, we give these studies—which were run by true professionals still practicing in their fields—more credence than our own survey. Again, this survey is just a broad charcoal rubbing of all human sexuality, not a microscopic analysis of it.

Non-Human Participants

We can see some of you in the back are quite excited about the spooky nature of some of these dioramas as we enter a mythical forest-themed stretch of our Hall of Arousing Art. Yes, yes, we’ve entered vampire, werewolf, and magical beast territory. Please stay in your seats and behave; your driver has a whip and knows how to use it.

In line with previous research on the subject of arousal and supernatural beings/acts, our data shows women develop an arousal tied to transformation and things that transform—as well as things that are violent or otherwise a threat to their safety—at much higher rates than men. Specifically: Transformation (f16% m5%), vampires (f21% m7%), werewolves (f14% m2%), and aliens (f13% m8%).

Gentlemen, please wipe those holier-than-thou smirks off your faces. If we look at any mythical humanoid not known for transforming and/or violently ripping apart and consuming humans, the rates or inclusion in erotic fantasies are equal across genders—or lean male. Specifically consider: androids (f7% m8%), dwarves (the fictional race—f2% m8%), giants (the fictional race—f8% m7%), half-human-half-animal beings (nagas, centaurs, etc.—f7% m4%), goo people (f2% m4%), people made out of food (f0% m0%), and furries (anthropometric animals—e.g., a girl with cat ears and a tail—f5% m5%).

Now, Simone over here thinks Malcolm is reaching too far in his categorization of aliens as violent and giants and androids as nonviolent—surely Malcolm has seen countless recent movie scenes with violent giants and androids, right? Malcolm, however, maintains his stance, insisting that the data clearly shows vampires, werewolves, and aliens have something in common that is not shared by androids, dwarfs, giants, goo people, half-humans-half-animal beings, furries, or people made out of food. He posits that this former group is seen as more inherently violent because that would make our data align with other research—but concedes that it could also be that its members are associated more with transformation (which women also find disproportionately arousing). These groupings may also just present a mere coincidence created by a few popular romance novels.

Perhaps some of you on the tram have better ideas. By all means, enlighten us (but seriously, send your theories and ideas to Hello@Pragmatist.Guide; we are all ears).

The supernatural race we find surprisingly rare among our dioramas of mythological and part-human beings is furries (anthropomorphic animals). Among our respondents at least, furries were less popular than other mythical humanoids. This is bizarre, considering the massive grasp furries have on popular culture, with movies such as Zootopia even going so far as to specifically advertise to the furry community. In our data, it is less common to fantasize about furries than it is to fantasize about aliens, androids, dwarves, and giants.

On the other hand, let’s not reach too far here and keep these numbers in context: 5.5% of Americans are Asian Americans, so the number of people who consumer erotic material tied to furries in America is about as large as the entire Asian American population. If you meet a random American, our survey suggests they are just as likely to consume furry porn as they are to be an Asian American. (Just a reminder: when we compare a community like Asian Americans to a kink, we are choosing the community based on its percentage of the population for visualization purposes, NOT because the kink appeared disproportionately within said community.)

Before we depart from this mystical forest, we beseech you to marvel at the fact that that transformation, which features in 16% of the erotic materials consumed by our female survey respondents, and 5% of that consumed by our male respondents, is surprisingly common in both females and males. This is just the sort of delicious phenomenon that gets us interested enough in human sexuality—as biologically repulsive as it tragically is—to write this book.

Being aroused by transformation has no obvious social benefit specifically to women, fails to break any social taboos (or at least not as much as other less common and less gendered kinks), and does not seem obviously tied to reproduction (maybe you could argue pregnancy is seen as transformation and that would also explain why it is gendered . . . but we think that’s a bit of a reach). So why on earth is transformation arousing people and why is it arousing mostly women?

We explore this idiosyncrasy in the “Emotional States and Concepts / Dominance and Submission” subchapter on page 112. For now, let us forge onward into the strange and ephemeral territory of human cognition and explore more categories of people with whom we are not supposed to have sex.

Forbidden Sexual Partners

Both men and women taking our survey reportedly fantasize about biological relative incest (f11% m14%) and step relative incest (f20% m27%) at about the same rate, with both being slightly more popular sexual themes among males. This is higher than we anticipated, but not totally shocking. Dangerously large sexual organs are also popular, but not jarringly so. Our female survey respondents reported a higher preference for giant penises than their male counterparts did (f7% m4%), while our male survey takers reported a much higher preference for giant breasts (f4% to m17%). (We break out these stats with more nuance in the “Songbirds and Boobies” chapter on page 41 and dig into some theory on why this arousal pattern appears at the rates it does.)

We see some of you eyeing our pop culture-inspired dioramas with discomfort. We understand there have been many complaints in the media about mouth-breathing male neckbeards online sexualizing children’s cartoon characters, but our data indicates this stereotype may be misplaced. Both men and women in our study reported sexualizing characters from child-targeted pop culture at around the same rates (f8% to m9%), with males only being more likely to fantasize about fictional characters when they are targeted at adults (and even then the gender difference is slight: 11% versus 16%).

To put it simply, the pathways that cause us to become aroused by characters from fiction to whom we feel an emotional attachment seem to activate equally in both men and women. This lends evidence to the idea that the neurological pathway that causes some people to eroticize children’s cartoons is likely a malfunctioning version of the same neurological pathway that leads people to become more aroused by individuals to whom they feel emotionally close, as that pathway also lacks a gendered preference (more on this in the subchapter:“Emotional Connections to People” on page 112, in which we dig into why the things that turn people on turn them on).

BDSM Scenes

Heads up, folks—we are finally entering BDSM territory. If you would like to augment your fetching leather shoulder restraints, feel free to reach up and pull down the leather masks that have just popped down from your overhead compartment.

BDSM covers bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism. Think: Classic, kinky sex that features power exchanges, a myriad of rituals, a broad diversity of uniforms, and oodles of toys. Note: This section only looks at BDSM as consumed in erotic materials; we’ll revisit BDSM from the perspective of acts people regularly practice further along in our tour.

Both hefty proportions of men and women consume BDSM-themed erotic material (f29% m37%). Essentially one in three Americans consumes BDSM-themed erotic material. To put it another way, it is a bit of a stretch to call someone who is into BDSM “kinky” if by “kinky” you mean: Far out of the norm. Heck, consumption of BDSM-related erotic material is about as common as interracial erotic material (f35% m36%). So BDSM is about as “kinky” as interracial porn if kinkiness is based on how out-of-the-norm a thing is.

Two themes you will see in the data that we will flag upfront is both men and women are much more likely to be aroused by dominance and submission in erotic material when it is voluntary and men are slightly more likely than women to be aroused by dominance and/or submission.

In general, our data suggests that males get turned on more by male submission in their erotic fantasies than females do (forced male submission f9% and m14% versus voluntary male submission f16% and m20%). That said, while those who do get turned on by male submission in their erotic material skew male, both males and females are vastly more likely to consume and be aroused by erotic material in which the male is dominant (forced male dominance f16% and m19% vs. voluntary male dominance f46% and m40%).

Both females and males taking our survey reported female submission to be far more arousing than male submission, be it forced (f17% m19%) or voluntary (f32% m40%). Male survey respondents reported fantasizing about dominant females more than their female peers—both voluntary (f17% m28%) and forced (f8% m15%).

Alas, we are not presently touring through virgin terrain—virgin terrain . . . get it? Everything we find here is consistent with other studies on the subject of dominance and submission. In general, both men and women prefer to fantasize about female submission and male dominance, however, the significant minority of men who fantasize about submissive males and dominant females dwarfs the number of females who find the idea of submissive males and dominant females arousing.

No need for your eyes to linger too long on that flock of kneeling submissives in the diorama at left—take a look over here at this display of sadomasochism, which 18% of both our male and female respondents find arousing and consume in erotic material. Interest in sadomasochism does not seem to be gendered, even when you consider psychological sadomasochism, which involves, for instance, an individual being forced to do something “evil” against their will (if you were wondering, psychological sadomasochism is found arousing by our survey population at a rate of 11% among both men and women).

Our data even shows this gender equality covers various “directions” of violence: Male-on-female violence (f9% m7%), female-on-female violence (f5% m5%), female-on-male violence (f6% m6%), and male-on-male violence (m3% f1%). In this case, our data does not correlate with the findings of other studies on the subject. Other research we have reviewed suggests that women get much more turned on by male-on-female violence, whereas our data suggests women are only just slightly more turned on by it. At first, we assumed this was just a data dredging issue that we were going to see whenever we attempted to parse out gender-based preference for fairly rare kinks, but in this case, the consistency of the non-gendered pattern of arousal from violence is intriguing in that it could indicate something about the underlying neurological mechanisms that lead violence to be arousing to some individuals. It is fascinating that both females and males are far more likely to be aroused by violence when a female is in some way involved (neither males nor females are turned on much by male-on-male violence) and that both females and males find male-on-female violence arousing at higher rates than any other category of violence directionality.

This is the type of stuff we love to dig into. Why would someone get turned on by violence? In most cases, violence will not aid reproduction or keep offspring alive and the most arousing violence pattern, male on female, is the most demonized in our society (think the societal cliché of spousal abuse) while the least arousing violent configuration, male on male, is glorified (think boxing). We just adore digging into these types of questions and have a lot of fun with them in our chapter on “The Impact of Gender Differences on Human Sexuality” on 186, but for now, back to the tour.

Baby Making

Speaking of fairly rare kinks and equal interest from men and women alike: Both men and women fantasize about someone getting pregnant at the same rate: 10%. You may be a little surprised at this low percentage given that that, well, REPRODUCTION IS THE ENTIRE BIOLOGICAL PURPOSE OF SEX. Oddly, more people are turned on by seeing a woman cry (f14% m13%) than impregnation. That’s friggin’ insane!

Were Simone to guess why impregnation fantasies are so relatively unpopular when contrasted against the evolutionary motivation behind them, she would posit that this lackluster interest reflects a systematic campaign waged from childhood in Western culture. A broad range of educational programs seems hell-bent on convincing people that babies equate the end of freedom, fun, and financial stability. Obviously, such campaigns were created with good intentions, to scare people out of teen pregnancy, but their wider effect is the societal consensus that fun stops when kids start. These campaigns may be inadvertently contributing to a disastrous slew of consequences, including the current demographic collapse—but that is a subject for a different book.

Malcolm disagrees with Simone on this one. He points to evidence (covered earlier in this book) suggesting that socialization of arousal patterns is fairly rare in humans. Malcolm instead posits that we may be thinking about arousal incorrectly in this instance. Arousal is just one brain reward mechanism associated with all sorts of stimuli evolution wanted to reward. We only associate arousal more closely with reproduction than happiness or fulfillment because arousal is the emotional reward mechanism most closely tied to the actual act of sex. This creates the illusion in our mental heuristics that arousal is the “baby making” reward mechanism.

Happiness, sadness, and all other emotional outputs share responsibility in guiding our reactions to stimuli in a manner that boosts our odds of having as many surviving offspring as possible. Arousal is but one of many tools in a diverse toolkit evolution leverages to achieve this task. The outputs of fulfilment and love are the two more frequently used reward mechanisms to encourage impregnation. It would make sense for evolution to more heavily leverage love and fulfillment to motivate baby making (over arousal), as they encourage longer-term behavior patterns whereas arousal appears to be better at guiding short-term behavior patterns (and specifically behavior patterns that encourage an individual to do something one would otherwise find off-putting—like putting slime-generating Dongle A into slime-generating Port B).

From Housewives to Crying

Now that your guides are done bickering, enjoy the soothing breeze while we speed up to quickly pass by a few of these remaining dioramas. Our data on the character types included in the erotic fantasies is sadly not that interesting; however, a few points do stand out: Both the men and women we polled reported consuming fantasies featuring slutty[[65]](#_ftn65) participants (“slutty” being defined in our study as someone whose portrayal is aggressively promiscuous) at higher rates than any other trope (f31% m50%). So, to our scantily clad guest suggestively rubbing her breasts in the center row: You just keep doing you. Also interesting: Neither men nor women reported many fantasies involving muscular individuals of their own gender (f1% m7%), and about half of males reported fantasizing about a housewife.

Over here we have a fun finding that strongly aligns with the research already out there: Both men and women who took our study reported consuming a non-trivial amount of erotic material that features females crying (f14% m13%), though neither males nor females reported consuming much material featuring crying men (f4% m1%). Also, while cutting and piercing is a rare kink, females find it arousing at four times the rate of men, f4% m1%. This aligns with other research, which generally shows women to be more aroused by bodily harm than men.

At this point, it should be clear to our passengers that common narratives framing chauvinistic, self-centered men as the sole drivers in markets for erotic material featuring females suffering (or otherwise being degraded) are off base. In the subchapter “Inconvenient Things that Arouse Females”on page 186, we break this stuff down in more detail, because, boy howdy, it sure is fun to see societal narratives challenged by data!

Speaking of common misconceptions, you are probably beginning to notice that narratives suggesting that mostly women drive demand for powerful female subjects in erotic material are inaccurate. There is definitely a demand for powerful women in erotic material—however it is coming predominantly from men. Finally, the narrative that most people are sexually “vanilla” and only a small handful of perverts consume all the weird porn and “out there” romance novels is complete bunk. If you are not even sometimes aroused by weird and disturbing things, you are in the vast minority.

Grab Bag of Kinks

Alright folks, enough pontificating. If you thought those mythical dioramas were a thrill, you’ll adore what’s coming up next: We’re entering some pretty trippy country. Here we are going to explore some wackier sources of arousal, but before we do, let’s pull some statistical yardsticks to help you more easily contextualize how many people we are talking about when we say something like: “3% of Americans.”

Religious populations in the US:

Ethnicities in the US:

States:

Now that we have our mental yardsticks at the ready, let’s get moving again!

We can see some of you are looking a little alarmed at the scenes we are passing by at present, so we’ll drive through the menagerie of weirdness quickly:

Should I Be Scared?

Given some of your horrified expressions, we can tell that we are going to have to take a quick aside here, so you don’t walk away at this point thinking that a sizable chunk of the population is comprised of psycho killers. Despite what urban myths and film plots would have you believe, a piece by Geoffrey O’Brien persuasively argues that commercially distributed snuff is a myth that has been created intentionally by a few films that pretended to be real snuff films as a promotional tactic—specifically the 1976 film Snuff and the 1980s film Cannibal Holocaust.

We are inclined to agree with Mr. O’Brien. There is not and never has been a snuff equivalent to the commercial pedophile industry. In fact, most film clips of real human deaths that are intentionally watched by people are consumed recreationally for their shock value and not to feed some particular form of sexual arousal. This can be seen from interviews of some of the quarter million r/WatchPeopleDie subscribers (a subcommunity of Reddit.com dedicated to videos of real people actually dying). Instead of watching actual humans die, most people who glean arousal from the concept of death appear to receive arousal from three other sources: The first and the most common is from narrative-style pornography (vampire romance novels and the like), the second and also somewhat common is cartoon-drawn pornography, and the third—the most shocking and thankfully rarest—is “crush” pornography.

We like to try to stay open minded, but crush pornography is easily the most messed up thing we have encountered while writing this book. Crush porn involves sexualized women and men stepping on small living animals (like a puppy or a kitten) and slowly crushing them. These videos are clearly created specifically to elicit an arousal response, given the fact that they often use high heels and other sexualized paraphernalia. That said, we need to come back and highlight that most of the people deriving arousal from the concept of death are doing so from cartoons and fictional stories, which is no more morally questionable than deriving any other source of pleasure from watching fictionalized violence and death (e.g., laughing when Tom tortures Jerry or getting excited when an action hero “heroically” guns down a village with automatic firearms in both hands).

In fact, this is a point to dwell on as a reader: More extreme-sounding arousal pathways like snuff, gore, guro, vore, necrophilia, etc., are almost never engaged in through the actual act, but instead through things like novellas, cartoons, and innocuous roleplay. In the case of necrophilia, a common practice involves one consenting partner “playing dead,” artificially lowering their body temperature through ice or something, then lying motionless during intercourse. In the case of vore, in which arousal is gleaned from the idea of eating someone, being eaten, or seeing a person eaten, a person may climb inside an inflatable orca pool toy filled with goo and masturbate (there is a store in Japan called VoreCafe where you can pay for this unique experience).

Therefore, when you hear about someone being aroused by things like gore, vore, necrophilia, snuff, and other disturbing concepts, imagine embarrassing roleplay (no more extreme than the stuff you probably tried in your teens), cartoons (no more gory than a blockbuster movie), and cringy fanfiction (a la 50 Shades of Gray—yes, as we will keep reminding readers, 50 Shades of Gray, one of the bestselling books in history, was originally written as an erotic Twilight fanfiction.)

It is not at all unusual to feel a positive emotional sensation when thinking about someone suffering. When we read articles about people who create videos in which they step on puppies for sexual satisfaction and we see their smug faces, we imagine how good it would feel to choke the life from them. While it may not be a sexual impulse to desire such action, it is a positive emotional impulse being generated from the thought of inflicting severe suffering on another person. While we may feel this impulse, we don’t go out and act on it. Why? Because we’re not crazy.

We imagine almost everyone reading this book at some point in their life has enjoyed a pleasant fantasy involving the suffering of another person. But like us, we are also willing to bet you haven’t acted on it . . . because you aren’t crazy. You don’t just go out and act on every imagined scenario that makes you feel a positive emotion. The same is true for almost everyone who is aroused by these types of things. You don’t need to worry about a person just because the idea of hurting someone creates a positive emotional impulse in their mind. This is something almost all humans deal with successfully—just not in the form of arousal. What you do need to worry about are those who can’t say, “I am not going to inflict suffering on someone just because it will make me feel satisfied” (the crazy people).

This kind of comparison may also help you understand why individuals who are turned on by the concept of death don’t watch real snuff videos depicting people actually dying and instead focus on cartoons and fanfiction. As much as we feel an impulse to hurt puppy crushers, we would feel horrible actually doing so in the real world. We would feel horrible even watching a video of a puppy-stomping human being severely injured. The concept of people suffering for their actions is what is generating the positive emotions in us—actually watching it happen to a real person would be horrifying.

So, while we can’t empathize with what it feels like to be aroused by severe harm coming to a person, we can understand what it feels like to get a positive emotion from such a concept. Through that, we can understand how a concept can create a strong positive emotional impulse in someone’s brain without that person feeling a drive to recreate that concept in real life. Hopefully trying a similar thought experiment yourself will help you understand how an individual could be simultaneously aroused by the concept of someone dying and repulsed by the idea of watching a real person die.

Interpersonal Dynamics

You will notice a fascinating contrast between rates of the less common, “classic kink” stuff above with the rate of arousal patterns tied to social interactions between people. People appear to be far more likely to have an arousal reaction in response to social dynamics than something like tentacles.

Non-trivial proportions of our study respondents reported finding more socially driven dynamics arousing, such as:

These numbers are insanely high when put in the context of the portion of the population they represent. As we’ve discussed in the main body of this book, it seems as though the part of our brain that yields arousal tied to sex is intertwined with parts of our brains that process certain types of social interactions or the brain is using concepts as proxies for dominance rituals which in turn were motivated by a mating display system. This, in turn, causes some to feel arousal in response to certain social interactions.

We also see surprisingly high rates of consumption of erotic material focused around what people are wearing, specifically uniforms (f14% m17%) and latex or PVC (f7% m13%).

Japanese Imports

Ah—observe: Another exhibit imported from Japan. Futa, short for futanari, is a type of pornography with Japanese origins featuring individuals who have female figures and breasts—but also a penis. Our data shows drawn futa arouses 7% and 8% of our male and female study populations respectively (live action titillating each gender at a smaller rate of 5% each). Note: Here we need to be super clear that, while sometimes a transitioning individual will act in porn marketed in the futanari genre (as they may have both a penis and breasts), those who consume futanari porn do not have a high overlap with those who consume trans porn.

Futa shares much in common with tentacle porn and furry porn. All three genres boast vast treasure troves of online content, are heavily influenced by Japanese porn culture, have a lot of crossover in their consumers, appear at around the ~6% level, and are fairly gender neutral in who consumes them—despite societal stereotypes. To put them in context: The percent of Americans that enjoy tentacle porn, futa, and/or furry porn and regularly consume them each (individually) is roughly equal in size to the population of the smallest 15 US states combined (approximately 6%).

Let’s spice up this tour with a brief history lesson: Why does tentacle porn come from Japan? Erotic art involving tentacles can be seen historically in Japan in works like the 1814 famous print, The Fishman’s Wife, which depicts a scene from the legend of Tamatori in which the wife of a fisherman is having a consensual sexual interaction with octopus minions of the Dragon King. Though now seen as classically Japanese, such erotic art was not wholly unique to Japanese culture. It became disproportionately popular in Japan due to censorship of genitals starting as far back as the Meiji period. Depiction of tentacles—instead of genitals—presented a convenient loophole and enabled erotic artists to circumvent censorship rules. Finally, manga (Japanese comics) was already common in Japan when contrasted with other narrative industries due to a complex set of cultural circumstances, meaning drawn porn was already more likely to exist. Given these factors, kinks that lean on physically impossible things that can only be depicted in a drawn medium will often appear in Japan before other countries.

We hope our riders are enjoying themselves as we pull up to this diorama featuring a busty lady with a skinned head and maggots coming out of her eyes delicately holding an exquisitely folded origami swan—made, of course, from her own scalp. She is our liaison from the Guro porn community, which is reportedly enjoyed by 2% of our female study population and 3% of the gentlemen.

Guro has its roots in a 1930s artistic movement in Japan that has blossomed into what can only be described as the most “hardcore” form of wacky, extreme pornography. Imagine the “nightmare fuel” of porn, things that would turn on people if breaking social norms and taboos was actually as arousing as it is portrayed to be in pop culture (breaking social taboos does not actually arouse a large portion of the population, as we discussed in the subchapter: “Social Taboos and Rule Breaking” on page 183).

Seriously though, unless you suspect it might be your thing, don’t look up Guro porn—and especially don’t do it while considering that there are about as many Americans who consume and enjoy this type of pornography as there are residents of New York City (2.6% of the population).

This fantastical and bizarre erotic expression appears (at least in our data) to be more arousing than more traditional gore, which was of interest to none of our female survey respondents and only 2% of our male population. Gore is similar to Guro, but it takes a somewhat toned down, less fantastical approach to extreme violence. Also, unlike Guro, which is very much a Japanese cultural import, Gore developed independently as a genre and is less attributable to any single point of regional origin. To be more specific on the difference between these categories:

Arousing Practices

For those of you feeling a little gross after all the dismembered and rotting corpses in the latest two dioramas we passed, remember that feeling dirty is arousing to a fairly large part of the population (f10% m11%). If you’re ready for us to turn things down about a hundred notches, consider that rope bondage is a shockingly common wellspring of arousal, with 23% of our male and female survey populations alike reporting consumption of erotic material focused on it. Look to your left; now look to your right. If there were passengers on both sides of you, there is a 41% chance that one of them is into rope bondage.

Ma’am—ma’am—why are you exiting the vehicle? Oh my . . . well ladies and gentlemen, she appears to have taken a b-line for the very muscular and tall janitor attending to the rope bondage diorama. Look at ‘em go. Given the fact that her husband here seems to be . . . oddly OK with the situation, we figure now is a great time to discuss our study’s findings on cuckolding—and those who feel aroused by a partner having sex with someone else.

Cuckolding is a super common kink contrasted with the genetic pressures against it. A robust 11% and 17% of our female and male respondents respectively find it arousing. What is weirder is that arousal in response to cuckolding skews male instead of female, despite males having the most to lose from the act from a genetic perspective (cuckolding likely skews male because it is the product of an inverse pathway, and inverse pathways skew male—see the “Emotional Connections to People” subchapter starting on page 133 for a more detailed discussion of cuckolding). While cuckolding is a predominantly male fantasy, females actually slightly outrank males in regard to fantasies focused around the infidelity of a married individual (f21% m19%).

Before you start wondering how many of your peers actually engage in this practice, bear in mind that the number of individuals who actually take part in cuckolding (f4% and m1%) is far lower than the number reportedly aroused by it (f11% m17%). Cuckolding is one of those topics that is super interesting to us, as it belies a surface level understanding of arousal patterns (that arousal patterns are meant to maximize the number of kids you have) and thus is a concept we frequently revisit.

Seeing how many of you (and not just this lady’s husband) appear to enjoy this little scene, it might not surprise you in the least that voyeurism presented broad-based appeal among study respondents, arousing 23% and 35% of our male and female respondents respectively.

While we’re on the subject of voyeurism, note that while more of our male study participants have participated in watching someone else have sex in person (f11% to m16%), women have participated in being watched at about the same rate as men (f18% to m17%). We suppose this makes sense, as we presume the most common dynamic here is a heterosexual couple being watched by a male.

Trans Erotic Art

Now for a stop on our tour that is too culturally sensitive to quip about: Our data indicate porn in which an individual is explicitly trans enjoys fairly high consumption rates (f10% m9%). To put that in context, studies indicate that trans individuals may make up between 0.6% and 6.8% of the US population.

Like almost all expressions of an LGBT identity, the population that sexualizes trans people far outnumbers the population that identifies with that expression. You see the same thing with both gay male porn and lesbian porn: The population that likes watching gays in porn is also much larger than the gay population—but more on that shortly.

Roleplay & Fantasy Scenarios

As we roll past the roleplay-themed dioramas, a quick shout out to all the passengers roleplaying as parents on board—you’re the real stars, here. People seem to like roleplay fantasies starring opposite-gender parents. Men prefer mother roleplay (f4% m15%), women prefer father roleplay (f8% m7%), and a decent proportion of the population we polled (f7% m6%) actually carries out child-parent roleplay fantasies regularly during sex.[[66]](#_ftn66)

You might be thinking those roleplay numbers for father roleplay look pretty gender neutral, but we can modulate that by pointing out that across the board, men like family themed roleplay much more than their female counterparts. For example, 17% of men taking our survey reported being aroused by sibling roleplay, whereas the theme reportedly interests a mere 5% of our female respondents. When that is considered, females are unusually turned on by father-daughter roleplay.

Let’s enter the realm of rule 63. Rule 63 is one of the great rules of online culture that claims everyone has an opposite-gendered counterpart in the world of eroticism. In the real world, 6% and 3% of our female and male study population fantasize about themselves as another gender for the purposes of arousal. (We should clarify that an individual doing this is not necessarily trans or gender fluid, though doing this does not exclude an individual from being trans or gender fluid.)

Why, ladies and gentlemen, do you think females fantasize about opposite-gender versions of themselves more than men? From what we gathered in our data, it appears to be that females in general fantasize about things that require imagination to conjure more than males do. For example, a respectable 39% of our female study respondents reported fantasizing about themselves, whereas only 23% of our male respondents reported doing the same. Honestly, it surprises us this isn’t more common: 61% and 77% of our female and male study respondents respectively do not choose to star in their own sexual fantasies.

As we are on the incessantly charming subject of ourselves, you may also be interested to learn that 27% and 14% of our female and male subjects respectively reported indulging in thoughts of being sexually irresistible and f18% and m15% reported dabbling in thoughts of being sexually desirable to a large number of strangers. It is likely these two fantasies that lead some to post sexually explicit photos of themselves online—a practice that can appear confusing to those who lack this arousal impulse.

The Wonderland of Sex: An Exploration of Sexuality in Practice

Beep beep, perverts: Listen up. We are about to depart from our theoretically focused Hall of Erotic Material and enter into our practically focused, live-action Wonderland of Sex. During this mostly outdoors portion of our tour, you will be occasionally invited to exit the vehicle and walk around; however, be sure to only do so at our instruction, for this is a world of real people and real actions.

In addition to asking our study participants to tell us about their turn ons and the arousing material they consume, we asked them which sex acts they had actually, personally tried more than once. The idea was that someone would probably need to like something a least a little to have done it multiple times, and by getting data on such activities, we can better understand human sexuality beyond the bounds of erotic material consumption.

BDSM Land

We have a lot of ground to cover and are starting out in a splendidly colorful and popular place: BDSM Land.

| | F | M | | --- | --- | --- | | BDSM as the sub | 27% | 11% | | BDSM as the dom | 11% | 19% | | Caregiver and Little as Little includes Daddy Dom / Little Girl | 7% | 1% | | Caregiver and Little as Caregiver includes Daddy Dom / Little Girl | 3% | 5% | | BDSM as “service sub” | 10% | 2% | | BDSM as dom to “service sub” | 2% | 4% | | BDSM as a “brat” | 9% | 1% | | BDSM as a dom to a “brat” | 3% | 2% | | BDSM as a “primal” sub | 3% | 0% | | BDSM as a “primal” dom | 2% | 1% | | Petplay/ponyplay I have acted like an animal | 3% | 0% | | Petplay/ponyplay I have acted like the owner/trainer/handler of my partner | 2% | 2% | | Rope bondage as rope bottom | 10% | 3% | | Rope bondage as rigger top | 7% | 15% | | Impact play as the bottom being hit by a partner | 15% | 6% | | Impact play as the top physically hitting a partner | 4% | 11% | | Sadomasochism as the masochist | 7% | 7% | | Sadomasochism as the sadist | 2% | 6% | | BDSM involving no overtly sexual interaction | 3% | 7% | | Knifeplay | 5% | 2% | | Cutting or piercing | 3% | 2% | | Bloodplay | 3% | 0% | | Edgeplay | 7% | 4% | | Sexual roleplay pretending to be something you are not during sex | 25% | 33% | | Roleplaying as another gender during sex | 5% | 2% | | Cross-dressing not as part of sex | 1% | 3% | | Cross-dressing as part of sex | 3% | 2% | | Watching someone else have sex in person | 11% | 16% | | Being watched having sex in person | 18% | 17% | | Cuckolding as the cuckold cuckqueen | 4% | 1% | | Cuckolding as the hotwife hothusband | 3% | 0% | | Cuckolding as the bull cuckcake | 0% | 1% | | Biting | 29% | 22% | | Being bitten | 25% | 29% | | Scratching | 26% | 11% | | Being scratched | 19% | 24% | | Pegging | 7% | 4% | | Anal receiving | 42% | 5% | | Anal giving | 10% | 46% |

The first thing you might notice in BDSM Land is (1) its sizable population and (2) some clear gendered preferences exist within it. Our stats suggest that women prefer to participate as the sub at more than double the rate of men (f27% m11%), and males prefer to be the dom at almost double the rate of females (f11% m19%). Keep in mind that as of this book’s creation, 5.6% of Americans are Asian Americans, so a random American is about twice as likely to participate in BDSM as they are to be an Asian American.

BDSM Land’s Vibrant and Diverse Neighborhoods

Observe the colorful and varied neighborhoods and enclaves as we drive through this populous land—there are many popular dynamics people incorporate into BDSM play. Please take a bingo sheet and pass it on: As we make a broad circuit through the heart of BDSM Land, see if you can spot any the following dynamics at play:

If we look at the stats associated with subcategories of BDSM, we observe a trend in which almost all submissive participants lean female. While dominant participants lean male, there is still a fairly equal gender split among doms. This gets interesting considering that men are much more likely to be BDSM doms when practicing generic BDSM, whereas men and women are equally likely to play the dom when practicing “subgenres” of BDSM.

Why might this be happening? No spoilers!

The increase we observe in female sub participation in more obscure/specific BDSM subsets suggests that many of the couples in these “deep dive” BDSM communities are comprised of a female dom and female sub. This could make sense given that a significant factor differentiating these communities from mainstream BDSM is their additional narrative elements and the apparent female tendency to consume narrative-heavy erotic material (remember that giant library of romance novels and fanfiction we strolled through at the beginning of our tour?).

Hurtsville

Once BDSM comes to involve physical pain, these dynamics break down. In such instances, we see higher rates of men preferring to be the sub, creating gender equity in participation. With impact play, this is less pronounced, with f15% m16% reportedly practicing being hit by their partner during sex / erotic play and f4% m6% practicing hitting a partner during sexy times. The difference is more pronounced with sadomasochism in general, with 7% of both male and female respondents dabbling in masochism, whereas three times as many of our male respondents (6%) have experimented more than twice with sadism (versus 2% of female respondents).

These results challenge one of our own theories in which—at least until running this study—we had been very confident: That arousal through masochism leverages the neurological arousal pathways involved in submission. If this were the case, we would see a similar gender breakdown between the expression of masochism and submission. In other words, if submission and masochism are just two ways of igniting the same general neural pathway, it would be unlikely that one of the two interests would be disproportionately popular among women while the other wasn’t—unless there were some underlying societal drive pushing men to feel more comfortable with arousal coming from being hurt than arousal coming from being submissive. Perhaps stigma against being a submissive male is what accounts for this discrepancy and while this differentiation in arousal patterns does exist, males are embarrassed to indulge in it. Alas, ladies and gentlemen, we lack the funds at this time to properly test that theory.

By this point, you will have noticed that subs in BDSM Land outnumber doms at a rate of something like three to one. Intrepid guests, we are pleased to report that humans vastly prefer being submissive to being dominant. For those who embarked this tour in an effort to pick up some tips on securing sex more easily, you may benefit from leveraging the insatiable (and presently poorly met) market demand caused by the apparent dearth of doms: Getting sex if you become a high-quality dom is easier than securing it as a sub or neutral. Doms, on average, must have many more sexual partners than subs for these stats to be possible.

Danger Drive

As we turn down Danger Drive, you will notice an increasingly high density of female denizens. We’ve found that more violent forms of BDSM are preferred by women. In fact, the only BDSM subcategory we found to be preferred more by men involves BDSM without any sexual interaction at all (m7% f3%). Violent variations on BDSM preferred by women include knife play (f5% m2%—this is a form of BDSM that uses knives), cutting and piercing, bloodplay (f3% m0%—this is BDSM focused around drawing blood from a partner), and edgeplay (f7% m5%—this BDSM is considered risky by the mainstream BDSM community—typically because it is genuinely dangerous).

Why do we see this? We suspect for two reasons:

  1. A BDSM scene involving extreme violence is less likely to be focused on ending in an orgasm and thus would be less alluring to men given how they relate to sex.
  2. These findings line up with the existing research on sexuality, which indicates that females are far more likely to be sexually aroused by violence—and specifically violence against themselves or other women—when contrasted with males.

Our findings, however, deviate from the mainstream (women being more into violence) in a few areas. Specifically, they suggest that:

Why might interest in violence appear to be gender neutral in some scenarios, but much more arousing to women in others? We theorize there is a fairly simple explanation: That men and women are masochists at equal rates, but the impulse often burns “hotter” in women. The cases in which the gender breakdown is equal or leans male are “dilettante-ish” cases—like porn consumption or a participant expressing an interest in generic masochism. Sexually violent indulgences that demonstrate a more intense interest, such as activities like knife play or edgeplay (activities that may not necessarily be seen as safe, sane, and consensual), lean female. This theory would also explain other research showing the impulse to be heavily gendered (toward females), as said research is focused on things like: “Out of the total number of people who watched X video, how many were female?” and “How many Google searches for Y phrase were conducted by females?” Even if the arousal pathway manifests in equal rates among men and women, women would be more likely to go out of their way to search for violent erotic material, watch multiple videos, or conduct lots of searches on the topic if they felt the impulse more strongly.

It may also be that our survey population or study is just totally off. We do not know.

Character Court

As we pull onto Character Court, feel free to unbuckle your seatbelts, stand up, and reach for one of the many masks and costumes available in our overhead storage bins. It’s time to talk roleplay.

Roleplay (acting as someone/something you are not) turned out to be quite a common practice among our survey population. There are nearly as many US citizens who engage in roleplay as there are US citizens with pet cats (29%), as a robust f23% and m33% of our respondents have engaged in roleplay in a sexual context more than once.

Women prefer to roleplay as another gender at more than twice the rate as men (f5% m2%)—though our data also indicates that men prefer cross-dressing not as part of sex at three times the rate of females (m3% f1%). All that said, when sex is involved, the female preference remains (f3% m2%). This interesting flip of the data is actually in line with the existing research, which has consistently found gender display impulses that are not intrinsically tied to sex or arousal pathways to more commonly manifest among males.

Tooth & Nail Avenue

Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle as we make our way to the outer gates of BDSM Land; the denizens on this particular street bite. In terms of more generic sexual practices, biting is both very common and seems to be practiced by women at slightly higher rates than men, with biters trending female (f29% m22%) and bitten parties trending slightly male (f25% m29%). The same can be said of scratching, with females inflicting the majority of the damage. Specifically, 26% of our female respondents reported having scratched their partners during sex more than once (in contrast to 11% of male respondents) and 24% of our male population reported being scratched more than once during sex (in contrast to 19% of female respondents).

Mount Ass

You will be amused to see that we are exiting BDSM Land through Mount Ass. As we pass through its cavernous Anal Sphincter Tunnel, we find it appropriate to ask: Do we have any fans of anal on board? If so, you are in good company. A sizable 42% of women have repeatedly tried receiving anal and 46% of men have given anal more than once. Those numbers are way higher than we anticipated. We are fascinated by how well the results align with women and men who consume erotic materials in which anal is practiced (f40% m56%). As for the inverse: 10% of

women have given anal and 5% of men have received it (with 7% of female respondents and 4% of male respondents engaging in this activity through pegging, which involves a woman using a strap on to give anal).

Now let’s take a quick gander at the frequency of the supposed cornerstone emotions of romantic relationships: Love, jealousy, sex, and lust.

Crazy Country: The Land of Love, Jealousy, Sex, & Lust

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Crazy Country, a hazy wasteland over which colorful clouds of love, lust, and jealousy gently waft. Should you not want to be overcome by these emotions as we drive through these heady thunderheads, we recommend you grab one of the various gas masks available and ensure a proper seal. Move quickly, folks—this pink cloud up ahead represents love.

| Are you currently in love with someone? | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | Yes | 61% | 49% | | No | 31% | 43% | | Unsure | 7% | 7% |

Love: More Common Than You Would Think

What shocked us about these responses is just how common it is for an individual to report being in love. Our survey suggests that basically about half of men—and well over half of women—are in love at any given time. If this data is generalizable, love is not an unusual emotion; it is basically the norm of human existence.

Jealousy: Not Such a Big Deal

We decided to dig in on some other relationship-related emotions, so in addition to looking at arousal, we took a quick peek at jealousy patterns as well. Jealousy is not as common as vindictive country songs about jilted lovers might lead you to believe.

| Do you feel intense jealousy in relation to your sexual partners? | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | | 1 (Very Little Jealousy) | 26% | 39% | | | 2 (Little Jealousy) | 26% | 28% | | | 3 (Some Jealousy) | 23% | 19% | | | 4 (Quite Jealous) | 16% | 11% | | | 5 (Intense Jealousy) | 9% | 3% | |

While it appears that women are slightly more jealous than men, both men and women taking our survey reported relatively low levels of jealousy. This paints a rosy picture, no? Love abounds, and jealousy . . . well, it’s not that much of an issue.

At least you, dear guests, would likely see this picture as rosy. It should be clear by now that we see love as one of the most toxic of human emotions given the effects it has on one’s ability to make evidence-based decisions that benefit one’s long term goals and core values (we had quite a crisis when trying to decide whether or not to get married, fearing our decision might be being influenced by our “love” for each other). We frankly find this stretch of the tour deeply unsettling.

Sex & Lust: Overrated?

Sex and lust lie somewhere in the middle between love and jealousy—not terribly uncommon, but not as free flowing as some may believe.

| How frequently do you have sex? | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | Multiple times most days | 1% | 2% | | Around one time a day | 7% | 4% | | Around three times a week | 16% | 30% | | Around once a week | 27% | 15% | | Around twice a month | 11% | 7% | | A few times a year | 16% | 14% | | Almost never | 22% | 27% |

A hearty 38% of our female respondents and 39% of the gentlemen either almost never have sex or have sex just a few times a year. We do not find these percentages to be particularly surprising, but an utterly absent sex life doesn’t seem so depressing when one considers that about two out of every five people are in the same boat.

What about masturbation? Don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen, we asked.

| How frequently do you masturbate? | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | Multiple times most days | 1% | 2% | | Around one time a day | 10% | 24% | | Around three times a week | 16% | 44% | | Around once a week | 22% | 20% | | Around twice a month | 28% | 5% | | A few times a year | 9% | 2% | | Almost never | 14% | 3% |

The vast majority of men taking our survey—70%—reported masturbating more than three times a week, while the ladies’ reported masturbation frequency is all over the place, with 77% reportedly masturbating more than twice a month.

While this data is far from groundbreaking, it does dispel the myth—common among some sexually inexperienced individuals—that once someone is in love, they stop masturbating. Our data showed individuals who feel they are in love report masturbating at slightly lower rates, but they certainly don’t stop. This slowing makes sense as love decreases testosterone production in males, which lowers overall sex drive.

| Rank your libido from 1 to 5, with 1 indicating no interest in sex at all. | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | 1 (Very Low Libido) | 1% | 3% | | 2 (Low Libido) | 22% | 11% | | 3 (Average Libido) | 33% | 26% | | 4 (High Libido) | 30% | 30% | | 5 (Very High Libido) | 14% | 30% |

What about libido? Among our respondents, men on average self-assess themselves as having higher libidos than women (perhaps because for women, sex drive is more responsive and driven by contextual cues), but the difference in self-assessment is not as extreme as social tropes would lead you to believe.

| How do you feel about your sexuality? | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | 1 (Very conflicted) | 0% | 2% | | 2 (Uncertain) | 5% | 1% | | 3 (Still figuring some things out) | 3% | 2% | | 4 (Certain) | 32% | 21% | | 5 (Very certain) | 59% | 74% |

While our female respondents appear to feel slightly more conflicted in their sexuality than their male counterparts, both groups on the whole are fairly certain about their sexuality, with only 5% of men and 8% of women feeling as though there are still things for them to work out.

You will be relieved to know that we are now leaving this hazy tundra of data not explicitly tied to arousal and are returning to the Magical Forest of Turn Ons and Turn Offs.

The Magical Forest of Turn Ons and Turn Offs

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the wondrous territory of arousal spectra. Here we dig into things that cause an arousal response in some while inspiring a disgust/aversion response in others.

The following chart indicates the reaction a person most identifies with the following concepts, sex acts, smells, and images.

Note: These questions had clarifying text and full sentences associated with them that were removed in this presentation to make the chart easier to read.

| | Female | Male | | | | | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2% | | Partner acting masculine | 7% | 1% | 21% | 15% | 56% | 60% | 22% | 9% | 5% | 3% | | Partner acting feminine | 60% | 13% | 16% | 3% | 7% | 1% | 3% | 3% | 31% | 62% | | Partner being muscular | 7% | 3% | 25% | 31% | 34% | 38% | 36% | 12% | 13% | 2% | | The thought of roleplaying being raped | 56% | 11% | 11% | 8% | 14% | 67% | 12% | 8% | 5% | 7% | | The thought of actually being raped | 77% | 8% | 7% | 3% | 5% | 84% | 4% | 5% | 5% | 1% | | The thought of roleplaying raping someone else | 81% | 5% | 4% | 5% | 3% | 59% | 14% | 11% | 8% | 8% | | The thought of actually raping someone else | 93% | 1% | 2% | 1% | 2% | 83% | 4% | 5% | 4% | 3% | | The thought of being owned by someone | 53% | 11% | 9% | 19% | 9% | 72% | 12% | 6% | 7% | 3% | | The thought of owning someone | 70% | 12% | 5% | 7% | 5% | 59% | 11% | 15% | 6% | 9% | | Watching my partner have sex with someone else | 71% | 10% | 4% | 8% | 7% | 67% | 12% | 8% | 9% | 3% | | The idea of losing agency (e.g., being hypnotized, mind controlled, or otherwise mentally dominated) | 64% | 5% | 14% | 10% | 7% | 66% | 16% | 9% | 5% | 3% | | Pretending that my partner is related to me | 79% | 9% | 4% | 8% | 0% | 63% | 17% | 7% | 6% | 6% | | The thought of sex with an actual relative | 92% | 2% | 4% | 1% | 0% | 81% | 9% | 2% | 1% | 6% | | The smells associated with sex | 20% | 26% | 23% | 20% | 11% | 14% | 21% | 32% | 19% | 15% | | The naked male form | 5% | 5% | 13% | 32% | 45% | 59% | 24% | 7% | 4% | 6% | | The naked female form | 15% | 21% | 23% | 21% | 21% | 1% | 0% | 2% | 7% | 90% | | The sight of a penis | 5% | 7% | 12% | 27% | 48% | 66% | 16% | 2% | 8% | 7% | | The sight of a vagina | 31% | 21% | 16% | 14% | 19% | 1% | 3% | 6% | 20% | 70% | | The sight of breasts | 16% | 18% | 27% | 17% | 22% | 1% | 1% | 3% | 9% | 86% | | The pregnant female form | 56% | 23% | 17% | 4% | 0% | 46% | 27% | 18% | 7% | 2% | | The idea of pleasing someone else | 6% | 4% | 17% | 32% | 41% | 2% | 8% | 13% | 34% | 42% | | The idea of being useful to someone I admire | 9% | 11% | 27% | 33% | 20% | 5% | 19% | 32% | 29% | 15% | | Acting sexually dominant | 15% | 21% | 23% | 31% | 11% | 4% | 16% | 20% | 34% | 26% | | Acting sexually submissive | 9% | 13% | 14% | 26% | 38% | 25% | 24% | 13% | 26% | 12% | | Seeing partner act submissive in a sexual context | 26% | 21% | 26% | 15% | 12% | 5% | 3% | 22% | 42% | 28% | | Seeing partner act dominant in a sexual context | 5% | 10% | 11% | 22% | 53% | 12% | 23% | 16% | 30% | 19% | | Being bound or otherwise physically restrained | 30% | 12% | 13% | 25% | 20% | 44% | 22% | 11% | 15% | 8% | | Physically striking partner during sex | 66% | 13% | 12% | 5% | 3% | 59% | 17% | 10% | 5% | 8% | | Being physically struck by partner during sex | 54% | 9% | 11% | 14% | 12% | 58% | 15% | 10% | 13% | 4% | | Being choked during sex | 53% | 10% | 11% | 10% | 16% | 71% | 7% | 9% | 8% | 4% | | Choking someone during sex | 74% | 7% | 10% | 7% | 3% | 56% | 17% | 6% | 13% | 8% | | Being talked down to during sex | 58% | 12% | 9% | 11% | 10% | 58% | 18% | 8% | 8% | 7% | | Talking down to partner during sex | 69% | 18% | 5% | 7% | 1% | 49% | 18% | 15% | 12% | 6% |

We see the surprise on your faces that things that create an arousal response in one portion of the population caused a disgust/aversion response in another portion of the population for every single stimulus tested. Excellent reaction—this yields a perfect transition into one of our favorite takeaways from this data.

These responses provided us with evidence in favor of a theory of ours discussed in greater detail in the chapter: “Things that Cause Arousal” on page 68. Our theory is that the mental system triggering disgust/aversion is almost certainly running on the same basic “software” as the mental system triggering sexual arousal.

This theory suggests that complete explorations of human sexuality should feature sources of disgust in addition to sources of arousal—that understanding a person’s sexuality is as much about determining what disgusts them as it is about exploring what arouses them.

At any rate, let’s plunge deeper into this mysterious forest and explore the data. Don’t expect any immediate, sudden drops or jump scares as we make our way in: The first few test results are pretty predictable: Men prefer feminine women and women prefer masculine men . . . “Well, THANKS, Captain Obvious.” Right?

But look again—could the plot be thickening behind that thick clump of gnarled trees? The results might seem obvious first glance but are striking in their severity. Let’s look at a simple breakdown:

| Females | Partner Acting Feminine | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Partner acting Masculine | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | 2% | | | | 4% | | -1 | | | 1% | | | | 0 | 8% | 3% | 10% | | | | 1 | 7% | 3% | 2% | 2% | 1% | | 2 | 44% | 6% | 3% | 1% | 1% |

| Males | Partner Acting Feminine | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Partner acting Masculine | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | | | 1% | 13% | 47% | | -1 | | 1% | | 15% | 7% | | 0 | | 1% | 2% | 3% | 1% | | 1 | 1% | | | 1% | 3% | | 2 | | 1% | | | 2% |

It is remarkable just how much male and female sexuality mirror each other in their severe disgust reactions to gender displays associated with their own gender and strong arousal reactions to gender displays by the other gender. A hefty 47% of our male respondents rated femininity in a partner as arousing as possible and masculinity as aversive as possible; this is mirrored in responses from our female respondents, with 44% feeling the same way, but with gender expressions flipped.

It is also neat to see that a rare 1% of our male respondents (2% of our female respondents) report both femininity and masculinity to be turn offs. As for those who find both arousing: 6% and 5% of our male and female respondents respectively like it either way—again a near-perfect mirror between genders (this mirroring features frequently in our survey’s results, which has important implications in understanding the neurological pathways at play).

Rape

Again, we must step out of our “tour theming” to discuss a topic that is very sensitive, but which nevertheless represents an important aspect of human sexuality.

We asked about the following two concepts in a row, the second immediately after the first:

  1. The thought of roleplaying being raped
  2. The thought of actually being raped

These topics were presented one after another to make it clear to anyone taking the survey that yes, they had already answered the question about fantasy rape, and that is not what this second question was about. Furthermore, this juxtaposition enabled respondents to think very clearly about the relative allure of each scenario, enabling us to see if people clearly found one scenario more arousing (or aversive) than the other.

A whopping 8% of female respondents and 6% of male respondents reported the thought of actually being raped a turn on (roughly equivalent to the percentage of Americans that own a bird or reptile as a pet, 7%) while an equally breathtaking 22% and 12% of our female and male respondents respectively reported the thought of roleplaying being raped to be a turn on (around the same percentage of people in the US owns both a cat and a dog 17%).

One of the reasons we were so diligent to put these two questions right next to each other is we thought peer-reviewed research on this subject might be over-reporting the number of people who find the thought of actually being raped arousing, and we were excited to disprove those findings. Clearly, we failed on this front; our data is right in line with other studies on this unsetting phenomenon showing arousal from the thought of actually being raped is fairly common. To highlight just how prevalent this arousal pattern is, consider that the population of women in the US that gets turned on by the idea of actually being raped is roughly the size of the female population in the second most populous state, Texas.

Before we charge onward, allow us to emphasize that finding something arousing does not mean you want it to happen to you. A man can look at his friend’s wife and find her visually arousing while still thoroughly not wanting to have sex with her on account of ethics, potential consequences, likely psychological damage, and other complications. A commuter daydreaming on a subway train can look at a fellow train rider and think: “It would be arousing to rape them,” but also internalize that the subject of their fantasy is a real human with real feelings. Said daydreamer doesn’t need to act on literally everything they find arousing.

In addition, it is possible to find the idea of being raped arousing, but to also be fully aware that the arousing experience isn’t even close to the price paid in psychological damage, risk of STDs, PTSD, etc. Keep in mind 3% and 4% of our female and male respondents respectively reported the act of watching a human die to be arousing—and yet we don’t see streets strewn with bodies.

We asked a similar set of questions about raping someone else. Again, these questions were asked in a manner that minimized potential confusion. In our survey, 3% of female respondents and 7% of male respondents reported to find the thought of raping someone arousing, and 8% of the women taking our survey and 16% of their male counterparts claimed to find the thought of roleplaying raping someone arousing. To put this in perspective: There are more men who find the thought of actually raping someone arousing than there are male residents in the nation’s third most populous state, Florida.

While the proportion of male respondents aroused by raping someone else and being raped themselves is approximately equal, the proportion of female respondents aroused by the idea of being raped is well over double the number who are aroused by the idea of raping someone else.

Slave Meadow

Now that we are on to slightly less touchy ground, we will return to our tour theming. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Slave Meadow—a surprisingly popular destination, believe it or not.

Don’t feel too bad for the men and women in chains to your right—they’re getting quite the sexual thrill here. An eyebrow-raising 21% of women and 10% of men find the thought of being owned by another human arousing, while only 12% of women and 15% of men find the thought of owning someone else arousing. For context, there are more Americans who are aroused by the idea of being owned by someone else than there are Americans who don’t have a car (15%).

One thing we found slightly odd is that the number of people who get turned on by losing their agency is slightly lower than the number who get turned on by being owned by someone else (f17% m8%). We assume this means there are a significant number of people who get turned on by the idea of involuntary slavery—slavery that they attempt to resist. Alternatively, it could just mean that “high concept” ideas like a loss of agency are less arousing than easily to visualize ones like slavery.

Cuck Creek

Let’s dig a little deeper into the actual arousal patterns associated with cuckolding behavior while we pull away from the hazardous territory of Slavery Meadow and cross over Cuck Creek, where you will observe a lineup of men on this bridge intently watching their wives bang other men by the water below.

While we found that 15% of women and 12% of men reported the prospect of watching their partner have sex with someone else to be arousing, the vast majority of both male respondents—67%—and female respondents—71%—ranked this experience as leading to the most extreme aversion reaction possible. It therefore appears to be that while cuckolding is a fairly common sexual predilection, the vast majority of people still find the idea to be highly aversive.

Incest Point

Perched over Cuck Creek, you may observe several pairs of kissing cousins and siblings necking in their cars parked on Incest Point. Our survey data suggests that men find incest more arousing than women. The 8% of women who find incest roleplay arousing is dwarfed by the 12% of men who found the concept titillating, and we see a similar mismatch with 1% of women versus 7% of men reporting actual incest to be arousing. To put this in context: 5.9% of American males live in New York State. That’s right: Our survey data implies that there are more men in the US aroused by the idea of sleeping with one of their current family members than there are men in the state of New York.

Olfactory Valley

OK, OK—we’re really leaving controversial territory now—you have all been so brave—but please put on your protective face masks. Not all of you are going to like the odors wafting in from Olfactory Valley ahead. We’re about to briefly explore the smells associated with sex. Zesty!

It seems very few people are on the same page when it comes to this subject, which is probably why we’re seeing such a rainbow of facial expressions as we drive through this new and fragrant zone of our study’s findings. Every category of arousal and aversion, from extreme to mild, had an almost exactly equal number of adherents when describing how what impulse they associate with the smells of sex and there was not a strong gendered distribution to the answer, though women were slightly more likely to find the smells aversive.

A significant 21% of our survey’s female respondents and 34% of male respondents reported the smells associated with sex to be arousing. Were you able to graph a line from arousal to disgust in males and females, it would be almost a straight line with each gender, which makes it totally unique among arousal pathways.

Were we to venture a guess as to why there is such an even and diverse distribution of reactions to sexy smells, we would suppose that this neural pathway is entirely divorced from all other arousal pathways and has been affected by modern evolutionary pressures in weird ways—either because it is very ancient or just now developing. We do not think socialization or association could explain this broad and even distribution, as arousal in response to sex-associated smells was not tied to a high level of sexual experience; however, it is heavily tied to being a dog person or a cat person, which is beyond weird. More on that later.

Our reactions to smells are just some of many surprising and all-over-the-place sexual reactions people have to various stimuli, leaving us all the more flummoxed at the cut and dry manner in which so many people view sexuality. Consider, for example, that our male survey respondents found that pregnancy makes a woman more attractive at a higher rate than our female respondents did (Men: 9%; Women: 4%).

Mammary Mountain and Phallus Peak

Please remove your masks and get a whiff of something far more groundbreaking (in our minds, at least) than our findings regarding the smells of sex, as we’re about ascend Mammary Mountain and pass by Phallus Peak, enjoying along the way a splendid view into our survey respondents’ reactions to the male and female forms and genitalia. Our survey results do a great job of illustrating how inadequate the “gay” versus “straight” spectrum is at exemplifying a person’s sexuality.

But first—let’s get the conventional interpretation of this out of the way. Typically, “gay” is a method of self-identification for individuals who are more aroused by stimuli they associate with individuals who identify as the same gender as themselves. In 2017, 4.5% of Americans identified as gay. This 4.5% was reported in a Gallup poll and we understand it is a much lower number than most people think, as the same poll showed Americans think that the gay identifying population is 10% to 23%.[[67]](#_ftn67)

In our survey, 3% of the participants identified as gay and 8.75% identified as bisexual.[[68]](#_ftn68) Our number is a bit low because we removed trans and non-binary participants from the data set, which identified disproportionately as gay or bisexual. With our survey’s trans and non-binary participants added back in, we are right around the national stats for identifying as gay.

Take a look at the naked people hula hooping to your right. Which of these charming nudists do you find arousing? And what about them is arousing? You might find that there is not a perfect correlation between your supposed position on a gay-straight spectrum, but rather a mixture of things that both turn you on and turn you off about various body parts and figures—this is what our survey respondents demonstrated, at least.

Here are just a few examples of this phenomenon:

In other words, the concept of “gayness” when talked about as a spectrum of gender preference doesn’t map well onto the data, as it requires a “male package” (penises, the naked male form, etc.) of attraction and a “female package” (breasts, vagina, the female form, etc.) of attraction. Instead the way arousal patterns group to male and female bits in the real population is quite different.

To dig a bit deeper:

Keep in mind, only 3% of our participants identified as gay and only 8.75% identified as being the variant of bisexual attracted to at least men and women.

| Female | Breasts | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Naked F Form | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | 9% | 3.4% | 2.3% | | | | -1 | 4.5% | 10.1% | 5.6% | 1.1% | | | 0 | 1.1% | 2.3% | 13.5% | 2.3% | 2.3% | | 1 | 1.1% | 2.3% | 5.6% | 6.7% | 4.5% | | 2 | | | 1.1% | 4.5% | 16.9% |

| Female | Vagina | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Naked F Form | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | 12.4% | 2.3% | | | | | -1 | 12.4% | 9% | | | | | 0 | 5.6% | 4.5% | 6.7% | 2.3% | 2.3% | | 1 | 1.1% | 4.5% | 3.4% | 9% | 2.3% | | 2 | | 1.1% | 2.3% | 3.4% | 15.7% |

| Female | Penis | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Naked M Form | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | 4.5% | 1.1% | | | | | -1 | 1.1% | 2.3% | 1.1% | 1.1% | | | 0 | | 3.4% | 3.4% | 2.3% | 2.3% | | 1 | | | 4.5% | 21.4% | 7.9% | | 2 | | | 2.3% | 3.4% | 38.2% |

| Male | Penis | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Naked M Form | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | 54.6% | 1.1% | | 3.4% | | | -1 | 12.5% | 9.1% | | 1.1% | | | 0 | | 3.4% | 2.3% | 1.1% | | | 1 | | | | 3.4% | 1.1% | | 2 | | | | | 6.8% |

| Male | Breasts | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Naked F Form | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | 1.1% | | | | | | -1 | | | | | | | 0 | | | 1.1% | 1.1% | | | 1 | | | 1.1% | 3.4% | 3.4% | | 2 | | 1.1% | 1.1% | 5.7% | 80.7% |

| Male | Vagina | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Naked F Form | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | | -2 | 1.1% | | | | | | -1 | | | | | | | 0 | | | 1.1% | 1.1% | | | 1 | | 2.3% | 2.3% | 3.4% | | | 2 | | 1.1% | 2.3% | 14.8% | 70.5% |

What appears to be happening here is that humans have two, apparently independent arousal systems: One that determines whether or not secondary sex characteristics (breasts, curves, muscular arms, etc.) are arousing and the other that determines which primary sex characteristics (penis or vagina) are arousing. A person’s reaction to one of these arousal systems is only loosely associated with the other system.

We live in a world in which 4.5% of male Americans identify as gay—and yet the same amount (4.5%) find the naked male form aversive, but penises arousing. This trend is not unique to males, as 6.7% of women find the female form arousing, but vagina aversive. In such a world, the concept of the gay-straight spectrum as a tool for understanding arousal patterns can be little more than an artifact of history. Using the gay-straight spectrum to describe an individual’s sexuality is like using the gray scale to describe a color—but by this point in the book, you are probably sick of us ranting about this.

We also see you staring with great attention at the hula hoopers’ breasts and penises. Would you like to know what sizes of these undulating appendages the average guy and gal find most arousing? Of course, you would.

| What breast size do you find most arousing on a woman? | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | Small | 5% | 6% | | Below Average | 2% | 8% | | Average | 36% | 42% | | Above Average | 29% | 29% | | Well above average | 3% | 10% | | Huge | 1% | 2% | | Unnaturally Large | 0% | 1% | | I do not find breasts arousing at all | 23% | 1% |

Calm down, ladies, we know you all want to know if your exact cup size is in high demand, but we needed to be realistic with the options we presented in this survey. We figured men wouldn’t know cup sizes and we didn’t find this question interesting enough to find pictures of breasts for the survey.

The key takeaway with regard to arousing breast sizes, however, is this: The average man (56% of male respondents in our survey), believe it or not, prefers breasts that are of average size or below. Despite popular media stereotypes, the percent of men who like breasts that are well above average or larger is quite small (only 13% of those participating in our survey).

On to the real humdinger here: Penis size.

| What penis size do you find most arousing on a man? | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | Under 3 inches | 0% | 0% | | 3-5 inches | 1% | 2% | | 5-6 inches (Average) | 35% | 8% | | 6-7 inches | 26% | 9% | | 7-8 inches | 14% | 9% | | 8-9 inches | 14% | 2% | | Over 9 inches | 1% | 0% | | I do not find penises arousing at all | 8% | 69% |

Our study’s female respondents were significantly less moderate than their male peers, with only 36% preferring a partner who had an average sized penis or smaller. Sorry, guys.

Now it’s time to wave goodbye to the hula hoopers and their distracting genitalia. Hopefully, they’ve changed the way you consider the manner in which we categorize our sexuality.

BDSM Tribal Lands

Let’s leave boobs and penises behind and loop back around to an area of the forest settled by BDSM tribes to enjoy some of humanity’s more colorful and upbeat turn ons.

Note: Our survey percentages will not equal 100% as they don’t include the breakdown for people who felt neutral about dominance/submission.

Key:

Males

Females

To put it simply, females are more likely to be aroused by acting submissive and males are more likely to be aroused by acting dominant.

But here is where it gets interesting . . . and this is a little hard to explain, so bear with us. These male and female arousal patterns mirror each other to a remarkable extent. If instead of using the labels dominance and submission we label submission in females as P for the predominant arousal pathway and dominance in males as P for the predominant arousal pathway (while labeling the less common pathway L in both cases), you get:

For the numbers to align that tightly, there must be something going on here. It’s almost as though submission and dominance are tied to male and female sexuality in a similar fashion to people’s predominant attractions to the male or female form, but in the case of dominance and submission arousal patterns, we see more perfect mirroring. In other words, if you were to do the same exercise with something like attraction to the naked female form and the naked male form, you wouldn’t see the same kind of nice mirroring. At any rate, male and female sexuality are more closely aligned in dominance and submission than they are to attraction to the male or female form.

As a side note, we find it fascinating how common switches are among both males and females and it amuses us to no end that about 10% of the population finds both dominance and submission to be active turn offs.

The Bondage Hut

Let’s take a moment to stretch our legs and get some hands-on—or rather ropes on—experience, you brave, curiously minded adventurers. Feel free to pick up some rope and have someone help you into some form of bind or another; you may find you quite like it.

Becoming aroused by being physically restrained is, as it happens, extremely common among women, with 45% of the population finding it arousing. Yes, we see you two ladies over there—stop being so shy and let this nice local tie you up.

Only about half as many of our male respondents (23%) reported restraints to be arousing, but guys, feel free to give this a try anyway; you might be one of those one-in-four men who rather enjoys being tied up. This lower rate of male interest in being put in restraints is very much in line with our related dominance and submission findings, which consistently indicate women are more aroused by submissive roles, whereas males are more turned on by assuming dominant roles.

For example, 26% of our female respondents reported the idea of being choked during sex to be arousing, which is over double the rate at which our male respondents reportedly feel aroused by such scenarios (12%). Similar patterns are seen with choking someone else during sex, with fewer women (10%) reporting arousal at the idea of choking someone during sex than men (21%),

We see this same flip flopping of giving and receiving across gender with behaviors such as:

The Pain Market

Let’s take a quick stroll over to this charming, open-air market full of thatched stalls selling paddles, floggers, clamps, and all sorts of other delightful, pain-inducing toys and tools, so that we might explore pain as a physical turn on in greater depth. Feel free to keep those restraints on if you like; they make profoundly better souvenirs than t-shirts, right?

We were curious to know how people sexually identify with pain, so in our survey we asked the following question:

| Does this statement describe you: “I sometimes look at pornography or read romantic literature in which one of the partners appears to be in pain.” | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | Yes with a focus on physical pain | 20% | 15% | | Yes with a focus on emotional pain | 8% | 1% | | Yes with a focus on both physical and emotional pain | 10% | 11% | | No | 63% | 73% |

Here we see that specifically physical pain is far more associated with arousal than emotional pain—though emotional pain does seem to be tied to arousal patterns in a significant chunk of the population.

To those of you who picked out something nice for yourselves, tell us: What would you like to do with it? Would you like to use it on someone? Would you like someone to use it on you? Or perhaps would you like to see some other people use it? We found this general dynamic in our survey to be fascinating.

| When you consume material in which it appears one of the participants is in pain, where do you place yourself in that fantasy? | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | F | M | | I sometimes imagine myself being the one in pain. | 48% | 42% | | I sometimes imagine myself causing the pain. | 27% | 58% | | I sometimes take the role of an observer. | 52% | 67% |

(Note: This was a checkbox style question, so participants select multiple responses.)

Our survey respondents suggest that for both men and women, the preferred perspective is not the individual receiving or causing the pain, but that of a third party observer. This means the arousal is not coming from first-hand experience of dominance or submission, but rather something tied to mentally processing the concepts of dominance and submission—or the concept of pain and inflicting pain. To put it in other words, this finding suggests that the average person finds concepts on their own to be more arousing than the manner in which these concepts relate to them personally.

This, ultimately, is so much more interesting than the one-note conceptualization that so many people have of various fetishes and kinks. It would seem that in many cases, mere ideas are sexier to people than actual experiences. Isn’t that wild?

Correlates to Arousal Patterns

We will pause the tour metaphor momentarily again as this section will touch on the topic of childhood sexual trauma.

When we commissioned this survey, our goal was to find what may “cause”—or at least what heavily correlates with—certain expressions of an individual’s sexuality. For example, what makes a person get turned on by acting dominant or submissive? While dominance and submission-related arousal patterns are gendered in their expression, they aren’t so gendered as to make us think something else isn’t at play.

Before we proceed, bear in mind that some of the subgroups from which we tried to glean information were quite small, meaning our data should be taken with the hefty grain of salt that should accompany most findings associated with small sample sizes. From this point onward, our survey results should be thought of as “maybes” and as indications of places to dig further with real scientific studies—not as proclamations of what is true. Getting a large enough sample size to have a hundred of each of these subgroups, which is what we wanted to do, was ultimately not realistic.

When we first dug into this topic, we imagined that childhood conditions would appear to play a big role in the manifestation of human sexuality in adulthood. In line with this assumption, we collected all sorts of information on things like sexual versus non-sexual childhood abuse, whether a person was spanked as a child, how much money subjects’ families made when they were growing up, how their families were seen by their local communities, the strictness of their parents, the political beliefs of their parents, the religions in which they were raised, the size of the towns in which they grew up, etc. This diverse line of questioning was posed in an effort to parse out which childhood events and conditions affected adult sexuality and which did not.

We were shocked by our results. Essentially, we found that almost everything that happens to a person before puberty has very little influence on their sexuality as an adult, with the two exceptions being the size of a person’s childhood town and the strictness of their parents. Obviously, the biggest shock to us is that we found no systematic effects of childhood sexual abuse on arousal pathways—or at least that is what the stats we collected seem to show. We are aware of some studies that suggest otherwise but are not aware of any of these studies using the same methodology to contrast equivalent pre-puberty traumatic events with post-puberty traumatic events.

Childhood Sexual Assault vs. Sexual Assault in Adolescence

Individuals in our survey who were sexually assaulted before hitting puberty (the period during which adolescents reach sexual maturity), featured no deviation in kink scores from the mainstream population and bore no discernible change in arousal patterns tied to things like choking, being hit by a partner, hitting a partner, or even arousal rates tied to rape roleplay or rape itself. While this group of respondents did show a slight preference for losing agency and a slight increase in the frequency of masturbation, these two effects were small and when viewed in context, are likely false positives from data dredging rather than any indication of genuine correlation.

That childhood sexual assault would correlate with arousal pathways around rape and assault no more than childhood dog ownership or the wealth of one’s family truly shocks us. When we presented this data to a sex psychologist friend in hopes that they might sanity check our findings and expressed our dubiousness in the face of the results, she said the data didn’t surprise her at all and that it lined up perfectly with her anecdotal client experience.

In the strongest possible terms, we are not arguing that the sexual assault does not lead to long-lasting psychological effects—it categorically does. Specifically, childhood assault is associated with an increased rate of depression, anxiety, PTSD, nightmares, obesity, and distorted self-perception. Our data merely seems to suggest that these psychological effects do not seem to correlate with adult arousal pathways.

In contrast, those who were sexually assaulted after hitting puberty feature moderate, though not extreme, effects on their arousal patterns across the board.

The biggest effect post-puberty sexual assault seems to have on adults is that those who were sexually assaulted as teens were vastly more likely to be turned on by roleplaying rape scenarios: 47% of the women we polled—and 33% of the men we polled—who were sexually assaulted as adolescents found rape roleplay to be arousing, whereas only 22% and 12% of the general female and male population respectively found rape roleplay to be a turn on. This is in line with findings from other studies on the subject.

Being sexually assaulted as an adult also appears to increase the number of things that arouse people in erotic material, an effect not seen for males or females that only experienced sexual assault before puberty. In female survey respondents, sexual assault in adulthood was associated with higher arousal in response to violent or violent-adjacent submission, such as an increase in arousal from being bound, with 41% of women in this category ranking being bound as extremely arousing when contrasted to only 12% of the general population. Female victims of sexual assault in adulthood also reported higher arousal in response to being hit by a partner, with 23% of women in this category ranking being hit as extremely arousing when contrasted to only 8% of the general female survey population. Furthermore, female adult sexual assault victims reported an increase in arousal from being owned by someone, with 18% finding it extremely arousing—up from 3% in the general population.

Here we need to note that these large differences are only seen when looking at extreme levels of arousal from such activities. In other words, the occurrence of sexual assault post-adolescence doesn’t seem to correlate with whether a woman gets aroused by these activities at all, rather it appears to correlate with the volume of the arousal output associated with them.

Finally, sexual assault experiences in adulthood are correlated (in our data, at least) with both higher libido and higher rates of masturbation: 45% of women in taking our survey who reported being sexually assaulted as adults also reported masturbating more than three times a week, contrasted with 23% of the general population. Again, this is not seen in those who reported being sexually assaulted before puberty.

With all this being the case, why is there a common assumption that childhood sexual abuse causes adults to experience sexuality so differently? We think it’s important to remember that a big chunk of the population is into weird sexual stuff, and if you fall into that group and happen to also be the victim of childhood sexual assault, it gets REALLY easy to point at that relatively unusual sexual proclivity and say: “My childhood sexual assault explains why I am so into [insert non-mainstream sexual interest here].” We would go so far as to say it would be weird if people didn’t make this assumption.

Also, recall that there is a ton of evidence suggesting that childhood sexual abuse does lead to PTSD. Given that PTSD can be triggered by situations that bear a semblance to the situation that caused it, it would be common for such individuals to have PTSD reactions in sexual scenarios. It would be very easy to mistake this PTSD reaction for something to do with an arousal pathway because it was happening in a sexual context and was triggered by sexual stimuli. However, PTSD is neither an arousal nor an aversion reaction, but rather a panic reaction.

Note from the Research:

Now you may be wondering: Does our survey data suggest that anything in childhood has an effect on adult sexuality? We separated out both sexual and non-sexual childhood abuse and found the same results: Nothing unusual. We also looked into whether growing up in a “high power” family might make someone more dominant or sexually aggressive/violent: Nothing unusual there either. We even looked at spanking, assuming it would at least have a connection to the prevalence of spanking or impact play kinks. Again: Nothing. That said, being spanked as a child does seem to increase rates of arousal in response to submissive play during sex among men and women alike.

Bucolic Childhoods & Their Surprisingly Violent Connections

Having braved the topic of sexual abuse, let’s grab some fresh air—plus some findings related to childhood conditions that actually do appear to correlate with distinct sexual preferences in adulthood.

We did find two areas of early childhood development that may have moderate effects (at least moderate correlation) on adult sexual preferences. Both correlations surprised us. In some species of primates, the size of their troop, amount of resources in the environment, or other environmental features can alter the “behavioral template” that gets expressed through something called behavioral polymorphism, so we decided to try to determine if there may be a similar effect in humans—and by golly, it looks like there might be. This explains why we find ourselves driving through bucolic rural farmland at the moment. Feel free to roll down the windows, but keep away from the male residents (you’ll see why in a moment, darlings).

Specifically, males who took our survey and grew up in a rural environment were 240% more likely than their urban, small city, and suburban counterparts to report finding the thought of actually raping someone arousing (at around 17% instead of 7%). Interestingly, our study’s rural respondents were not significantly more likely to find the thought of merely roleplay raping someone more arousing than the general male population (18% versus 16%).

Men and women responding to our survey who grew up in rural environments were also much more likely to find the thought of owning someone to be arousing, at around 33% (versus an average of 15% among our entire male survey population) and 19% (versus an average of 12% among our entire female survey population) respectively. In general, it appears that growing up in more sparsely populated areas tracks with arousal in response to violence. Urban-raised males are much more likely to find sexual violence to be an active turn off.

Rural females who took our survey professed to be far less likely than any other female demographic to report finding rape roleplay to be arousing, at only around a 6% level, whereas women who grew up in suburbs, small cities, and large cities all reported finding the idea of roleplaying being raped to be a turn on at around the same level (20%, 23%, and 26% respectively).

Women who grew up in cities both small and large reported the idea of actually being raped much more arousing at rates of 15% (6% average) and 16% (12% average) when contrasted with those in rural and suburban environments, who reported finding the thought of actual rape to be arousing only at a 0% and 4% level. We discovered the inverse of this trend among male survey respondents, with men in rural environments being far more likely to report finding the thought of actually being raped arousing when contrasted with any other male demographic at 17% (around 17% also reported the idea of rape roleplay to be arousing).

Women who grew up in rural environments and small cities also reported the idea of being struck by a partner during sex to be arousing at almost twice the rate of those in cities (35% rural and 31% urban versus 16% in cities) with a similar pattern appearing in relation to being choked (38% rural and 31% urban versus 21% in cities). We see an inverse of this trend when it comes to female preference for choking others, with 16% of our city-dwelling respondents reporting the idea to be arousing versus 6% of our rural female respondents and 8% of those living in small cities. Female and male patterns match up very well here, with city-dwelling males getting much more turned on by being hit (22%, versus 8% rural male respondents), much less turned on by hitting their partner (17%, versus 25% of male respondents in rural environments), and much less turned on by choking a partner (6%, versus 24% of rural male respondents).

In sum, those who grow up in areas with less dense populations (or perhaps in environments where animals are more commoditized) seem to have their arousal patterns optimized for a more aggressive male reproductive strategy and a more defensive female reproductive strategy. However—and this is a big however—this is likely just a shadow of the effects that an individual’s political views have on arousal pathways. We say this because political views have a similar but more extreme effect on arousal pathways and also correlate with rural vs. urban life (we dig into this shortly). If it’s really political leanings that influence these factors (rather than rural versus urban childhoods), this pattern would also fit a larger trend we found, in which a person’s worldview affects their arousal pathways much more than their living conditions or events in their life—more on that later.

Strict Fathers

Our eagle-eyed guests may remember we did find one thing that a person’s parents could do that may affect arousal patterns after the person grew up; well, here we are. Let’s stop by this farmhouse and pose for photos with this very strict-looking dad.

Indeed, parenting style—at least when it comes to strict parents—presents another childhood domain that may affect adult arousal patterns. In our survey, female respondents who grew up with a strict father were more than twice as likely to enjoy rape roleplay (35% to 14%) and almost twice as likely to become aroused by the thought of actually being raped (12% to 7%) when contrasted with female respondents whose fathers were not strict. Daughters of strict fathers responding to our survey also preferred larger penises.

This is not to suggest, in any fashion, that strict fathers rape their daughters. Perhaps the greater interest in rape roleplay stems from having found some comfort in a figure in one’s life taking firmer control being transferred to a sense of arousal in the face of someone seizing a huge amount of sexual control via the act of rape. This may just as easily be a data-dredged false positive, as the effect is not as consistent as the rural versus urban effect, does not extend to strict mothers, and does not have a corollary effect in males. It may also just be that strict fathers are more common in rural environments, making this just another manifestation of the effect found above.

To put this another way: With the case of rural versus urban effects, we saw a similar pattern across genders that affects several arousal pathways and bears a consistent theme. This clustering of evidence gave us reason to believe the effect was real, though it could have been caused by a common influencing factor (like politics) affecting both one’s location and arousal pathways. In contrast, when we consider the case of parental strictness, we only see just a few blips, such as the increased female interest in rape roleplay.

To put a bow on this: Much to our shock, our survey suggests the events and conditions of childhood do not seem to systematically affect arousal patterns as an adult. The only two exceptions to this pattern are both dubious, with the rural-urban exception likely being the result of an external correlation (perhaps political affiliation) and the other, parental strictness of fathers to daughters, likely just being a false positive from data dredging or the same urban-rural effect being viewed from a different angle.

Diversity Land

Rejoice, brave passengers, as we enter the small Epcot knockoff zone of our survey landscape—Diversity Land—and explore the effects of ethnicity on sexuality. Grab a corndog; they’re about the only things worth trying here.

Alas, ethnicity does not seem to play all that prominent of a role in our arousal—especially when contrasted with other factors we have yet to explore. There were, however, a few curious and systematic differences worth discussing, as ethnicity did present more robust correlations than those we found in relation to childhood conditions.

The clearest example of ethnicity having a systematic effect on arousal pathways is that different ethnicities appear (at least from our data) to have different preferences for penis size. As you gnaw on your corn dog and enjoy the miniature nation-themed landscapes to your left and right, consider how various ethnic groups appear to have varying tastes for a . . . different sort of sausage.

Black female survey respondents reported a preference for significantly larger penises than any other ethnicity—with 37% preferring penises over 8 inches long and 5% preferring penises over 9 inches long. Female East Asian respondents, in contrast, professed a significant preference for smaller penis sizes, with 67% preferring penises below 6 inches in size. White, Hispanic, and South Asian study respondents reported preferences for penises at around 6-7 inches.

In general, women from ethnicities with larger penises on average appear to prefer larger penises, and women from ethnicities with smaller penises on average appear to prefer small penises. Interestingly, our data suggest ethnicity has no discernible effects on male respondent preferences for breast size. (Sorry, we forgot to check for butt preference—something a bunch of this book’s early reviewers wanted to know about.)

We know what some of you may be thinking: “It seems like almost all ethnicities of women prefer penises of above-average size.” You’ve got that right: 61% of women prefer a penis of above-average size.

As this book was heading to the printers, one of our black friends mentioned a stereotype that black women did not like giving head as much as white women. We had never heard this stereotype before and had not thought to search our data for it. We went back in to give the data a poke and—believe it or not—there is actually almost no difference in preference for fellatio by race (black women 45% vs. white women 46.4%) . . . or at least no reported difference in preference for erotic material featuring fellatio. You might therefore consider this particular racial stereotype busted.

Ultimately, ethnicity does not appear to have much of an effect on arousal. This makes sense given that most arousal patterns appear to not be socialized. If socialization played a larger role in our arousal patterns, we would expect the vastly different life experiences of Americans who grow up in different ethnic demographics to shape their arousal patterns at least to some extent.

The Colosseum of Sexual Influence & Big Four Show

Let’s pull into this replica Roman Colosseum in Diversity Land—the Colosseum of Sexual Influence—to take a gander at the myriad factors that actually do correlate with interesting sexual arousal pathways.

The big performance that takes place in this Colosseum every hour on the hour showcases The Big Four, as we like to call it—four factors that correlate very strongly with various arousal pathways:

  1. Political affiliation
  2. Self-reported wealth
  3. Self-reported hotness
  4. (No joke here) Personal preference for dogs/cats

Looks like we got here a little early, but that means we can catch the BDSM show presently taking place—it just so happens to exemplify some other fun correlations we found.

See those two ladies who appear to be having the time of their lives as they play out a wee dom-sub routine? Chances are both have excellent self-esteem. While our survey suggests that self-esteem has little effect on male sexuality, we found it is highly correlated with females becoming more turned on by acting dominant, while also not being any less likely to be turned on by acting submissive. Women reporting high self-esteem in our survey turned out to be twice as aroused by dominance when compared to their less-self-confident female compatriots. It is as though self-esteem selectively unlocks the ability to be turned on by dominance in women.

To put this another way, women with high self-esteem are not less turned on by anything that turns on a “normal” woman. Women with high self-esteem are just as turned on by acting submissive as the average woman. However, women with high self-esteem will find acting dominant in a sexual context more arousing than their less self-confident female peers. To us, this indicates that all women may actually be more “switchy” than other data pools give them credit for, being able to become aroused through both submission and dominance. This dominant-submissive ambidexterity might be hidden by a high prevalence of low self-esteem in our society.

OK, so what about happiness? Well, that intimidating female dom may be having a blast right now, but chances are she’s one of the less happy cast members of Diversity Land. Unhappy females in our survey turned out to be more than twice as likely to play the dom in a BDSM context (23% versus 7%), while happy females turned out to be far more likely to play a sub (32% versus 19%).

On the other hand, while happy men taking our survey were slightly more likely to be doms in a BDSM context (12% to 8%), they were four times more likely to play a sub (8% to 2%). In other words, happy people are much more submissive, regardless of their gender. If this effect is causational, we expect that it is simply easier for someone with submissive tendencies to be happier, as submission is inherently a relinquishment of power along with a relinquishment of responsibility, and a lack of responsibility increases one’s mood.

Interestingly, if you look at what differentially turns on unhappy people, it may not be that simple. Unhappy women are far more aroused by things like being tied up (59% to 38%), being hit by a partner (41% to 19%), and being choked (18% to 10%), which is weird, because happy men are more aroused by the same things: Being bound (21% to 11%), being hit (19% to 5%), and being choked (17% to 3%).

As you can see, while submission seems to make everyone happier—unhappiness in women and happiness in men is related to arousal in the face of what we will call “violent and violent-adjacent submission.” We genuinely do not know what is going on here—but the effect is consistent across similar arousal categories, so there is probably something actually happening. Have any theories on this front? Send them to Hello@Pragmatist.Guide and share them with us.

Have a glance at the gentleman down there taking a beating from a female dom. He may be sinister, and we’re not referring to his BDSM tendencies; our survey data suggests that left-handed men are more than twice as likely to be submissive and left-handed women are more than twice as likely to be dominant, however left-handedness was not associated in our data with more dominance in males or less submission in females.

Across the board, left-handed men who took our study were more likely to be aroused by arousal pathways typically associated with women but were not less likely to be aroused by the arousal pathways typically associated with men. Likewise, our left-handed female survey respondents were more likely to be aroused by arousal pathways typically associated with males but were not less likely to be aroused by arousal pathways associated with females.

In other words, the average left-handed person appears to harbor more arousal pathways, selectively gaining more access to those which typically stick along gendered lines, with left-handed women being more likely to be turned on by male arousal pathways and left-handed men being more likely to be turned on by female arousal pathways. This is not super surprising given that studies in the past have shown left-handed individuals are far more likely to be gay (well, 34% more likely).

While we wait for the snack carts to clear out before the main event, consider sampling the following tasty tidbits suggested by our survey results:

Keep in mind that we looked at a LOT of variables. Only a few strongly correlated with a person’s arousal pathways in what looked like a systematic pattern (i.e., in a way that was unlikely to just be random false positives from data dredging). We remind you of this because we don’t want to mistakenly give the impression that everything is heavily correlated with sexual expression. Most questions we asked of our survey population did not yield any unexpected hearty connections to arousal pathways that jumped out at us enough to dig into. For a list of these other questions:

We are not saying that none of these questions yielded systematic links to arousal patterns. While several answers to the above questions did show some correlation with arousal patterns, we ignored most. Why? We sought dramatic, huge, and consistent effects on arousal patterns.

Actually . . . a few of the above questions that didn’t make it into the big four did have effects that met that criteria, but when they did, they appeared to be a “shadow” of one of the big four. For example, having a position of authority at work had a very similar effect on arousal patterns as wealth did, because the two correlate with each other. Wealth made it to our big four and a position of authority at work did not, as the effect wealth had was “louder,” leading us to believe it was the primary driver of this unusual arousal pattern.

Great timing: It looks like the show is ready to start. Time to see how the big four—politics, wealth, hotness, and cat/dog preferences—correlate with arousal pathways.

The Political Promenade

As you can see, the show is starting off with a patriotic military parade. Feel free to grab the flag of your choice and a sparkler as they pass them around; it’ll help to get you in the mood.

An adult’s current political beliefs appear to correlate fairly strongly with their arousal patterns.

You might be looking down at the conservative contingent below and thinking, “Well, duh, conservatives are going to be way more sexuality inhibited than liberals”—however, you would be wrong. Our survey data suggested no difference at all between conservative and liberal “kinkiness score” in either men or women. In fact, our conservative survey participants reported dramatically higher libido than their liberal counterparts, with 66% of conservative women reporting a-higher-than-average libido versus 37.5% of liberal women and 72% of conservative men reporting a higher than average libido versus 48% of liberal men.[[69]](#_ftn69) Also, if you think male conservatives prefer generic-looking women, you would also be wrong. Actually, political beliefs—in our data at least—had no effect on preference for things like breast size.[[70]](#_ftn70)

So how do a person’s political beliefs relate to their sexual expression? Grab a pair of binoculars and take a gander at the parading masses below, specifically observing the military accessories flashed by the conservative crowd.

Males

Our data suggests males who self-identify as conservatives are more aroused by violence against others while males who self-identify as liberals are more aroused by violence against themselves. For example, when we contrast male liberals and conservatives, conservatives from our data are more than twice as turned on by hitting a partner (20% to 8%) and choking a partner (33% to 13%), while liberals are more turned on by being hit by their partner (21% to 12%), more turned on by being tied up (28% to 16%), and more turned on by being talked down to during sex (33% to 13%).

In general, self-identified male conservatives from our survey were just way more turned on by acting dominant (71% to 57%), while self-identified male liberals were way more turned on by acting submissive (45% to 29%).

Perhaps the biggest effect in males was how their politics correlated with how aroused they reported to be by rape, with conservative males becoming aroused by rape roleplay at markedly higher rates (38% to 8%) and feeling aroused by the idea of actual rape more as well (25% to only 2%). Surprisingly, given their derogatory use of the word “cuck,” but in line with other studies on the subject, male conservatives are also almost twice as likely to be turned on by watching their partner have sex with another person (21% to 11%).

You may be amused by the types of erotic art each political leaning reported consuming in our study. Conservative male participants reported consuming narrative forms of erotic art at dramatically higher levels than their liberal peers (romance novels 12% to 0%, erotic fanfiction 12% to 6%, and erotic young adult novels 8% to 2%) while liberal men were more likely to report a focus on personal imagination (54% to 48%) and live-action video (81% to 72%).

Females

What about females? In contrast to males, political ideology had no meaningful connection to our female survey population’s preference for submission or dominance. But here it gets wacky: Conservative females who took our survey were more likely to become aroused than liberal female respondents by almost any violent act, be that act committed by them personally or a partner.

Conservative female survey respondents reported getting more turned on by choking their partner (15% to 9%), more turned on by being choked (35% to 18%), more turned on by striking their partner (19% to 7%), more turned on by being talked down to (31% to 16%), more aroused by talking down to their partner (15% to 9%), more aroused by being raped in a roleplay context (38% to 16%), more turned on by being bound (62% to 38%), raping a partner in a roleplay context (19% to 7%), actually being raped (23% to 5%), and actually raping someone (15% to 0%). The only violence-related act that did not follow this trend involved arousal from being hit (27% to 27%).

On a tamer note, and perhaps unsurprisingly, conservative women are also vastly more turned on by masculinity (92% to 58%).

As to whether we see the same divide in erotic art consumption in women as well: We do, but it doesn’t follow the exact same pattern, with conservative ladies reporting higher romance novel consumption (52% to 41%), higher consumption of erotic young adult novels (16% to 11%), and more daydreaming (72% to 69%), but less fanfiction consumption (12% to 20%).

As you can see, both male and female liberals and conservatives appear to have two totally different sets of arousal patterns. Are their politics driving the arousal pattern differences, are the arousal pattern differences driving their politics, or is there some common external factor driving both we didn’t catch with our other questions? In contemplating this question, we would like to remind readers that studies of identical twins separated at birth and adopted by different families shows our political beliefs are actually highly heritable—making this finding even more engaging. What if it turns out that the patterns we see showing “heritable politics” are actually heritable arousal strategies that affect one’s politics? What if our political inclinations are just one weird manifestation of what turns us on? If we had the money and time, the first thing we would dig into was whether or not unusual arousal patterns are heritable.

One final systematic pattern we found distinguishing conservatives and liberals can be observed in their differential reactions to relationships. Conservatives responding to our survey were more likely to report being in love than liberals (f65% to f55% and m60% to m46%) and were more likely to be jealous (f35% to f25% and m24% to m9%).

Additional Political Tidbits

As if you had not already stuffed yourself with theme park corndogs and stadium snacks, some of you are looking downright starved. Thankfully, we bought along a picnic basket of homemade treats to get you through the final stretch of our tour.

What could possibly be tastier than stats which tell a meaningful story about the human condition? Water cooler stats, of course! Such stats are delicacies to all of us, especially reporters, bloggers, and armchair political theorists. Since politics is such a contentious subject, we figured doing a deeper dive into how a person’s political stance correlates with what turns them on might allow other people to see patterns we didn’t and give them something to talk about—perhaps giving us some free promotion in the process.

Bon appetit!

According to the self-reported data from our survey:

The High-Net-Worth Extravaganza

Wasn’t that a great start to the show? Well, it gets better. We love this part: No, it’s not just your imagination running amok: Luxury helicopters are indeed landing in the stadium as the patriotic promenade scuttles toward the exits amidst high levels of chopper-driven wind. Have a look at this land’s most well-heeled denizens.

We investigated the nature of our survey respondents’ jobs, education levels, positions at work, income levels, self-esteem, happiness, and self-perception of wealth (i.e., “Would you consider yourself wealthy?”). These factors correlate with each other, so effects from one bleed into the others. However, when looking at the stats, it was clear the leading factor among them was the perception of wealth—how wealthy an individual thought they were.

You won’t be crazy to think the expensively dressed high rollers stepping out of those helicopters look a bit . . . cold, cruel, and calculating. Our survey findings suggest that wealth makes males and females more dominant and more turned on by violence against their partners, but in males, wealth has a secondary effect of making them turned on much more by concepts and much less by the feminine form.

It isn’t just the six-inch Manolos those ladies are wearing that makes them seem intimidating—wealthy women who responded to our survey were far more likely to become aroused by acting sexually dominant, with 70% in our survey reporting that acting dominant arouses them, whereas only 27% of female survey respondents who saw themselves as low-income reported feeling the same way.

We didn’t find a single wealthy woman in our survey that found the thought of being sexually dominant to be a turn off, while 36% of low-income women did. Similarly, 71% of our self-reportedly wealthy male survey respondents reported feeling turned on by acting dominant, whereas only 44% of their self-reportedly low-income male counterparts felt the same way.

Don’t think those moneyed strutters down there are only into dominance. Our study suggests that wealthy men are also more likely to be turned on by acting submissive, as 75% of our self-reportedly wealthy male survey respondents reported getting turned on by acting submissive, contrasted with only 44% of our self-reportedly poor survey takers. A similar effect is not seen among the female respondents to our survey.

You may notice that the gentlemen below are not gawking with slack jaws at the ladies. Our study suggests that wealthy men are far less likely to be turned on by the sight of the female form and are far less likely to find it very arousing when their partners act feminine than low-income men (who are by far the most likely to find it very arousing when their partner acts feminine out of any wealth category). Wealthy men simply do not find femininity or the female form terribly arousing.

In addition, our data backs up a pattern that has been observed in other studies: That wealthy men prefer smaller breasts. This pattern is even more striking than we anticipated in our data—not a single man in the wealthiest category of those taking our survey reported preferring a breast size above average, with around half preferring small breasts.

Our survey respondents who reported being in the second-highest wealth category reported preferring small breasts at a rate of 17% and a robust 84% preferred breasts of average size or below. Contrast that with the lowest income category of men who took our survey, who reported preferring small breasts at around only a 5% rate and the second poorest preferring them at around the same level (only 4% in this case).

Essentially, as a person becomes wealthier, their preference for breast size scales down in lockstep with their wealth after they feel financially stable. Other studies have shown that hungrier men prefer larger breasts as well, which suggests it might be an evolutionary adaptation for men in times of famine to search for partners with more fat stores and thus larger breasts.

Now, this is a really bizarre effect: It looks like the wealthier a person is, the more they are turned on by fantasies in which they are a man, and the poorer they are, the more they are turned on by the idea of themselves as a woman. Women who took our survey were much more likely to get turned on by the idea of themselves as a man if they reported being wealthier (33% of our reportedly wealthy female survey respondents reported fantasizing about being male versus 6% of our female respondents on average). Also, wealthy women responding to our survey were more likely to fantasize about impregnating other women, with 33% having the fantasy, versus only 2% of any other class of women. At the same time, the poorest category of men responding to our survey reported fantasizing about themselves as women at a 5% rate, the second poorest at a 4% rate, and not a single man who thought of himself as of average wealth or above in our sample ever reported fantasizing about themselves as a woman.[[71]](#_ftn71)

We have no idea what is going on here. Maybe it has something to do with how our society conceptualizes wealth and social roles. Maybe it has to do with society seeing women as disempowered, and therefore a portion of people subconsciously assume they are more male when in positions of power and more female when they have less power (but frankly we hate this theory—it’s too Freudian). If you have a theory you are passionate about, we would love to hear your thoughts on this; send your theories to Hello@Pragmatist.Guide or better yet, share it with the world on YouTube or in a post somewhere online and send us a link.

As for wealthy people being more aroused by violence: Wealthy men are much more likely to be aroused by the thought of actually raping someone when contrasted with other demographics. In addition, 38% of our self-reportedly wealthy male survey respondents reported to be turned on by the thought of hitting their partners, whereas only 16% of the poorer male respondents felt the same way, and 38% of these wealthy men reported finding the thought of choking someone during sex to be arousing contrasted with 10% of the poor men. In general, men who feel poor are much less likely to be aroused by the concept of any sort of violence against a partner. This is interesting, given that domestic violence is more common in poorer communities. We assume these increased rates of domestic violence reflect an impulse control issue and not an arousal pathway issue, as the emotional pressures of poverty are shown to significantly decrease impulse control, which is likely what causes the higher rates of domestic violence.

This arousal by violence against one’s partner extends to wealthy women as well, with around 50% finding this violence arousing at the highest levels of wealth. Contrast this with only 4% of the lowest wealth category of women. You see a similar pattern with choking, with women becoming more aroused by choking their partner as they become wealthier.

There is not a clear connection between wealth and arousal from being the recipient of blows from a partner in either men or women. Both wealthy and poor men and women get turned on by being struck by a partner at around equal rates.

Part of us wonders if this is a cause or effect thing. Are people who are aroused by hurting others and repulsed by femininity more likely to become wealthy, or is it that people adopt this perspective after becoming wealthy? Maybe this is all just a bleed over from a person’s politics.

Oh dear, the wealthy people are already getting back into their helicopters. We imagine they’re off to hunt people for sport.

As the show transitions to its next act, consider that:

The Sexy Beauty Pageant

Get ready for an audience favorite, folks: The sexy beauty pageant. Enjoy the scantily clad men and women making their way into the stadium and give us some guesses as to how you think their confidence in their appearance may affect their arousal pathways.

We see a few of you are somewhat confused by the fact that not all the cast members posing in lingerie and extremely tight briefs meet . . . average standards of beauty. Their presence in this show is a product of how they feel about themselves personally; our opinions matter not. The factor we are exploring here is self-assessed attractiveness.

Our survey findings related to self-reported attractiveness are messier than those tied to self-reported wealth and a bit harder to summarize, but in general, our findings imply that women who think they are attractive are much more dominant and unattractive men get much more turned on by being submissive. In addition, unattractive men are much more turned on by violence against women and both unattractive men and women are much more likely to report finding the idea of being raped to be a turn on.

Direct your gaze toward the gentlemen strutting around below; you may think they’re men who like to live boldly, and you’d be right. Men who see themselves as attractive appear to live along extremes, at least when it comes to jealousy. Our male survey respondents who reported to be at the extreme ends of attractiveness and unattractiveness also sorted into the extreme ends of jealousy (either being super jealous or super not jealous . . . not just moderately jealous). We at first suspected that this result came from people who like to answer all questions in an extreme fashion, but ultimately we didn’t see the same pattern among our female survey respondents’ answers or in response to other questions with sliders. Specifically, unattractive women have unusually low levels of jealousy; outside of that there was no correlation

You may also feel that the women milling about below bear a surprising resemblance to the wealthy ladies who just took off in their helicopters, and again, you would be fairly spot on. Attractive females are much more likely to be turned on by acting sexually dominant. On the flip side, unattractive women are very unlikely to find acting dominant in a sexual context arousing, with a full 0% of women in the lowest category of self-assessed attractiveness getting turned on by acting dominant in a sexual context and 55% of those in the highest self-assess attractiveness category getting turned on by it (this is one of the largest effects we saw anywhere in our study).

Don’t assume the same for these confident dudes, though: Interestingly, our survey data suggests that being attractive does not track all that strongly to whether or not a male gets turned on by acting dominant while being wealthy does tie to how much a male is turned on by dominance.

If we were to guess what was happening here, we would say that whether you are a male or a female, you will likely get more turned on by being dominant if you see yourself as a high-value potential partner, and it is common knowledge that we live in a society that judges a female partner’s value more on her attractiveness and a male partner’s value more on his wealth (and not so much his attractiveness). Though perhaps women who are wealthy invest more than their male counterparts in their appearance, so there is more likelihood that women who are wealthy are also confident about their appearance, which would blend together the correlations we’ve identified.[[72]](#_ftn72)

Reportedly unattractive men responding to our study were likely to be turned on by acting sexually submissive, with 83% of those in the lowest category of attractiveness getting turned on by being submissive and only 28% of attractive men feeling that way. Self-reported attractiveness showed no correlation to arousal tied to submission in our female study respondents, nor did wealth. This is much harder to explain than the above pattern. Intrepid sexual explorers: What do you suspect is going on?

Furthermore, self-reportedly unattractive men taking our survey are more than twice as likely than men in any other category to report feeling turned on by the idea of hitting their partner, with 33% finding the thought arousing. Attractiveness has no effect on women in this regard, and attractiveness had no effect on how much being hit was a turn on in either men or women.

Our survey data suggests that, whether you are a man or a woman, you will become aroused at the idea of being raped much more if you see yourself as unattractive. Unattractive men taking our survey were much more likely to report finding rape roleplay arousing, with 66% in the lowest level of attractiveness finding it a turn on contrasted with 10% of average men and 14% of hot men. The same is true of females, with 44% of the least attractive category of women reporting arousal at the idea of roleplaying being raped contrasted with 22% for women of average attractiveness.

We see similar results with arousal from the thought of actual rape, with 20% of women in the least attractive category finding it arousing and only 3% of women in the average category finding it arousing. The same is seen among the male respondents to our study, with 50% in the least attractive category finding actual rape arousing and 2% of men in the average category finding actual rape arousing.

Perhaps this correlation is a product of self-confidence. After all, if someone sees themselves as objectionable, sex that they had zero role in initiating might be much more arousing to them, as they wouldn’t feel they are subjecting another person to their (in their mind) objectionable self.

Interestingly, when it comes to being the rapist, our survey data suggests if you are a female and see yourself as attractive, you will find the idea of raping someone else to be much more arousing. Self-reportedly attractive women responding to our survey vastly preferred roleplaying raping someone else, with 22% of women in the most attractive category marking it as a turn on and 17% of those above average reportedly finding it arousing, but almost none of the women in the average or below average categories of attractiveness reporting the idea to be arousing at all.

In contrast, 66% of the self-reportedly least attractive males found the idea of roleplaying raping someone to be arousing, while only 10% of men of average attractiveness did, and 14% of those of high attractiveness did. As for actually raping someone: 49% of self-reportedly unattractive men taking our survey found the idea to be arousing, while not a single average man did, and only 14% of attractive men did. Contrast this with women, where again you see more attractive women getting turned on by being an actual rapist, with 22% in the most attractive category, 3% in the second most attractive, and no women of average or below average attractiveness getting turned on by the idea of actually raping someone. **This effect is dramatic—a woman who sees herself as attractive is far more likely to get turned on by the idea of raping someone while a man who is unattractive is much more likely to find the idea arousing.**

Ladies and gentlemen, what do you think these people below find attractive when it comes to masculinity and femininity? Before you venture a guess, consider that you might find the answer to be counterintuitive. As it happens, both females and males who took our study and reported to see themselves as attractive reported feeling more aroused by masculine-acting partners.

While this is a moderate effect in women, it is fairly extreme in men—in fact, not a single man in the below average attractiveness category of attractiveness found masculinity in their partner to be a turn on, while 6% of average attractiveness men found it a turn on and 14% of above-average-looking men found it a turn on. There was no similar or converse effect seen with regard to preferences for femininity in a partner. We assume this preference for masculinity by individuals who see themselves as attractive is a self-confidence effect in which a partner’s masculinity is not as threatening to them.

Oh shucks, the sexy beauty pageant is coming to an end. As you vote for the most actually attractive person from the bunch, enjoy some additional fun factors tied to self-assessed hotness:

The Dog and Cat Show

The Big Four performance concludes with the perfect mental palate cleanser: A dog and cat show. Do NOT, however, get too distracted by the majestic pupsters and kitties that come prancing out. It’s their owners who comprise the major points of fascination in this display.

The surprising correlations between pet ownership and arousal pathways present a delectable example of a random question leading to really fun data. When we put together our survey, we asked questions both about pet ownership and about preference in partner pet ownership (e.g., “Would you prefer to date a partner who owned a dog or one who did not own a dog?”). We didn’t do this because we genuinely cared about the answers, but because we thought fun stats may emerge, like: “Women who prefer a partner with cats like larger penises,” and we were keen to use this kind of vapid data to advertise the book in click bait articles. Sadly, there was no big correlation between pet ownership and breast or penis size preference outside of a small preference for larger penises among women who had dogs. There were, however, massive correlations between cat/dog preferences and many other aspects of sexuality that completely blindsided us.

Gauge the attractiveness of the men and women below. Note how the women striding next to their flouncing canines are rather attractive whereas the male dog owners are . . . less so, and that the pattern reverses with the male and female cat owners showing off their prized felines. Our survey found that more attractive women and less attractive men are drawn to dog ownership, and conversely, more attractive men and less attractive women are likely to have a cat. When it comes to animals that are neither a dog nor a cat, the results are even stronger, with very unattractive women likely to own other critters (think: birds, snakes, iguanas, fish, guinea pigs, etc.) and very attractive (but also very poor) men likely to have them. (Keep in mind our attractiveness ratings are self-reported, so you can choose to read attractive as “self-delusional” if you prefer.)

We can see a few of you drooling over those gorgeous male cat owners. Want some dirt on them before you get their digits? Our survey findings suggest that men with cats are much more likely to rate themselves as being jealous. On what might be a good note for you, they are much less likely to find the idea of physically striking their partners to be arousing (three times less likely, actually).

Take a look at that one guy getting his dog to heel like a champ, and the gentleman at the other end of the stadium failing to get his cat out of its carrier. Perhaps their comfort (or lack thereof) with controlling these animals bleeds over to the bedroom: Our dog-owning male survey respondents were slightly more likely to be sexually dominant, while their male cat-owning counterparts were much more likely to be sexually submissive. While the female dog owners responding to our survey were slightly more likely to be turned on by being sexually dominant, they were, unlike their male counterparts, also significantly more likely to be turned on by being sexually submissive.

Here is where this cat and dog show takes a delicious twist: As it happens, intrepid guests, the real star of this segment is not the pet owners below, nor is it their pets, but rather you! While our survey findings show only moderate correlation between one’s ownership of a dog or cat and various arousal patterns, our findings show a surprisingly high correlation between arousal patterns and preferences for partner pet ownership.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: The way you, personally, feel about those dog and cat owners below may say more about your sexual proclivities than their pet ownership does. We suspect this is because actual pet ownership is modified by a bunch of external factors, such as where a person lives or how much they move, whereas preference in partner ownership is more of a “pure” expression—unencumbered by static tied to one’s lifestyle—of whether a person is a dog or cat person.

Men Who Prefer a Partner with a Cat

If you have a cat and are targeting male partners, you are likely to attract significantly more submissive partners. This is true across almost every metric of submission, be it how much they get turned on by choking someone during sex (9% to 36%), striking their partner during sex (4% to 20%), roleplaying getting raped (12% to 5%), finding the thought of owning someone arousing (13% to 21%), getting turned on by acting submissive (35% to 21%), or getting turned on by acting dominant (58% to 73%).[[73]](#_ftn73)

So, if you want a fellow to boss around, grab a cat or two and start working them into the sexy selfies you post on your online dating profiles.

Applicability of study results is so cool!

Some other weird findings here:

Men Who Prefer a Partner with a Dog

Our survey data suggests that if you are trying to pick up a guy and you own a dog, you are much more likely to secure a dominant guy (78% to 39%), but not less likely to secure a submissive guy (34% to 22%) (remember—a person can be aroused by both dominance and submission). You are also much more likely to secure an aggressively dominant guy, as the arousal rates tied to things like roleplaying as a rapist (22% to 12%), the thought of actually raping someone (17% to 5%), and choking a partner (31% to 11%) are in most cases more than twice as high in men who prefer partners with dogs.

Some other weird findings here:

Women Who Prefer a Partner with a Cat

Inconveniently, women who prefer a partner who owns a cat have preferences similar to those of men who want a partner with a cat. Both groups in this case are looking for someone who is aggressively dominant, while tending toward being “violently submissive,” hence cat people appear to (statistically speaking) make poor matches for fellow cat people.

For example, they are much more likely to get turned on by being submissive (85% to 57%), they are way more likely to be aroused by being restrained (61% to 34%), they are less likely to get turned on by striking a partner (8% to 15%), more likely to be turned on by being struck (38% to 26%), much more likely to be turned on by being choked (41% to 23%), and much more likely to be turned on by the thought of being owned by someone ( 41% to 15%).

Some other weird findings here:

Across genders, there is definitely a common profile for people who prefer a partner who owns a cat. The two things that don’t carry across genders is the cat-liking males’ predilections for incest play (5% to 8%) and watching their partner have sex with other people. The consistency across genders and distinctness of sexual preferences here is uniquely remarkable and adds credence to our perception that there is something actually going on with this pet owner preference effect.

Women Who Prefer a Partner with a Dog

Both men and women who took our survey and expressed a preference for dog owners bear striking similarities across the gender gap, but in this case, the cross-gender difference is better matched. As with males who prefer dog owners, we see an increase in arousal from dominance (53% to 33%). That said, were in males, rates of submission were simply unchanged, arousal from submission in females who prefer female dog owners’ skyrockets—especially when it comes to “violent submission” (such as roleplay getting raped 19% to 5% and arousal from loss of agency 24% to 6%).

The only thing that stands out as unique between genders is that female lovers of dog owners show a distinct preference for watching their partner have sex with someone else (19% to 11%). Remember that male cat lovers feature this preference as well, whereas male dog lovers are strongly against it, and female cat lovers were lightly against it. We are not sure what is going on here as nothing else had an effect on these numbers, and yet we see it all over the place in pet type preference and the effects of said preference inverse across genders.

Weird findings here:

What the Hell Did I Just Watch?

That was a weird show, right? Why do you think these factors stood out so boldly in our data? To us, it seems pretty apparent when you break them down into two categories: Politics and pets being the first, and wealth and attractiveness being the second.

Wealth and attractiveness factors are likely products of perceived value on the dating market and/or perceived position in a social hierarchy. We see similar, if slightly less pronounced, correlations from any factor that increases a person’s position within their social hierarchy (friend group size, position at work, etc.). However, these confidence-boosting factors also tangibly increase a person’s value on the dating market, so it is hard to break out what the exact cause is (confidence or perceived desirability).

That said, we think we have this figured out: Attractiveness increases a woman’s odds of becoming aroused by acting dominant more so than it increases a male’s odds. Wealth increases males’ arousal from dominance more than it increases females’ arousal from dominance. It appears to be a person’s self-assessed value on the dating market that drives arousal from dominance.

At first glance, it may seem as though confidence is at play, but if these correlations were being driven by confidence, wealth and attractiveness would theoretically affect men and women equally on these fronts. (This of course assumes our participants believe wealth increases a man’s value on the dating market more than a woman’s and attractiveness increases a woman’s value on the dating market more than a man’s.)

This conclusion is reinforced by our survey data indicating a person’s self-perception of their position within their social hierarchy has less of an effect on how aroused they become by dominance than wealth or attractiveness did.

Long story short, the primary driver behind arousal from dominance (versus submission) appears to be how much of a “catch” a person thinks they are. The more one sees oneself as a catch, the more one is aroused by acting dominant.

It could be argued that people who are more aroused by dominance are more likely to acquire wealth, and thus a proclivity towards dominance may drive wealth acquisition rather than the other way around. We don’t think this is the case and instead suspect the causal nexus involves wealth and attractiveness influencing arousal pathways, not arousal pathways affecting wealth and attractiveness. Attractiveness is not a choice. While someone could reasonably argue that certain arousal pathways could increase a person’s odds of accumulating wealth, it is harder to argue that certain arousal pathways increase your attractiveness (though we were, admittedly, only able to gauge self-reported attractiveness, which might be affected by a proclivity towards dominance).

As for politics and pet preference: Though our survey was extremely detailed and while it dove into almost every nuanced aspect of our subjects’ lives, we did not ask much about personal opinions and worldviews.

We developed this study thinking that arousal pathways are a product of things that happen to us in life—specifically early in our lives—so we didn’t think to ask much about the things people choose to believe. Only our questions related to politics and pet preference touched on opinions. It ultimately makes sense that our beliefs would have a larger impact on our arousal pathways than serendipitous conditions. Still, we were surprised to learn this, and if we were the types to ever write a book on the same subject twice, this is something we would dig into a lot more next time.

We remain somewhat baffled by the trends associated with politics and pet preferences. That said, lots of research shows political beliefs are, in part, genetically inherited[[74]](#_ftn74) and tied to more basic instincts like those associated with risk tolerance. We wonder if political leanings might be tied to a heritable behavior pattern in which a single common factor is influencing both politics and sexual expression, but unfortunately lack the data required to investigate such a theory. We can say with some confidence that we do not believe it is a person’s political beliefs that influence their sexual expression. Were that the case, one wouldn’t see conservative males much more likely than liberals to find the idea of their partner sleeping with someone else to be arousing, given that “cuck” is a popular conservative insult for liberal males.

Why Do People Participate in BDSM?

Beloved informational explorers, welcome to the close of our tour. Please follow us out of the replica colosseum, exiting through the BDSM-themed gift shop. While some of you have already picked up a few BDSM-themed souvenirs along the way, we would be remiss in neglecting to give you one final shopportunity.

You may be wondering why our gift shop is BDSM-themed. When parsing through the data, we made one final BDSM-themed discovery that we would like to share with you.

While we didn’t expect a perfect overlap between erotic material consumption and the actual acting out of various sexual acts, we did expect the same demographic factors to correlate with similar changes in each. For example, if being wealthy made a man more likely to get turned on by acting dominant, we hypothesized that wealth would also increase a man’s probability of being a dom in a BDSM context. This, however, is not what our survey results revealed.

Our survey results suggest that, generally speaking, **factors that increase a person’s value on the sexual marketplace—be they male or female—typically cause an increase in that person’s rates of arousal from acting dominant. However, this trend does not carry over into BDSM participation.**

Our data indicated, as we expected, that BDSM subs primarily participate in BDSM to masturbate the arousal pathway associated with submission. Factors increasing a person’s likelihood to be aroused by submission almost always correlate with a person’s participation in BDSM as a sub in our data.

This was not at all the case with doms. Factors that increased arousal from dominance often decreased the odds of one acting as a dom in the context of BDSM. This confused the hell out of us at first. Why would factors causing people to be more aroused by acting dominant in a sexual context not also correlate highly with people assuming the role of a dom in BDSM contexts?

After looking at the data again and again and again, we eventually noticed a pattern: When the thing that increases a person’s value on the sexual marketplace also increases the dominance they experience daily (as is the case with wealth, a job with great authority, a position at the top of one’s social hierarchy, etc.), rates of participation in BDSM as a dom either didn’t rise dramatically or dropped, while rates of arousal from acting dominant rose.

Check out these store displays for some examples. See that placard under the male mannequin with the expensive three piece suit and Rolex? While our survey results suggest that 71% of men with high-power positions at work get turned on by acting dominant in a sexual context (in contrast to only 53% of those that are in low power positions), our results also suggest that high power men assume the dominant role in BDSM contexts at a rate 17% rate, which stands in stark contrast with that of men with less power at work—a robust 29% of men in lower professional ranks assume the dominant role in BDSM play.

At this point we are sure you won’t be surprised to know that our survey data suggests that women at the top of their social hierarchies are much more likely to be aroused by acting dominant than other women. You also won’t be surprised to hear that men low in their social hierarchies are more likely to be aroused by acting submissive in a sexual context. However, we may succeed in raising a few eyebrows when we say our data indicates that a woman at the bottom of her social hierarchy is far more likely to assume a dominant role in BDSM contexts, and men at the bottom of their social hierarchies are no less likely to assume dominant roles in a BDSM context than their king-of-the-hill counterparts, despite both being much less likely to be aroused by acting dominant.

Our data also suggests that women who have larger friend groups are less likely to assume the role of a dom in BDSM play, while nevertheless receiving more arousal by acting dominant.

Finally, our data suggests that men born in families they perceived as being at the bottom of the social hierarchy prefer to play the dom at almost twice the rate in BDSM scenarios (18% vs 10%). While females born into high-power families prefer to be a dom at a significantly higher rate than females of low-power families (29% to 10%), they also prefer to assume the role of the sub at much higher rates (57% to 29%). It appears that being born into a high-status family as a woman just increases BDSM participation across the board and not specifically as a dom or a sub.

Is it not fascinating that even those who are more aroused by dominance in many cases aren’t assuming the dominant role in BDSM contexts? While on the surface this finding seems surprising, it makes sense that those who experience dominance in their daily lives would not need to resort to BDSM to masturbate dominance arousal pathways. However, in a society that tells people that indulging in subservience in public is not a laudable behavior, it makes sense that all categories of submissive people would be drawn to BDSM, as there are not many instances in which the submission pathway will be masturbated through the course of a normal day.

We could be wrong about all this. It could just be that the factors associated with being aroused by acting dominant in a sexual context—attractiveness, wealth, large friend groups, power in an office environment, etc.—also vastly increase the social and self-image “cost” of participating in a marginalized community like the BDSM community. This is something the data actually indicates might be true.

Bear with us here, because there is no concise way to explain this: Recall that our study found that men in a high position of power at work assume the role of a dom in a BDSM context at a rate of 17% versus 29% of their low-power male counterparts. Men with high-power jobs reported assuming the position of a sub at a rate of 8%, versus 18% of men with low-power jobs, suggesting that when they acted in a BDSM context, they played the dom 283% more often than when they were a sub—whereas the men of low power at work were only a dom at 161% the rate they were a sub. This indicates that when such individuals do participate in BDSM, they do so proportionally as a dom at a rate you would expect given how much more naturally aroused by dominance they are. This higher participation in dominant roles by the professionally high-power men who do participate in BDSM undermines the theory that they are more likely to have their dominance arousal pathway fulfilled by their daily life. Instead, these stats reinforce the theory that professionally high-power men are just participating in BDSM less overall.

Remembering the Journey: A Recap

Thank you for joining us on this whirlwind review of our informal research. We can tell from the dizzy and moderately nauseous looks on some of your faces that we presented a lot to digest.

As you gather your shopping bags and collect a complimentary souvenir thong on the way out, please also grab hold of this huge caveat: This is not peer-reviewed research. This is armchair research—or to put it more flatteringly, “gentleman science.” We are massive advocates of recreational research as a means of sanity checking personal theories and filling in gaps in one’s knowledge of the world. If you disagree with anything we think we found in our survey, we heartily encourage you in the strongest possible terms to do your own research. We recommend Positly.com and GuidedTrack.com as great tools for conducting your own small-scale research studies over something like Survey Monkey. Should you ultimately give this a try, we would love to help you share your findings.

If you read this far in the supplementary section of the book . . . why? We never intended you to read through all this, our sane readers stopped at the beginning of the supplementary section. Especially given that you are a deep cut kind of reader, we strongly encourage you to leave a short review on Amazon. Putting these books together is a pain in the butt and we give away all the money they make. The reviews people generously take time to post both make us feel good and lower what we have to pay in advertising to get this content out there to other people (books with more reviews and better reviews enjoy a higher conversion rate from ads). If you want to really be helpful, we are always looking for people to help edit our upcoming books—just drop us an email at Hello@Pragmatist.Guide.

[[1]](#_ftnref1) Not all of the professional sex therapists we contacted gave us detailed feedback and none reviewed content added in the final stages of editing.

[[2]](#_ftnref2) See “Cultural Drift and Social Change” in Current Anthropology for a discussion of cultural drift and the manner in which it accelerates within small isolated groups.

[[3]](#_ftnref3) One of the writers of the book is LGBTQIA, as are a number of its editors and contributors. We like to think that hasn’t impacted our objectivity and thus need not be mentioned, (it was not in the original print of the book). However, a number of this book’s negative reviews specifically called out what the reader assumed to be non-LGBTQIA individuals writing on the topic of sexuality. While we prefer that our ideas be judged on their own merit, we feel obligated to mention this, as negative reviews can severely impact the reach of this book. If it annoys you that people do this, please drop us a positive review.

[[4]](#_ftnref4) We are in no way comparing the daily experiences or levels of oppression that these communities historically faced and currently endure. LGBT people have been and are being killed. We only wish to highlight that cultural drift has affected each group.

[[5]](#_ftnref5) When you look at other research, like a study of 2,300 people in the UK showing 75% to have a kink, our number may seem high. This is because our survey does not explore kinks per se, but rather any turn on not tied to penis-in-vagina sex or oral sex.

[[6]](#_ftnref6) OK, that isn’t entirely true—we did find one potential pathway through which parenting might ultimately affect adult sexuality, but the effects are fairly light and are more likely to be signs of correlation rather than causation. For more info, see the chapter: “Strict Fathers” on page 451.

[[7]](#_ftnref7) See: “Psychological Barriers to Evolutionary Psychology: Ideological Bias and Coalitional Adaptations” in Archives of Scientific Psychology

[[8]](#_ftnref8) For more on the replication crisis, check out Muthukrishna, M, and J Henrich’s article “A problem in theory” in Nature Human Behavior.

[[9]](#_ftnref9) The words fetish, kink, and paraphilia are synonyms when used in the vernacular (and we generally try to write our books in the vernacular), but if you really want to get technical, here is how they differ:

Kink: Arousal tied to a non-traditional or otherwise socially taboo stimulus. This arousal is additive to other sources of arousal. Fetish: A sexual fixation on a specific object or act to the extent that sexual gratification is impossible (or nearly impossible) without engaging said object or act. (An alternate, commonly used definition of fetish includes all intense arousal from non-human objects and non-genital body parts.) Paraphilia: A fetish that has escalated to a point at which it has negative life consequences. (Think of this as the “clinical” term for a fetish.)

[[10]](#_ftnref10) There is a mirror phenomenon in which humans believe those they find arousing are also intrinsically more moral—this is typically referred to as the Halo Effect.

[[11]](#_ftnref11)Object sexuality, the romantic attraction to specific structures or architectural elements, is classified as a paraphilia when it really shouldn’t be. Accounts from those who have object sexuality almost exclusively focus on romantic or intimate feelings for structures—these individuals’ feelings are rarely erotic in nature. Meaning this is not an abnormality in an arousal pathway but rather one in a pair bonding pathway which is likely a separate neurological system as discussed above.

[[12]](#_ftnref12) You will notice that while the word bisexual was obviously used in the research we are citing here, we do our best to avoid it and will continue to do so throughout the book. The term “bisexual” has a few competing definitions that can be intensely personal. Some define bisexuality as attraction to more than one gender while others require this definition to include an attraction to one’s own gender—recommending the word polysexual to describe attraction to multiple genders but not necessarily one’s own. Neither of these definitions necessarily includes all people who have at least an attraction to males and females but not necessarily any other gender identity (which is what bisexual used to mean). People who would have checked the word “bi” on a survey in the past may identify as anything from bisexual to pansexual, omnisexual, or polysexual.

[[13]](#_ftnref13) To not beat around the bush: The most vocal of these groups are a few extremist sub-factions of the “Gender Critical Radical Feminists” also known as TERFs by their detractors (to highlight that they don’t believe trans women are women). This is also not an argument used in the more mainstream factions of the gender critical movement.

[[14]](#_ftnref14) Full disclosure: One of the authors of this book is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

[[15]](#_ftnref15) See “Single dose testosterone administration increases men’s facial femininity preference in a Chinese population” in Psychoneuroendocrinology

[[16]](#_ftnref16)Well, one would call them asexual unless one knew about the term apothisexual, but we don’t think having a billion words for ultra-specific sexualities is super helpful either. Yes, it helps people feel like they are part of a wider community but it also pigeonholes people who deviate from the existing lexicon and hinders their ability to communicate their sexuality to other people.

[[17]](#_ftnref17) Of course, gayness might have evolved multiple times for multiple reasons. Moreover, there is some evidence from anthropological research that gay people do care for nephews and nieces at higher rates, showing there could be some selective pressure here, but that is as far as the evidence for this hypothesis goes.

[[18]](#_ftnref18) In current terminology omnisexuals are individuals that experience active attraction to all genders (this term is used to contrast with the term pansexual, which is often used to indicate a lack of aversion to any gender and is more common in females who fall toward the center of the Kinsey scale).

[[19]](#_ftnref19) Pansexual = Someone whose arousal pathways are not influenced by the gender of a target.

[[20]](#_ftnref20) There are still cases of women who feel no arousal toward anything at all. These cases just make up the minority of women who identify as asexual. Think of the concept of asexuality being akin to that of being colorblind: Most people who are colorblind can actually see most colors, but a minority of colorblind people with achromatopsia actually fit the etymology of the term “colorblind” and can only see in black and white but they are so rare that the term colorblind rarely applies to them even though etymologically it should apply exclusively to them.

[[21]](#_ftnref21) Bukkake falls under this category if you assume that arousal from sperm is a gender detection system. It could be that arousal from sperm comes entirely from the societal notion that being covered in it is shorthand for being dominated and thus arousal from bukkake is really arousal from submission. This could be teased out be seeing if it appears cross culturally.

[[22]](#_ftnref22) In modern parlance most of these people would now be called “omnisexual” which is used to describe active sexual attraction to all genders (as opposed to pansexual, which is seen as being more gender blind).

[[23]](#_ftnref23) Our primary ambassador from the looner community introduced us to this store run for looners called balloons-united.com which delights us to no end and is well worth a visit.

[[24]](#_ftnref24) As a cool aside, great apes have been observed laughing when people perform magic tricks for them. This would fit our schema. Magic tricks would kind of make sense within a great ape’s worldview, but would still be surprising, so they would want to see the trick performed again to fully understand it. To us, this indicates that our hominid ancestors likely laughed as well.

[[25]](#_ftnref25) This was a checkbox-style question, so participants were able to select multiple responses.

[[26]](#_ftnref26) We did find that strict fathers may have an effect, but the effect is fairly small and can be explained by other factors.

[[27]](#_ftnref27) For more info on this, see the literature review: “Women’s Erotic Rape Fantasies: An Evaluation of Theory and Research” in the Journal of Sex Research.

[[28]](#_ftnref28) This evidence could also imply that humans were in the process of transitioning in the opposite direction as well, but given that we know the end result of this period (recorded history) was largely monogamous or polygynous showing a strong expectation of female fidelity and that our closest relatives, chimps, have little expectation of fidelity, we can pretty safely assume this was not the case.

[[29]](#_ftnref29) Well—OK—we can think of one: Women who evolved this trait may have been living in a polyamorous society and trading sex with males for resources, securing resources from less genetically attractive (but otherwise attractive in terms of available time and/or resources) males when they could not get pregnant, but in light of the morphology evidence discussed above, we don’t think this was the case.

[[30]](#_ftnref30) Some ancient Greek quotes about women for context: “A woman who travels outside her house should be old enough that people ask whose mother she is, not whose wife she is,” “A man who teaches a woman to write should know that he is providing poison to an asp,” and “Zeus made wives as his worst pestilence and fettered us in bonds unbreakable.”

[[31]](#_ftnref31) In this particular discussion, we assume humans primarily lived in polygynous societies for the reasons discussed above. Thus, women had “primary” partners and were able to “cheat” though both concepts probably would have had vastly different meanings to these historic cultures and certainly would not have had their current moral baggage. We merely use these words as a shorthand.

[[32]](#_ftnref32) Part of why this surprised us is other research has indicated that doms actually report higher levels of happiness and wellbeing than subs and that participating in BDSM even lowers their cortisol levels (presumably lowering their stress levels in general).

[[33]](#_ftnref33) Note: This is in reference to practices like cross dressing as a cis person and not in reference to being trans.

[[34]](#_ftnref34) Interesting languages that evolved independently do not show much consistency in how they gender inanimate objects. This is a good demonstration of just how affected by our culture—and not inborn—our “gender packages” happen to be.

[[35]](#_ftnref35) This phenomenon isn’t unique to gender. Sometimes a concept or way of looking at the world is so boldly carved into our subconscious that it spills out into our perception of reality. For example, humans also have a “pre-programed” system for reading agency and emotion in other individuals. This system is so deeply ingrained that across cultures, humans will accidentally ascribe agency and emotions to inanimate objects and random patterns (like weather or clouds). Some neurodivergencies even cause alterations in how this system expresses itself (like the phenomenon of magical thinking in schizophrenia, a term for ascribing agency and intentionality to patterns), so it would be weird to not see neurodivergencies affect the gender system.

[[36]](#_ftnref36) We suspect this is why toddlers often become so fixated on the topic of gender and act out simplistic gendered behavior. This can be thought of as the gender version of babbling. On this topic, it would be fascinating to see if these systems could be hijacked in toddlers to identify other social roles with their gender systems.

[[37]](#_ftnref37) If you are interested in reading more on this front, check out “Transvestism: A Survey of 1032 Cross-Dressers” by Richard F. Docter & Virginia Prince published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

[[38]](#_ftnref38) Here we need to note that some organizations lump cross-dressing individuals under the “trans umbrella,” so in that sense cross-dressers would be “trans” but not “trans men” or “trans women.” Regardless of nomenclature, wanting to act out the gender display of another gender is not the same as being a gender different from the sex you were assigned at birth, so it is important to establish that both of these groups exist as distinct behavioral sets. This is another one of those cases of groups forming around the social prejudices aligned against them rather than similar drives.

[[39]](#_ftnref39) I, Simone, am a woman, yet I reacted similarly to the study’s male participants when looking at the study’s various pictures, so I doubt this is a strictly male phenomenon. Alas, we haven’t yet come across studies investigating female reactions to images of men exhibiting various configurations of provocative dress and posture.

[[40]](#_ftnref40) Do not assume that any of the above kinks are more common in the trans population. The aforementioned kinks are indeed more common among certain groups, but not trans people per se—rather, they are more common among the politically conservative and wealthy.

[[41]](#_ftnref41) Technically, agender people like us (people who do not have an attachment to any gender identity) are considered non-binary and sometimes non-binary people are considered trans. In some circles, our statement could therefore be read like: “As trans people, we have no idea what it feels like to be trans.” But in the same way a straight person has a better understanding than a “totally asexual” person of what a gay person is describing when they talk about being turned on by someone, a cisgender person has a better understanding of what it feels like to be a trans man or woman than we do.

This inability to even attempt to model what it feels like to care about our gender is one of the reasons we keep this section so short.

[[42]](#_ftnref42) For some examples see: I’m a Transgender Woman Because of Video Games or A video game showed me who I really am and read the comments from people who had similar experiences.

[[43]](#_ftnref43) Given this data, we cannot help but wonder if the reason the trans community has taken longer to gain acceptance than the gay community is in part because people with soft-gender expressions are far more prevalent than people with low libidos.

[[44]](#_ftnref44) As is the case with most of this book, we asked some community members to “sanity check” our writing, as we can’t say much about being trans from firsthand experience. We were advised to mention the role gender dysphoria plays in being trans, but ultimately chose to sidestep the subject as there is some debate within the trans community as to whether gender dysphoria is necessary to be trans. The discrepancy in consensus strikes us as a question of definition or ideology, placing it outside the scope of this book. We are more interested in the underling “brain stuff” and not linguistic stuff. All we can say is that many people who identify as trans experience gender dysphoria while others do not.

[[45]](#_ftnref45) Spanking became such a popular mental proxy for submission among boys who grew up at English boarding schools it become known as the “English vice” during the Victorian era.

[[46]](#_ftnref46) See “The pleasure is momentary…the expense damnable?: The influence of pornography on rape and sexual assault”

[[47]](#_ftnref47) See: “Is Pornography Really about ‘Making Hate to Women’? Pornography Users Hold More Gender Egalitarian Attitudes Than Nonusers in a Representative American Sample.”

[[48]](#_ftnref48) See: “Pornography reinforces sexist attitudes among a subgroup of heterosexuals.”

[[49]](#_ftnref49) Because porn affects opioid pathways, it will cause the parts of the brain that “light up” when exposed to potential opioids to activate when looking at porn. This has been shown in some studies.

[[50]](#_ftnref50) If you do believe you are addicted to masturbation and it is having a negative effect on your life, an interesting study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings suggests through a case study that Naltrexone, an opioid antagonist, could be an effective treatment.

[[51]](#_ftnref51) This quote is from an interview of Andrew L. Whitehead of Clemson University in PsyPost

[[52]](#_ftnref52) NRE stands for new relationship energy. It’s the intense feeling one gets about a partner early in a relationship. The term is most often used in the poly community.

[[53]](#_ftnref53) We are open to the possibility that NRE is comprised of a few different emotional states. We broadly define these states as an involuntary fixation on another person combined with a strong emotional reward from increased closeness with them that is not based solely on sexual interest, love, or intellectual interest.

[[54]](#_ftnref54) It is very interesting that while our sexuality is largely unalterable through pharmacological intervention, our amoralities are highly influenceable by pharmaceuticals. Not only can drugs significantly change what incites the feeling of love in an individual in the short term but some substances, like LSD, have been shown to have long-term effects on whether or not certain concepts are likely to insight the feeling of love.

[[55]](#_ftnref55) Nevertheless, the NRE system—the force driving us to have crushes on people—might be influenced by gender preference, which could help to explain the origin of concepts like heteroromantic and homoromantic, as the NRE system is bundled with the amorality system in a person’s romantic orientation.

[[56]](#_ftnref56) If gender is a big part of “who a person is” in your conception of the world, it can impact your amorality.

[[57]](#_ftnref57) There is one common exception: Some individuals seem to have the thresholds required to fall in love with a target dramatically lowered by their sexual interest in a target while for others this is irrelevant. Functionally, this can make someone “gay” or “straight” in amorality even if this pattern is not caused by an amoural attraction to a specific gender. This is another one of those circumstances in which an obsession with gender causes society to miss a blindingly obvious pattern in the data—that the systems involved with love cannot read the gender of a target but that through other systems, gender can influence love. The system is likely gender blind because it first evolved to form pair bonds with one’s children and the gender of a child would have been irrelevant.

[[58]](#_ftnref58) Evidence indicating the average person’s underlying romantic proclivities are panromantic does not proclaim “panromantic” to be the only “amoural identity” nor does it invalidate other romantic identities. As with sexual identities, our romantic identities are the patterns cast upon a wall when the light of our underlying romantic proclivities shines through the stained glass windows of our surrounding cultures and life experiences. The fact that the same sun shines upon most churches does not invalidate the patterns created by the unique stained glass windows they feature.

[[59]](#_ftnref59) We suspect that object sexuality, which leads some to form relationships with objects like cars or monuments, describes not a mix-up in someone’s sexual system, but rather a mix-up in a person’s amourality system. This is one of the few exceptions in which people are apparently only able to feel love for a narrow set of things—with the divergence in this system being that one is capable of forming intense love for inanimate objects, something the average brain appears to block (with the exception of childhood comfort items like blankets and stuffed animals).

[[60]](#_ftnref60) For more information on this, see: “The gendering of language: A comparison of gender equality in countries with gendered, natural gender, and genderless languages” in Sex Roles.

[[61]](#_ftnref61) Amorality can be pharmacologically altered with some hallucinogens, so this may be a bad example.

[[62]](#_ftnref62) We just made up that name to be the most generic sounding fursona we could think of; sorry if it is a real person’s fursona.

[[63]](#_ftnref63) See Personal Relationships or Misogyny on Twitter by Demosand Derogation of Competitors in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

[[64]](#_ftnref64) ”Trashy” in our study was defined as “someone whose portrayal is aggressively aimed at demonstrating a lack of appropriate demeanor.” We would prefer not to use words colloquially intended to be derogatory, like “trashy” and “slutty,” but such words are common in arousal patterns and the naming of pornographic material sub-genres, thus a failure to use these terms would compromise our data.

[[65]](#_ftnref65) We assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that we would prefer not to use the word “slutty,” but this is how erotic material is labeled, and we run the risk of compromising our data when we make efforts to find a roundabout way of describing this genre of porn and erotic material in our surveys.

[[66]](#_ftnref66) On the back of the book, we claim that the number of people interested in parent-child roleplay is around the same as the Black population in the US. We drew this conclusion by looking at people interested in either father roleplay OR mother roleplay: 12.5%. The US Black population is 12.7%.

[[67]](#_ftnref67) For more information on this phenomenon, see the paper: Not Threat, But Threatening: Potential Causes and Consequences of Gay Innumeracy, which found overestimation of the size of the gay population to be common among groups that see them as a threat. A more updated breakdown indicates this phenomenon isn’t subsiding—see the Gallup article: Americans Still Greatly Overestimate U.S. Gay Population.

[[68]](#_ftnref68) In our survey we defined bisexual in the vernacular (arousal from at least males and females), as explaining the more complicated new variant definitions would increase the length of an already very long survey.

[[69]](#_ftnref69) As these are self-reported libido levels, it could be that conservatives contextualize a lower level of libido as being abnormal, but our other data does not support the theory. For example, 54% of conservative females have sex more than once a week versus 47% of liberal ladies, and 56% of conservative men had sex more than once a week versus 41% of their liberal counterparts.

Maybe sex is a bad indicator, right? If we look at masturbation more frequently than three times a week, we find 80% conservative men versus 76% liberal men fall into that category, with the hiccup being we see this case in 15% of conservative women vs 29% of liberal women.

[[70]](#_ftnref70) We’re referring only to the average breast size of partners. Political leaning did track with one difference in breast size preference: specifically, appetite for porn with giant breasts, which both conservative men and women reported consuming at higher frequency than their liberal peers in our study.

[[71]](#_ftnref71)A complication to this trend is women in the below-average category of wealth get turned on by seeing themselves as a man at a higher rate as well (7.7%). While this is only slightly higher than average, it still throws a wrench in the nice pattern we were seeing.

[[72]](#_ftnref72) Malcolm here: As a guy, I had trouble understanding this, so here is how Simone explained it to me: “I think many women feel unpretty because they lack the funds necessary to pay for services that they believe make them pretty (or stylists who make them feel pretty through sheer flattery).”

[[73]](#_ftnref73) We tried a ton of ways of showing the data in this section and couldn’t find one that was comfortably succinct—we tried laying out all the data systematically and it was immensely boring. Thus, we have decided it is best to stick with a purely narrative approach and cite stats when relevant, with the first stat being X gender who prefers partners with Y pet and the second being X gender who explicitly prefers partners without Y pet—we will not include the numbers of indifferent individuals unless they add color to the data, as they make it harder to read. We know it still sucks to read but it is the best of the various ways of laying out the data and this is where we landed.

[[74]](#_ftnref74) See “Genetic Influences on Political Ideologies: Twin Analyses of 19 Measures of Political Ideologies from Five Democracies and Genome-Wide Findings from Three Populations in Behavior Genetics” for one of these studies.

Raw text for machines: .txt · .md · cite as TPG 47.4.7