D is for Male, S is for Female
Upon reading this title you might have thought “WTF is he talking about? Men and women (and hopefully you thought of non-binary and agender people as well but since the title didn’t mention them I can forgive you if you didn’t) can be any role they want!” If so, congratulations! You are clearly not held down by societal gender norms. However, while you are correct at the individual level, statistically speaking men are more likely to be D-types and women are more likely to be s-types (I know this is twice that I’ve left some people out, please forgive me, I’ll get back to that later).
Obviously people are individuals and thus what I am about to say does not apply to every person or even to every BDSM circle. However, my anecdotal observations tell me that the BDSM community tends to share some of the same gender norms as society at large. That is, it’s often assumed that the man is Dominant and that the woman is submissive.
Why should you care about this? Maybe you don’t. If you’re a sub looking for a Dom female, you should probably care if for no other reason than that the data does not show great odds for you (fortunately I already have my Dom and she’s the best Dom so I don’t have to worry about that). If you’re looking for a Dom male, your odds are a lot better and statistics probably won’t play into your situation.
Otherwise, you might care if you’re like me, by which I mean a nerd who enjoys diving into statistics, identifying correlations, and then searching for an underlying cause (because remember that correlation in and of itself is does not indicate causation).
There are a number of surveys that have been conducted on this topic. Domina Chase and I talk a lot about conflation between gender and roles. While people still shouldn’t make assumptions or speak in a way that excludes certain gender/role combinations, the fact is that some stereotypes exist for a reason.
The definition in the study I’m about to quote may not be the same as that used within the BDSM community as it refers to a number of activities that aren’t necessarily masochistic in a BDSM sense (the definition in the DSM 5 is different than the definition you’ll find in our own HuBDSM glossary). It seems that the article is using “masochist” to mean both masochist, bottom, or submissive. As such, I hesitate to use it to draw too many conclusions but I did find this excerpt worth sharing.
There are far more masochists than there are sadists (Baumeister, 1988, 1989; Cross & Matheson, 2006).
Prostitutes report a more disproportionate ratio. In fact, one of the biggest challenges for a self-respecting masochist is to find a suitably cooperative sadist.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/magnetic-partners/201403/sexual-masochism
Data for the following charts was reportedly pulled from Fetlife in December 2014 and are posted here: https://imgur.com/a/tLcWL
Kink Orientations Among All Users
Kink Orientations Among Men
Kink Orientations Among Women
This includes more categories than just Dom/sub/switch but if you group them together appropriately (such as rolling kajira, brat, slave, pet, etc under sub) you’ll see similar results.
The details vary and the correlation is stronger in some surveys than in others, but in broad strokes we see the same conclusions:
There are proportionally more Dominant men than Dominant women.
There are proportionally more submissive women than submissive men.
There are proportionally more submissive men than Dominant women.
I’d like to know why this is. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer. I’m not sure that anyone is certain of the answer.
However, if I had to guess I would say that it relates to societal gender norms. Women are expected to be more submissive or at least more passive and men are expected to be more dominant/aggressive. I’m not talking about BDSM, I’m just talking about society in general.
Another aspect might be physical differences. Men on average are physically stronger than women which naturally puts them in a more dominant position from the start. Now of course much of BDSM (particularly D/s) is mental but to subvert those expectations is a sort of uphill battle. And while D/s can be mental, some people do like to use physical strength as part of their play, which means that men just naturally have more options than women when it comes to asserting their dominance.
Unfortunately, these surveys and graphs all seem to be focused on the binary genders. I can’t even be certain how much (if any) transgender representation was included much less any data that includes non-binary people.
There are some things that I think could help inform our understanding of BDSM roles in the future:
Surveys from other cultures that have different views on gender.
Surveys from cultures that have different views on individualism vs collectivism.
Surveys that include D/s roles among transgender, agender, and non-binary people.
Surveys that can better account for BDSM roles other than dom/sub/switch.
All of the above would help get a better sense of how much of our BDSM role is informed by society vs being something that’s simply ingrained in us. Is that important? In practical terms, maybe not. We are who we are regardless. However, I think there is always value in better understanding ourselves, our society, and the world around us.
What is your opinion on the correlation between gender and BDSM roles? Do you know of any data out there that can help inform this topic? We’d love to hear from you in the comment or in our Facebook group Humanistic BDSM: Inclusive AF Kink!
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