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This chart's data looks so impossible to me that I'm not putting any faith in it. More than 1 in 5 people taking the survey reported interest in "receiving ora

This chart's data looks so impossible to me that I'm not putting any faith in it. More than 1 in 5 people taking the survey reported interest in "receiving oral sex from animal"? More than 1 in 50 people admitted to having a pedophilic interest in "pre-puberty children", and just as many have a desire to execute someone? Edit: I suppose, even more incredibly, its rather >1 in 50 people are aroused by the concept of executing someone...

coldtea 4y ago
Given how any small town would have the know-and-avoid "local pedo" back in the day, as Louis CK used to joke, it might not be impossible! Those scum are sure a lot! Now sure I believe 1 in 50 admitting to it though...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  I guess I'm going to be the guy who objects to someone being called scum just for having a thing for kids and never actually acting on it.
  - cwillu 4y ago
    It's like people think that someone just woke up one day and decided to be that way.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Does it matter? Would a serial killer be any better if "genetics" made them do it? In fact, that would make them more of a beast (as sometimes such people are reffered as), not less. Beast are what they are, they're not what they "chose" to be either... I sure don't agree with unlawful punishment or cruel torment as punishment of course, whatever the crime - as some people think somebody being like that gives them a free ride to kill/torture them. I think those people are also sick, and just finding a convenient widely agreed target for their violent urges...
      - rocqua 4y ago
        Would a serial killer be just as horrible for fantasizing about murders without ever murdering, or helping others murder? Of course not. That doesn't mean they are harmless either. But stigmatizing thoughts to the point where you can't ask for help with the thoughts seems like a recipe for problems.
        tshaddox 4y ago
        How are we assuming that the whole town knows someone’s thoughts if they never act on them?
        kelseyfrog 4y ago
        > be just as horrible I don't get the utility of making ontological statements about people including serial killers. Maybe someone who does find utility in them could chime in and explain it.
        rocqua 4y ago
        Constructed counter-examples tend to be exaggerated to bring out the inherent contradiction.
        Thiez 4y ago
        By definition you must murder to be a serial killer, so in that regard they are incomparable to pedophiles, who only require an attraction without acting on it. Interestingly a significant part of sexual abuse of children appears to be committed by people (mostly men) as a crime of opportunity, without them being primarily or exclusively attracted to children.
        rocqua 4y ago
        That is arguing semantics. The point was about the difference between urges and actions.
        hutzlibu 4y ago
        "Would a serial killer be just as horrible for fantasizing about murders without ever murdering, or helping others murder? Of course not. " Sure, because they simply would not be serial killers, if they have never killed. So yes, it is important to make the clear distinction between people who have done horrible things and those, who have fantasies about it and not mix them all together. Part of what makes us human is impulse control. I might feel the urge to beat someone - but only if I would let that part of myself go, then there is a real problem as then something happened. With pedophiles it is of course a bit more tricky. Would you let someone close to your kids, if you knew they have fantasies about sex with them, but so far he has showed restraint? "But stigmatizing thoughts to the point where you can't ask for help with the thoughts seems like a recipe for problems." Yes, there was the famous incident, where one pilot decided to suicide himself and the whole plane with him. Smart populistic politicians reacted by saying they need a new law that says psychotherapists who treat pilots, must inform the authorities when the pilot has dark thoughts. Awesome way to hinder people from getting therapy as they could never open up if they know it might lead to their job being taken away. Therapies must be and remain confidential to have a chance of working.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Well, having such a constant "thing" in your thoughts qualifies I think. Actions matter more, but thoughts matter too. I means that's how you see other people. And that they'd might even just act on it if it wasn't for law and repercursions! Now, a normal person sure can e.g. in anger have a momentary revenge fantasy of killing somebody thats being a jerk, but that's not the same I'd say as a constant urge for something like that. Then it's part of personality.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      The important question here I think is: is it under the person's control. If it's not (and it seems plausible to me that it's not as other more normal sexual preferences like homosexuality and heterosexuality are to a large degree not) then they can hardly be held responsible for it. If someone is unlucky enough to be born attracted to children and they control themselves such that they don't act on those urges then I'd consider that quite admirable.
      - noduerme 4y ago
        I'm not sure this holds up logically. If someone can't control something, then the "admirable" quality of controlling it would be impossible. If they do control it (admirably) then it's by definition under the person's control. If what you mean is that the desire is not under their control but refraining from acting upon it is, then is it admirable for someone to repress their homosexuality in, say, Iran? Or is that just a matter of survival? In that case, don't we say it's admirable for someone to have the courage to be themselves in the face of enormous risk, and that repressing individual sexuality is a violation of human rights? The difference, of course, being that homosexuality doesn't imply non-consensual acts; no one is hurt by it. It could be that some pedophiles refrain from molesting children because some internal moral standard tells them it would hurt the child, but it seems more likely that they only refrain when and where they could get into trouble for it. Just looking at what an outlier "teens under 18" is on that chart... it's as popularly a fetish as "lips" or "thighs" (Y-axis), but it sits way out in the taboo area near bestiality. That's gotta be because it's illegal. Almost everything right of 70% is illegal, and its position correlates roughly to "how illegal is it".
  - imiric 4y ago
    To lighten the mood, Mark Normand has a great bit about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vwdmZFBJvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vwdmZFBJvA That entire special[1] is side-splittingly funny. One of my favorite comedians. Comedy! [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDolNU89SXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDolNU89SXI
- RajT88 4y ago
  > Those scum are sure a lot! Far more than we'll ever know. I am convinced most of them get away with it, and far more manage to keep it in the realm of fantasy. I'm not sure I really want to know the real number.
rippercushions 4y ago
The survey does not claim to represent the general population. Many participants were recruited from places like FetLife, which you'd expect to lean heavily towards kink: https://aella.substack.com/p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey https://aella.substack.com/p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey But the results are still interesting for comparative purposes, as well as the opinions of how the general population views each kink. For example, it's kind of remarkable that pedophilia is considered worse than cannibalism, "meatslaves" and "woundfucking", both new words I learned today.
- FeistySkink 4y ago
  After reading this comment, I'm convinced we need a NSFW flag.
  - n-e-w 4y ago
    I would have thought the title of the article would have been sufficient to prevent you clicking it in a work context :/
- coldtea 4y ago
  >For example, it's kind of remarkable that pedophilia is considered worse than cannibalism, "meatslaves" and "woundfucking", both new words I learned today. The first is considered as something very real, quite widespread, and very common danger. The others are see as very exotic/extreme fringe. So it's not exactly considering e.g. cannibalism "less taboo", it's just that this and the others you mention seem to unreal and rare to warrant serious consideration. If there were cannibalism stories in the news with the same frequency it would be just up there with pedophilia
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Do people generally take “cannibalism” to mean murdering someone and then eating them, or just eating human flesh? I thought the latter is the normal sense of the word, and in that case I don’t think it holds a candle to pedophilia.
quirino 4y ago
If you even decide to respond to a poll like this you're already in a bubble
googlryas 4y ago
The survey was taken on a fetish website, and read it. I'm sure there is some mix of people who actually feel those things, and trolls just messing around. But you're right to not put any faith into it. Blasting out any kind of Internet survey it's just asking for useless results.
RajT88 4y ago
Some of these seem to back up some things I was seeing in the Ashley Madison breach. I was surprised to discover quite a lot of men saying they were interested in crossdressing, and quite a lot of women interested in their male partners crossdressing. A bit under 20% here, and without much skew towards either gender. I would have expected it to be more of a male-centric fringe activity, instead of what it actually is. (Perhaps because I'm not into it myself) > More than 1 in 5 people taking the survey reported interest in "receiving oral sex from animal"? More than 1 in 50 people admitted to having a pedophilic interest in "pre-puberty children", and just as many have a desire to execute someone? Fucking hell this chart made me chuckle, and then go silent in horror, as I worked my way from top left to bottom right.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- FooHentai 4y ago
  Since Ashley Madison caters to people wanting to cheat, it would self select for people with taboo-, thrill-, or risk-seeking tendencies. So not sure (and sure hope) this could be extrapolated to the population as a whole.
- philippejara 4y ago
  its a poll whose participants consist pretty much entirely of people who follow a pornstar on social media, so I'm not sure you should take it as conclusive on anything other than what her fans like
- yucky 4y ago
  A huge chunk of the "female" profiles on Ashley Madison turned out to be (suprise) bots. I wouldn't read too much into any of that data.
aquova 4y ago
I'm curious at how the questions were phrased as well. It's one thing to express interest in watching pornography with multiple people in it versus wanting to go out and participate in an orgy themselves. I don't think this quite excuses things like execution, but would change some of the other answers quite a bit.
- patmcc 4y ago
  She goes into it a bit here: https://aella.substack.com/p/my-kink-survey-design-methodology?s=w https://aella.substack.com/p/my-kink-survey-design-methodolo... but one key bit from it is here (this is quoted on the linked page, from the survey itself: “Our sexual fantasies are different from what we do in real life. I'm going to ask about some things that might seem cruel if actually done; being aroused by a taboo erotic fantasy does /not/ mean you would violate consent in real life. Please answer according to your ideal fantasies, even if you would never actually act on it.” (slightly later) "A good test is "have you searched porn of this thing", "have you masturbated to fantasies about this thing", or "have you asked a sexual partner to participate in this thing" So someone who has masturbated to fantasies involving orgies or animals or execution would likely be included.
patmcc 4y ago
Alfred Kinsey did research suggesting that ~8% of men and ~3.5% of women had engaged in beastiality at least once. Based on that I wouldn't be surprised if 20% have at least fantasised about it.
userbinator 4y ago
The results look like something 4chan might create.
csours 4y ago
> reported interest in reported interest in fantasy about x
jrockway 4y ago
I'm surprised that cuddling is rated more taboo than various actual acts of intercourse? I feel like I could do as much cuddling in public as I wanted when I was a teenager, but never attempted anything more extreme. Maybe they changed the definition of the word while I wasn't looking, though. I have a feeling that these are results that don't mathematically hold up if you did head-to-head comparisons. People are just making up a % taboo and they don't really mean it. I suppose if you consider the margin of error +/- 10% though, maybe it all works out. (This sort of thing always looks like sorting to me. There are two kinds of sorts you can do; a radix sort or a comparison sort. The radix sort, where we place everything in its correct position one at a time, requires O(n) questions of the survey respondents. The comparison sort, where you compare two options and pick the "less" option, seems more accurate to me, but requires O(n log n) questions of the respondents. It makes so much more sense to me, but nobody ever does it. That said, I'm not sure how you deal with inconsistencies and how to average out the data provided by multiple respondents. I know that election theory sort of covers this, but they seem to always pick methods that looks like my radix sort, with the hope that the results would be the same as the overall winner winning each pairwise election. If someone has an article that would make this all make sense to me, I'd love to read it. It's something I think about a lot but get stuck on.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
zozbot234 4y ago
"Enthusiastic consent" viewed as more taboo than "doggystyle position", "cunnilingus", "blowjobs" or "fingering vaginas"? Also "romance" and "cuddling" as more taboo still? Quite disappointing and sad if true!
hushhushhash 4y ago
>"receiving oral sex from animal" That's like the most basic kink for women, the animal being usually a dog. I can't even remember all the women that have shared this "secret outrageous fetish" with me, from my experiences it's not uncommon at all. Also psychopaths and other predatory humans exist in huge numbers, 1 in 50 is probably an underestimate. Consider yourself lucky that you have successfully lived on a sheltered environment most likely all your life.
nineteen999 4y ago
> and just as many have a desire to execute someone? Having dated someone who was aroused by this in the past year, I'm surprised its that common. I'd never heard of it before dating her, other than the Dahmer, Meiwes cases etc. Again I think this is probably over-represented in this study due to the sourcing of participants.

coldtea 4y ago

Given how any small town would have the know-and-avoid "local pedo" back in the day, as Louis CK used to joke, it might not be impossible! Those scum are sure a lot! Now sure I believe 1 in 50 admitting to it though...

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I guess I'm going to be the guy who objects to someone being called scum just for having a thing for kids and never actually acting on it.
- cwillu 4y ago
  It's like people think that someone just woke up one day and decided to be that way.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Does it matter? Would a serial killer be any better if "genetics" made them do it? In fact, that would make them more of a beast (as sometimes such people are reffered as), not less. Beast are what they are, they're not what they "chose" to be either... I sure don't agree with unlawful punishment or cruel torment as punishment of course, whatever the crime - as some people think somebody being like that gives them a free ride to kill/torture them. I think those people are also sick, and just finding a convenient widely agreed target for their violent urges...
    - rocqua 4y ago
      Would a serial killer be just as horrible for fantasizing about murders without ever murdering, or helping others murder? Of course not. That doesn't mean they are harmless either. But stigmatizing thoughts to the point where you can't ask for help with the thoughts seems like a recipe for problems.
      - tshaddox 4y ago
        How are we assuming that the whole town knows someone’s thoughts if they never act on them?
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        > be just as horrible I don't get the utility of making ontological statements about people including serial killers. Maybe someone who does find utility in them could chime in and explain it.
        rocqua 4y ago
        Constructed counter-examples tend to be exaggerated to bring out the inherent contradiction.
      - Thiez 4y ago
        By definition you must murder to be a serial killer, so in that regard they are incomparable to pedophiles, who only require an attraction without acting on it. Interestingly a significant part of sexual abuse of children appears to be committed by people (mostly men) as a crime of opportunity, without them being primarily or exclusively attracted to children.
        rocqua 4y ago
        That is arguing semantics. The point was about the difference between urges and actions.
      - hutzlibu 4y ago
        "Would a serial killer be just as horrible for fantasizing about murders without ever murdering, or helping others murder? Of course not. " Sure, because they simply would not be serial killers, if they have never killed. So yes, it is important to make the clear distinction between people who have done horrible things and those, who have fantasies about it and not mix them all together. Part of what makes us human is impulse control. I might feel the urge to beat someone - but only if I would let that part of myself go, then there is a real problem as then something happened. With pedophiles it is of course a bit more tricky. Would you let someone close to your kids, if you knew they have fantasies about sex with them, but so far he has showed restraint? "But stigmatizing thoughts to the point where you can't ask for help with the thoughts seems like a recipe for problems." Yes, there was the famous incident, where one pilot decided to suicide himself and the whole plane with him. Smart populistic politicians reacted by saying they need a new law that says psychotherapists who treat pilots, must inform the authorities when the pilot has dark thoughts. Awesome way to hinder people from getting therapy as they could never open up if they know it might lead to their job being taken away. Therapies must be and remain confidential to have a chance of working.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Well, having such a constant "thing" in your thoughts qualifies I think. Actions matter more, but thoughts matter too. I means that's how you see other people. And that they'd might even just act on it if it wasn't for law and repercursions! Now, a normal person sure can e.g. in anger have a momentary revenge fantasy of killing somebody thats being a jerk, but that's not the same I'd say as a constant urge for something like that. Then it's part of personality.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    The important question here I think is: is it under the person's control. If it's not (and it seems plausible to me that it's not as other more normal sexual preferences like homosexuality and heterosexuality are to a large degree not) then they can hardly be held responsible for it. If someone is unlucky enough to be born attracted to children and they control themselves such that they don't act on those urges then I'd consider that quite admirable.
    - noduerme 4y ago
      I'm not sure this holds up logically. If someone can't control something, then the "admirable" quality of controlling it would be impossible. If they do control it (admirably) then it's by definition under the person's control. If what you mean is that the desire is not under their control but refraining from acting upon it is, then is it admirable for someone to repress their homosexuality in, say, Iran? Or is that just a matter of survival? In that case, don't we say it's admirable for someone to have the courage to be themselves in the face of enormous risk, and that repressing individual sexuality is a violation of human rights? The difference, of course, being that homosexuality doesn't imply non-consensual acts; no one is hurt by it. It could be that some pedophiles refrain from molesting children because some internal moral standard tells them it would hurt the child, but it seems more likely that they only refrain when and where they could get into trouble for it. Just looking at what an outlier "teens under 18" is on that chart... it's as popularly a fetish as "lips" or "thighs" (Y-axis), but it sits way out in the taboo area near bestiality. That's gotta be because it's illegal. Almost everything right of 70% is illegal, and its position correlates roughly to "how illegal is it".
- imiric 4y ago
  To lighten the mood, Mark Normand has a great bit about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vwdmZFBJvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vwdmZFBJvA That entire special[1] is side-splittingly funny. One of my favorite comedians. Comedy! [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDolNU89SXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDolNU89SXI
RajT88 4y ago
> Those scum are sure a lot! Far more than we'll ever know. I am convinced most of them get away with it, and far more manage to keep it in the realm of fantasy. I'm not sure I really want to know the real number.

rippercushions 4y ago

The survey does not claim to represent the general population. Many participants were recruited from places like FetLife, which you'd expect to lean heavily towards kink: https://aella.substack.com/p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey https://aella.substack.com/p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey But the results are still interesting for comparative purposes, as well as the opinions of how the general population views each kink. For example, it's kind of remarkable that pedophilia is considered worse than cannibalism, "meatslaves" and "woundfucking", both new words I learned today.

FeistySkink 4y ago
After reading this comment, I'm convinced we need a NSFW flag.
- n-e-w 4y ago
  I would have thought the title of the article would have been sufficient to prevent you clicking it in a work context :/
coldtea 4y ago
>For example, it's kind of remarkable that pedophilia is considered worse than cannibalism, "meatslaves" and "woundfucking", both new words I learned today. The first is considered as something very real, quite widespread, and very common danger. The others are see as very exotic/extreme fringe. So it's not exactly considering e.g. cannibalism "less taboo", it's just that this and the others you mention seem to unreal and rare to warrant serious consideration. If there were cannibalism stories in the news with the same frequency it would be just up there with pedophilia
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Do people generally take “cannibalism” to mean murdering someone and then eating them, or just eating human flesh? I thought the latter is the normal sense of the word, and in that case I don’t think it holds a candle to pedophilia.

quirino 4y ago

If you even decide to respond to a poll like this you're already in a bubble

googlryas 4y ago

The survey was taken on a fetish website, and read it. I'm sure there is some mix of people who actually feel those things, and trolls just messing around. But you're right to not put any faith into it. Blasting out any kind of Internet survey it's just asking for useless results.

RajT88 4y ago

Some of these seem to back up some things I was seeing in the Ashley Madison breach. I was surprised to discover quite a lot of men saying they were interested in crossdressing, and quite a lot of women interested in their male partners crossdressing. A bit under 20% here, and without much skew towards either gender. I would have expected it to be more of a male-centric fringe activity, instead of what it actually is. (Perhaps because I'm not into it myself) > More than 1 in 5 people taking the survey reported interest in "receiving oral sex from animal"? More than 1 in 50 people admitted to having a pedophilic interest in "pre-puberty children", and just as many have a desire to execute someone? Fucking hell this chart made me chuckle, and then go silent in horror, as I worked my way from top left to bottom right.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
FooHentai 4y ago
Since Ashley Madison caters to people wanting to cheat, it would self select for people with taboo-, thrill-, or risk-seeking tendencies. So not sure (and sure hope) this could be extrapolated to the population as a whole.
philippejara 4y ago
its a poll whose participants consist pretty much entirely of people who follow a pornstar on social media, so I'm not sure you should take it as conclusive on anything other than what her fans like
yucky 4y ago
A huge chunk of the "female" profiles on Ashley Madison turned out to be (suprise) bots. I wouldn't read too much into any of that data.

aquova 4y ago

I'm curious at how the questions were phrased as well. It's one thing to express interest in watching pornography with multiple people in it versus wanting to go out and participate in an orgy themselves. I don't think this quite excuses things like execution, but would change some of the other answers quite a bit.

patmcc 4y ago
She goes into it a bit here: https://aella.substack.com/p/my-kink-survey-design-methodology?s=w https://aella.substack.com/p/my-kink-survey-design-methodolo... but one key bit from it is here (this is quoted on the linked page, from the survey itself: “Our sexual fantasies are different from what we do in real life. I'm going to ask about some things that might seem cruel if actually done; being aroused by a taboo erotic fantasy does /not/ mean you would violate consent in real life. Please answer according to your ideal fantasies, even if you would never actually act on it.” (slightly later) "A good test is "have you searched porn of this thing", "have you masturbated to fantasies about this thing", or "have you asked a sexual partner to participate in this thing" So someone who has masturbated to fantasies involving orgies or animals or execution would likely be included.

patmcc 4y ago

Alfred Kinsey did research suggesting that ~8% of men and ~3.5% of women had engaged in beastiality at least once. Based on that I wouldn't be surprised if 20% have at least fantasised about it.

userbinator 4y ago

The results look like something 4chan might create.

csours 4y ago

> reported interest in reported interest in fantasy about x

jrockway 4y ago

I'm surprised that cuddling is rated more taboo than various actual acts of intercourse? I feel like I could do as much cuddling in public as I wanted when I was a teenager, but never attempted anything more extreme. Maybe they changed the definition of the word while I wasn't looking, though. I have a feeling that these are results that don't mathematically hold up if you did head-to-head comparisons. People are just making up a % taboo and they don't really mean it. I suppose if you consider the margin of error +/- 10% though, maybe it all works out. (This sort of thing always looks like sorting to me. There are two kinds of sorts you can do; a radix sort or a comparison sort. The radix sort, where we place everything in its correct position one at a time, requires O(n) questions of the survey respondents. The comparison sort, where you compare two options and pick the "less" option, seems more accurate to me, but requires O(n log n) questions of the respondents. It makes so much more sense to me, but nobody ever does it. That said, I'm not sure how you deal with inconsistencies and how to average out the data provided by multiple respondents. I know that election theory sort of covers this, but they seem to always pick methods that looks like my radix sort, with the hope that the results would be the same as the overall winner winning each pairwise election. If someone has an article that would make this all make sense to me, I'd love to read it. It's something I think about a lot but get stuck on.)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

zozbot234 4y ago

"Enthusiastic consent" viewed as more taboo than "doggystyle position", "cunnilingus", "blowjobs" or "fingering vaginas"? Also "romance" and "cuddling" as more taboo still? Quite disappointing and sad if true!

hushhushhash 4y ago

>"receiving oral sex from animal" That's like the most basic kink for women, the animal being usually a dog. I can't even remember all the women that have shared this "secret outrageous fetish" with me, from my experiences it's not uncommon at all. Also psychopaths and other predatory humans exist in huge numbers, 1 in 50 is probably an underestimate. Consider yourself lucky that you have successfully lived on a sheltered environment most likely all your life.

nineteen999 4y ago

> and just as many have a desire to execute someone? Having dated someone who was aroused by this in the past year, I'm surprised its that common. I'd never heard of it before dating her, other than the Dahmer, Meiwes cases etc. Again I think this is probably over-represented in this study due to the sourcing of participants.