Another such question is how widespread are kinky sexual practices in this population?īDSM activities involve inflicting and/or receiving pain as well as, for instance, teasing or humiliation ( Wismeijer & Assen, 2013). One key question is, for example, what kinds of attitudes do young men and women in Norway have toward kinky sexual activities including BDSM. The strong interest in activities that only a few years ago were stigmatized and classified as a mental disorder is interesting and raises several questions. Given the popularity of kinky sex in the popular media, it seems these kinds of sexual expressions have undergone a transformation from a stigmatized to a mainstream phenomenon, and perhaps particularly so in the younger segments of the population. In February 2010, the Norwegian Directorate of Health removed sadomasochism from the diagnosis registry ICD after a year-long battle by sexual minority groups and organizations. But the definition may also include activity connected to dominance and submission as in BDSM (bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, sadism, masochism).
One example of what may be defined as kinky sex is sexual role play, which may comprise activities such as dressing up as a nurse or a school teacher. The term kinky refers to unconventional sexual practices or fantasies as opposed to more conventional, “mainstream,” “straight,” or “vanilla” sexual practices ( Kleinplatz & Diamond, 2014 Newmahr, 2010). Expressions of sexuality that are often referred to as “kinky” are currently highly visible in popular media forms such as TV, radio, music videos, and newspapers. Keywords: attitudes, BDSM, behavior, bondage, dominance, kinky sex, sexual role play, submission, young adults.īente Træen er professor ved Psykologisk institutt ved Universitetet i Oslo. Kinky sexual activities generally seem quite common in and accepted by Norwegian young adults. The included predictors explained 22.5% of the variance in experience with sexual role play, 30.2% of the bondage experience, and 35.5% of the variance in dominance and submission games. Previous sexual behavior (step 3) added significantly to the percentage of explained variance for all three dependent variables. An additional 15.1% of sexual role play experience, 22.1% of bondage experience, and 27.9% of experience with consensual dominance and submission was thus explained. In step 2, attitudes contributed significantly to the prediction for all three dependent variables after controlling for social background. Social background variables explained a small percentage of the variance in all three dependent variables.
Hierarchical regression analyses were carried out to study the relationship between the three different lifetime experiences of kinky sexual activity and social background factors (step 1), attitudes towards different expressions of sexuality (step 2), and previous sexual experience (step 3). The most commonly reported activities were bondage (27.5%), sex that includes consensual roughness and/or pain (18.1%), and sexual role play (15.5%), herein defined as the three dependent variables. Sixty-two percent reported no kinky sexual experience, 20.8% had experienced one such activity, 10.4% took part in two such activities, and 6.4% had participated in three such activities. Of those polled, 27.2% responded ( n = 568). In 2013, the polling organization Ipsos MMI sent an online questionnaire survey to a representative national web sample of 2,090 persons aged 18–29 years. The purpose of this study was to explore attitudes toward and experience with kinky sexual activities in younger adults in Norway. Norwegian young adults’ attitudes toward and experience with kinky sexual activities