njlauren
Posts: 1577
Joined: 10/1/2011 Status: offline
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I think you have to be careful about this, the sampling is not very good, it fails a lot of things, including the differences in sample size. At best, something like this would give pause for a larger study, after trying to look for obvious bias (like, for example, when doing the survey, could it be that people into BD/SM, knowing the negative image of the community, try and make themselves look better by answering in a way they think will make them appear more 'normal'). I have read studies on this that were all over the map, studies who said more bd/sm people have abuse in their past, others that say they don't, and quite frankly, I think it is one of those things where what the fuck is the point? Either trying to prove that we aren't all bloody nutters or trying to prove we are, people will believe what they believe:). About the only study I believe is one i read about that said that people into BD/SM tend to be skewed more on the intelligence and creativity side of things then the general population, and I can believe that. In my own experience (which is not a scientific example of anything) in the scene community, I tended to find a lot of people in creative fields, arts, image design and so forth, and a lot of people who seemed interested in a lot of things. Could be that this was in NYC, but comparing the people in the scene to my wider band of (presumably) more vanilla oriented people, it seemed to be true. Plus of course that as serious as people get in this world, into D/s relationships, a lot of it to me always struck me as advanced playing, which is often the sign of intelligence, too....Does it matter? Nope, not really, but still interesting. As far as the mental health thing, reminds me of the old Arte Johnson character on Laugh In, "Verrrrry Interesting...but shtupid"
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