It’s a beautiful time to talk about what’s new in BDSM research. The last couple of years have yielded landmark studies that add to the BDSM academic and scientific literature. These are the kind of studies that make psychologists, psychiatrists, and sexologists hungrily lick their lips for juicy new truths.
I’ve collected a batch and will feature several here over the next couple of weeks. Today, I’m starting with two exceptional BDSM studies that were very powerful to me, albeit for different reasons.
Two Studies Stood Out for Me
There were two studies that I see as landmarks in the BDSM literature. One is a study from the Czech Republic by researchers Jozifkova, Broul, Lovětínská, Neugebauer, and Štolová (2025), published in Deviant Behavior, a peer-reviewed sociology journal. The other is the study from American researchers Casey & Sagarin (2025), published in the prestigious Archives of Sexual Behavior.
You cannot study something science hasn’t named and defined. Before this paper, a researcher seeking to study 24/7 D/s relationships lacked a definition to work from and found no agreed-upon terminology or theoretical frameworks for interpreting findings. The Casey & Sagarin study was the first rigorous attempt to define “Authority Transfer relationships” (what we generally refer to as lifestyle, 24/7, TPE, M/s) as a legitimate relationship type.
The Jozifkova study is more engaging and immediate to BDSM/kink people. It presents close-up and intimate views into the private lives of kinky people. It is of unique and powerful interest to all of us who walk this path.
What Is the Jozifkova Study?
Before Jozifkova et al., BDSM research almost exclusively measured what happens during kinky sex. The early BDSM research was almost entirely cataloging behavior: who does what to whom, how often, with what equipment.
The Jozifkova study shifted the margins and centered on what kinky folks do together, the REST of the time. This was the first deliberate effort to measure how many practitioners carry their power dynamic into daily life, and whether they stay in role at home.
The results are data-driven, simple, emotional
The study is grounded in facts: It has data, numbers, percentages, and measurable findings. It’s the kind of evidence we’ve always looked for. It asks, “Who are we? How do others like us live? Can we learn from them? Can they learn from us?” It’s the kind of questions we asked each other for which there were no answers.
It’s easy to get: You don’t need to be a college grad to know what “half of practitioners live their power dynamic outside the bedroom” means. It means 50% of self-identified kinksters deliberately choose to live in a power relationship.
It frees us: we didn’t need science to validate us, but this study’s results did just that. This study (from Europe, no less) speaks to the core experience of being a kinky person in a vanilla world. It’s remarkable how much we have in common across cultures. The people in the study are us, even though they live in another land.
The study shows us that kink is a consensual choice made by consenting adults. We were seen as we are for who we are. Regular humans doing what humans do. It quietly acknowledges and affirms those choices as a matter of scientific fact.
Two Quick Stats for Your Salivation
Some delectable morsels from the study to make you think.
Half of practitioners live their power dynamic 24/7.
Out of the 421 adults studied, 55% of Dominants and 46% of Submissives said their preferred power roles show up in their relationship outside sex.
WHAT IT MEANS: Consensual Kink is the architecture of their relationship.
What I Want to Know Now
Why do 50% NOT want to live that way? Is it because they cannot (society, religion, etc)? Would they be too guilty/ashamed to do so? As a therapist, I’m less surprised that 50% of people love keeping a power relationship in motion than by the idea of 50% of people missing out on one.
Switches are ambivalent about hierarchy.
Only 41% of Switches experienced hierarchy outside sex.
WHAT IT MEANS: The 5 to 14% spread between switched and dom/sub relationships implies that switches are less inclined to need or want power play outside of erotic intimacy.
What I Want to Know Now
Do switches have distinctly different points of view from people in defined power roles? Does switching itself meet their needs in ways other players don’t? Or does BDSM serve more as a pleasureful adventure and less rigid than the protocols, rituals, and rules that usually go along with TPE?
I hunger to know everything! I hope you enjoy the ride 🙂
Next on the blog: the Casey & Sagarin study will be burning up the blog next week, as I tell you about their framework and why it’s already changing how scientists study power relationships
Photo credit: Mikhail Nilov @ Pexels.com
