New research shows that 67% of people who explore BDSM turn to entertainment media for their education — pornography, novels, online forums. It’s ludicrous and somewhat alarming. Porn and novels (and lots of anonymous opinions in forums) are not designed to teach safe, consensual practices. Those places are built for fantasy and arousal, not for educating anyone on real-world safety protocols.
Research further shows that people continue to rely on the same entertainment sources for ongoing education about safety in kink. Imagine if everything you thought you knew about consent and safety was based on de Sade or even The Story of O! O no.
Sex Ed is Not Just for Kids!
Back in 2015, I wrote about the public health crisis created by inadequate sex education. I argued that when we fail to provide comprehensive, evidence-based sexuality education, adults turn to unreliable sources. The consequences of sexual illiteracy show up as STIs, injuries, preventable accidents, unwanted pregnancies, and lifelong psychological damage.
Now, a decade later, research confirms what I see in my practice daily: inadequate childhood sex education creates adult sexual dysfunction on a massive scale. Not just ED — I’m talking about sexual shame, body dysmorphia, performance anxiety, religious trauma, PTSD, and the inability to communicate desires.
These psychological wounds affect far more people than any mechanical dysfunction. In turn, they become high-risk factors for sex traumas that extend to every corner of human erotic behaviors, including BDSM.
The BDSM Community Factor
A groundbreaking study published this month in Sex Education surveyed 615 BDSM practitioners internationally to understand how pornography shapes knowledge and expectations about kink.
Researchers Iris Ryn Olson and Bryce Westlake found that, while some practitioners identified genuine benefits from porn, many others learned nothing useful. Viewers who had difficulty separating fantasy from reality were negatively affected by the porn. The most important finding was that people who actively participate in local or public BDSM communities showed significantly decreased reliance on pornography for education.
Community involvement — munches, workshops, mentorship from experienced practitioners — provides what porn cannot: reality-based learning, safety protocols, communication skills, and the crucial ability to distinguish fantasy entertainment from actual practice!
Further supporting the importance of Community-based education, a companion study by Westlake published in Archives of Sexual Behavior found that practitioners who believed pornography depicted BDSM safety “mostly or very accurately” were the least likely to learn about BDSM safety. They did not learn the levels of meaning of consent or ethical power exchange. They never built the skills to use BDSM equipment safely, nor knew that safe words and signals can save lives.
Community is the Answer
This is a good time to preserve the excellent educational resources we’ve built as a community — from studies we’ve supported and participated in, the books we’ve written or been interviewed for, and a great time to take your best self to conferences that offer courses on consent, ethics, and compassion in BDSM, along with the skills to successfully give someone the ecstatic ride of a lifetime without significant risks.
Entertainment cannot replace education. Education requires you to think, react, engage, and learn. Entertainment is passive: it shows you things, but primarily to manipulate your emotions.
Serious learning occurs in community, through mentorship, and with evidence-based resources. That’s where people develop the knowledge, skills, and judgment to explore power exchange safely and consensually.
Even books alone will not suffice as a complete education because, well, let’s simply say that one of my famous clinical sayings is SEX IS EXPERIENTIAL. You must live sex, feel sex, and emotionally experience it to understand its powers and delights.
Citations
Brame, Gloria (2015). Why Sex Ed Is a Matter of Public Health. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-sex-ed-is-a-matter-of_b_7065176
Castleman, Michael (2024). Why Do People Begin Exploring BDSM? Psychology Today (2024). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/202406/why-do-people-begin-exploring-bdsm
Olson, I.R., & Westlake, B. (2025). Holes in kinky education: the role of pornography in learning about BDSM sexualities. Sex Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2025.2461301
photo credit: Climate Reality Project https://unsplash.com/@climatereality
