Wednesday, September 28, 2011

October Update

Onto month five in our rebooted experiment. We've put out two data sets and will be releasing the "Switch Up!" data this month. We're also finally attracting more women and trans folks to the project. All I can say is "welcome and please be patient." Right now we are male heavy and breaking the data apart by gender wouldn't present a fair sample of women and trans folks, but that day is coming. Things are getting interesting and soon enough we'll be able to combine data across surveys to see a bigger picture.

Current Surveys
Switch Up! Switch up! (Closes 9/30/11): This survey explores roll reversal and switching within the community. Do you think it's ok for a Dom to be a sub on a occasion? How about a sub as a Dom? Should exploration result in a fixed role? We'll stop collecting data in a couple days and releasing the report this month.
What are you into? What are you into? (Closes 10/31/11): "What are you into?" is a basic question we've all heard before. How prevalent are different kinks? How about different limits? Perhaps that secret fetish of yours isn't so unusual. Go ahead, it's anonymous,  you don't need to be shy.
Relationship Models

Relationship Models (Closes 11/30/11): Describing relationships in the kinkster lifestyle can be complicated. This survey explores the complexities of different relationship models. 
Project Data
Labels and IdentityWhat is a boy?Safe Sex

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Safe Sex

One of the leather community's greatest strengths is its acceptance of HIV positive individuals. While stigma is still prevalent, members of the community tend to be more educated about the risks and how to "play safer" than their non-leather counterparts. How does increased acceptance effect how the community views bareback sex and bareback porn? Could it be possible that our emphasis on acceptance increases our tolerance of what others consider high risk behavior? These questions inspired this survey. Its data is outlined below.

This chart separates the data by HIV status and raises some interesting questions. HIV positive individuals are split on their views of the banning of bareback porn despite their higher likelihood to engage in bareback sex, approve of the selling and showing of bareback porn. Inversely, HIV negative individuals generally do not seek out bareback sex, disapprove of showing bareback porn at bars, but oppose its being banned.

What was most compelling was the differences between the 41-50 age group and the <21-30 age group. These groups have the highest rate of self reported HIV infection. They have very different views on banning of bareback porn, despite their common views about showing and selling it. Can this difference at least partially explained by their different views about whether or not bareback enthusiasm is a lifestyle?

In previous surveys I've realized that I should have asked more, or different questions. The same is true here. This data would have been more clear if I had asked "Do you enjoy bareback prorn?" or "Have you purchased bareback porn?" Perhaps we can explore this issue differently in the future.

Click the link here if you would like to see the unedited raw data of this survey.
Click here to receive future reports and surveys by email