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Pliskin's “Autism, sexuality and BDSM” (2022)
“Autism, sexuality and BDSM” [PDF]
With increased neuronal hyperconnectivity (Markham & Markham, 2010) and diversity (Hahamy et al., 2015), autistic people are less likely to automatically perceive context in the way that allistic people do and more likely to attend to and organize details in an idiosyncratic fashion (Vermeulen & Myles, 2012).
Non-normative BDSM activity may fit well with autistic sensorimotor patterns. BDSM communication norms serve the autistic preference for literal and explicit language. BDSM learning paths fit the autistic tendency to go deep. Ultimately, the BDSM community may be a more inclusive and accessible environment than much of the world.
Researchers report higher levels of sadistic and masochistic paraphilia (a medicalized term for sexual desire deemed abnormal) among autistic people compared to allistic people (Schöttle et al., 2017). Boucher found that 5.7% of BDSM practitioners who responded to an online survey reported an autism diagnosis, which is more than 5 times the approximate 1% prevalence in the general population (2018). Through open-ended interviews with autistic women in Australia, Seers (2021) found that several respondents engaged in diverse and inclusive communities and “prided themselves on living an ‘alternative’ lifestyle such as …participating in the ‘kink community’ where gender normative performance is less restrictive” (p. 6).
Fluctuating distinct sensory profiles mean autistic people are less likely to enjoy specific activities enjoyed by most people and more likely to have idiosyncratic preferences. Autistic people enhance sexual satisfaction by choosing accommodations and customizing sexual repertoire to each person’s needs (Barnett, 2015). BDSM provides a venue in which to try out, choose and engage in a wide variety of sexual and non-sexual activities (Brown et al., 2019).
Results from their sample of 132 US-based adults (44 reporting autism diagnosis) who completed an online survey indicated that autistic males had higher levels of both sadistic and masochistic fantasy and behavior than allistic males and than both autistic and allistic females (Schöttle et al., 2017).
Boucher concluded that, for autistic people, sensory preferences shaped their BDSM activity preferences more than allistic people (2018). While allistic respondents indicated that “commands and demands” were the most important activity to incorporate into a BDSM experience, “bondage and restraint,” was the most important to autistic respondents
The second autistic trait which impacts sexuality is a preference for literal and explicit thinking and talking. This tendency may reflect differences in the way autistic people adapt the meaning of words to a particular context (Vermeulen & Myles, 2012). While the article does not include explicit mention of BDSM, every respondent to Barnett’s set of qualitative interviews (2015) described using what researchers called “literal declaration” as a verbal or written sexual success strategy.
Given that autistic people who experience satisfaction in sex report preferring explicit negotiation of activities and planning through which they could engage their individual preferences (Barnett, 2015), BDSM communication norms may therefore appeal to autistic people.
[P]articipation in alternative sexuality communities is associated with increased comfort with sexual communication, which is in turn associated with sexual satisfaction (Rubinsky & Hosek, 2020).
[W]hen it comes to sex (as in other areas of life), autistic people “can be extreme” (Rosqvist & Jackson-Perry, 2020). While average responses for allistic males differ from allistic females, the distribution of responses within each allistic group more closely resembles the normal distribution of a bell curve, with a large portion of responses clustering near the mean. By contrast, both male and female autistic responses include many responses near the mean, but also larger amounts of responses near the extremes than allistic responses (Schöttle et al., 2017).
The distinct autistic patterns of moving, thinking, focusing attention and behaving described earlier in this article result in coercion, rejection, discrimination and predation by those enacting or taking advantage of neuronormative standards. Social deficits associated with autism may result more from anxiety related to discrimination than from innate autistic traits (Fein, 2015).
Given the idiosyncrasies described in this article, autistic responses to socialization may be more varied than allistic responses. Autistic people may be more aloof from social norms or cling to them too rigidly. They may be more likely to be deemed failures at adhering to social norms. In some cases, aloofness from norms can result in an approach to the world characterized by critical thinking, personal integrity and independence from harmful social patterns (Spät and Jongsma, 2019), but in other cases, it can result in inadequate attention to the boundaries of others.
One of the most striking gender or sex differences among autistic people is evidence that, especially among young adults, autistic females are more likely to have sexual experience than autistic males, but more likely to report that their experience was unwanted or later regretted (Pecora et al, 2019). Autistic females are targeted for sexual assault at much higher rates than autistic males or both allistic males and females, often resulting in post-traumatic symptoms and sexual disgust (Cazaliz et al, 2022). By contrast, there is evidence that autistic males, especially those who are young, cisgender and heterosexual, experience higher rates of sexual desire and lower rates of sexual experience than autistic females and both allistic males and females (Schöttle, 2017; Byers, 2012; Byers, 2013; Barnett, 2015).
Autistic people may be freer from gender norms than allistic people, resulting in both benefits and challenges. Reviewing 15 theories explaining repeated findings of high rates of transgender identity among autistic people, reviewers found the most evidence for explanations based on resistance to social norms and less pronounced sex differences between autistic people (Wattel et al., 2022).
McNaughtan found that autistic males were the only group to invoke explicit rules, stating for example that a character should “wait until 4 dates, because its the societal norm to have sex on the 3rd date and it is important to know if they are sexually compatible before becoming a couple” (2019, p. 36). The autistic orientation towards explicit methods of understanding human behavior might have prosocial results such as superior performance on social psychology tasks (Gollwitzer et al., 2019), and may also attract young autistic males, who report particularly struggling with courtship (Barnett, 2015), to groups like Pick Up Artist culture who teach formalized methods of courtship, often in ways that are sexist (Chen, 2016; Jenkins, 2014).
While both consensual BDSM practitioners and sadomasochistic sexual offenders exhibit high levels of sensation-seeking, only offenders exhibit low levels of empathic concern and sexist beliefs (Dawson et al., 2016 ; Hébert and Weaver, 2014; Martin et al, 2015). While autistic people may struggle to understand what allistic people are thinking, they do not, on average, lack empathic concern (Blair, 2005).
As an alternative to being targeted for assault, failed attempts to connect in contexts of ambiguous norms or isolation, BDSM communities and practices may accommodate autistic differences by offering inclusion of diversity, relationships with atypical others who are more accepting and practices in which people explicitly express what they want, set boundaries and agree to shared sexual and nonsexual activities.
Generally, empirical studies indicating a link between autism and BDSM are few, sample sizes are small, and varied definition of terms complicate comparison. Researchers in the future should challenge pathology paradigm and sex negativity bias and include more precise and accurate descriptions of gender diversity.
Price argued that “when Autistic people are at the reins of event planning, we can craft environments [such as BDSM gatherings] that are tailored to our sensory and social needs. In small, mask-free subcultures that are created and maintained by Autistic people, we get a glimpse of what a society that truly accepts neurodiversity might look like” (Price, 2022, p. 202).
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