July 24th is “World BDSM Day”, so you know that Pornhub’s statisticians were bound to reveal some interesting stats about this exciting sexual genre. In today’s Insights post, we’ll be taking a look at which BDSM terms are most popular and what gender and age groups are most likely to search for BDSM. To tie it up, we’ll also share which countries and U.S. states dominate the searches.
According to Dulcinea Pitagora, a certified Sex Therapist and contributor to Pornhub’s Sexual Wellness Center, “BDSM is an acronym that evolved from SM or S&M to be more inclusive of the vast array of activities, behaviors, and relationships within the BDMS community. It stands for bondage and domination, the dominant/submissive power dynamic, sadomasochism, and sadism and masochism, though it also includes fetishes and roleplay, despite the lack of representative letters.”
Aside from “BDSM”, the most popular searches on Pornhub include “bondage”, “slave”, “latex” and “spanking”. When combined, the hundreds of BDSM related terms make up about 1.5% of all Pornhub searches. When shopping for your next BDSM party, our stats indicate that “latex” outranks “leather” and blindfolds are another popular fashion fetish accessory.
Women are proportionately 86% more likely to search “BDSM” when compared to men, and gay male visitors are 12% more likely to search when compared to non-gay traffic.
When comparing age groups, visitors over the age of 55 are the most likely to search for BDSM terms, with those over the age of 65 searching +13% more when compared to all other ages. Visitors 35 to 44 are the least likely to search BDSM.
Compared to men, women are 163% more likely to search for “gay bdsm”, perhaps not surprising since we’ve previously found that many women enjoy watching porn featuring gay men. (See Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys).
Interestingly, Pornhub’s female visitors are also 160% more interested in content depicting people getting “spanked and fingered”, 144% more into “daddy spank” videos and 105% more into “spanking punishment” themed content. Before trying any of this at home, you’ll want to ask your partner’s permission before engaging in spanking and other aspects of BDSM, but our data shows that it may be a turn-on for many women.
The United States falls -13% below the world average for BDSM popularity, but the popularity by state varies greatly. Vistors from Vermont and Oregon dominate the BDSM searches at +31% above the national average, followed by +29% in New Hampshire and +28% in Maine.
Southern states tend to be less interested in BDSM searches, with visitors from Maine being -21% less interested when compared to the national average, -17% in Louisiana, -15% in Georgia and -14% in Texas.
Worldwide, visitors from Hong Kong are proportionately the most interested in searching BDSM by +61% compared to the world average. It also tends to be more popular in European countries like Switzerland (+51%), Germany (+50%), Austria (+47%) and the Netherlands (+37%).
If you would like to learn more about BDSM, safe practices, and how to communicate these desires with your partner, we welcome you to view more BDSM content on Pornhub’s Sexual Wellness Center.
You can also take a look at past Insights to find other interesting porn genres, including Foot Fetishes, Sneaker Fetish, Feederism Fetish, Sweat Fetish, What’s Up With Wedgies, Golden Showers and Cuckolding.