A new survey of Redditors shows the percentages of people that are aroused by the most taboo sexual acts.

A new survey of 562 Redditors on sexual taboos revealed a finding that might not surprise anyone, especially not women. When it comes to sexual arousal, nothing in this green, watery earth is too taboo for men. Men will literally get off to anything.

According to a chart of the survey's findings, the taboo sex most men are aroused by is group sex, while women are way more into BDSM than any other kinky situation. But men and women agreed on one thing: The least arousing of taboo sex acts is  Emetophilia, aka sexual arousal from vomit, was something that didn’t really interest them. They were so uninterested in fact, that both genders reported more of an an interest in pedophiia and bestiality than puke porn.

Of course, the results of this study were displayed in a really fancy chart, but our blasted website width isn't big enough for us to share it with you on our site. So, you'll have to squint, or you can go here to see it ..,but we also just summarized the results below.

Here are the findings:

 

Of the 562 survey participants, 375 were men and 187 were women. Most respondents were between the ages of 18 and 30, but there were also 76 17-year olds and a small percentange of people over 40. The vast majority of respondents were straight (420), but there were 75 bisexual and 25 homosexual respondents.

Given the fucked up and psychologically damaging nature of some of these sexual ideas (necrophilia, pedophilia, incest) you'd think it was surprising anyone would respond that they were aroused by them at all. But it really isn't. People have such vastly different personalities, upbringings and personal experiences that the idea of 10 or so men out of 375 and a couple of women being turned on by a taboo sexual act isn't that surprising. A lot of these taboos are maladaptive and even unsafe even safe in some instances, but it's own way, it's kind of normal that you'd find a variety of fantasies in a sample size that large. On the other hand, some of these taboo fantasies like BDSM, public nudity, urophilia and asphyxiation can be practiced or role played in safe, healthy ways that keep the fantasy out of the zone of brutal reality. In fact, expressing these fantasies safely, consensually and through role play if need be can be immensely therapuetic.

More importantly, there's a huge difference between fantasizing about something and acting out your fantasies. The questionnaire simply asked whether people were aroused by such things, not whether they've done them. That point is perfectly illustrated by the survey's reporting of female's inordinately high interest in rape; although rape is a fantasy that plays with the concepts of dominance, submission, and forced pleasure, it's something no woman actually wants done to them.

Another interesting concept were the gendered patterns in the responses. There were some sexual acts like necrophilia and cuckolding (your significant other having sex with a person other than you) that had almost identical rates of interest. Yet there were also some sexual acts that garnered heavily gendered responses. Many more men than women responded they'd be aroused by performing sexual acts with a friend, as well as by incest and performing sexual acts with an adolescent aged 15-19. On the other hand, many more women than men were interested in erotic aspyhxiation, rape, and BDSM.

Both of these disparities speak to both traditional gender roles and pre-existing bioprogramming. Men are evolutionarily wired to have sex many, younger-ish women in order to propagate their genetic lineage safely and efficiently. Women on the other hand, feel aroused by being "ravaged" or "caught," because that in turn increases chances of impregnation and thus fulfillment of genetic lineage. This research is particularly elucidating in that women's interest in taboo acts that deal primarily with power exchange provides a great glimpse into thousands of years of evolution in which women were sexually overpowered by men and for centuries, men who held sexual power were the norm. In today's society, that's taboo because it's highly un-feminist and screams forced sex, but at the same time, the clandestine nature of a taboo can make it arousing for some people.

When something's genetically implanted into your brain, it's hard to wipe that out of the collective unconscious, and that's why we still find traces of these rather animalistic sexual taboos in our society. But rather than say they're wrong to think about, it helps to know that there are evolutionary reasons why we feel these things, no matter how fucked up they are in the context of today's society. That doesn't make them excusable, particularly when they involve coercion of someone else, but it's good to that they're often the result of millennia of prior human experience.