Sex in the city

I've been perusing last week's Time Out sex survey results, which whilst being a narrow spectrum of folk who live in the Big Smoke I thought might have enough interplay with the kinkier side of life to be interesting. Maybe it was the questions more so than the answers which didn't surprise me - age of losing virginity, number of sexual partners, amount of times you have sex.

There were a few that I did note however - most people put their "kinkiness" on three out of five (with five being 'practically perverted') - now with this kind of self-assessed survey it's hard to tell whether people think that fluffy handcuffs merit a kink-factor but the appearance of the question itself in the survey is notable - not all sex is straight sex - even if it is just the one point before moving on to sexual injuries. Unsure whether these two questions were related. There was a flicker of kink in the sexual fantasies arena - kidnapping, fear and bondage all featuring, making BDSM a high scoring "fantasy" with the group surveyed. I wonder whether this is a desire that is made sweeter by being forbidden or by being unobtainable - the fantasy is only exciting because it is a fantasy, when faced with it in reality would people genuinely desire it?

There was a lot of gender division, almost every question had a section for male responses and female responses, backed up by two "sex experts" giving their opinion on both the male and female results (no room for trans responses here, just team pink and team blue) - so the battle of the sexes still wages in the bedroom then. That made me think - harking back to a number of conversations I've had with various kinky folk on the importance and indeed relevance of gender to play - for me it doesn't matter that much in terms of pure play, bodies are bodies are bodies, just some have different bits and make noises in baritone or soprano (and depending on where you are hitting that isn't always as easy a guide as one might think). A number of people I know feel the same, men and women, even when it comes to more sexualised play. However here the difference was made abundantly clear - boys and girls like things differently. I'm not sure whether that makes vanilla sexuality more prone to remarking upon a gender divide or just that we kinksters like our bread buttered on both sides. With jam.