Aella

great question. data source: https://aella.substack.com/p/my-birthday-gangbang the diagram is calculated with d3-sankey & rendered with imgui. you can stretch that window however you want—ok, enough. edit: the original steam-engine sankey diagram created a far stronger emotional reaction in me. the aella chart is just more modern, i guess?

Aella has collected some great stats on polyamory https://aella.substack.com/p/polyamory-vs-monogamy-how-relationships

That doesn't say anything about what percentage of sex workers were sex trafficked. The only stat it gives are what percentage of sex workers were sexually abused prior to entry. The best estimate I've seen for percentage of active sex workers that are currently being trafficked was between 3 and 4 %. https://aella.substack.com/p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-in?s=r

It's difficult for me to reconcile her grief at the loss of her mother with the horrific abuse her parents inflicted on her. (Mostly her father, to be fair, but with the full knowledge and consent of her mother.) https://aella.substack.com/p/the-joy-is-not-optional

(This is going to upset some people.) A successful escort who is into statistical data analysis and market research talks about the details of organizing an orgy.[1] Aella's thing is to ask questions that lead to "what do women really want", and go from there to design events. She has about 800,000 raw survey responses, so there's enough data to look for patterns. The answers will upset some people. The conventional wisdom appears to be way out from where the data leads. [1] https://aella.substack.com/p/a-girls-guide-to-a-data-driven-orgy

You may be interested in the data surfaced by this large-scale survey[1] [1] https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v3

Here is some data: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v3 I haven't looked at it closely, so I have no idea whether it supports or opposes the hypothesis. Just wanted to give you some data.

https://aella.substack.com/p/everyone-has-autogynephilia If you want to base your understanding of the world on data rather than anecdata, here.

Nothing stops them, some people do do that. Two examples that come to mind are Aella's research on fetishes[1] and Scott Alexander's research on birth order effects[2]. But you don't get academic credibility by publishing online without peer review, and it's much harder to get university funding. [1] https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/08/fight-me-psychologists-birth-ord…

I found this post on her substack: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v3

well actually... https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity

thanks for bringing this up! while informative, i wish this type of study (and analysis) were repeated to address concerns of representation [0]. [0] https://aella.substack.com/p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey

Short realitycheck https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity The authors of the french study will likely be shocked and appalled to find out that men werent the target audience for 50 shades of grey. Prudes better stick to reading only the first 4th from the left. She isnt kidding with taboo, human sexuality can get pretty fucked up. Then again, no kink shaming. You do you. Play safe :)

Perfect illustration of how tricky it can be to draw a firm line. Another survey in this same genre is "the rape spectrum" with >5k respondents ranking scenarios: https://aella.substack.com/p/the-rape-spectrum-survey-results Tough topics to discuss (I see why the OP went with vehicles in the park). I'm glad I'm not in the content moderation business!

She goes into it a bit here: https://aella.substack.com/p/my-kink-survey-design-methodology?s=w but one key bit from it is here (this is quoted on the linked page, from the survey itself: “Our sexual fantasies are different from what we do in real life. I'm going to ask about some things that might seem cruel if actually done; being aroused by a taboo erotic fantasy does /not/ mean you would violate consent in real life. Please answer according to your ideal fantasies, even if you would never actually act on it.” (slightly later) "A good test is "have you searched porn of this thing", "have you masturbated to fantasies about this thing", or "have you asked a sexual partner to participate in this thing" So someone who has masturbated to fantasies involving orgies or animals or execution would likely be included.

The survey does not claim to represent the general population. Many participants were recruited from places like FetLife, which you'd expect to lean heavily towards kink: https://aella.substack.com/p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey But the results are still interesting for comparative purposes, as well as the opinions of how the general population views each kink. For example, it's kind of remarkable that pedophilia is considered worse than cannibalism, "meatslaves" and "woundfucking", both new words I learned today.

Aella's guide to escorting includes a section on screening clients: https://aella.substack.com/p/becoming-a-whorelord-the-overly-analytica… Of course she couldn't choose a client who didn't even want to hire her, but rejecting a client who throws up red flags is certainly possible and advisable.

I can see why that idea is tempting, but it doesn't seem to work. Military had "don't ask don't tell" for a long time because legalisation and social acceptance are different (also seen in reverse order with cannabis). Even today, the percentage of people in the US who think society should not accept it, 21%, is higher than the percentage who are homosexual or bisexual: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-on-homosex… For this reason, there's still plenty who want to stay closeted. And there's a lot of stuff with 5% or more reporting interest, according to Aella's sexual taboo survey, that society still very much isn't OK with: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity If sexual liberation was driven from the top to reduce blackmail opportunity, I think there'd be a lot more desires whose taboo was lessened, not just homosexuality. (Though perhaps I'm underestimating how much else has changed due to what hasn't; I'm sure "cheating on spouse" used to be a thing that killed political careers, clearly doesn't now). It also feels like the social acceptability of trans people has moved backwards. (Just my perception, or has that actually shifted?) That said, the logic you give is still sound, and I think the increasing ease of private surveilance means we must eliminate as many taboos as we can so that society can keep functioning.

This writer's much more recent post is better: https://aella.substack.com/p/the-polyamory-post?s=r I think she explains herself more thoroughly and isn't nearly as provocative about it, though still makes the same basic error in equating possessiveness with insecurity. Someone may be quite confident but still not like sharing. I think that's a basic impetus behind a whole lot of type A personalities and elite competitors that I don't believe you can rightfully call insecure. Her definition is unorthodox to say the least, by the way: > (edit: i should clarify that my definition of monogamy is “when you place a restriction or expectation on your partner’s engagement in sexual activity.” In a situation where two people are totally okay with their partner fucking/loving other people, but just happen not to due to lack of desire or interest in other people, I consider this just passive polyamory.) I guess I fall into this category of having a "formally open" marriage because I don't believe it is realistic to expect that in 60 years together neither my wife nor I should ever encounter some opportunity to have safe, harmless sex with some other person, but at the same time, we're both homebodies who are not socially motivated and absolutely do not want to date or go looking for someone. Calling us "polyamorous" on that basis stretches common usage. Every poly-identifying person I have ever known that talked about it seemed quite opposite, intensely social people who needed to…