The Five Year BDSM Test
How much can a quiz really tell you about yourself? If you look through a vast majority of Fetlife profiles, you might think people's identities rely solely upon it.
LEVEL ONE:
I first took the BDSM test in November 2015 when I started to explore my kinks and fetishes properly. One of the things I noticed immediately was the definitions didn't really tell me much, and the percentages all being out of 100 didn't clarify who I was as a kinkster.
How could someone be 100% this and that and the other?
I needed more. I needed to know who I was, but also who I was.
I could and would evolve over time, and I needed a way to track that, to see that evolution in more than just words and the intermittent image filtered, finessed, and posted on social media.
Hence, the Five Year BDSM Test was born.
TEST #I - NOV 2015
Back then, I barely knew what terms like Rope Bunny and Primal Predator meant, but I saw this test everywhere, so it must have been important, right?
The scores were surprising:
The first thing that stuck out wildly was the Exhibitionist score (74).
I'm not an exhibitionist, at all, but I had found joy in showing myself through writing online.
The second glaring error was Masochist (88)
‘I don't like pain!’ I thought. ‘How can I be a masochist?!’
Perhaps if I did the test again the following month, I'd get a different result - this was the first result, which meant it could be anomalous, or it could be the benchmark. I'd never know if I didn't try.
TEST #2 - DEC 2015
This was more like it!
December brought the Voyeur (15) and Exhibitionist (7) scores closer to what I expected - that is to say, very low.
It also increased the Submissive score to (82) - an increase of 28% - suggesting I was indeed on the right side of the slash, albeit nearly seven times more into being degraded.
At the time, I was exploring my first ever D/s dynamic, which probably resulted in the 40% decrease in my Dominant score. I was also facing the breakdown of a vanilla relationship, so it was interesting to see the Vanilla score increase by over 60%, along with a slight increase in Non-Monogamist.
The Masochist score was still higher than I liked (69), but this was the beginning of my exploration of alternative forms of pain - the total destruction of my relationship by the end of December 2015 enabled me to really explore emotional sadomasochism, alongside the rest of my unfolding kink journey. Jumping forward over time, the increase and convergence of the Sadist and Masochist scores is interesting:
So was December’s test bringing me closer to a benchmark?
Only time would tell.
LEVEL TWO:
During the first few months of tracking my progress, I realised that whilst I could easily present someone with my "average" results as an indicator of my preferences, I had no way of cross-checking any kind of compatibility with them as a potential play partner - what was the use in creating a roadmap of my journey if the results couldn’t validate anything?
I began working on a cross-compatibility chart, where I could plug in a partner's results alongside my own to see some kind of visual indicator as to how well we matched in our roles.
Their Dominant to my submissive
Their Sadist to my masochist
Their Rigger to my rope bunny
And so on.
By indexing the corresponding roles, and through the magic of conditional formatting, I now had tables and charts as a visual aid as to whether or not they were suitable candidates to engage with.
Using the numeric value of each person’s score, I plotted them against a total to give a comparative percentage, or a ratio of the role, e.g Ageplay :
65 + 30 = 95 becomes A (my test score) + B (their test score) = C (total score)
(A ÷ C) x 100 = A%
100 - A% = B%
A% (my percentage of the role) = 68 rounded
B% (their percentage of the role) = 32 rounded
I then took the top 5 scoring roles (green bold text) and bottom 5 (red italic text) to highlight any relevant/irrelevant roles to each of us. Percentages lower than a 10% threshold highlighted in red as areas of potential concern if they were important roles, and percentages within a threshold of 50% highlighted in green to show the strongest compatibility.
Seeing areas where we could fulfil each other was a huge plus, but seeing areas with a big gap, like my Voyeur (18) to their Exhibitionist (8) was highlighting potentially important areas that could one day become an issue if the relationship was going to become long-term.
In truth, as primitive a method as it is, I've used this comparison chart with every potential play partner that's done the test, or been willing to satisfy my curiosity by doing so.
The only unfortunate difference is that I can use my rolling average, whereas I can only use their most recent score.
Perhaps this limits my actual interaction with people, if I dismiss them based on a score, but I like the foresight of potential concerns it provides me. It enables me to make a decision on the viability of pursuing something - if the important roles are vastly different, neither of us would end up happy.
LEVEL THREE:
Even during breaks from kink, I would continue to log my scores once a month, and it has reached a point where I can be confident in the quality of the averages from 2015 - 2020, as well as being able to predict possible fluctuations in my preferences that may develop over the coming years based on further experiences.
In recent months, I've re-evaluated tracking the results of the original BDSM test, as changes made to the question formats in the BDSM test have caused a difference in results too significant to maintain the accuracy of the averages and forecasts.
Watching the evolution of the ever-popular test over the last six years, alongside the difference in my own results, has been fascinating.
Though it does leave me wondering about those who took the test in, say, 2015, and then never revisited it.
I wonder what differences they might be surprised to find about themselves if they took the test again several years later.
What the test did teach me was that there was a lot of room for improvement in the kink identity profile world, and I did begin creating a new in-depth kink profiling test, but that labour of love is still a work-in-progress.
Until then, I make do with a skeletal assessment of who I am.
Perhaps one day, the world will be ready to label itself as readily as I try to. Until then, I guess the Five Year BDSM test means that I can say with some degree of confidence
I am a switchy sadomasochistic degrading degradee with bratty submissive tendencies.
Or at least something like that.
About the Author: DiavalDiablo is a mental auralist with a love of sharp things, including wit, and is considered an "antisocial butterfly".
