How common is femdom? What surveys can and cannot tell you

People who ask how many men are submissive, or search for female domination statistics, usually want a figure to hold against their own life. Researchers cannot supply one, for two reasons. The studies measure different things: a fantasy, an interest, something tried once, something done regularly and a label you give yourself are five separate questions, and their answers differ by tens of percentage points. And none of the studies below reports femdom as a category of its own; their summaries describe submission, domination and BDSM in general, a term the guide to what BDSM is unpacks.

So this page gives the findings one study at a time, with the size of each sample and what it asked. A number without its question means almost nothing.

Four studies give a useful picture, and each asked something different:

• Quebec, 2014 (Joyal and colleagues): an online survey of 1,516 adults, 799 women and 717 men, who rated 55 sexual fantasies. The authors called a fantasy common if more than half the sample reported it, and found submission and domination themes common for both men and women. Thirty of the 55 fantasies were common for one sex or both, and only two were rare.
• United States, 2018 (Lehmiller): a survey of more than 4,000 adults behind the book Tell Me What You Want. Fantasies fell into a handful of broad themes, and the one covering BDSM and power was among the most common, alongside multi-partner sex.
• Belgium, 2017: a questionnaire given to 1,027 people, a sample representative of the general Belgian population. 46.8% had at some point done at least one BDSM-related activity, and a further 22% had fantasies about it; 12.5% did something of the kind regularly, and 7.6% called themselves BDSM practitioners. Interest in dominant and submissive activities was comparable and strongly linked, and BDSM and fetish interest scores were higher for men than for women.
• Australia, 2001 and 2002, published 2008: telephone interviews with a representative sample of 19,307 people. 1.8% of sexually active respondents said they had been involved in BDSM in the previous year, 2.2% of men and 1.3% of women.

Set the findings side by side and a ladder appears. At the top sit fantasies: in Quebec, submission and domination themes were rated common for both sexes. Next comes having tried something: in Belgium, nearly half the sample had done at least one BDSM-related activity. Lower comes doing it regularly, at 12.5% there, then calling yourself a practitioner, at 7.6%, and at the bottom is practice in the previous year, 1.8% of sexually active adults in Australia.

The ladder is not a contradiction. Countries, decades, questionnaires and survey methods all feed into it, and a study that counts any BDSM-related activity ever done will find at least as many people as one that asks only about the last year. Method matters in its own right. A Quebec survey of 1,040 adults that compared telephone and online interviews found that more people acknowledged unusual interests online.

A fantasy is not a plan. The Quebec authors warned against calling a fantasy unusual, let alone deviant, and urged that attention go to its effect rather than its content. Some men enjoy the thought of a woman in charge for years and never act on it; others find it grows into a wish to try. The surveys cannot say which you are.

Samples shape results too. The Quebec fantasy survey recruited volunteers in one city through advertisements and an online questionnaire, while the Belgian and Australian surveys were built to be representative. An online survey draws people willing to write about sex on the internet, a telephone survey draws people willing to answer aloud, and each misses some of the rest. Self-reports are filtered by embarrassment, and the questions are worded by the researchers, who may mean something different by submission than you do. Treat every figure as a rough indication of scale, never as a measurement of you.

Common does not mean right for you, and uncommon does not mean wrong. The figures describe other people; whether femdom suits you depends on how it feels when you meet it, within limits you set.

Put the studies together and the conclusion is modest but solid. Fantasies of submission and domination turn up throughout several large samples, in men and in women, and in Belgium nearly half the sample had tried at least one BDSM-related activity. Far fewer people practise regularly or adopt a label, which is why it can seem that nobody else wants this. Plenty do. The feeling of being unusual comes from how seldom it is said aloud, not from how few feel it.

If shame has been the cost of wanting to be led, the male submission guide and the guide to kink-shaming are the next reads, and why men like femdom takes up where the pull comes from. When you would rather look than read, the fetish cams page and the online Mistress page show how live sessions work, and public rooms are mostly free to enter.