The most recent scoping review on BDSM (Brown et al., 2020), claims there is nothing sexist about it while also stating the majority of dominants/sadists are men.
To acknowledge the majority of men are sadists and the majority of women are masochists, while simultaneously denying the role of sexist power dynamics, is intellectually dishonest. What other possible reason could there be for this disparity?
The lead author of this paper is a woman, Ashley Brown. She is throwing all women under the bus by normalising and legitimising BDSM. To state BDSM is not sexist, harmful, or abusive in academic literature is putting womenâs lives at stake.
How are women supposed to speak out about the misogyny and abuse of the BDSM community, when âofficialâ academic findings will be used to discredit this argument?
Kinksters infiltrating academia to push their agenda is nothing new. They love to claim research shows BDSM isnât caused by trauma, when itâs literal kinksters carrying out the research. When you look at masochism/submission separately, the research does show it is caused by trauma (Selic & Jug, 2025; Abrams et al., 2022; Abi-Habib et al., 2025). Of course when you look at it in totality, these results will be obscured, as you donât need trauma to be a sadist, you just need to be a misogynistic man.