https://www.kinkspec.com/blog Articles from KINKSpec: what the catalog's evidence says about kinks, fetishes and paraphilias, written above the entries rather than inside them. en Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/voyeurism-kink-or-crime https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/voyeurism-kink-or-crime Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Clinical Definitions Voyeurism is sexual arousal from watching other people undress or have sex. When the people watched know and agree, it is one of the most common erotic interests there is: 46 percent of adults in Joyal and Carpentier's 2017 survey wanted it. When they do not know, it is voyeuristic disorder in the DSM-5-TR and a criminal offence. Consent is the whole line; intensity has nothing to do with it.

]]> https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/why-feet-are-the-most-common-fetish https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/why-feet-are-the-most-common-fetish Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Data History Feet are the most common fetish in every study that has counted. In Scorolli and colleagues' 2007 analysis of 381 online fetish groups, feet were 47 percent of body-part preferences, and Lehmiller's 2018 survey of 4,175 American adults found one in seven had fantasised about feet. Why feet are the most common fetish is unproven: the standing explanations are associative learning, a contested map in the brain, and a cultural history older than the word.

]]> https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/is-my-kink-normal https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/is-my-kink-normal Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Clinical Definitions Is my kink normal? By the numbers, yes for nearly everyone: a 2015 survey of 1,516 adults found only two sexual fantasies out of 55 that were statistically rare, and nearly half of adults report interest in at least one paraphilic category. By the manuals, a kink is never a disorder on its own; the DSM-5-TR and the ICD-11 diagnose one only with clinically significant distress or impairment, or a person who has not consented.

]]> https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/kink-vs-fetish https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/kink-vs-fetish Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Definitions Clinical A kink is any sexual interest, practice or fantasy outside the conventional, and the word has no clinical definition. A fetish is narrower, arousal tied to a nonliving object, a material, or a non-genital body part, and it has one, in the DSM-5-TR. Every fetish is a kink; most kinks, spanking or roleplay for instance, are not fetishes.

]]> https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/most-common-kinks https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/most-common-kinks Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Data Definitions The most common kinks, by the KINKSpec index of 486 entries, are dominance and submission, bondage, foot fetish, roleplay and voyeurism, each with an estimated prevalence between 14 and 46 percent of adults. Twenty-six interests reach the ultra-common tier of 20 percent or more; 130 sit in the rare and very rare bands under 0.5 percent.

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