Methodology
How the index is built
KINKSpec places every human sexual and non-sexual interest on one honest, comparable scale. This is how each entry is defined, classified and scored — in plain terms, with the research it rests on.
- 474
- Entries catalogued
- 11
- Categories
- 264
- Subcategories
- 0–100
- Popularity index
What we catalogue
A broad, encyclopedic view of human interests — named by the everyday word people actually use, with the clinical term kept alongside it.
Fetish
A strong, reliable erotic interest in a specific body part, object, material, act, role or scenario.
Paraphilia
The clinical umbrella term. A paraphilia is not a disorder in itself — it only becomes one when it causes real distress or harm.
Non-sexual fixation
Everyday, non-erotic fixations too — collecting, sensory interests, material obsessions — for the fuller picture.
Every entry sits in exactly one of 11 categories, from Body Parts & Partialism to Clinical Paraphilias, and is written as a neutral, clinical article — never explicit, never instructional.
Three catalogs, three leaderboards
Interests, identities and relationship structures are documented the same way — but never ranked against each other.
Interests
Kinks, fetishes and paraphilias — what someone is drawn to. The main catalog, at /browse.
Identities
Sexual and romantic orientations — who someone is. A separate vocabulary, at /orientations.
Structures
Monogamy, polyamory, open relationships — how a relationship is arranged, at /relationships.
All three use the same five-signal 0–100 index described below, and all three are ranked strictly within themselves. A structure is never ranked against a kink, because “more common than” only means something between comparable things. Confusing the three is the most common error in this subject area: an orientation is not a preference you pick, and polyamory is a relationship arrangement rather than an orientation.
The 0–100 popularity index
A single headline number per entry — how prominent an interest is across the world, not a measure of worth.
Real-world prevalence is wildly uneven. A handful of interests are held by tens of percent of people; the long tail by well under one in a hundred. Numbers that span so many orders of magnitude pile up near zero on a normal scale — so we measure prevalence on a logarithmic scale. On that scale, prevalence forms a clean bell curve, and the index spreads evenly across the full 0–100 range.
The self-assessment reads this same index back: it places the interests a reader selects on the curve described here and returns their weighted average position. Nothing in it is a separate instrument.
The base-10 logarithm of an interest's prevalence is normally distributed — a bell curve.
index 0–10
33 entries · 7%
index 10–20
39 entries · 8%
index 20–30
78 entries · 16%
index 30–40
87 entries · 18%
index 40–50
94 entries · 20%
index 50–60
87 entries · 18%
index 60–70
35 entries · 7%
index 70–80
15 entries · 3%
index 80–90
4 entries · 1%
index 90–100
2 entries · 0%
A clean, slightly right-leaning spread — mean 39.3, ranging 2–92. The log scale doing its job.
From prevalence to points
Prevalence is stretched across the index between two anchors — one person in ten thousand at the floor, three in five at the ceiling — so the rarest and most common interests both have room to breathe.
If an interest is held by…
- 0.1%26
- 1%45
- 5%71
- 14%83
- 50%98
Five signals behind every score
Prevalence anchors the index, but four more signals shape it — so a score reflects real-world presence from every angle.
Prevalence
How much of the adult population holds the interest
40%Search interestEST
Online search and adult-content demand
20%Community sizeEST
Size of dedicated communities and forums
18%Cultural visibilityEST
Mainstream and pop-culture awareness
12%Research attentionEST
Volume of academic and clinical study
10%
Where the numbers come from
Prevalence is computed— it is derived arithmetically from the entry's cited population estimate, and where a study genuinely measures that figure, the entry cites it. The four signals marked est — search interest, community size, cultural visibility and research attention — are indicative editorial estimates: scored 0–100 against a fixed anchor rubric (reference interests pin the scale — the catalog's giants sit at 85–95, mid-tier interests around 50–70, obscure paraphilias at 5–25 — and everything else is placed relative to them), informed by public signals such as search-trend data, community sizes and publication volume, but not traceable to a per-entry source. Together they carry 60% of the composite weight, which is why the entry's confidence rating and this label travel with every score. Treat the index as a documented editorial judgement, not a measurement.
The five signals are combined with a geometric mean, not a simple average. That choice matters: an interest can't reach the top on one spike alone — it has to score across the board. Something prevalent but invisible in research lands in the middle, where it belongs.
Prevalence tiers
A plain-language band for each entry, from near-universal to vanishingly rare — with how many entries fall in each.
- Ultra-common≥ 20%26 · 5%0
- Very common8 – 20%47 · 10%1
- Common2 – 8%148 · 31%2
- Uncommon0.5 – 2%123 · 26%3
- Rare0.05 – 0.5%95 · 20%4
- Very rare< 0.05%35 · 7%5
Grounded in research
Figures aren't guesses. Every estimate is anchored to published prevalence studies and clinical literature, then kept consistent across the whole catalog.
~50%
of adults report interest in at least one paraphilia.
Feet
are the single most common body-part focus by a wide margin.
4–7%
of people have never had a single BDSM-themed fantasy.
2
fantasies are statistically rare — and both involve a party who cannot consent.
How sure we are
Prevalence research is thin and uneven — so every figure carries a confidence level, and we say so plainly.
- High
- Multiple converging surveys or community datasets agree.
- Medium
- One solid dataset, or several strong indirect proxies.
- Low
- Anecdotal or proxy-only — read it as an order-of-magnitude estimate.
Ethics & care
A reference about human sexuality has to be handled with care. Here's the line we hold.
Clinical and non-explicit
Every entry is written in neutral, encyclopedic language. No pornographic detail, no how-to — descriptions, not depictions.
Completeness, never endorsement
A small number of clinically-recognized paraphilias are inherently harmful or illegal because they require a non-consenting party. These 22 entries appear for completeness only, behind a clear content notice, with harm and legal context — never as endorsement or instruction.
Symbolic illustration
Each entry is illustrated with a single graphite still-life — an object or metaphor that stands in for the idea. Never a person, never an act.
Reference, not advice
KINKSpec is educational. It documents what interests exist and how common they are — it does not give medical, psychological or legal advice.
Limitations
What this index is — and isn't. We'd rather state the caveats than imply false precision.
- Prevalence figures are directional estimates synthesized from heterogeneous sources — clinical surveys, community sizes, search data — not census counts.
- Online and search-based signals over-represent Western, English-speaking people with internet access.
- The catalog aims for breadth over exhaustiveness. New entries are added and the whole index re-scored as better evidence arrives.