Sexy South Florida

Oh, you crazy folks in South Florida!

From the Broward County / Palm Beach New Times:

Sex in South Florida: Our Survey Finds That We Sure Like Our Kinks

The survey is clear about one thing: People around [Palm Beach]  like sex. They like a lot of it, and they like it with numerous partners. A healthy chunk of them are into kink — not just whips and chains. Responses to an open-ended question about fetishes included spanking, watersports (Google it, if you dare), and everything in between.

What? That’s normal, right? Well, maybe not:

Compared to nationwide surveys, our readers are randy. A Kinsey Institute survey found that just 3 percent of women and 17 percent of men had 21 or more lifetime partners. That means we have ten times the national average of people who have had multiple partners.

Seriously? But… it’s Florida.What gives?

Then again, sex seems to be in the air around these parts, says Jakob Pastoetter, clinical associate professor at the Orlando-based American Academy of Clinical Sexologists. He says it might be all the sunshine. “It makes you feel good. It makes you feel relaxed,” Pastoetter said. “You trust people more in sunshine than in the fog.” It also doesn’t hurt, he says, that we tend to wear a lot less clothes down here.

[…]

Our survey doesn’t just show that the number of people someone has slept with really isn’t a big thing. It shows that freakiness isn’t a big deal either.

An overwhelming 77 percent majority has said yes to sex in public. More than half said they’ve had sex with more than one person at the same time.

For a mainstream-ish newspaper, this was pretty interesting reading. But what about the kinky stuff?

About 11 percent of readers are swingers, and more than a third have a fetish, though their idea of what a fetish is varies greatly. Some respondents listed things like accents, punks, and redheads. Others got into specifics when describing what makes them lose their minds in the bedroom (or dungeon), including paddles, male chastity, stockings, and doctors and latex. Feet got a lot of mention, as did dominance and submission. More-obscure activities named were bukkake and something called ball stretching. Seven people mentioned watersports.

“Something called ‘ball stretching.'” For some reason I found that amusing. Oh yeah, and there’s that male chastity thing again. Next thing you know, they’ll have them on the Home Shopping Channel.

In South Florida, fetishes have grown big enough to spawn several subcultures. Some consider fetish a lifestyle and have an entire social circle built around it. A woman who identifies herself publicly as Dominant Amanda told New Times that almost every type of fetish has its own subgroup here. They get along, she said, but certain fetish communities, like spanking, for example, don’t typically associate with everyone else. She said swingers don’t come around too often either.

Not unlike Fetlife.

Ahem.

But here’s an interesting insight on the fetish community:

Barbara Winter, a Boca Raton-based psychotherapist specializing in sexuality, sees everybody from prostitutes to sex addicts. Once in a while, someone with a fetish will make an appointment with her and never show up, she says, adding that this might be due to growing acceptance of it. “They probably don’t want to give it up,” she says. “It’s probably working for them.” The fact that there’s a whole community out there that’s in the same boat can’t hurt.

A short, but interesting article. Head on over to the New Times and check out the rest of it.

Just a gratuitous fetish-themed picture.