BDSM community educational needs assessment

<full disclosure> I’m on the Advisory Committee for the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS) </full disclosure>

CARAS is conducting an online survey to assess the educational needs of the BDSM community. The goals of the project are to identify what educational needs people have, determine what practices educators and organizers have, and increase the quality of content and professionalism among BDSM educators. There are a lot of sex educators and “sexperts” (I really dislike that word) out there and while many of them are quite skilled, there are also plenty that don’t really know enough about their topics and/or how to teach. But then, my degree is in Adult Sex Education so I get picky about it. <sex nerd self-promotion> If you want to read my dissertation “Sex and Shame: Authenticity in Adult Education“, click on the link. </sex nerd self-promotion>

Anyway, we’re about halfway to our goal of 1200 completed surveys and we’d love your help. The participation criteria are:

“You should complete this survey only if you have actively participated in a “face to face” BDSM community event, such as attending a conference, organizational meeting, social event, or other gathering. You do not need to be a member of any BDSM organization. Intimate relationships, friendships, and mentoring are important avenues of BDSM education, but this survey is focused on activities of the public, organized BDSM community. If you have no direct experience with BDSM or “kink” community events please do not complete this survey.”

But even if that doesn’t include you, please feel free to pass the link to the survey along. This is the first community-based survey of sex education workshops and I want it to be the best it can be. It’ll make lots of sex educators really happy. And no, that’s  not me in the picture. But that’s how happy I’ll be when we see what the results are.

The survey is here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=iG8LaEIcMpw_2bRR9spo_2bXig_3d_3d

Feel free to send the link itself, or send someone to this blog. Thanks a lot for your help.