The Australian Sexual Health and Relations Surveys, 2002 and 2013, taken together, reached some 40,000 people, using random sampling. Among the questions those 40,000 people were asked were:

• Have you participated in bdsm in the last year? and
• Have you taken part in role-playing games, like teacher and naughty schoolgirl, n the last year?

Taking the results, and making some estimates, we find that 2% of the population took part in bdsm with a further about 8% taking part in sexual games that involve elements of “command and I will obey you”, and spanking. That looks like 10%.

However, we don’t know exactly how those role-players played their roles, and we don’t know if commands (i.e. dominance and submission), or spanking were involved in every one of those games. So to be on the conservative side, we’ll count about half of that response, or 4%. 

Now, 4% playing sexual games with, “come here!”, and “you need a spanking, don’t you” elements, plus the 2% who took part in what they directly referred to as bdsm, should add up to 6%. However, about half of the bdsm group also said they’d taken part in role-playing games. To avoid double counting those people, we bring the total down to 5%.

Okay, it’s not a spanking, but it’s part of that Thing We Do. Folsom Street Fair, of course.

So that’s one in twenty of the population. That means that something that affects us, or is affected by us, can’t just be dismissed as a problem for a few isolated weirdos.

Also, and on a more cheerful note, it means our odds of meeting a compatible partner are a lot greater than many people have thought. 

To put that in context, that means there are about twice as many of us as there are exclusive gays or lesbians. On the other hand, we’re out-numbered about two to one by bisexuals.

That means there are:

• about 16 million of us weirdos in the United States
• about 3.2 million of us in the UK
• about 1,8 million of us in Canada
• about 1.2 million of us in Australia
• about 225 thousand of us in New Zealand

So we’re everywhere, as they used to say. But a hell of a lot of us seem to turn up in Folsom Street.

That’s a hell of a lot of people, isn’t it?

Even more encouragingly, over 60% of us are switches (I’m not, I’m afraid), so your odds of having a good evening with the right person are pretty good.

I’ve only applied the figure to Britain and its predominantly white former colonies, because there’s enough cultural similarity between those countries to make it reasonably safe to do so.

I could probably make a guesstimate for France, Germany and Italy too, but that’ll do for now.

Tomorrow’s Wicked Wednesday, so I’ll be posting something sexy.

But there are more stats on Thursday, considering this question: An adult and a child are turned on by a spanking: hey, what are the odds?