Kinktests.
A review of some of the main ones
The world of kinks is as varied as the world at large, and the most confusing part of it?- the Labels. There is so much to get confused over, and drawing lines through people’s emotions and associations should never be done carelessly. Nevertheless, they must be drawn, as there is quite a wide gap between eg. cosplay and edgeplay.
What probably turns most curious souls away at the door to discovery, is the fear that exploring their slightly alternative “I wonder what that would be like”- thought, is only a stone’s throw away from a home dungeon and full blown criminal activity.
Before the freedom of the internet, discovering what your deep down dark side was into was a challenging and risky endeavour. But thankfully those dark ages are over, and if dungeons turn out to be a source of pleasure for you, you don’t need to dedicate a fortune, just to find out. Not only is information about most kinks readily available, but there are sites dedicated purely to pointing you in the right direction. We take a look at them!
The following surveys are all free and anonymous with no registration required.
This site offers a wide variety of quizzes which are not as much tests as they are fun conversational activities to do with a partner or friend and is the closest to the Cosmo/GQ survey style from our list. It offers separate short quizzes for Kink and BDSM but admittedly, doesn’t deal with either in a very probing or informative way. Still, the polished website design and short format means there are worse ways to spend a couple of minutes asking yourself what fun you may be into.
You’re asked to give an opinion between, Hell No! and Yes Please on a 5 point scale, over 71 questions. This test focuses on 10 key categories, those are Restraint, Pain, Role Play, Pleasure Control, Degradation, Sensation, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Edge Play, Potty Play, and also distinguishes between Sub/Dom preferences. The results are a mix of clear cut preferences and more ambiguous questions, without a lot of yada yada just to end up suggesting products for you to buy.
In all fairness to this minimalist site, it genuinely reads as like minded people extending their help to novices and newbies on their journey of self discovery. Of all the tests taken we found its results to be the most informative and easy to share with a partner despite the somewhat limited answer range.
If you ever needed some encouragement, that you are not alone, or that the world of fetishes and curious fascinations is large and wide, check out this site. This recommendation has to be qualified though. There are a few labels and definitions there that are rather dubious, so don’t take everything you read on the site as scientific or even true, but with over 100 definitions of likes and obsessions, that’s to be expected. Nevertheless, the site creators definitely spent their time aiming to cover the comprehensive spectrum of human behaviour in and surrounding kinkiness.
The survey is again a series of questions answered across a 7 point spectrum from agree to disagree and again set up to give you a glimpse into what interests you, and what you could consider trying.
If you want to find out whether you’re a rigger, a brat, a hunter or switcher, this is the survey for you. It sets out a dozen Archetypes spanning kinky behaviours and based on your answers, suggests what beast lurks inside you waiting to be set free (or let out for a brief breath of fresh air depending).
Finally, bdsmtests.com. This site looked promising and has a decent design and layout asking only 30 questions on a 1-10 scale. But despite taking the whole test twice it simply would not give us any results. Normally, we wouldn’t have included this failure to launch here, except it really drove home a key point. Kinky is not reserved for underground, strange, or borderline illegal corners of the world. It’s not even necessarily a yes/no thing, and has its ambiguity and flaws like everything else in life.
Ice cream comes in many different flavours, from vanilla to mint chocolate chip. But while we all have our favourites, we rarely want only one flavour at a time, and we definitely don’t want the same flavour for the entirety of our lives. Consider taking one of these tests as reading the catalogue of flavours rather than actually tasting it, but like with most things, there’s a charm to starting slow.
