A sub is just a roll

Or is that a role. Why are some individuals committed to one role, while others are flexible?
I have been thinking about how I might contribute to the sum of knowledge through my blog entries ......beyond helping readers to understand that there is one more self involved asshole blogging happily away.

This is the first of a series of posts, which sampled profiles on fetlife to find some interesting things about gender, dominance and sexuality.  The other posts which followed  are  Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Part 1   Part 2    and    Part 3

Thinking about the malleability of gender and power roles. We grow up thinking that it is decreed, but I am learning that this is perhaps delusion. I originally was ready to proclaim the wisdom of my own insights into the psychology of gender bending and power relationships in the communities that I have come to know. Then I realized that in another life I function as a scientist, and that this topic is subject to some basic empirical research. So I present a bit of research I did which I hope some will find interesting. I basically developed a method by which I could randomly search profiles on Fetlife, the facebook of kink, and simply note the declared gender and preferred power status of the user. I did this about 350 times, and created the chart below. Gender-wise users can describe themselves as male or female or a variety of ambi-gendered descriptions. In the same way they can describe themselve with unambiguous power designations master, dom, domme or submissive, slave, bottom, or ambiguous terms like switch or kinkster, or sadomasochist, all of which I lumped into switch.
The results are shown below.

	Dominant	Switch	Submissive
Female	04%	11%	12%
Ambi-Gender	0%	01%	02%
Male	29%	25%	14%

.HTML Tables

Not Surprising. Almost 70% of profiles describe themselves as male while only 27% say they are female. I think that past research in this area has shown that males self describe as being into BDSM relationships at least twice as often as females.
Sorry Guys!

Where were my assumptions shattered? Well I imagined that close to 25% would describe themselves in gender ambiguous terms. Hey all my friends do!!
3%! alas! And I was ready to do my riff on how power preferences are malleable,but I thought only 20%- would self-describe as the old switcheroo, but it turned out to be 37%. More than chose the old tried and true male dom, female sub categories. So hush my mouth! I am abashed and educated. Gender is still a relatively inflexible category, but top/bottom preferences are much more fluid in the early 21st century, and that in itself is a sign of progressive understanding of gender. In traditional world, gender and power are fixed and inflexible. That so many do not fall into the stereotypical male /female power dynamics is a sign that this world is far behind us.
I think simple examination of the demographics of Fetlife may provide some other insights into the relative flexibility of gender and power. If I can only pause long enough in the continuing self examination to look at it.