Does an interest in BDSM indicate a pattern of abuse in earlier life?

[leo9]

I think it's hard to make a correlation because a lot of people suffered abuse as children. You can't really point to the small percentage who wind up with an interest in bdsm and say "AH HA! That's what caused it!" I'll bet if there were ever a study done on it, the percentage of abuse victims who wind up in the "lifestyle" is smaller than the percentage within the vanilla community.

It's my belief that because BDSM scenes sometimes expose repressed memories, and because BDSM people are less likely to feel ashamed to admit to having been abused, we probably have a higher percentage of people who openly identify as abuse survivors than in the general population. And this may create a false impression that the actual incidence of abused people is higher.

That is, in statistical terms, it's an artifact of reporting.