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Notes -
BDSM relationships are rational and adaptive for (some? many?) modern women
[Epimistic Status: Might just be the girls I date]
Oh boy! Another post on gender and romantic dynamics. Discussions on this topic here tend to go in a few predictable ways, and unfortunately there's a frequent vibe of posters here just not liking women. Leaving aside the whole hypergamy bit, there's frequent sneers about girls being attracted to partners that will mistreat them. This attraction is attributed to two evo psych explanations:
Men with aggressive and dark triad traits are more likely to succeed in gathering resources and accruing power. This makes them valuable mates, but also makes them high risks for physical abuse, infidelity, etc. There's something good correlated with something bad.
Females evolutionarily were frequently coerced by mates. They often didn't get to even choose their mates at all. This goes back all the way to chimps and monkeys. The ones that tolerated the abuse better were more likely to survive and reproduce. One of the pathways to tolerate abuse better is to enjoy it at some level. If you can't really control whether you get hit or not, it's more adaptive to get off on it than have a mental breakdown. The same goes for submissive behavior. Once you're wired deep down to enjoy something, you're going to start seeking it out.
I broadly think these two points are true, and I still like women. I think given submissive and masochistic impulses are wired in, the rational move is satify them while minimizing damage. BDSM relationships (which I'm using here as a catchall for everything from hard power dynamics to good 'ole slapping and choking in bed) are a social technology that fills that role.
Women want things in a partner. They also have different reproductive strategies that don't always neatly coincide. Pretty boys will make pretty daughters. Kind and caring partners are more likely to invest in you and your offspring. Dark triad partners are more likely to be disproportionately successful, but they might hurt you in the process. Straight up abusive partners just need to be survived, and some level of massochism helps.
Some of these reproductive strategies clearly work out a lot better than others. It's much better to end up with a pretty boy than an abusive one, but instincts were evolved when mate choice was much more constrained. Leaving a bad partner is much more of an option now, rendering some of the survival instincts counter produtive. So what's a gal to do with that masochistic drive? Get with a decent partner than have them do BDSM. Much better to be choked by the pretty boy that loves you than the dark triad guy that will actually kill you.
Backdoor on Feminism?
So here's my fringe, underdeveloped thought. Feminism and "womens liberation" broadly decreased the amount women had to submit to their partners. A lot of women liked that change. Some more reactionary ones didn't and explicitly volunteer for more trad lifestyles. I think a lot of women have mixed feelings. They really value the practical gains in freedom in some areas. But in others they didn't really want to stop being submissive. Western blue tribe women are seeped in the idea that feminism is good, and wanting to roll things back is bad. BDSM offers a figleaf for that. It's culture is soaked in the language of consent, so it doesn't contradict feminism. Yep, wearing a collar and being your man's slave is empowering. BDSM offers a framework for picking and choosing what bits of power to keep and return. You can still have your own job, but do everything you husband says at home.
My anecdotes
I had an ex who I was keeping on a leash. She really liked being given orders. One day I asked her to fetch me food a few too many times and she said "I wanted to be your girlfriend, not your servant!" I learned then when girls want to be submissive it's more like they want to be your pet than your maid.
I had two separate exes who ran away from abusive partners and then ended up with me. They were sensible enough to flee at the first sign of trouble. They liked me a fair amount at first, but when I introduced them to BDSM they became enthralled with me. I think early in the relationship were satisfying the Pretty/Caring strategy. Once BDSM hit the mix they felt like they were satisfying Pretty/Caring/Dominant. I think the BDSM community downplays the relationship with domestic violence for PR reasons. There's definitely something there.
I've recently started listening to Malcolm Collins, and his take is that female sexuality is dimorphic. Historically women have had the possibility of living in two distinct possible scenarios: safe pair bonds, or prostitute/sex-slaves. If someone is born to a family with a reasonable amount of money and get married to a single man, she is best off if she mates with him and has a bunch of children and remains loyal to him. His wealth is her children's wealth, his prosperity is her children's prosperity, and the more love and attention she gives him the more she will get from him. Therefore, women release high levels of oxytocin when having sex the first few times, which develops this bond.
On the other hand, if foreign tribes come in and conquer, they kill the men and steal the women. The woman has no choice about what will happen to her, she's going to have sex with lots of men or she's going to be killed. There is no advantage to bonding with any of these men, they're going to pass her around and use her anyway, often violently. She might as well adapt to being a sex slave and hope she can please the men enough that they want to keep her alive for more. Similarly, a poor women forced into prostitution is going to get used and abused, she might as well adapt to it to survive. Pair-bonding with any of these men would be maladaptive, since she can't be loyal to them even if she wanted to, and they're likely bad men and won't reciprocate loyalty with resources. So after having sex enough times the oxytocin response to sex weakens with each additional iteration.
Therefore, the proliferation of BDSM fetishes in modern times follows biologically from promiscuity culture. Women have enough sex with enough different men that their brains shift into sex slave survival mode. They don't expect to have a single loving partner who loves them and wants to share resources with them willingly, so they adapt to survive and enjoy the life they expect. It's not women's biology training them to look at all the possible options for who to choose as a mate and rationally/selfishly trying to maximize resources compared to picking a safer husband, it's an adaptation to a historical environment where sometimes women had no agency in who to choose as a mate at all, and they're just trying to do the best they can with the mates forced upon them.
I think I tentatively believe this story, it anecdotally tracks with things I've observed and what I know about biology and sex, though the correlation between BDSM and promiscuity could be confounded by the causation going the other way (or just promiscuous people being more willing to admit to having a BDSM fetish while shy, monogamous people keep it to themselves). But I think this idea has some merit.
I don't really buy the link between BDSM and promiscuity. I was the first for the partner that got me into BDSM. Even as a virgin she was into the idea of it and wanted to try it out with me. I also doubt the historical story you're telling about coerced sex being largely promiscuous. My understanding is that when a woman was historically kidnapped, they either ended up as a "war bride" or a slave to a specific man/household. I don't think going into a brothel was the median case. There's the whole story of the Rape of the Sabine Women, where they were kidnapped to be wives for Romans. There, I think it did matter to bond to their abductors (Stockholm syndrome). Bonding effectively was a gambit to raise their status from sex slave to wife.
I think there's a probable link between early sexual activity (esp. the coerced or semi-coerced sort) and later BDSM proclivities. It might impact the extremity to which they'll ultimately go.
But the flip side is, well, a lot of really normal women were happy to watch Fifty Shades.
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