The truth about sex at Warwick

The secret sexual fantasies (and realities) of Warwick students are revealed…

Since the publication of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, kink has suddenly become cool. After its release in 2011, the book triggered a wave of erotic romances, most of them centred around BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism, for the uninitiated). Within weeks of the book’s runaway success, reports of increased sales of sex toys flooded the media, as according to some, the book had essentially become ‘BDSM for Dummies’.

But has the recent interest in kink had any real effect on the students of Warwick? We took it upon ourselves to find out:

Whilst the overwhelming majority of the thirty students who answered our survey were heterosexual, we received responses from students who identified as homosexual, bisexual and pansexual as well. Similarly, most students who answered our survey had had sex before, with only 13% of respondents considering themselves virgins.

While 39% of the students quizzed confessed that they would like to have sex with someone significantly older than them (which we specified as an age gap of more than ten to fifteen years), only 3.5% of students had actually done it. This meant that 57% of students had no interest in a partner over ten to fifteen years their senior, but whether this statistic puts the stereotype of the ‘sexy lecturer’ to bed is still up for debate.

In total, 70% of students said that they had used or would like to use a sex toy.

While 16.67% of this group had not used a sex toy, 26.67% had used one during intercourse and 26.67% had used one on their own.

Approximately two thirds of the students we surveyed admitted to having sex (or wanting to have sex) in a public place. 36.67% of this group had actually carried out their fantasy and had sex in public. We did not ask students to specify the public place where they’d had sex, but we’ve had our suspicions about the bathrooms in Smack for a very long time…

However, approximately 69% of the students we surveyed had no interest group sex whatsoever. Given that group sex is frequently hailed as ‘the ultimate fantasy’ by trashy magazines the world over, this came as something of a shock. 27.5% of students would like to have group sex, but only 3.5% of the students we surveyed had actually had group sex, meaning that that rugby lad boasting about the threesome he had last weekend is most likely lying.

Similarly, 60% of respondents said that they had not had anal sex, and had no interest in trying it. However, while only 3.33% of students surveyed said they would like to try anal, 36.67% of respondents said that they had already tried it.

Overall, 57.62% of the students that we surveyed said that they had tried (or would like to try) using restraints or bondage in the bedroom. While 41.38% of students did not want to try BDSM, of the group who expressed an interest 31% had already tried it. We received very similar responses about role play in the bedroom, with 45% of students expressing no interest in it, 24% of students wanting to try it and 31% of students who had already tried it.

When asked what they considered to be the kinkiest thing that they had ever done, we received a wide range of responses from the students we surveyed. While some of them only wanted to spoon all night long, others confessed to using blindfolds, biting, spanking, handcuffs, costumed foreplay, food and an extremely unconventional way of using drumsticks, as well as having sex in a wide range of positions and in several public places (including Smack and one of the Oxford University libraries).

Is this down to the recent rising interest in kinky erotica, or are we all inventive enough in the bedroom not to rely on the latest trend in fiction?

And does it even matter, if everyone’s having a good time?