{"id":259215,"date":"2026-04-09T11:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259215\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:34:08","slug":"a-bay-area-sex-researcher-made-a-survey-1-million-people-answered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259215\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bay Area sex researcher made a survey. 1 million people answered."},"content":{"rendered":"

In a library deep within an academic compound off Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley called Lighthaven<\/a>, Aella curls up on the couch, opens her HP laptop and navigates to BigKinkSurvey.com<\/a>. She built the website herself (using Claude Code, of course), training it to display raw data from a 40-minute survey she designed \u2014 and which more than 1 million people have taken. Drop-down menus allow users to explore correlations between everything from emotional traits like narcissism to sexual fetishes as obscure as interest in \u201corcs\/ogres\/golems.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Aella is not your typical academic, but the 34-year-old sex worker-turned-sex researcher may very well have created the largest dataset on human sexuality in history. For an audience of 139,000 Substack<\/a> followers, she uses the data to explore ideas as far ranging as the demographics of child sexual abuse and how \u201cbody count,\u201d a derogatory term for the number of sexual partners someone has had, impacts relationships. The data also informs her most popular content: sex advice stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The large, raw dataset makes for a voyeuristic experience and provides a peek into sexual realities that are otherwise kept under wraps, but like the work of previous trailblazing sexologists such as Shere Hite<\/a>, its scientific value is up for debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Regardless, the data is useful for at least one thing: fine-tuning Aella\u2019s approach to throwing orgies, which she operates out of a house in Berkeley that she lives in with five other people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher who has conducted a survey of more than 1 million people about their sexual kinks, poses at Lighthaven, a rationalist event center in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

Becoming Aella<\/p>\n

Aella chooses not to use her given name so that strangers don\u2019t send her porn clips to her father. Homeschooled in Iowa by conservative Christian parents, Aella\u2019s first job was on a factory floor, and her second job was doing sex work as a cam girl. It didn\u2019t take long for her account to go viral thanks to an innate understanding of Reddit.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI saw places where girls were posting nudes of themselves, and they were all kind of boring \u2026 I just was like, what would be fun?\u201d\u00a0Aella said during an interview at Lighthaven, for which she dressed in a conservative, ankle-length skirt and mismatched socks.\u201cIt\u2019s like a guiding light in my life. What would be fun to do, and would be interesting?\u201d<\/p>\n

The result was a 2013 self-shot photo series in which a group of lawn gnomes pulls her naked body off camera. It helped grow her following such that she earned more than $100,000 in a month via OnlyFans. She then began working as a high-end escort, which she describes as her favorite type of sex work (she now considers it more of a \u201chobby\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just feels good to sit down with a person and look into them, in the eyes, and have a conversation and touch their bodies. Something about it feels healthy,\u201d Aella said, speaking in a rapid-fire cadence. \u201cOnline, the men are reduced to numbers, and I\u2019m reduced to one woman out of 1,000 that you can easily switch between. It\u2019s like, \u2018Are you maximizing the funnel stream?\u2019 It just feels like I\u2019m stripped down into an algorithm.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher who has conducted a survey of more than 1 million people about their sexual kinks, poses at Lighthaven, a rationalist event center in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher who has conducted a survey of more than 1 million people about their sexual kinks, poses at Lighthaven, a rationalist event center in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

For most of her adult life, she\u2019s been a nomad, bouncing around between locales, living in Australia; Portland, Oregon; Boston; New York; Berkeley; Hawaii; Seattle; and, most recently, Austin, Texas, for two and a half years\u00a0\u2014 her longest stretch anywhere before she returned to Berkeley in 2025. She moved to Austin partially because she\u2019d heard there was a large community of people who practice Circling, a style of interpersonal meditation she enjoys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aella also considers herself a practitioner of \u201crationalism,\u201d a loosely defined intellectual movement based around unflinchingly logical debate (often with \u201canti-woke\u201d tendencies). Unlike at Lighthaven, a welcoming rationalist compound run out of an old hotel space in Berkeley where she co-works, the rationalist communities in Austin weren\u2019t tolerant of her status as a sex worker and ostracized her to the point she felt she wanted to leave the city.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was having trouble in Austin because it was too right wing,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel very politically homeless. I just want reasonable discourse with people who disagree without getting mad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that California is much better in her eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the people here, but I hate California itself. It\u2019s terrible governance. Basically, you can\u2019t build here. Taxes are extremely high compared to the benefits that you get. I find it pretty atrocious, and I am resentful that I have to continue living here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The big survey<\/p>\n

While living in Hawaii in 2021, armed with an online audience in the hundreds of thousands that she\u2019d built up over the years, Aella let her curiosity drive her to a career as an independent sex researcher. Her first surveys were admittedly clumsy; eventually, she refined them to mostly follow a seven-point Likert scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree.<\/p>\n

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\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher, talks about her survey on sexual kinks at\u00a0Lighthaven, a rationalist event center, in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

\u201cI made a slightly better survey, discovered more errors in the data, and then I just kept doing that over and over again until I accidentally made the world\u2019s largest sex survey dataset,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd now I have that.\u201d<\/p>\n

One might question how someone could get 1 million strangers to take a 40-minute survey, and the answer comes down to a simple reward: At the end, participants receive a rank on their level of kinkiness, as associated with 80 fictitious characters (Deadpool and Willy Wonka rank high, Captain America and Bambi on the vanilla side). It\u2019s the appeal of the BuzzFeed quiz but for your sex life. People began posting their results on TikTok, and the survey went viral, quickly racking up 400,000 participants. At this point, it passively attracts roughly 20,000 takers every month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Michelle Marzullo, chair of the human sexuality department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, says it shouldn\u2019t be relied on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI wouldn\u2019t call it a survey, or even a scientifically valid or generalizable study at all. I think it\u2019s a participatory internet project, and it\u2019s something that really could be used as interesting and fun for people but not at all scientifically valid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher, talks about her survey on sexual kinks at\u00a0Lighthaven, a rationalist event center, in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher, talks about her survey on sexual kinks at\u00a0Lighthaven, a rationalist event center, in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

Marzullo\u00a0cited a list of issues with the data beyond just a skewed sample set, since it\u2019s self-selected by people who find Aella online. Concerns range from formalities like the lack of peer or institutional review to the legality of including minors in the study (the data explorer limits its respondents to ages 14-34, but it doesn\u2019t verify a person\u2019s age). Use of artificial intelligence to parse the data, inappropriate statistical weighting, compromised data and potential for causing unintended trauma are other red flags. She noted that not many studies have been done on niche sexual kinks because of the difficulty and expense of finding participants who are willing to take part\u00a0in a panel interview. Marzullo cited a study she conducted on LGBTQ individuals in higher education at UCLA; $150,000 of its overall cost went just to finding subjects.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t want to be harsh about this, because I know she\u2019s a novice researcher and I think it\u2019s a fun thing, but what I\u2019m afraid of is that it could mislead people into thinking that this is a large representative survey,\u201d Marzullo said.<\/p>\n

Aella\u2019s quick to admit that her methods aren\u2019t perfect, and that her sample is skewed by the type of people who follow her, but she sees advantages to working outside traditional academia, where funding is often inadequate and attention isn\u2019t a commodity in high supply.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just happen to come from a sex work background, which has taught me how to work with social media and attention really well,\u201d Aella said. \u201cAnd a lot of academics are not trained with that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher who has conducted a survey of more than 1 million people about their sexual kinks, poses at Lighthaven, a rationalist event center in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

Playing with the data<\/p>\n

Weekly posts on Aella\u2019s Substack dig into some of the data from both the Big Kink Survey and smaller targeted surveys. A survey specifically about \u201cbody count\u201d drew 40,000 respondents. As one might expect, a person with fewer lifetime sexual partners is more likely to have a hard time imagining being happy without their current relationship, and it\u2019s more likely that their partner takes priority over everything else in their life. A person with more lifetime sexual partners is likely to have had more sex with their current partner over the past six months but have lower sexual satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Reading Aella\u2019s blog findings like these is interesting, but it\u2019s much more fun exploring the data yourself. Although Marzullo was highly critical of drawing any scientific conclusions, she noted that it\u2019s something of a \u201cdata playground\u201d that could be treated as a game or fun conversation piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Using the BKS Data Explorer is as simple as choosing two categories to compare. For instance, the homepage defaults to the number of sexual partners a person has had, depending on their political leanings (perhaps surprisingly, conservatives are more promiscuous). Another graphs the most erotic body part based on one\u2019s biological sex. One easy click creates a simple graph with each category on the X and Y axes, showing that women are much more interested in hands, shoulders, arms and teeth, while men\u2019s interests weigh more heavily on areolas, buttocks, armpits and feet. That\u2019s a particularly safe-for-work example, but since this is a kink survey, the rabbit holes of data get as granular as to gauge what type of creature those who are into bestiality are most fond of \u2014 women most prefer octopi, whereas men are heavily into rodents. However, given the potential for joke answers alone, these findings probably shouldn\u2019t be used to throw a sex party.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people are like, \u2018Oh, the data is false,\u2019\u201d Aella said. \u201cNo, data isn\u2019t false. How you interpret it can be false, right? Data is just data. It\u2019s useful regardless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher, talks about her survey on sexual kinks at\u00a0Lighthaven, a rationalist event center, in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

Data-driven approach to sex parties<\/p>\n

Data nerds may get turned on by such deep statistical dives, but Aella\u2019s Substack isn\u2019t just armchair information science \u2014 there are also diary-like entries about \u201cthe pain and the glory of nonmonogamy,\u201d and sex advice columns like \u201cHow to Be Good at Sex: Starve Her Brain,\u201d which inspire most of Aella\u2019s paid subscriptions. She shared that around 3% of her subscribers pay for a $9-per-month subscription, which amounts to nearly $450,000 per year.<\/p>\n

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The most popular article \u2014 which is behind a paywall, of course \u2014\u00a0is titled \u201cMy Birthday Gangbang,\u201d a 2024 post that documents the day Aella organized an event where she had sex with 42 different men (for their services, they received a commemorative bathrobe), which she recounted in a viral article<\/a> in the Atlantic. The attention to detail that marks her surveys also applied here: Participants were filtered from a larger pool of 1,604 applicants, and close data was kept on the outcome (of the 42, 37 penetrated Aella and 15 didn\u2019t finish). One man, who said he was a virgin, even wore his own heartbeat monitor and shared how his heart rate changed through various points of the experience.<\/p>\n

Another popular post is \u201cA Girl\u2019s Guide to a Data-Driven Orgy,\u201d which features a 20-minute video of a TED-esque talk laying out the theory behind her \u201cRed Means No\u201d orgies. Through, you guessed it, a survey, Aella found that the average number of sexual partners people had at orgies was actually less than one, and the majority of the sex that occurred was with preexisting partners.<\/p>\n

\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher who has conducted a survey of more than 1 million people about their sexual kinks, poses at Lighthaven, a rationalist event center in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call it an orgy in name only. But it\u2019s mostly like a sexually charged meetup, or speed dating for slutty people,\u201d she said in the presentation. \u201cWhere you can go and occasionally see some people f\u2014king, and feel really cool that you\u2019re present while people are f\u2014king.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Part of this stems from most orgies requiring clear consent before all physical interactions, which is great for making women feel safe but not always for making them feel sexy, Aella says. Her data reinforces this dynamic, with the most popular female fetishes involving some type of power dynamics or nonconsent, whereas the No. 1 fetish reported by men\u00a0is clothing, followed by roleplay, exhibitionist, genderplay and incest \u2014 \u201ca nice, cute variety,\u201d Aella says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the women side, you may see a theme \u2014 it\u2019s basically \u2018Fifty Shades of Grey,\u2019\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the Red Means No orgies work: They\u2019re CNC themed, which stands for \u201cconsensual nonconsent.\u201d You attend either as a \u201cpredator\u201d or as \u201cprey.\u201d A colored wristband system makes it clear what genders and experiences you\u2019re open to, and black tape is used to indicate any body parts that are off limits. The code word \u201cred\u201d means stop. This cuts out unsexy consent chit-chat, better serves female fetishes and thus attracts more women to the events, which is harder to do, according to Aella.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to an orgy once, and I was just like, \u2018I just want someone to grab me and f\u2014k me,\u2019\u201d Aella said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to have to do the game where I go up to somebody and then flirt with them, and then they say, \u2018Can I have sex with you?\u2019 I just hate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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She\u2019s now thrown 11 of the Red Means No parties, attracting between 30 and 60 people, who pay around $150 for the experience.<\/p>\n

\"Aella,<\/p>\n

Aella, a Bay Area sex worker and researcher who has conducted a survey of more than 1 million people about their sexual kinks, poses at Lighthaven, a rationalist event center in Berkeley, Calif., on April 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

If Red Means No events are an extension of the data-centric side of\u00a0Aella\u2019s Substack, then Slutcon is the real-world version of the \u201chow to be good at sex stuff.\u201d The three-day conference \u2014 with tickets starting around $1,000 \u2014 includes a variety of workshops, practice and play. There are sessions with both sex therapists and researchers, but the most popular element are sessions where men can practice flirting with women and receive immediate feedback. Early tickets for this year\u2019s event have already sold out.<\/p>\n

It all plays into Aella\u2019s mission: working toward a better understanding of how people think about sex and sharing that information with the masses. In its own right, the act of taking her Big Kink Survey is an enlightening experience, both in terms of introspection and realization of how far the fetish rabbit hole goes. The findings may raise more questions than they answer, but they\u2019re questions that most sex researchers are bound from asking. Ultimately, the proof is in the real-world application, with a better understanding of sexuality simply resulting in better sex.<\/p>\n

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\u201cGood sex benefits everybody. And if we could just figure out how to learn about ourselves, and other people, then we\u2019re more likely to have good sex. It\u2019s just gonna be better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a library deep within an academic compound off Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley called Lighthaven, Aella curls up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,923,1693],"class_list":["post-259215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sfgculture","tag-sfglocal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}