The study conducted by the Center for Social Investment Studies(Censis, 2019) provides information on a precise segment of the population, namely people aged 18 to 40, referred to as “young Italians.”
The report describes how less traditional and more transgressive sexual practices are on the rise, such as a higher number of sex partners, threesomes, paid sex, and the practices of bondage, domination and S&M.
The latter in particular encapsulate all those sexual interactions characterized by an imbalance of power of the parties (two or more sexual partners) and the presence of physical pain as a means of obtaining and maintaining sexual arousal and are characterized by the fundamental presence of consent of all parties enacting them and very often also of key words (the safe words) that allow the practice to be discontinued at any time.
These practices are classified as BDSM.
12.5% of Italians aged 18 to 40 admit to using BDSM practices regularly or occasionally, and 46.9% use offensive or obscene language during the sex act. Also Censis (2019) reports that in 2000, the bondage/sadomaso was being enacted by only 0.5 percent of the Italian population, showing that twenty years ago these kinds of practices were still unknown or niche, or that only very few Italians openly admitted to using them than in recent years.
The report also provides prevalences regarding contraceptive use: 15 percent of women and 8.6 percent of men admit to never having used contraception in the past year. Within millennials also, 63.3 percent of Italians admit to having had at least one complete unprotected sexual intercourse, and only 21.6 percent have always used contraception. Finally, compared to twenty years ago, fewer people currently use contraceptives.
