A Minority Stress Perspective in Five Paraphilic Interest Groups

Paraphilic sexual interests are frequently stigmatized, yet little research has examined potential minority stress processes across these groups. We investigated outness, prejudice events, self-stigma, and concealment, along with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and autism traits in N = 470 UK-based participants in five paraphilic groups: BDSM (n = 278), pet play (n = 194), age play (n = 123), furry (n = 101), and balloon fetishism (n = 53), with overlapping memberships. Rates of self-reported clinical-range autism traits ranged from 14.6% (BDSM) to 45.3% (Furries). Hierarchical regression models predicting the mental health outcomes were entered in three steps: 1) age, sex, sexual orientation, and childhood gender nonconformity, 2) outness and prejudice events, and 3) acceptance concerns and self-stigma. Self-stigma and, to a lesser extent, prejudice events were the most robust predictors of psychological distress. Outness was inconsistently associated. Concealment behaviors were the most widely endorsed (71.6%), followed by efforts to suppress (50.1%) or disavow their paraphilic interests (37.8%), and experiences of verbal abuse (40.1%). While average levels of depression and anxiety were below clinical thresholds, 15-30% of participants per group met or exceeded clinical cutoffs. These findings extend some minority stress constructs to individuals with putatively stigmatized paraphilic interests and underscore the potential role of structural and interpersonal sources of marginalization in these populations. Results provide evidence that both discrimination and group identification are meaningfully associated with these paraphilic interests, highlighting the importance of future research using longitudinal and biologically informed methods to better understand causal mechanisms.