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Survey of crux interests

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phlebas

phlebas

PRIMUS POENUS
Staff member
Hi all,

Some of you may remember the "Were you raised a Catholic" thread:
http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/poll-were-you-raised-catholic.37/
talking about whether a religious upbringing had any bearing on our interest in crux.

This topic came up again recently, and I decided to create a short survey to find some answers. It asks about religious upbringing, and interest in different aspects of the crux experience.

I've created it as an anonymous survey at SurveyMonkey as it gives more functionality than the poll option here at CF. Please feel free to follow the link and fill it in, I'll leave it open for a week or so, depending on the number of responses. I'm looking for a good cross section and a reasonable sample size, so don't be shy.
If you feel uncomfortable filling in an on line 3rd party survey, please pm me and I'll send you a plain text version. I want to know!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HLNHJBM
 
I would wonder if it’s not just the religious upbringing as it would be the religious imagery. How many of us have had illustrated children’s bibles with images of Adam and Eve in the garden, having their bits convienently hidden by accident, or the image of Christ on his cross, or even before pontius pilot. I think those have more of an effect than the teachings.
 
For me, as an imaginative 'words' girl, it was the story of the Passion that I first found - and still do find - arousing,
especially when a teacher decide to give us 11-year-olds a blow-by-blow (literally) account of the process.
Images have certainly been powerful too, but it's identifying, empathising with Jesus,
imagining myself having all that done to me, that appeals most strongly to my deeply masochistic nature.
 
jacksjg89 said:
I would wonder if it’s not just the religious upbringing as it would be the religious imagery. How many of us have had illustrated children’s bibles with images of Adam and Eve in the garden, having their bits convienently hidden by accident, or the image of Christ on his cross, or even before pontius pilot. I think those have more of an effect than the teachings.
Click to expand...
Eulalia said:
For me, as an imaginative 'words' girl, it was the story of the Passion that I first found - and still do find - arousing,
especially when a teacher decide to give us 11-year-olds a blow-by-blow (literally) account of the process.
Images have certainly been powerful too, but it's identifying, empathising with Jesus,
imagining myself having all that done to me, that appeals most strongly to my deeply masochistic nature.
Click to expand...

Agree with both these points ... they certainly had an effect on me. :p
 
There are so many ways of connecting with this kink.

The survey is going really well so far, 45 responses after a day. Very pleased, my personal target is 100 responses, surely that is possible between the 7,000 members at the Foundation and 20,000 here? . I know it's not perfect, we learn by doing, and I see how some questions could have been better, but it's a start. I mean, who else is doing this kind of analysis? Maybe there's a doctorate in it somewhere?

I may also open it to the bunch over at M_C_Research, the male crux group, but possibly after I've had a response from the mixed crux groups. Maybe as well as gender I should have asked "are you gay, straight, a little from column A, a little from column B" ?
 
In my case it was the influence of my Catholic upbringing. Although it was not particularly strict, the constant imagery of half-naked men suffering, as well as the tales of martyrdom, is what affected my mind. Then, still before puberty, I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" by Zeffirelli - that sealed the deal for me. While for me it is crucified women and not crucified men that are erotic, but yet the passion of Jesus is equally arousing. I have often wondered whether that means I have a confused sexual orientation.... any other guys out there with a similar dilemma?
 
jimsac said:
In my case it was the influence of my Catholic upbringing. Although it was not particularly strict, the constant imagery of half-naked men suffering, as well as the tales of martyrdom, is what affected my mind. Then, still before puberty, I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" by Zeffirelli - that sealed the deal for me. While for me it is crucified women and not crucified men that are erotic, but yet the passion of Jesus is equally arousing. I have often wondered whether that means I have a confused sexual orientation.... any other guys out there with a similar dilemma?
Click to expand...
I did. I think when I was really young and first seeing the images of crucified Christ, I didn’t discriminate against men or women, and when I got older I separated them, but the image of the crucified individual stuck with me.
 
jimsac said:
In my case it was the influence of my Catholic upbringing. Although it was not particularly strict, the constant imagery of half-naked men suffering, as well as the tales of martyrdom, is what affected my mind. Then, still before puberty, I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" by Zeffirelli - that sealed the deal for me. While for me it is crucified women and not crucified men that are erotic, but yet the passion of Jesus is equally arousing. I have often wondered whether that means I have a confused sexual orientation.... any other guys out there with a similar dilemma?
Click to expand...

jacksjg89 said:
I did. I think when I was really young and first seeing the images of crucified Christ, I didn’t discriminate against men or women, and when I got older I separated them, but the image of the crucified individual stuck with me.
Click to expand...

Such powerful imagery is bound to have an influence.
Jimsac, I think it is entirely possible for a straight man to have an interest in male crux, for me that interest becomes a vicarious one. I also think that the sheer force of the ordeal, the passion to use the traditional word, commands our attention and our interest, whether male or female.

What do others think?
 
jimsac said:
I have often wondered whether that means I have a confused sexual orientation.... any other guys out there with a similar dilemma?
Click to expand...
I sometimes wondered myself too. I follow Phlebas interpretation :

phlebas said:
Such powerful imagery is bound to have an influence.
Jimsac, I think it is entirely possible for a straight man to have an interest in male crux, for me that interest becomes a vicarious one. I also think that the sheer force of the ordeal, the passion to use the traditional word, commands our attention and our interest, whether male or female.
Click to expand...
Not specifically Christ's crucifixion (my favourite character in the passion is the rebellous bad thief). Yet the, what Phlebas calls, 'vicarious' aspect, of such an intense experience as crucifixion, the 'victim identification' has a strong attraction, both when it concerns male or female.
 
jimsac said:
In my case it was the influence of my Catholic upbringing. Although it was not particularly strict, the constant imagery of half-naked men suffering, as well as the tales of martyrdom, is what affected my mind. Then, still before puberty, I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" by Zeffirelli - that sealed the deal for me. While for me it is crucified women and not crucified men that are erotic, but yet the passion of Jesus is equally arousing. I have often wondered whether that means I have a confused sexual orientation.... any other guys out there with a similar dilemma?
Click to expand...
Exactly the same to me.
The erotic aspect could be even more confusing in my case: for me crucified men are not that erotic but so are pictures of me crucified and such of crucified women...
But I won't say it's a dilemma to me. I keep it on this: There are some things in the world that don't have to be explained but just enjoyed... ;)
 
A big thanks to all who have participated so far.

I am not closing this survey, but here are the results after 6 days, 90 responses, close to my target of 100. The individual comments are not on this link, I may post them separately after removing any identifying details that might be in them.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-KDSTMNVRV/
 
I was a bit surprised by the low percentage of females (around 16%). Males definitely dominate this site. That doesn't surprise me, but I would have guessed that females represented a little higher percentage, like 25%. We do have some very engaging female members and I always enjoy hearing about their fantasies and ideas.
 
Plus 3% no answer. 80% male, not too surprising. Also some of our most active members are female, they pull their weight here.

So, raised Catholic came out at 55%. Being such an international group we don't have a base population to compare against, to say whether this is higher or lower than could be expected, but it is a healthy figure. And another 60% fully or partly continue to identify with a religion. What I was interested to see is that no one identified as Muslim, but 4.35% identified as other non Christian. Buddhist? Hindu?

A clear majority fantasised about the cross, both in and out of church. I suppose that should not be a surprise but it is good to have the data to be sure.

Some further comments about religion were:
Wasn’t raised religious, but there was children’s bible on hand that sparked my imagination.
For me, crucifixion was a natural and simple extension of extreme bdsm with a element of familiarity due to my religious upbringing

The question "Which of the following aspects of crux most interest you ?" was never going to be comprehensive, so I apologise to those who saw shortcomings. But some interesting things came out of it.
80% or respondents liked female crux, and a healthy 32% male crux. For years I felt I was pushing the male crux boulder uphill in these groups, so it's encouraging to see there is real interest there now.
Interest in pain and torture, and in the artistic aspect of crucifixion came in equally at 58%, with 54 votes each. What a marvelous balance.
Otherwise eroticism topped the list, followed by shame and humiliation.
Real life and self crux came in with almost 39%, quite healthy, whereas religion trailed all other categories at under 1/5 of respondents.

Conclusions? Religious background may have something to do with interest in crux, but there is a healthy spread in the way that interest is expressed.

If I do this again to dig deeper I'll try to refine the questions, and also see if I can find out what those non christian religions are. Maybe also where people are from, at least in terms of continent.

With the data I've got I'll do some analysis on differences between those identifying as male and female, if any. That could be interesting!
 
Really interesting results, Phlebas, and thanks for setting up the survey! I hope you'll consider doing it again, in more depth: I'd have been happy to fill out a much longer and more detailed survey. As you mentioned in your earlier post, it'd be nice to have some information on same-sex versus opposite-sex attraction. Maybe something too on practice—strictly fantasizing, solo self-crux, crucified by others, crucifying others? And perhaps a question on the scenarios in which the respondents are interested, which would be multidimensional: Roman vs. modern, sexes of crucified, sexes of spectators, sexual arousal of crucified... I could easily see this turning into a 20-page survey!
 
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