This paper deals with the analysis of the main stereotypes about gender, sexuality and the body in the BDSM Italian scene. With BDSM we intend all the practices dealing with Bondage, Domination and Submission/Discipline and Sadomasochism. In this paper I will present some theoretical reflections and partial empirical findings from my doctoral research. I relied on qualitative methods, mainly ethnographies and in-depth interviews, to conduct the research. My aim is to present how stereotypes about gender, sex and the body – key aspects of BDSM – are constructed and enacted within the scene, and explore whether and to which extent they challenge, deconstruct or reproduce the main stereotypes in society. Consent is central to BDSM play, since it differentiates these practices from paraphilia (APA 2013). Practitioners are used to negotiate scene, roles and practices before the session takes place. Given the importance of consent and negotiation in BDSM play, I want to investigate if these attitudes are reflected on the deconstruction or challenge of main stereotypes by BDSM practitioners. The importance of the subject and his/her social network in this process of choice is highlighted by empirical data, collected during ethnographies and interviews. Nevertheless, binarism with regards to gender roles, sexual orientation and roles during play is persistent.

In this paper I try to highlight how and why the feminine body still represents, within the public sphere, the center of the definition of social order and its social and legal norms. Around the female sexuality much of the discursive orders develop, in order to affirm the heterosexual norm and, at the same time, to expropriate the self-determination and the voice of women. Here, I compare two different discursive waves: on the one hand, the “securitarian” one (2007-2009), started with the murder of Giovanna Reggiani, during which violence and prostitution were utilized as ways to produce social panic, justify repressive acts, and re-affirm gendered social roles; on the other hand, a period during which gender violence “goes back home” (where it has always been) – whilst the public space is filled with the sexual scandals of the prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and the subsequent moralistic response. Gender violence and prostitution are social facts which produce ethnical, sexual and cultural processes of control and discipline of bodies, starting from bodies and sexuality, which are the core of the governamental strategies of power. But this power is not univocal or monolithic; on the contrary, it spreads along the power relationships that run through the entire society. Anyway, if the female body has always been exploited in order to justify and enforce the social control of society, the cultural representation of bodies is useful to affirm a gendered social order, in which women are definitely expropriated of their subjectivity and voice. As a victim or as a culprit, there will always be someone else speaking for them – thus depicting a structural conflict and freedom process which is steadily going through our society.

In the last decade, the field of sex work and anti-trafficking in Europe has been the object of renewed attention, often presented as being about «gender equality». While feminists have been at the forefront of these debates, they appear to be increasingly divided around the «prosex work» and the «sex work as a form of violence» approaches. This article argues that by conceiving these two positions as irreconcilable, and by promoting standardised international policy solutions that fail to take into account local contexts, these current feminist engagements jeopardise alternative feminist traditions in which diverse stances on sex work coexisted, and which can be usefully studied in order to overcome some of the current impasses. Taking Italy as its case study, this article shows how between the 1980s and the 1990s feminists were able to develop a «feminist alliance» capable of supporting the emancipation of women selling sex and of migrant victims of trafficking. Drawing upon the analysis of texts, we explore the strengths and weaknesses of such an alliance, and the reasons why in a context of austerity, antimigrant sentiments, and new security approaches, it is currently at risk of disappearing, leaving the space for the new feminist polarisations.