BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism)

This paper examines the masochistic elements in The Story of O. It uses the works of Sacher-Masoch and others who have written on the theme of masochism to help make sense of what these masochistic performances give to O, the protagonist of The Story of O. One recurring argument which will be addressed is that masochism is an exaggeration of the existing traps that romantic and gender structures create. The paper hopes to show that this exaggeration which O enacts through her masochistic acts is utilized as a method of gaining freedom from the very traps it mimics.

This book is the story of my self-deception about my “deviant” sexuality and my protracted and painful progress toward self-understanding and self-acceptance. Unavoidably, the book involves explicit descriptions of a wide range of activities often regarded as sexually deviant. It is not intended as pornographic; though some people may use it that way. It describes how I deceived myself about my sexuality as a consequence of trying to conform to the norms of my inherited culture. I hope that it will be found enlightening and entertaining. I also hope that it will be helpful to people who are struggling to adjust themselves to social expectations that make unreasonable demands upon them and that it will help them to avoid the psychological crises and decades of wasted life that I suffered.

The permissibility of actions depends upon facts about the flourishing and separateness of persons. Persons differ from other creatures in having the task of discovering for themselves, by conjecture and refutation, what sort of life will fulfil them. Compulsory slavery impermissibly prevents some persons from pursuing this task. However, many people may conjecture that they are natural slaves. Some of these conjectures may turn out to be correct. In consequence, voluntary slavery, in which one person welcomes the duty to fulfil all the commands of another, is permissible. Life-long voluntary slavery contracts are impermissible because of human fallibility; but fixed-term slavery contracts should be legally enforceable. Each person has the temporarily alienable moral right to direct her own life.

RESUMO Este artigo tem por objetivo refl etir sobre como certas práticas realizadas pelo grupo BDSM são apresentadas na 5ª Revisão do Manual Diagnóstico e Estatístico de Trans-tornos Mentais. BDSM é um acrônimo que deve ser considerado em pares, uma vez que cada par se refere a práticas que se implicam, ou seja, BD signifi ca Bondage e Discipli-na; DS, Dominação e Submissão; e SM, Sadomasoquismo. Neste sentido, considera-se útil perscrutar também certos elementos do processo histórico que ensejou a organiza-ção das práticas sexuais, a partir das categorias " normal " e " patológico " , e a consequen-te estigmatização de determinados grupos sociais, entre eles, o próprio BDSM. ABSTRACT This article aims to refl ect about how certain practices performed by the BDSM group are presented in the 5 th Revision of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. BDSM is an acronym that should be considered in pairs, because each pair refers to practices that are mutually dependent: BD, Bondage and Discipline; DS, Dominance and Submission; and SM, Sadomasochism. In this sense, to scrutinize certain elements of the historical process that gave rise to the organization of sexual practices is considered useful, from " normal " and " pathological " categories, and the consequent stigmati-zation of certain social groups, among them the BDSM.

Research has begun to investigate subclinical levels of sadism including "everyday sadism:" an enjoyment of cruelty in normal, everyday situations. Thus far, subclinical sadism has been conceptualized as inherently antisocial, as with Internet trolls. We examined a potentially prosocial manifestation of sadism: self-identified sadists in the BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism) community who cause pain only to consenting partners. A total of 532 BDSM practitioners and non-practitioners completed measures of everyday sadism with consent explicit, non-consent explicit, or consent ambiguous, and known correlates of everyday sadism (empathy, HEXACO traits, and Dark Triad traits). Across both samples and all conditions, everyday sadism correlated negatively with affective empathy, agreeableness, and honesty-humility, and positively with Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. These results support the validity of the measure of everyday sadism among BDSM practitioners. Psychopathy uniquely predicted everyday sadism among BDSM practitioners when non-consent was explicit. BDSM sadists differed significantly from non-sadistic BDSM tops only on the physical subscale of everyday sadism and only when consent was explicit. These findings suggest that most BDSM sadists are not everyday sadists, and that BDSM sadism might represent a prosocial manifestation of subclinical sadism, but that BDSM sadists with high levels of psychopathy might be everyday sadists.

Durante muchos años la sexualidad ha permanecido encerrada en la esfera privada y vista como
la única forma de dar continuidad a la especie humana. Cualquier sexualidad que no tuviera
fines reproductivos era condenada.
Hoy en día los tiempos han cambiado y ya no se condena la sexualidad que tiene como fin el
disfrute de los individuos, pero a pesar de esto hay un conjunto de prácticas sexuales que
todavía siguen siendo prejuzgadas por el hecho de hallar placer de una forma distinta a la
convencional, son las prácticas BDSMK.
Este trabajo pues intenta profundizar en las prácticas BDSMK y en su comunidad esbozando así
sus características. ¿Cómo entran en contacto con este mundo? ¿Cómo se sienten sus
practicantes?, ¿cómo los ve la sociedad? Estas son algunas de las preguntas que trataremos de
responder en esta investigación.

On the ninth of February 2017 erotic video platform ManyVids caused a scandal among their members on Twitter when a “racist woman” was given the MV Social Media Slayer of the Year. This caused a public outrage over racist content. A day later, the ManyVids removed all ‘raceplay’ video’s on the site, with a public statement that conflated race play and racism. The result was again a heated discussion on Twitter about personal rights, racism and discrimination against specific fetishes. Race play – which is a sexual practice where the either imagined or real racial background of one or more of the participants is used to create a BDSM-scene (Bondage, Dominance/Discipline, Submission/Sadism and Masochism) – lies on the intersection between highly contested racial and sexual minorities, which allows for valuable investigations into the ways we negotiate these concepts. However, in academic research this phenomenon has mainly been overlooked.
This article uses the ManyVids incident as a starting point to use phenomenological investigations and discourse analysis to show how the phenomenon of race play can offer new insights into the relationship between collective identities and personal agency. For people from racial minorities, their choosing to engage in and even their enjoyment of these practices is often justified by pointing out that the race play scene is a site of fantasy and therefore accepting race play is different from accepting (institutionalized forms of) racism. However, looking at the ManyVids controversy we see the argument is not convincing to everyone. Interestingly, as some people in the Twitter discussion pointed out, the media platform did not decide to take down clips in which rape and incest are simulated. Apparently, with these categories of porn, the fantasy/reality distinctions are grounds for acceptance of these practices whereas the same cannot be said for race play videos.
The person of Mollena Williams will also be brought into the discussion. This prominent educator and agent of BDSM and race play has argued in both interviews and performances that for her BDSM scenes in which she re-enacts the experience of her ancestors as African American slaves, are a way to access and process her own cultural trauma. She has even expressed that her ability to do so is empowering to her as an African American woman. This also sheds light on another tension: though most would agree that a person should have the right to choose how to deal with their own traumas, would we also want to be accepting towards people who actively go searching for pornographic video’s where racist slurs and symbols are being used as an erotic device?
With porn we see a distinction between fantasy and reality, but not when it comes to race. To what extent is the distinction clear, how can it be that racialized content makes this boundary disappear? I argue that it is the aforementioned tension between representationalism and personal agency that is at the core of this issue and that we will have to see the controversies about race play, and with it the ManyVids incident, in this context. Even though this apparent tension between individual agency and representationalism is most clearly visible when we look at race play, I argue that it is actually present in most dealings with minorities and can be a problematic and unintended outcome of the ways we think about and try to protect these groups.

Cilj ovog rada je da na osnovu relevantne literature i rezultata istraživanja pokušamo prikazati savremeni pogled na sadomazohističke seksualne interese kao i da ih pokušamo depatologizirati. Sve veći fokus modernog društva na detabuiziranje seksualnosti zahtjeva drugačiji pogled na sadomazohizam i njegove praktikante. U ovom radu date su definicije parafilija i parafiličnih poremećaja (sadomazohizam može spadati u bilo koju od ove dvije kategorije), te su opisane osnovne karakteristike sadomazohizma. Nadalje, navedeni su i rezultati istraživanja koja su se bavila psihosocijalnim karakterstikama osoba sa sadomazohističkim seksualnim interesima. Suprotno popularnom vjerovanju, prema navedenim rezultatima, osobe koje se uključuju u sadomazohističke aktivnosti nisu 'bolesne' niti češće pate od određenih mentalnih poremećaja. Sadomazohizam se jednostavno može prikazati kao uobičajena varijacija u seksualnom ponašanju koja ne oslikava nikakvu patologiju, već samo potrebu ljudi da na različit način izraze svoju seksualnost.

Interest in male-male sexuality appears to be a common yet overlooked paraphilia among women, according to new research published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The study examined Boy Love, a genre of erotic fiction typically created by women that depicts romantic relationships between men. The genre, which is also known as yaoi in Japan and danmei in China, has grown in popularity since the 1980s.
See: Madill, A., Shloim, N., Brown, B., Hugh-Jones, S., Plastow, J., & Setiyawati, D. (2022). Mainstreaming Global Mental Health: Is there Potential to Embed Psychosocial Wellbeing Impact in all Global Challenges Research? Applied Psychology: Health & Well-Being, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12335

The sadomasochistic subculture of "female domination," namely femdom, has formed a conspicuous mode of digital carnality that prevails among new media interfaces while radicalizing interactivity. The submissive man's relationship with the dominant woman is never simple here, not just pornographic but symptomatic of complex phenomena regarding power and society, media and life that shape our techno-libidinal age. This paper sheds light on its sexual, psychological, psychoanalytic and socio-ethical implications, drawing on and reframing theories about masochism, abjection, biopolitics, nihilism and so on. Full of paradoxes, femdom embodies a formally structured governance of sensation and determination, an exceptional law beyond normal law by which submission to a sexual sovereign leads to both the slave's self-deprivation and regain of freedom. His failed desire for the unobtainable object then takes on the Lacanian drive, the instant satisfaction of circulating around the void as if to constantly "edge" without closure, as typified in the digital loop of GIF images. More precisely, desire and derive mingle indiscernibly in the disintegration of the Symbolic and the Real, of the private and the public that characterizes the self-destructive addictive culture of capitalist hedonism. In this context the femdom wonderland turns out to be a permeable network of numerous Dom/subs' life-building communities, a self-modulating interactive heaven of the undead desire-drive without outside, without nirvana.

Toute activité sportive est perçue en général comme étant positive et bénéfique. Mais quand, cette activité libératrice à la base, devient addiction, teintée de souffrance et des syndromes de manque, elle n’est plus centrée sur le plaisir, mais elle empêche le bon fonctionnement du sujet dans les autres domaines de sa vie. Creusant cette problématique, particulièrement dans l’activité de la musculation, nous avons touché au fond de la psyché, à un complexe, celui d’Adonis, qui englobe notamment les domaines du narcissisme défaillant, de l’estime de soi oscillante, et ses répercussions sur l’image du corps que l’Adonis travaille à changer, pour relayer à des assises narcissiques défaillantes. À travers les thèses analytiques des relations d’objets, les thèses sociales, passants par les thèses neurobiologiques, nous avons démontré notre problématique. Puis à travers des entretiens cliniques et des tests scientifiques administrés à des hommes qui fréquentent les salles de gym pour exercer la musculation, nous avons vérifié nos hypothèses. Tout cela dans le but d’aider les hommes à trouver des moyens pour désamorcer leur insatisfaction corporelle et apprendre à reconnaître leurs problèmes, trouver de nouvelles manières de percevoir leur corps et découvrir d’autres façons d’avoir confiance en eux-mêmes et un sentiment d’accomplissement en soi, loin de toute forme d’addiction.

Activité physique - Addiction - Anorexie masculine renversée - Anxiété - Complexe d’Adonis - Compulsion - Corps - Défaillance narcissique - Dépendance - Dépression - Dysmorphophobie - Dysmorphie - Estime de soi - Fixation – Homosexualité - Image corporelle - Masochisme - Musculation - Narcissisme - Narcissisme primaire - Narcissisme secondaire - Phobie - Relation d’objet narcissique - Sport - Théorie de la Relation d’objet - Trouble obsessionnel compulsif -

The final chapter, ‘‘Sex Play and Social Power: Reading the Effective Circuit,’’ sets my performative materialist method into motion with a series of close readings of the political effects of particular SM scenes. Focusing on cultural trauma play—specifically, play around race and ethnicity—I provide an ethnographic reading of slave auctions, Nazi play, an interracial mugging scene, and the ‘‘sadomasochistic’’ Abu Ghraib photographs. Although practitioners, like other Americans, are inclined to disavow the linkage between play with race and real racial inequality, I argue that these cultural performances are both based on and productive of material social relations. I foreground the performative efficacy of a scene, showing how and why a scene might work. This effectiveness, however, is politically multivalent; such scenes produce differential, variable, and uneven affective responses that link individuals with social and national imaginaries. These circuits between the social and the individual create opportunities for practitioners to both reaffirm and disrupt the fantasized break between the erotic and the political. Political effectiveness, then, is about whether practitioners connect their individuated, privatized erotic attachments to national histories of racialized belonging, and what happens when they do. Techniques of Pleasure ends not with a single, final analysis of the social politics of BDSM, but rather with an invitation, an opening—to explore, to linger on, the productive effects of sexual circuits.

Resumo: O artigo é uma introdução ao tema do sadomasoquismo no campo das Ciências Sociais. Isso se deve ao fato de que mesmo outras áreas, como a Psiquiatria ou a Psicanálise, terem muito explorado a questão, o mesmo não se deu, por exemplo, com a Antropologia ou a Ciência Política. Nossa metodologia envolverá análise qualitativa tanto das fontes originais do sadomasoquismo como posteriores comentadores do tema. Trabalharemos com tipos ideais dos conceitos e nossa conclusão envolve ver como não há uma leitura certa e final da obra do Marquês de Sade ou de Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, mas diferentes apropriações no campo cultural, logo veremos como os termos se desvelam polissêmicos. Palavras-chave: Sadismo; Masoquismo; Sadomasoquismo; Sade; Sacher-Masoch. Abstract: The article wants to be an introduction to the theme of sadomasochism in the field of Social Sciences. This is due to the fact that even other areas, such as Psychiatry or Psychoanalysis, have explored the issue a lot, the Anthropology or Political Science didn't did the same. Our methodology will involve qualitative analysis of the original sources of sadomasochism and later commentators of the theme. We will work with ideal types of concepts and our conclusion involves: there is no certain and final reading of the work of the Marquis de Sade or Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, but different appropriations in the cultural field. Introdução Sadismo, masoquismo e sadomasoquismo são elementos sociais/culturais 2 envolvendo a sexualidade. Assim sendo o presente artigo deseja investigar, e fazer uma 1 Doutorando, mestre, licenciado e bacharel em Ciências Sociais pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), membro dos grupos de pesquisa: Desigualdades socioeconômicas e políticas no Brasil Contemporâneo e As elites políticas brasileiras, grupos coordenados pelo doutor Eduardo de Vasconcelos Raposo. Contato: mariojpaiva@oi.com.br 2 Quando tratamos do tema cultura, estamos abarcando praticamente tudo. Antropólogos podem analisar desde os chocalhos xamãs até os aceleradores de partículas. Afinal ao tentarmos especificar o termo cultura, diferindo assim do termo sociedade-ver Roberto DaMatta (2010)-veremos sua ampla variação. Se pegarmos as atividades dos humanos, todas elas terão elementos culturais. Porque os nossos atos não são meramente biológicos, eles estão revestidos das particularidades (culturais) dos grupos. Na questão

This essay explains some basic concepts about BDSM, and it responds to two important objections to it. The first is the psychological objection—that BDSM practitioners suffer from mental disorders—and the second is the ethical objection—that BDSM practitioners have morally compromised desires because of the kinds of activities they desire to participate in, especially ones that involve roles that dip into tortured oppressive histories (e.g., "rape" scenes, "master-and-slave" scenes). The paper argues that both objections fail, and, more specifically focusing on the ethical objection, argues that BDSM desires are psychologically, conceptually, and phenomenologically different from their seeming counterpart real-life desires that are truly ethically defective. Finally, the paper argues that BDSM practitioners, in having to always understand, explore, and justify their desires (especially to a majority that is hostile to them), have an interesting chance to lead rich, flourishing lives.

Recently, much has been written in the mass media about the novel and film Fifty Shades of Grey. It was widely portrayed as an example of BDSM (a common abbreviation for the terms bondage, discipline, dominance, submissivity, sadism and masochism) subculture and used as a symbol of sadomasochistic identity. But is this public view based on the self image of BDSM subcultural members or is it a figment of the imagination of writers and journalists? This article presents the voice of BDSM activists, who are silenced and excluded from the public debate. Using a virtual ethnographic method, we analyse the BDSM blogosphere as a platform for subcultural expressions of opinion. We combine this with a documentary analysis. In doing so, we examine how BDSM subculture members perceive themselves in contrast to the mainstream view of them pictured in the book Fifty Shades of Grey. This article investigates to what extent the subcultural conception of BDSM corresponds to the book's depiction and where it differs fundamentally.

This petition argues that erotic comics are an important cultural record of the way in which diverse sexualities are understood and portrayed, and sexual fantasies explored. An Erotic Comics Anglophone Archive (ErotiCAA) will preserve these works for research by scholars in many different disciplines.

One of the biggest problems facing anyone researching pornography/erotica or comics, and therefore doubly so for anyone researching erotic/pornographic comics, is finding and gaining access to primary materials. So we have decided to have a go at establishing an archive in the UK to collect and catalogue English-language porn and erotic comics.

We intend to approach a number of libraries and research institutions to host and/or fund the archive. Persuading them to support us will be a lot easier if we an show that there is a need for this archive, so to help with that we’ve started this petition.

We’ve already got this kick-ass logo designed for us by Alison Lucy Stone and meetings set up with a couple of big libraries. Help us out by signing the petition? And if you’d like to be more involved, please tweet Dr Anna Madill @UKFujoshi or Dr Jude Roberts @tangendentalism - we’d love to hear from you!

Afin de cerner la teneur de la normativité sexuelle en contexte contemporain, cette étude prend pour objet les discours de praticien-ne-s de BDSM (bondage, discipline, domination, soumission, sadomasochisme) et la manière dont ces derniers font l’expérience du regard des autres sur leurs pratiques. L’étude montre que le type de rapport au jeu des praticien-ne-s influence leur rapport à la norme. Selon que les praticien-ne-s cherchent ou non à gommer la distance entre leur rôle dans le cadre du jeu et leur identité sociale, ils sont susceptibles de se positionner en rupture ou en continuité vis-à-vis de la normalité sexuelle. Tandis que ceux qui cherchent à quotidianiser leur pratique adoptent une attitude de distinction et conçoivent la sexualité normale comme étant ennuyeuse, les autres qui conçoivent le BDSM comme un jeu circonscrit dans des moments spécifiques sont portés à normaliser leurs pratiques et à les situer dans le prolongement de la normalité sexuelle. Les distinctions entre les deux types de rapport au BDSM (celui des tenant-e-s de la vieille école et des joueurs) portent essentiellement sur leur rapport aux coulisses du jeu et à la distance vis-à-vis des rôles. Les praticien-ne-s ne ressentent que très peu de stigmatisation auprès d’autrui. Les traces de l’épreuve d’un stigmate n’apparaissent que via le prisme de complexes et questionnements personnels chez les répondant-e-s qui s’interrogent parfois à savoir si leur intérêt pour certaines pratiques est sain. Les pratiques BDSM sont de l’ordre de la sphère privée et constituent un stigmate invisible. Les praticien-ne-s choisissent à qui et de quelle manière révéler qu’ils s’adonnent au BDSM en se basant sur la compréhension qu’ils ont de la normativité. Le niveau d’intimité partagé ainsi que la séparation entre la sphère privée et publique font office de critères pour départager à qui révéler son intérêt pour le BDSM et comment.

Western society is becoming increasingly secular as religion disappears from the public sphere. This developing identification has created a void as people move away from the traditional, established symbols and maps of meaning. People are still finding and inventing systems to fulfil their existential questioning, increasingly in areas that are traditionally seen as secular. Popular culture and contemporary subcultures are being utilized not just as art, entertainment and community but as religious expression. A prime example of this 'secular religioning' can be found in the practice and subculture of BDSM-the intentional, consensual participation in the play of pain, power and sex. The intersection of these primary forces in the human experience present in BDSM makes the practice a fertile ground for spiritual expression. The BDSM subculture can be analyzed as a 'secular religion' by looking at the psychology of pain and power, religious ways of hurting, and BDSM as ritual. The popularity of traditional religions are on the decline1 as Western society strives towards secularism. People are increasingly identifying as non-religious as religion disappears from the public sphere, but this does not mean that the drives and needs that religion addresses have declined. People may be moving away from particular symbols and maps of meaning but they are still finding and inventing systems to fulfil their existential questioning, increasingly in areas that are traditionally seen as secular. One prime example of this 'secular religioning' can be found in the practice and subculture of BDSM.

In this paper, I aim to explore a controversial practice within BDSM known as race play, from an anthropological perspective. Race play is a type of consensual erotic roleplay that focuses on playing with a societal taboo; perpetuating historically situated racial, ethnic, and religious power dynamics for pleasure. I argue that the intersection of race and sexuality in erotic play, especially in overt practices like race play in BDSM, can allow practitioners a space to identify, understand, explore, and discuss current and historical societal inequalities, that otherwise would not be illuminated in BDSM. By framing race play as the ultimate taboo and off-limits act, the BDSM community is feeding into neoliberal whiteness, and by refusing to acknowledge or speak about how deeply entrenched many aspects of erotic practices, in general, are inescapably tied to historically situated racial, ethnic, and religious traumas, there is no way forward, and no space for minorities.

Le sadisme a reçu son nom du roman, des nouvelles et de la vie personnelle du Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) et le masochisme des nouvelles et du style de vie de l´historien Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895) (Weinberg et Levi Kamel 1987). Ces termes ont été en 1885 promus au titre de catégories psychopathologiques dans Psychopathia sexualis par R. von Krafft-Ebing. L'auteur y décrit les comportements sexuels dit sadiques et masochistes comme des formes de dégénérescence relevant de la pathologie. Définissant le sadisme comme l´expérience de sensations sexuelles de plaisir (incluant l´orgasme) produit par des actes de cruauté, en particulier des punitions corporelles infligées à une personne, Krafft-Ebing considère le sadisme comme un désir profond d´humilier, de heurter, faire souffrir, voir détruire les autres dans l´intention de créer du plaisir sexuel. Quant au masochisme il serait basé sur le désir d´être complètement contrôlé et soumis au désir de l´autre, d´être traité par cette personne comme par un maître, abusé et humilié. Dans la lignée de Kraft-Ebbing, de nombreux thérapeutes, psychologues ou psychanalystes, décrivent encore le sadisme et le masochisme en termes de psychopathologie, tandis que d'autres auteurs, chercheurs en sciences sociales et pratiquants du sadomasochisme connu sous l´acronyme BDSM 1 , y voient avant tout des formes de comportements sociaux impliquant des subcultures et des relations entre des personnes (Weinberg et Levi Kamel 1983). Ces relations sociales et la portée accordée par ces auteurs à des notions telles que la capacité de se mettre à la place de l´autre, de faire preuve d´attention, de soin, ainsi que la capacité à prendre des responsabilités, peuvent alors être examinées sous la perspective du care (Molinier, Laugier et Paperman 2009) 2. Cette conception divergente du sadomasochisme repose donc sur un renversement complet du sens de ces pratiques, des normes éthiques qu'elles impliquent et du plaisir qu'elles sont susceptibles de procurer aux deux partenaires. Nous nous demanderons cependant si ce modèle optimiste des relations BDSM – qu'il s'appuie sur le souci de l'autre (care) ou le souci de soi au sens de Foucault – permet de rendre compte de l'ensemble des configurations BDSM, en particulier hétérosexuelles. Les théories psychopathologiques du sadomasochisme : une absence de dimension relationnelle D´après Thomas S. Weinberg et Levi Kamel (Weinberg et Levi Kamel 2011) la perspective des psychiatres et des psychanalystes qui dénient les dimensions sociales relatives au masochisme et au sadisme est compréhensible car les ? uvres littéraires dont ils étaient familiers, comme celles de Sade ou Sacher Masoch, décrivent des obsessions et des comportements extrêmes. De plus les seuls masochistes et sadiques avec lesquels ils étaient en contact étaient des patients, dont beaucoup d´entre eux étaient venus afin d´être aidés pour d´autres problèmes (Steckel 1965). Les premières théories psychopathologiques étaient donc dérivées de ces expériences à la fois limites et étriquées, dans une période, l´époque victorienne, particulièrement conservatrice. Si de nos jours, le sadisme et le masochisme sont encore considérés comme des troubles sexuels dans le CIM-10 3 et l ´OMS 4 , où ils apparaissent comme des maladies devant être soignées, la faute en incomberait, selon l'anthropologue

Peter Strickland's film The Duke of Burgundy (2014) presents an all-female world of lepidopterists whose non-monetary economic exchanges consist of mounted butterfly specimens and whose interpersonal exchanges consist of BDSM roleplay. This essay explores how the film represents a thought experiment in reimagining lesbian-feminist history by reconciling divergent strands of feminist and lesbian politics that occupied opposing camps during the period of the film's early-1970s setting. The film's "soft" eroticism and depiction of a non-capitalist economy posits a seductive fantasy of what an all-female separatist world might have looked like, had the various clashes within second-wave feminism found a utopian middle ground over major issues like the shifting place of lesbians within the women's movement, the acceptability of sadomasochism and pornography as expressions of women's sexuality, and the ecological implications of queerness.

Opera, it would appear, has developed a taste for sadomasochism. For decades now, radical stage directors have repeatedly dressed canonical operas—from Handel and Mozart to Wagner and Puccini, and beyond—in whips, chains, leather, and other regalia of SM and fetishism. Deviant Opera seeks to understand this phenomenon, approaching the contemporary visual code of perversion as a lens through which opera focuses and scrutinizes its own configurations of sex, gender, power, and violence. The emerging image is that of an art form that habitually plays with an eroticization of cruelty and humiliation, inviting its devotees to take sensual pleasure in the suffering of others. Ultimately, Deviant Opera argues that this species of opera fantasizes about breaking the boundaries of its own role-playing, and pushing its erotic power exchanges from the enacted to the actual.

This is an author proof of Chapter 8: Holocaust Pleasures, from my monograph Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, masochism and historical teleology. This chapter considers the role of invocations of 'sadism' in recent Holocaust perpertrator historiography and sociology. 

I have been receiving so many requests for this chapter since it does not show up at all on the google books search and Lexington still charges over US$100 for my book!

This blogpost consolidates my Masters Research Project on sadomasochism in The Book of Margery Kempe (1438), with comparisons to a modern work of erotic submission, Story of O (1954).
It was published on Jan. 12, 2022 on the The Margery Kempe Society website. The post was approved by Dr. Laura Varnam and Dr. Laura Kalas, and edited by Emily M. Harless. The URL is: https://themargerykempesociety.wordpress.com/2022/01/12/maybelle-leung-staging-submission-in-the-book-of-margery-kempe-and-story-of-o-a-study-in-contractual-masochism/

In this article, we discuss the relationship of kink and everyday life and ask how kinkyidentified individuals negotiate the relationship between kinkiness and everyday life in a society that stigmatises kink. We address kink as an everyday life experience through discussing authenticity, total power exchange, serious leisure, and escapism. We do not discuss merely kinky acts, such as BDSM play, but are also interested in the more mundane and implicit aspects of kink: those moments where nothing overtly kinky occurs. Our research material consists of 28 autobiographical writings by Finnish kinkyidentified individuals. The writings depict various understandings of the ways everyday life and kink are intertwined such as experiencing kink as an authentic way of living, or as a deeper connection to one's partner. Kink envelopes everyday life experiences and offers escape from the mundane. The kink community provides social connections, commitment, and active participation. Different forms of kink may present as crucial aspects in making everyday life enjoyable and meaningful for kinky individuals. Kink, thus, seems to have a multifaceted role in the everyday life of individuals, often enhancing the everyday life experience.

Le titre « Les Mythes de Sacher-Masoch » pourrait renvoyer à des concepts divergents, comme en témoignent les meilleures lectures de Sacher-Masoch, celle qui ont réussi à réinventer son texte même, notamment celle de Deleuze et de Quignard. On pourrait les dire « perverses », comme dirait Barthes, car elle implique un clivage (Roland Barthes, OC IV, p. 248), et il se fait sentir. En fait, l’auteur de La Vénus à la fourrure a écrit les Femmes slaves, dix nouvelles, réunies en volume en 2013, qui vont ici servir de plateforme pour déployer une petite trajectoire du masochisme naissant et du masochisme décadent, au masochisme contemporain, du carnaval (du congrès panslaviste) au théâtral, du sentimental au comique. Car, il y a masochisme et masochisme, et celui de Sacher-Masoch fait voir la fente ouverte par son écriture, tel la cravache de la femme « bourrelle », son ambition de concilier la littérature, la philosophie et l’histoire naturelle, n’a pu aboutir qu’à une bouffonnerie, à la « tragi-comédie masochiste » (Pascal Pia).

Based around the choice to engage in sexually submissive practices, this chapter seeks to advance understandings of agency by considering the complex relationship between identifying as a feminist and choosing to engage in sexually submissive practices. This chapter is based on PhD research that aims to explore the relationship between feminism and heterosexuality in practice, where 17 feminist-identified women offered ways of understanding feminism that primarily focused on a rhetoric of choice. Through the use of solicited diaries and interviews, it was found that choosing to engage in sexual submissiveness as a feminist was sometimes met with feelings of guilt and a sense of justification. Some participants questioned whether these sexual choices put their political identity in crisis, and perhaps, open to critique. Others felt that their individual understandings of feminism meant their choice to be submissive warranted no problematization and as such, offered ways of understanding submission through notions of embodiment - even if the female, feminist subject inhabits dominant heterosexual norms surrounding what it means to be a woman as defined by heteronormative, patriarchal terms.

This chapter aim to contribute to a growing body of literature that is advancing the way agency is conceptualized, where the focus becomes less on agency as something to be achieved once independent from the constraint of dominant norms, and more so on the ability to make an act one’s own - where inhabiting and investing in dominant norms is a means of locating oneself in one’s own desires and one’s own sexuality.


Keywords – choice, agency, feminism, sexual practices, embodiment, submission

Vor dem Hintergrund vielfaltsfeindlicher Debatten lotet der Artikel verschiedene Ebenen von (Anti-)Diskriminierung in ihrer Relevanz für Sexualpädagogik aus. Nach einem kurzen Blick auf Rassismus, Behinderung und Klassismus werden geschlechtliche Vielfalt, (a)sexuelle und (a)romantische Orientierung, Polyamorie, BDSM, Grenzachtung sowie die Bedarfe sexuell traumatisierter Adressat_innen als Themen nicht-diskriminierender Sexualpädagogik besprochen. Der Artikel
schließt mit einer Betrachtung der Entwicklungsbedarfe bzgl. der
Rahmenbedingungen von Sexualpädagogik.

Pain has properties which make conceptual analysis and thought experiment unusually ill-suited to many aspects of its metaphysics. I propose an empirically informed approach which allows us to be appropriately tentative and methodical in thinking about pain. To demonstrate this approach I address the possibility of so-called 'pleasure-pains' and suggest that they are metaphysically possible (and perhaps actual). Throughout the paper I catalog the wide range of experiences which practicing masochists actually describe and the current state of psychosocial research.

[MOTHBALLED: In the process of cutting down a much larger project on masochistic pain into something for submission to a journal I managed edit out most of the argumentative sections. The result was material from psychology and masochistic erotica interspersed with me declaiming on pretty much every important point. Very embarrassing. I then became president of the faculty for a few years and haven't yet had time or inclination to try to repair the botched editing job. I'm posting it here in the hope that some of the source material is at least useful to others thinking about the topic. ]

ABSTRACT This article uses the recent prosecution of a sex trafficking case in rural Missouri to argue three points. One, the federal law of trafficking is currently being used in unanticipated ways, including the apprehension of individuals who pay for sex. Two, trafficking invites creative use precisely because it provides prosecutors with a more salient justification for punishment than either legal moralism or harm; a rhetorical plea to anti-slavery that enjoys a longstanding but under-theorized role in criminal law rhetoric. Three, anti-slavery’s recurrence in criminal law rhetoric underscores a larger doctrinal point, namely that H.L.A. Hart’s version of the harm principle missed its subordinate relationship to what J.S. Mill termed the principle of freedom.

The kinkster/BDSM community is a sexual minority that largely operates underground. Although not linked directly with the sexual practices of the community, the prevailing social institution of the subculture is the munch, social gatherings in which no "kink" activities take place. In this research, we analyze data from two international surveys, one of munch organizers and one of munch participants. The findings show the lifestyle and demographic variables that are linked with placing importance upon the institution of the munch. One major finding from the research is that munch participants to be most strongly motivated with a desire to socialize, rather than looking for partners for sexual experiences, although these two motivations are not mutually exclusive. In addition, we see that for both organizers and participants in munches, the more years in the lifestyle, the less importance organizers and participants place on the munch for their involvement in the lifestyle.

This thesis explores the role of BDSM in the lives of its practitioners,
as well as examining the role of the researcher as an “intimate
insider” and a friend. Research was exclusively conducted in the
Flemish region of Belgium among self-identified members of the
BDSM community. Presented as short stories or vignettes that are
intended to capture the realities of my collaborators and that of
researching close to home, I argue that non-traditional ethnographic
methods and practicing self-disclosure could be beneficial to the
field of anthropology, as well as to the social sciences and sex
research in general.

Keywords: BDSM, self-disclosure, autoethnography

Over the past 40 years, much has been written about BDSM (Bondage, Dominance/Discipline, Submission/Sadism, Masochism) phenomena. Recently, this set of practices has increased in visibility in mainstream media (see for example the success of Fifty Shades of Grey; the BDSM imagery in music video's like Pink's Beautiful Trauma, Nicki Minaj's Only and Rihanna's S&M; and the representation of BDSM in popular tv shows like The Good Wife (2009-2016), Billions (2016-) and Riverdale (2016-)). However, academic research on BDSM, which gained momentum during the sex wars in the early 1980s has been characterised by either psychological (e.g. Baumeister, 1988; Kleinplatz & Moser, 2006) or ethnographic (e.g., 2009; Rubin, 1981) angles. Though the cultural influence of BDSM appears to have increased and developed, the research on BDSM hardly has. This has resulted in a very limited understanding of this set of practices and lifestyles that have until recently been shrouded. For this volume, we are looking for authors who can join us in showing some of the diverse ways in which the study of alternative sexualities can be executed and made productive. Centred around the theme of Embodied Knowledge-to be understood in a similar way to when it was first explored by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception, as a specific type of knowledge being tied to the body instead of logic-the authors will be expected to explore through different media and a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods how the still developing field of critical BDSM research might evolve and how we can develop new knowledge and understanding of and in relation to BDSM. We are looking for a balance between theory and practice, personal experience and academia. At the same time we hope to contribute to debates taking place both in and outside of the field of BDSM. Coming together from different disciplines and points of view, what we hope to accomplish is that the interdisciplinary dialogue started by the authors will both explore the possibilities in this emerging field and show its value to other areas of research. The aims for this volume are threefold:
1. To explore critical disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to the study of BDSM;
2. To explore the concept of Embodied Knowledge in relation to BDSM practices;
3. To show the value of BDSM research for ongoing (academic) debates.

В статье автором анализируется сущность современного рабства и феномен анонимной власти на примере кинофильма «Пятьдесят оттенков серого» (2015). Автор раскрывает особенности воздействия анонимной власти на нравственные и мировоззренческие установки человека. Феномен порабощения автором исследуется вначале на примере главных героев кинофильма по бинарной оппозиции доминантность/зависимость и затем в отношениях с воспринимающей его аудиторией, чтобы вскрыть сопровождающую данный феномен проблему анонимной власти и суть ее воздействия на общество.
In the article the author analyzes the essence of modern slavery and the phenomenon of anonymous power on the example of the movie "Fifty shades of grey" (2015). The author reveals the peculiarities of the influence of anonymous authority on the moral and philosophical attitudes of man. The phenomenon of enslavement is first explored by the author on the example of the main characters of the film on the binary opposition dominance / dependence and then in relations with the perceiving audience in order to reveal the problem of anonymous authority accompanying this phenomenon and the essence of its impact on society.

In Coldness and Cruelty, Deleuze remarks that masochism may be reflected on from three perspectives: as a pleasure-pain alliance, as an enactment of humiliation and slavery, and as a consideration of the enslavement of contractual relations. Later Deleuze and Guattari consider masochism in terms of an ontology of desire-in terms of virtuality rather than extensity. I argue that while the actualisation of pain might be considered secondary, and is oftentimes portrayed as incidental in popular depictions, it also constitutes the exhaustive/exhausted and refrain functions of masochism so that the masochist might be thought of as the figure of exhaustion.