March 23, 2015 • 53 mins
Is BDSM a safe and healthy sexual lifestyle? Cristen and Caroline guide listeners through the basics of Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism and Masochism and why it isn't what '50 Shades of Grey' readers might think it is.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and welcome to King Week, Ladies and gentlemen.
Today we are talking about b D s M. Next
time we'll be talking about the Dominatrix figure Dominatrice E's um.
(00:28):
But yeah, we we have fielded a lot of requests
to talk about these issues, these topics in the wake
of you might expect it, Fifty Shades of Gray. Yeah,
as of the time this podcast is coming out, Fifty
Shades of Gray has probably the film Fervor has died
down a little bit. And I was thinking, Caroline, about
how Stuff I've Never Told You though, has been around
(00:49):
so long that in two thousand eleven, when the books
went viral, we got a ton of questions, and then
we're recently we got all the same questions again with
the film. So we decided it was time for us
to really talk about b D s M. That's right,
and it's it's interesting that there hasn't been a ton
of academic research about b D s M in the past.
(01:11):
It's it's only now that we seem to be really
seeing more academic papers, more actual books diving into the culture,
and not in a way that treats it like a
mental problem. Yeah, I think the fact that it is
becoming more and more accepted as a lifestyle and even
for some people as a sexual orientation. In fact, that
(01:34):
more attention has been paid to it as a legitimate
and fully acceptable and healthy expression of sexuality and also
a lifestyle, even a profession for some people. That's right. Well,
so let's get into a bit of an overview of B, D, S, M.
Talk about what it is and what it is not.
And one thing that it is not for sure is
(01:56):
a single homogeneous group of people activity and kinks. Even
the letters themselves in the acronym stand for more than
one thing. But B and the D stand for bondage
and discipline, D and S together our domination and submission.
And then the S and the M are sadism and masochism.
So what do all of those individual components mean. Well,
(02:20):
when it comes to discipline, for instance, it's usually a
dominant person or the dom training a submissive person. And
then when it comes to submissive you have have a
person who really seeks and consents, which is important to
submit to another person. And this is also where we
get into the realm of b D s M is
(02:41):
not fifty shades of gray right exactly, because so much
of the b D s M core is that consent,
that issue of consent, and so the dom or the
dominant as a person who enjoys being with the submissive
person for for myriad reasons, could just be the issue
of control, could be sexual, could be on sexual um
(03:02):
Switching is a term that basically needs alternating between the
submissive and dominant roles. Sadism is getting pleasure from the pain, humiliation,
or suffering of others, and masochism is getting pleasure from
your own pain or humiliation. And the way that this
manifest is through a huge range of activities as well,
which makes it difficult to define and even pin down numbers,
(03:26):
because some activities don't all involve pain, for instance, some
might involve power place, some might involve a fantasy scenes.
I mean, they're they're all different ways in which b
D s M can be practiced and enjoyed. And this
is also too listeners one reason why we will not
be able to cover in granular detail every single aspect
(03:48):
of b D s M. Because again, it's not a
homogeneous group, and I think that that's one important clarification
for people not familiar with it, that it's not this
one group of people in the corner all doing the
same kind of thing, right, which is why I definitely
encourage you when you listen during, either during or after
you listen to this episode, to go to stuff I
ever told you dot com and check out the sources
that we're going to post for this episode, because there
(04:11):
is just so much more to learn about and read
about things that aren't just they're not just some shady,
dirty corner of the Internet like this. There's actual, really
great information out there for you if you're interested. But
it's also worth noting that b D s M doesn't
always even make up all of a person's sexual activity,
and this is coming from a two thousand and six
(04:32):
studies sided and some of the things that we read.
Eleven percent of b D s M practitioners in this
study exclusively engaged in b D s M play during
sexual intimacy. Thirty two percent said it constituted less than
half of their total sexual activities. So there's, like Kristen said,
there's a range of activities there's also just a range
(04:54):
of how ingrained these activities are in people's lives and
the type of sexual activity they pursue, and sex in
and of itself in thinking about different kinds of penetration
or even nudity may or may not be involved in
certain kinds of b D s M activities. But the
key to all of this, whatever form b D s
(05:18):
M takes, and this is something that anyone within the
b D s M community will emphasize over and over
and over again, is the importance of consent. The community
embraces the frameworker motto of safe, sane, and consensual because
this is erotic play, and as part of that, there
are often rules, there are safe words, there are boundaries
(05:40):
that are established before anything even happens as to what
is on and off the table, right because as boundaries
and the issues of trust and communication are so key
in addition to consent in the b D s M community,
and those are sort of the sticking points that a
lot of people have with Fifty Shades of Gray, both
of books and the film. Yeah, and before quickly before
(06:03):
we get into the b D s M versus fifty Shades,
because we got to talk about it people. Even though
I know a lot of folks cringe at the thought
of fifty shades, it's important for us to talk about this,
but also to making a note about that safe part
of safe, sane, and consensual. Even though yes, a lot
of b D s M play might involve pain, bondage restraint,
(06:25):
the point of it is not to hurt the other individual.
It might be to arouse pain, yes, but you want
to stay safe always in that in that case you're
not trying to break people's bones and do irreparable damage
to bodies, right, exactly. Well, So, Kristen and I read
this interesting article by Emma Green over at The Atlantic
(06:46):
which came out in February of this year, and Green
points out that, you know, there is a little bit
of good that came from the popularity of fifty Shades
of Gray, and that is that it's served a sort
of an opening to talk and think about b D
s M, H and kink and those communities and the
activities they're in, and the fact that it's reached a
(07:09):
broader audience than any other b D s M novel
before it, So it has people talking, It has people
thinking not only about other people's sexuality and what other
people are doing, but what they themselves might be interested in,
and it probably has people experimenting. How many flimsy trend
stories have we seen about escalating sales of rope at
(07:30):
hardware stores in Middle America? Yeah, but unfortunately according to Green,
you know, there's a there's some good and some bad
with Fifty Shades of Gray, and the bad is everything else. Yeah,
I mean the the whole framework of fifty Shades of
Great which side note in gase you don't know? And
I love this fact about nippy Shades of Grade that E. L.
James originally wrote it as a Twilight fan fiction. So
(07:54):
this is really where we're starting from. Uh, And I
have read Fifty Shades of Gray airline, I mean skimming
some parts because yeah, it is really poorly written. Um.
But the big problem is that Christian Gray's uh proclivities
for bondage are framed as a problem that they are
rooted in the fact that his mother committed suicide and
(08:16):
previously had been abused by a pimp. So he has
all these issues and so that's why he has to
do this one thing. And the fairytale ending is for
when they can finally have vanilla sex. Yeah, it's it's
definitely framed is something that he needs to and does
work through in order to get to the better sex,
which is vanilla, which, by the way, for people who
(08:39):
might not be familiar with vanilla, that is sort of
the b D s M communities code word for the
usually straight sex, often missionary style that is the mainstream
go to i e. Vanilla boring. Right, But it's not
only Green. Green's problem with fifty Shades is not just
(09:00):
that b D s M and bondage and things like
that are are framed as something to work through and
a problem, but also the association between hot sex and violence,
but without any of the community's context of consent, communication, trust,
and boundaries. And she she writes about how the character
of Anna, the main character, is uncomfortable with a lot
(09:24):
of this stuff, but it's too shy to speak her
mind or is afraid of losing Christian and so she
gives consent to things she doesn't necessarily want to consent
to and ends up getting hurt and wanting to out
of it, but she doesn't get out of it. Yeah,
and and the very fact that there are no rules
and boundaries and safe words established beforehand. He just opens
up the door to the red room, and you know,
(09:48):
no holds barred. And also the fact too that it
portrays again that vanilla sex as the most intimate, that's
the most wholesome, that's the only acceptable kind, whereas kinky
sex is very unhealthy. It's not, as Emmigreen writes, a
form of erotic play. It's an emotional bargain and it
tolerates it barely because she's scared of what will happen
(10:11):
if she doesn't and that I don't know about you, Caroline,
But that doesn't sound terribly consensual. No, nor does it
sound very fun. Um. But plenty of people do think
B D s M. The lifestyle, the community and everything
they're in is fun because it has a pretty darn
extensive history, going all the way back to ancient times.
For instance, going all the way back to four nine DBC.
(10:33):
We have this thing called the Etruscan Tomb of the Whipping,
which has a painting on the wall and erotic painting
depicting two men flogging a woman. Um, And it's definitely,
like specifically portrayed as an erotic act, not as necessarily punishment.
But there were a ton of ancient cults back in
the day that incorporated flagellation and whipping of yourself or
(10:56):
or others, and it could be punishment or as a
way to enter an altered state of consciousness or even
communicate with God. And also to the Kama Sutra mentioned
sexual spanking, slapping, inviting. So this is not new behavior,
which is not surprising. Humans have been figuring out, you know,
but playing around with these lines between pleasure and pain
(11:18):
as long as we have existed. Really well, Kristen, you
mentioned spanking, uh and I mentioned uh flogging, and these
are two things that our favorite characters, the Victorians, were
way into. Oh my gosh, and it makes so much sense.
So Salon Tracy Clark Floory over at Salon spoke with
(11:41):
Deborah Lutts, who was the author of Pleasure Bound, Victorian
Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism all about the popularity
of the so called flage porn in Victorian England. And
it's also too ties in with our podcast a while
back on Fat Bottomed Girls in Victoria, Arian's obsession with
(12:01):
women's behind, which then got into Victorian pornography involving spanking,
lots of dairy aer centered. Yes, it's very debious into
the pornographic introduce. Well, yeah, this flagporn was super popular.
About half of the pornography from eighty centered on flogging.
(12:21):
And this was everything from novels to plays, two lectures,
two poems. Although it wasn't as a lead up to
intercourse necessarily mean flagellation was really the focus of these publications.
And for example, this is the title of an actual
lecture at the time. Get ready because it's a long,
one quote experimental lecture by Colonel Spanker on the exciting
(12:47):
and voluptuous pleasures to be derived from crushing and humiliating
the spirit of a beautiful and modest young lady, as
delivered by him in the Assembly room of the Society
of Aristocratic Flagelence on Spanker. I love it. I would
love to see the publication that that was in that
that whether I doubt it was like a real lecturer
(13:09):
who knows, who knows, We don't know, but I would
I would love to see where that was. I want
to see the accompanying illustration of Colonel Spanker. Oh my god,
do you think he looks like the Kentucky Friendschick and
Colonel maybe did he wear a military uniform I hope so. Um. Well,
then there was a memoir called The Spirit of Flagellation,
(13:30):
or the Memoirs of Mrs Hinton, who kept a school
many years at Kensington. So lovely background information there. Yeah.
And also meanwhile, while this is going on in Victorian England,
hop over to Japan in the Edo period, which lasts
from sixteen o three to eighteen sixty eight. And this
is when you have the emergence of kimbako bondage, which
(13:52):
translates to the beauty of tight binding. So it's a
cross cultural thing as well. Yeah. And so in England
at the time, prostitution is legal and there are a
ton of flagellation brothels where men would go to be
whipped by women or other men. I mean, this was
a big thing. This was a big, like pop culture
secret not so secret obsession. Yeah. And we're going to
(14:16):
talk about the dominatrix in our next episode this week,
but a quick fact preview, Caroline. At those flagellation brothels,
the sort of proto dominatrix, women were often referred to
as whipstresses, yes, or governesses, which says a lot. Yeah, well, yeah.
(14:37):
One illustration of this cultural phenomenon is atheist poet Algernon
Charles Swinburne, who really resented Christianity's restraining sexual expression. And uh,
Swinburne compared the Virgin Mary actually to a kind of
sadistics sexual dominatrix, speaking of dominatrices, and he himself had
been flogged by authorities and eaten up by other boys
(15:01):
while eating and flagellation makes its way into a ton
of his writing, but he was not the only one.
This whole like flogged at eating thing is a theory
behind a lot of the popularity of flage porn, that
it was just like sort of a cultural phenomenon that
you were going to be beaten up basically as part
of your punishment at school, and so. Other theories though,
(15:24):
coming out of the Victorian period when they were so
obsessed with this stuff, was that middle and upperclass men
expect we're expected to control themselves, their wives, their servants,
and women were expected to be submissive, so perhaps men
wanted to lose control. And there were also issues of
closet and homosexuality at the time because lots of flageporn
focuses on men whipping boys, and that whole issue of
(15:46):
men being in control and women being submissive comes up
again when we talked about b DSM and dominate dominatrices.
Today the whole issue of like gender dynamics and gender
norms and who's responsible for what and who has to
be what in our society a theory we see today
a lot too is people losing control. Yeah, I mean,
it's a question too of how much is this are
(16:09):
there may be social influences, are our societal roles possibly
provoking us to want to upturn those a bit behind
closed doors? Or how many of how much of it
too is just simply you know, in the case of
the flogging it Eden when it happened, being like, oh
you know what, I actually kind of like that, and
it's as simple as that. Well, the thing is, though,
(16:32):
a guy named Richard Kraft von Ebbing did not simplify
things at all. He actually is a big reason why
a lot of this has been considered for so long
to be unhealthy deviant behavior. And in the mid eighteen eighties,
in this book Psychopathia Sexualis, von Kraft Ebbing comes up
with the term stadism and masochism based on eighteenth century
(16:56):
aristocrat and author market Asad who wrote Days of Stodom,
and nineteenth century Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher Massok who
wrote Venus in First and von craft Ebbing. I always
want to call him Craft von Ebbing. He characterized it
as a perversion. Well, sure he did, because this is
(17:17):
the same guy we cited in our female Ejaculation episode
where he said that the only women who ejaculated are
weak minded lesbians. So he's not a very tolerant, open
minded sexologist, although harolded it at the time for his genius. Well, yeah,
of course, as was Freud. He so in the early
twentieth century he and Havelock Ellis his buddy, stuck the
(17:40):
terms stadism and masochism together, and the theories that they
developed from that became part of the foundation for their
whole theory of sexual development. Basically, Freud thought sado masochist
personalities stemmed from a child watching the punishment of a sibling,
where that sibling is viewed as a bival for the
(18:01):
father's affection. Then that child begins to identify with the
sibling who's being beaten, imagines enjoying the treatment, and therefore
develops a masochistic fantasy. The child as he grows up
then represses the image and converts it into a fully
eroticized and sadistic fantasy. So that's that's Freud's explanation for this. Alright, Freud,
(18:22):
thanks for that contribution. Yep. Always Well, in the nineteen
thirties we have the earliest heterosexual s and m groups
in the United States, which were mostly centered in New York,
and a lot of them were really into the surrealist
art movement as well and highly influenced by the writings
of the market Assade, including American writer and explorer William Seabrook,
(18:46):
who fun fact, became a hit among hit Parisians at
the time after he allegedly participated in a cannibalistic rite
while traveling to the Ivory Coast. So he was he
was really really cool dude. He was like, hey, I've
done this, and also ps, I'm really into bondage, and
he was really open about it. Yeah, colorful character. He wrote.
(19:10):
My propensity for putting chains on ladies was common knowledge.
It was a sexual abnormality like many another. So he's
basically like, so who cares, I'm doing it anyway? And
in he commissioned artist man Ray, who was a surrealist,
to photograph women wearing bondage gear. And man Ray himself
(19:31):
was really fascinated with the philosophy of the market assad
And also, I mean he he kind of tried to
separate his sexuality from his b D s M fascination
and the photographs that he would take, and also his relationships,
his outright S and M relationships that he had with
(19:54):
wives and girlfriends at the time. Yeah, reading about man Ray,
it's all very complicated. Um, he does definitely, like you said,
try to separate the sexuality from the actual dominating behavior. Um,
there was definitely some beating women with belts and you know,
trying to control them and stuff like that. Yeah, and
(20:14):
where that kind of behavior, at least reading it and
reading his account of it, seems a lot more like
domestic violence than consensual b D s M. Right, he definitely.
Although he worked very closely with Seabrook, he considered Seabrook
to basically be a weirdo, which I'm like, hello pot,
hello kettle. Um, But he considered Seabrook to be such
a weirdo because Seabrook definitely got off on it like
(20:36):
it was definitely part of his sexual preferences basically, and
man Ray was like, oh no, not me, I just
like to it's just aren't philosophy. And he actually, as
part of their work together, Manray helps Seabrook design and
erotic color in which Seabrook's wife was photographed that made
it hard for the war to breathe or swallow. And
(20:57):
apparently Seabrook really enjoyed watching his wife wear it at
dinner parties because she could barely eat or drink anything. Yeah,
and Seabrook also was known to have fancy cocktail parties
and invite important people over and then just in the
middle of the party have women in bondage gear just
come out and then I'm seeing what happened. Yeah, but
(21:17):
the cocktail we NEI tree exactly after that. But but
man Ray's photography was definitely influential in terms of creating
all of these kinds of um erotic sized images of
women tied up or wearing bondage gear that we will
see to being depicted in lots of fashion editorials pretty
(21:40):
much ever since then. Um So Manory was a he
was an interesting figure in all this a bit. I
don't know exactly how I feel about him, but he's
a controversial figure but influential nonetheless, because this was the
thing Caroline and I were talking about this before we
were recording. How you have all of the flag porn
(22:01):
in the Victorian era, and then we have a lot
of stuff happening after World War Two, which we're gonna
talk about in a second. But then there's this massive
gap except for really these surrealists, particularly Seabrooke and man Ray.
So it's kind of a there's sort of filling a
peculiar gap in all of this. Yeah, but I mean
speaking of post war after World War Two, that's when
(22:24):
we really see the gay, b D, s M subcultures emerging.
And it's often referred to as the Old Guard versus
the New Guard, which is more recent, although there is
some discussion about what really constitutes new But anyway, so
you have soldiers returning from the war, and over in
Europe they had really had their first homosocial experience from
many of them. Uh. This is coming from psychotherapist Guy Baldwin.
(22:48):
He basically points out that being part of the military,
there's lots of rule following it's a very exclusive brotherhood,
and so in the early fifties you see the emergence
of the hyper masculine uh dom subculture in contrast to
a lot of the effeminate stereotypes surrounding gay men of
the time. And then in the later fifties we have
(23:08):
emerged sort of the stereotype what we think about when
we think of leather culture, which is that whole leather
biker subculture that sort of revolved around camaraderie, risk taking
in hyper masculine sexuality. So not too far removed although
more leather, but not too far removed from that hyper
masculine military culture well. And speaking of hyper masculine military
(23:30):
culture to pin ups were very big during the war,
and with this too. More after the war we have
the arrival of Betty Page, who we could do an
entire podcast on, but she became an international sex symbol
and pin up and from to nineteen fifty seven an
estimated twenty thousand photos of her were taken, and she has,
(23:54):
for instance, one iconic photo in Playboy for a Christmas
edition where she's holding up mistletoe and wearing nothing but
a Santa hat. Lots of you know, pinupy photos like that,
but also too when she was first starting out, she
met Irving Claw and his sister Paula, who specialized in
bondage photography, so they're all of these photos. She kind
(24:16):
of became the face of this bondage photography, whether she
herself was the one tied up or wearing a ballgag
or the one wielding a whip dress up in more
dominatrix here. And she always looks so delighted though all
of all of her photos. But she's a fascinating figure
who after seven completely drops off. I don't think another
(24:38):
photo of her was even ever taken, except for a
mug shot many years later, But she was I feel
like in terms of our maybe pop cultural iconography, she's
definitely one in the fifties sort of symbolize heterosexual bondage
(24:59):
sex reality. Um. And we move into the sixties into
mainstream culture. There are also a couple of interesting examples
that pop up, such as the Adams family, which totally
has B d s M undertones and outright overtones with
Morticia often getting tied up. Um. And then Carol Queen,
who is a sexologist and chief cultural officer for Good Vibrations,
(25:25):
told alternate that quote m appeals cat suit in the
television show The Avengers back in the sixties is a
perfect example as of what would now be viewed as
fetish garb. And think of Catwoman too or the kit
on Batman. Yes, we're in the same kind of thing. Yeah,
cats suit whip. Yep, we'll talk about that more in
the Dominatrix episode. Don't worry. But when we move into
(25:48):
the nineteen seventies US and we really see formal support
groups emerging, like the Ulenspiegel Society in New York and
the Society of Janice in San Francisco. And when we
look to gay leather subculture in the seventies, uh, they
have bars and biker clubs as the foundations of their groups,
but those morph into social clubs UH and become more
(26:09):
formal organizations, to the point where in nineteen seventy two
we see the publishing of the Leatherman's Handbook. So people
are getting organized, and we shouldn't forget lesbians. They had
their own s and M organizations like Samoa, which first
met in nineteen seventy eight, and the book Coming to
Power Writing and Graphics on Lesbian s and M was
published in nineteen eighty one, and people still talk about
(26:32):
this book and the effect it had on them. It
was basically the first collection of information about lesbian S
and M and their community, and it contains plenty of advice,
theory discussions on the community, and it served as a
major resource for people back then but still now, and
it seems like the eighties in particular was pivotal for
(26:53):
the b D s M community. Obviously this is pre
Internet days, but for the modern b D s M
community taking shape, and also too notably we have Robert
Mapplethorpe's highly controversial photography exhibit the Perfect Moment, which really
showcases that gay leather subculture for the first time. But
(27:14):
it's not until the nineties that the term b D
s M comes about. And of course, with the Internet,
as with other things such as polyamory a sexuality things
we've talked about before on the podcast, the Internet was
pivotal for people really coming together over these shared interests,
anonymously or not, and creating more community and even more
(27:38):
activism around this. But then that basically brings us up
to today, when the American b D s M community
comprises about a thousand diverse groups. And that's I mean,
that doesn't even count. That's just groups, that doesn't even count.
Just like people in the neighborhood, you know, just your neighbors,
your next door neighbors. Yes, Steve over there, you know,
(27:58):
and it's b D s M LA lifestyle. He's a
good guy. Yeah, cool dude. Um. Which although is understandable
at this point kind of understanding this rich history and
also the diversity that we see today, it's understandable why
why the b D s M community might not be
so happy and having their entire community and lifestyle and
(28:20):
history collapsed into one book about a girl meeting a
very wealthy man, right, because there there is so much
to it. There's there's so much more than just tying
someone up. There's so much interesting psychology to talk about
the personalities that are attracted to b D s M
and why. Um. But we will get into that when
(28:42):
we come right back from a quick break. So, you know,
I mentioned at the top of the podcast that there
hasn't historically been a ton of research into b D
s M. Beyond that people have considered it's sort of
an abnormality. Um. But consensual beds and behavior has increasingly
(29:02):
been accepted as an alternative sexuality, not as evidence that
practitioners suffer from psychological disorder or were victims of childhood abuse.
Those two things were like huge theories for a long time. Yeah.
And even when the d s M four came out,
it defined kink and b D s and practices as
(29:23):
paraphelias or unusual sexual fixations, and that designation really stigmatized
the whole practice and made it unclear as to whether
or not say, this kind of sexual deviance, if you
want to call it, that is actually a disorder. So
fast forward to the d s M five, which was
released in May. It's still in there, but it's not
(29:48):
necessarily pathologizing all b D s M community members because
the new definition at least draws a line between consenting
adults playing rough and actual pathology, basically saying like, yeah,
usually the stuff is totally fine unless it is inhibiting
your day to day life and well being. Yeah. And
this was thanks a lot to efforts by advocacy group
(30:10):
National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which fought against certain types
of sexual behavior being classified as markers of mental illness. Um,
I mean, it was to the point where b D
s M could be used in court as justification to
remove kids from custody, and now they're seeing a drop
off in that that just because someone has this preference,
(30:30):
this hobby, this interest, whatever, it doesn't mean that they're
an unfit parents. So at least that's a step forward.
And there are some advocates to even pushing for b
D s M to be recognized as its own sexual orientation,
which is controversial. It is very controversial, but interesting to
think about it in that way. So what brings people
(30:52):
to b D s M. Is it just Christian Gray's
men with lots of disposable income who have mother issues,
Caroline about what we're working with here. Uh, there's so
much more than that, although I'm sure he looks good
in a suit. And so this is coming from the
journal Psychology and Sexuality from and the authors essentially narrowed
down the reasons for being attracted to b D s
(31:15):
M two internal versus external influences. And so they said
that b D s M interests can be either an
intrinsic almost inexplicable part of the self. In other words,
you're born this way. And that's the explanation that's more
common in community literature, or they developed because of external
influences like a partner, friend, or the media. Fifty shades
(31:37):
of greg gets you interested in it? And what's interesting
in terms of gender, You know, people talk a lot
about the roles of a dominant versus a submissive in
these relationships, but the only differences they noted gender wise
were found among submissives. They found that more men than
women cited intrinsic self as the reason that they were
attracted to B D s M, and more women than
(31:59):
men at it external influences. Okay, now, when it comes
though to those external influences, a group of those female
subs said that those external influences eventually became an essential
part of themselves, as if they finally discovered their true
nature or identity. Although that said, an Atlantic video that
(32:20):
was also put together by and A Green who studied earlier,
cited a two thousand nine study in which both men
and women reported a preference for being dominated versus doing
the dominating, which is kind of interesting. Um. But one
thing too, in terms of this intrinsic explanation that you say, is,
you know, it's more common in community literature. There was
(32:42):
one study uh mentioned in one of our sources that
I don't have in front of me right now, which
talked about how most b D s M participants are
aware of their particular kink by the time they're teenagers.
I mean that means that some of them are aware
of it from a very early age. Oh hey, this
feels really good. I like this. I'm drawn to this.
(33:03):
I see this. For instance, Bob Flanagan, who calls himself
a supermasochist and is the focus of the documentary Sick,
talks about how when he was a kid watching cowboys
and Native American TV shows in parts when someone would
get tied up, he was like, oh, hey, I really
like that. So a lot of these things do do
tend to start. We have an awareness of them, whether
(33:26):
we're aware of it or not. Yeah. And the authors
of that Psychology and Sexuality UH study talk about how
it's possible that intrinsic motivation is cited more often in
order to legitimize b d S and possibly in order
to make it to qualify it as a sexual orientation,
but also sort of following in the footsteps of LGBT
(33:48):
community members who have come before, who have worked to
counter discrimination by saying we are born this way. This
is intrinsic. This is uh, you know, part and parcel
of who I am, not something that I just os
for myself one day. But also the researchers say that
this whole intrinsic versus external influence and man versus woman.
(34:08):
It follows previously noted patterns that men are more likely
to say that their sexuality and sexual orientation is set
from birth, whereas women are more likely to understand their
sexuality is fluid and responsive to social contexts and even
different partners. So I mean, I think that's fascinating in
and of itself. Yeah. And I want to say too, though,
that their statistics seem to indicate that women are also
(34:30):
likelier to switch compared to men, which to me corroborates
the fluidity stuff that we hear about a lot when
it comes to women. But what about personalities? Um, there
was a study publish in two thousand and fourteen in
the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality analyzing personalities associated with
(34:53):
DS relationships. So if it found that dom's score higher
than stubs desire for control, extroversion, self esteem, and life satisfaction,
whereas subs scored higher on emotionality. But one important thing
about submissives, even though the word is submissive, and that
might lead you to a lot of word association to
(35:14):
think that they must be inherently weak people. I will
again quote Bob Flannagan who said, by the way, has
cystic fibrosis, or had cystic fibrosis. He died um a
few years ago. He said, quote a massochist is actually
a very strong person. I think some of that strength
is what I used to combat the illness. So there's that. Yeah.
(35:39):
And it turns out that b D s M practitioners
and may actually be better off psychologically than the rest
of us. And this is coming from a study in
the Journal of Sexual Medicine, our favorite journal. But writing
about this, the people are at Life Science said that
participants in the b D s M community were more extroverted,
(35:59):
more open to new experiences, and more conscientious than quote
unquote vanilla participants. They were also less neurotic, a personality
trait marked by anxiety. They point out that b D
s M aficionados also scored lower than the general public
on rejection sensitivity, which is a measure of how paranoid
people are about others. Disliking them. And they said that
(36:21):
people in the scene reported higher levels of well being
during the previous two weeks and people outside of it,
and they reported more secure feelings of attachment in their relationships,
probably because of the trust involved that is imperative for
these kinds of relationships to happen in a healthy way,
(36:42):
as the community advocates. Yeah, and when they broke it
down specifically looking at dominant, submissive, and switch roles, they
found that dominance tended to score the highest in all
of these psychological health measures, submissive scored the lowest, and
switches were in the middle. But even though submissives were
the lowest, they still never scored lower than your average
(37:05):
one of the mill vanilla study participants on mental health
and frequently scored higher. So what's going on then, Well,
the researchers say that, I mean, and this makes sense,
B D s M participants tend to be more aware
of their sexual needs and their desires than these so
called vanilla people they were compared to, and that leads
to less frustration in the bedroom and in relationships overall. Plus,
(37:29):
I mean, they've had to come to terms with their
so called unusual sexual predilections and in choosing to live
that b D s M lifestyle, it takes a lot
of hard work psychologically. You have to come to terms
with a lot you're you're acting in a way that
is different from the norm. And so all of that
psychological work pays off in positive mental health. And so
(37:52):
the lead researchers conclusion to all of this was, Hey,
you know what we should take out of the D
s M all of this stuff which is not linked
to poor mental health. Yeah. And you know a lot
of people point out are there people who are in
the b D s M community who were victims of
abuse as children? Yes, but there are people in every
(38:13):
aspect of life who were had a difficult childhood or
a difficult phase in their lives that they still have
to grapple with to this day. And so that is
not an explicit like definite connection. Yeah. And questions too
of violence and consent and all of these things. It
is so easy for I mean, we fingers tend to
(38:35):
be pointed to this community. But one thing we haven't
addressed with all of this, that we have to talk
about is reconciling b D s M with feminism Because
for a long time, there have been some hard line
feminists who have said, no way, this whole DF stuff
(38:56):
is simply regurgitating patriarchal structure in the bedroom. Any kind
of what would appear to be violent acts in the
bedroom is only you know, perpetuating patterns of domestic abuses
is bad, bad, bad. Yeah, and it's not that I
don't get the point. However, people's sexual lives are their
(39:19):
own to choose and participate in. But we we owe
a lot of gratitude to Katherine Scott over at Bitch,
who did an entire twenty four articles series on b
D s M and kink, and she pulls so much
fascinating stuff to talk about, including she goes all the
way back to the nineteen seventies and eighties Second Way feminism,
and that's when we get a lot of the division
(39:40):
with feminists saying that, you know, you, we just can't
tolerate women being dominated, and women who want to be
dominated for sure, that they're actually damaging feminism. Yeah. She
cites author Kathleen Barry, who wrote I believe it was
female sexual Slaves who described B D S M as
quote a disgus eyes for the act of sexually forcing
(40:02):
a woman against her will, and lesbians involved in S
and m DS relationships, we're not off the hook as well,
because they were accused of replicating quote the very masculine
power dynamics used to perpetuate women's oppression, which is a lot.
But this is also around the time too, that you
have Katherine McKinnon, who is incredibly sex negative, who's basically
(40:25):
saying that you know, penis, vaginal penetration is is all
kinds of bad just to begin with. M Yeah, the
argument was one of the arguments anyway, was essentially that
we as women can never truly consent to a model
that has been shoved down our throats forever and uh
and writing in Miss magazine in n Norma, Ramos says
(40:48):
that women are socialized into actually getting sexual pleasure through
their powerlessness. Essentially, you can't even trust your own sexual desires.
You need to do whatever you can to uproot all
of that and figure out what's wrong with you and
why you feel this way and why you want to
be submissive, because clearly the patriarchy isn't stealing this in
(41:09):
your head and against you haven't been able to tell
from our tone in the past few minutes, Caroline, I
do not by this. I think that that's a very
toxic message and also a really simplistic message in way
to approach this not so simplistic community UM pro b
(41:30):
D s M. Feminist Gale Rubin has written about how
the feminist who condemn female submissives quote mistake their sexual
preferences for a universal system that will or should work
for everybody. In other words, slamming subs is simply bigotry
fueled by personal prejudices. Yeah, and continuing this theme, blogger
(41:54):
Cliff Provocracy says, listen, I don't get on vanilla women's
cases about how maybe they're only vanilla because society discourages
women from unconventional sexual choices. So, you know, don't criticize me.
And this was something too that blogger Jessica Wakeman dealt
with firsthand when a few years ago she wrote an
(42:14):
essay about her preference for spanking in the bedroom and
has also written openly about ds relationship that she had
for a while, And she did an interview with Jezebel
about this and also the flak that she got from
some feminists about saying, you know, how could you be
doing this? How can you be a real feminist into this?
And she said, I thought she put it well, she said,
(42:35):
quote the argument that women who enjoy b d s
M are taught they should be submissive in bed is
insulting to me as a feminist. I'm not a little
girl who needs other people to tell me what's best
for me. I choose to trust the men I play with.
I know what kind of pornography and erotica turns me on,
and so on and so forth. In other words, saying yeah,
I have complete and total agency with these choices that
(42:58):
I'm making that I know, oh, I derive sexual pleasure
from and it's not like she's taking that and then
replicating it out in her day to day life. And
I think that that's what a lot of people have
had problems with in terms of differentiating between sexual fantasy
and real life. Essentially, not to say that sex isn't
(43:21):
real life, but you know what I mean, Yeah, I'm
not very comfortable with the whole damned if you do,
damned if you don't thing in terms of telling women
how they should enjoy what kind of sex well, And
hasn't female sexuality in general been so completely overlooked and
marginalized and or regulated for time immemorial. The feminists of
(43:44):
all people, don't do that to me too. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And you know, it's important to remember the context of
today's b D s M community in which consent is everything.
So there is a line between consensual kink an actual
violence against women. And going back to the bit writer
(44:05):
Katherine Scott, she compares this to the difference between skydiving
and getting pushed out of an airplane. One is all
about personal choice and exhilaration, and the other is something
that you obviously did not consent to and could lead
to severe injury. She writes about how b D s
M places the submissives right to choose, the right to
change their mind, the right to say no, the right
(44:26):
to pleasure front and center. And after all, we're not
questioning the agency of men who seek out the services
of a dominatrix, which will lead us into our next episode.
And an important thing to keep in mind too when
considering the fact that these communities exist, and if it
is something that you hear about and that you think
(44:48):
about and that you want nothing to do with, that's
totally okay. Like the quote unquote mainstreaming of d s
M and just the acceptance of the fact that it
exists and it's not deviant and no people's you know,
child custody shouldn't be taken away from them because they
happen to enjoy a lot of leather. Is not saying that, hey,
(45:10):
you know what, you're going to have to do this
to ball gags for everybody. That's that's not the platform.
I think. In fact, though we do if by we
vanilla sex havers do have plenty to learn from the
b d s M community in terms of establishing trust
and establishing consent because before any of this stuff that
(45:32):
might frighten some of us, because before anything actually goes down,
there's a whole process there. You know, they're there their talks,
there are meals, there are walks in the park, there
are lots of I mean, there's a relationship established and
there's something to be set for that that is far
different from the kind of knee jerk sex that we
(45:56):
deem acceptable, which could be equally if not more damaging
in some ways. Yeah, and I mean in terms of
telling people what they can and can't do. I mean
that leads us to a group that's often underrepresented in
discussions about b DSM and in depictions of b d
s M, which is the community of black women or
women of color who enjoy race play, which is something
(46:16):
that a lot of people are wagging their fingers at
women for participating it, and it is very controversial and
complicated because of our own countries history of actual literal
slave master relationship between whites and blacks. This came up
when Justin Timberlake and Sierra released a video where he
was leading her around on a chain, and a lot
(46:38):
of people got very upset about those depictions. But the
one woman who Catherine Scott quoted, uh said I can't
do race play because I have people in my family
who had to submit to that where they had no choices.
It's too close to home for American black people. Um.
But there were other people quoted who were talking about like,
I know, it's I know, it's a little complicated. It
(47:00):
is then a little controversial, and I would never participate
in anything like this in you know, quote unquote real life,
but it's something that I do behind closed doors that
I just don't talk about. And it's the whole idea
that just because we shouldn't tell any woman in general
that she should not enjoy being a sub. No one
can really tell a person of color that she shouldn't
enjoy race play. It's another aspect of the b D
(47:22):
s M community that people can consent to. Well. I
think one of those people that Catherine Scott talked to
it might have been the woman you just quoted who said, Hey,
if I enjoy this, this doesn't mean that I want
to walk out on the street back into the Jim
Crow era, you know. There again, it's about differentiating sexual
(47:43):
fantasy and playing with taboo and deviance and all that
and what is what the rest of life? You know?
But I mean along these lines, there is a documentary
called Black Pervert coming out this year that's basically navig
dating where people of color fit into the b D
s M landscape, and it's just one of it. Will
(48:06):
it will be when it comes out, one of many
resources documentaries films about this topic, and Kristen and I
didn't even have time to really get into all of them.
We could go on and on and on about this,
but we can't because I don't think anyone wants to
listen to an eighteen hour podcast. But we wanted to
close with recommendations from stuff mom Never told you listeners
(48:29):
on places to go for more information, sources that they
themselves have found helpful. And this is coming from Facebook
because we posted before we did this record this podcast. Hey,
we're gonna be doing this b D s M podcast.
What do you think? Send us your sources? So for
further reading and listening. S and M one oh one
(48:51):
by Jay Wiseman has been quoted as a great resource.
The National Coalition of Sexual Freedom is an organization you
might want a google. Philip Miller and Molly Devin's Screw
the Roses Send Me to Thorn's has been mentioned by
a number of Facebook fans as well as in a
number of sources. Mimstress Matisse is a great resource. She
(49:12):
appears on Dan Savage's Savage Love podcast a Lot to
talk about b D s M. Also cited was the
podcast sex Nerd Sandra Nina Hartley, Stacy Newmar, and Clarice
Thorne in the book Perv by Jesse Barring also has
some good sources in there. Um, So we definitely appreciate
the recommendations. Yeah, and speaking of Clarice Thorne, I'm curious
(49:37):
to look at her recent book, The S and M Feminist,
because I'm sure there was a lot to digest in that.
So we want to hear from listeners now. I know
that there was a little bit of trepidation about us
talking about this because from people who are in the
b D s M community, because I think anytime, you know,
mainstream outlets want to approach b D s M, it's like,
(50:00):
oh no, what are they gonna say now? So we
hope that we did it justice and represented you as
as well as we could. But I know that there
was a lot of stuff that we couldn't talk about,
and there are probably lots of reactions people are having
about this topic, and let's start a conversation. Mom Stuff
at house stuff works dot Com is our email address.
(50:22):
You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast and
messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
to share with you when we come right back from
a quick break. I have one here from Maria. She says,
I really want to thank you ladies. I'm a twenty
six year old woman who dropped out of college. I
(50:43):
knew I wanted my degree and that I wanted to
go back to school, but I was really scared of
going back, but I found your podcast. I can say
you ladies have helped so much as I am back
in school getting my degree. My major is mathematics, and
listening to women in math, engineering, and science really help
me see that I can totally do this. Not only
that I'm doing much more than getting a degree, but
(51:06):
that I'm also helping set an example. Thank you. I
really love listening to the podcast and watching videos on YouTube.
You ladies have answered so many questions that I have
been scared to ask other women. I will let you,
ladies know when I'll be walking and thank you again
for motivating me and seeing getting my degree is totally
worth it. I can't wait to see the new things
I'm going to be learning, not just in school but
(51:28):
on the podcast. So congratulations on this major lifestep Maria,
and thank you for writing in Well. I've got a
let her here from c J in response to our
podcast on the history of fashion modeling, and c J writes,
I used to work for a fashion house and can
confirm a lot of what was said about modeling in
current times. It was my job to do castings, and
(51:48):
I can tell you that the models were considered less
like people and more like objects. Not only did your
body have to fit the clothes properly, but designers and
photographers would talk about your flaws in front of you,
as if you weren't present. As far as minorities, being
a black model has to be hard for the ego.
We thought really hard to employ this one black model
for a particular season. She was clearly the best candidate,
(52:09):
but there was such reluctance from the owner of the label.
We eventually convinced the boss to hire her, but at
the shoot the owner kept complaining that her hair was
quote too ethnic. Now when I see models on the
streets of New York, I have such respect. It takes
a lot to be a model, and although it may
seem glamorous, there is such a strength that must be
had to make it. So Thanks c J, and thanks
(52:31):
to everybody who has written into us, and also who
offered their B D s M sources and suggestions. Your
input makes such a difference always on the podcast, so
thank you, and again, if you want to email us,
Mom Stuff at house stuffworks dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcast
including this one with our sources so you can read along.
(52:54):
Head on over to Stuff Mom Never told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Isn't how staff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and welcome to King Week, Ladies and gentlemen.
Today we are talking about b D s M. Next
time we'll be talking about the Dominatrix figure Dominatrice E's um.
(00:28):
But yeah, we we have fielded a lot of requests
to talk about these issues, these topics in the wake
of you might expect it, Fifty Shades of Gray. Yeah,
as of the time this podcast is coming out, Fifty
Shades of Gray has probably the film Fervor has died
down a little bit. And I was thinking, Caroline, about
how Stuff I've Never Told You though, has been around
(00:49):
so long that in two thousand eleven, when the books
went viral, we got a ton of questions, and then
we're recently we got all the same questions again with
the film. So we decided it was time for us
to really talk about b D s M. That's right,
and it's it's interesting that there hasn't been a ton
of academic research about b D s M in the past.
(01:11):
It's it's only now that we seem to be really
seeing more academic papers, more actual books diving into the culture,
and not in a way that treats it like a
mental problem. Yeah, I think the fact that it is
becoming more and more accepted as a lifestyle and even
for some people as a sexual orientation. In fact, that
(01:34):
more attention has been paid to it as a legitimate
and fully acceptable and healthy expression of sexuality and also
a lifestyle, even a profession for some people. That's right. Well,
so let's get into a bit of an overview of B, D, S, M.
Talk about what it is and what it is not.
And one thing that it is not for sure is
(01:56):
a single homogeneous group of people activity and kinks. Even
the letters themselves in the acronym stand for more than
one thing. But B and the D stand for bondage
and discipline, D and S together our domination and submission.
And then the S and the M are sadism and masochism.
So what do all of those individual components mean. Well,
(02:20):
when it comes to discipline, for instance, it's usually a
dominant person or the dom training a submissive person. And
then when it comes to submissive you have have a
person who really seeks and consents, which is important to
submit to another person. And this is also where we
get into the realm of b D s M is
(02:41):
not fifty shades of gray right exactly, because so much
of the b D s M core is that consent,
that issue of consent, and so the dom or the
dominant as a person who enjoys being with the submissive
person for for myriad reasons, could just be the issue
of control, could be sexual, could be on sexual um
(03:02):
Switching is a term that basically needs alternating between the
submissive and dominant roles. Sadism is getting pleasure from the pain, humiliation,
or suffering of others, and masochism is getting pleasure from
your own pain or humiliation. And the way that this
manifest is through a huge range of activities as well,
which makes it difficult to define and even pin down numbers,
(03:26):
because some activities don't all involve pain, for instance, some
might involve power place, some might involve a fantasy scenes.
I mean, they're they're all different ways in which b
D s M can be practiced and enjoyed. And this
is also too listeners one reason why we will not
be able to cover in granular detail every single aspect
(03:48):
of b D s M. Because again, it's not a
homogeneous group, and I think that that's one important clarification
for people not familiar with it, that it's not this
one group of people in the corner all doing the
same kind of thing, right, which is why I definitely
encourage you when you listen during, either during or after
you listen to this episode, to go to stuff I
ever told you dot com and check out the sources
that we're going to post for this episode, because there
(04:11):
is just so much more to learn about and read
about things that aren't just they're not just some shady,
dirty corner of the Internet like this. There's actual, really
great information out there for you if you're interested. But
it's also worth noting that b D s M doesn't
always even make up all of a person's sexual activity,
and this is coming from a two thousand and six
(04:32):
studies sided and some of the things that we read.
Eleven percent of b D s M practitioners in this
study exclusively engaged in b D s M play during
sexual intimacy. Thirty two percent said it constituted less than
half of their total sexual activities. So there's, like Kristen said,
there's a range of activities there's also just a range
(04:54):
of how ingrained these activities are in people's lives and
the type of sexual activity they pursue, and sex in
and of itself in thinking about different kinds of penetration
or even nudity may or may not be involved in
certain kinds of b D s M activities. But the
key to all of this, whatever form b D s
(05:18):
M takes, and this is something that anyone within the
b D s M community will emphasize over and over
and over again, is the importance of consent. The community
embraces the frameworker motto of safe, sane, and consensual because
this is erotic play, and as part of that, there
are often rules, there are safe words, there are boundaries
(05:40):
that are established before anything even happens as to what
is on and off the table, right because as boundaries
and the issues of trust and communication are so key
in addition to consent in the b D s M community,
and those are sort of the sticking points that a
lot of people have with Fifty Shades of Gray, both
of books and the film. Yeah, and before quickly before
(06:03):
we get into the b D s M versus fifty Shades,
because we got to talk about it people. Even though
I know a lot of folks cringe at the thought
of fifty shades, it's important for us to talk about this,
but also to making a note about that safe part
of safe, sane, and consensual. Even though yes, a lot
of b D s M play might involve pain, bondage restraint,
(06:25):
the point of it is not to hurt the other individual.
It might be to arouse pain, yes, but you want
to stay safe always in that in that case you're
not trying to break people's bones and do irreparable damage
to bodies, right, exactly. Well, So, Kristen and I read
this interesting article by Emma Green over at The Atlantic
(06:46):
which came out in February of this year, and Green
points out that, you know, there is a little bit
of good that came from the popularity of fifty Shades
of Gray, and that is that it's served a sort
of an opening to talk and think about b D
s M, H and kink and those communities and the
activities they're in, and the fact that it's reached a
(07:09):
broader audience than any other b D s M novel
before it, So it has people talking, It has people
thinking not only about other people's sexuality and what other
people are doing, but what they themselves might be interested in,
and it probably has people experimenting. How many flimsy trend
stories have we seen about escalating sales of rope at
(07:30):
hardware stores in Middle America? Yeah, but unfortunately according to Green,
you know, there's a there's some good and some bad
with Fifty Shades of Gray, and the bad is everything else. Yeah,
I mean the the whole framework of fifty Shades of
Great which side note in gase you don't know? And
I love this fact about nippy Shades of Grade that E. L.
James originally wrote it as a Twilight fan fiction. So
(07:54):
this is really where we're starting from. Uh, And I
have read Fifty Shades of Gray airline, I mean skimming
some parts because yeah, it is really poorly written. Um.
But the big problem is that Christian Gray's uh proclivities
for bondage are framed as a problem that they are
rooted in the fact that his mother committed suicide and
(08:16):
previously had been abused by a pimp. So he has
all these issues and so that's why he has to
do this one thing. And the fairytale ending is for
when they can finally have vanilla sex. Yeah, it's it's
definitely framed is something that he needs to and does
work through in order to get to the better sex,
which is vanilla, which, by the way, for people who
(08:39):
might not be familiar with vanilla, that is sort of
the b D s M communities code word for the
usually straight sex, often missionary style that is the mainstream
go to i e. Vanilla boring. Right, But it's not
only Green. Green's problem with fifty Shades is not just
(09:00):
that b D s M and bondage and things like
that are are framed as something to work through and
a problem, but also the association between hot sex and violence,
but without any of the community's context of consent, communication, trust,
and boundaries. And she she writes about how the character
of Anna, the main character, is uncomfortable with a lot
(09:24):
of this stuff, but it's too shy to speak her
mind or is afraid of losing Christian and so she
gives consent to things she doesn't necessarily want to consent
to and ends up getting hurt and wanting to out
of it, but she doesn't get out of it. Yeah,
and and the very fact that there are no rules
and boundaries and safe words established beforehand. He just opens
up the door to the red room, and you know,
(09:48):
no holds barred. And also the fact too that it
portrays again that vanilla sex as the most intimate, that's
the most wholesome, that's the only acceptable kind, whereas kinky
sex is very unhealthy. It's not, as Emmigreen writes, a
form of erotic play. It's an emotional bargain and it
tolerates it barely because she's scared of what will happen
(10:11):
if she doesn't and that I don't know about you, Caroline,
But that doesn't sound terribly consensual. No, nor does it
sound very fun. Um. But plenty of people do think
B D s M. The lifestyle, the community and everything
they're in is fun because it has a pretty darn
extensive history, going all the way back to ancient times.
For instance, going all the way back to four nine DBC.
(10:33):
We have this thing called the Etruscan Tomb of the Whipping,
which has a painting on the wall and erotic painting
depicting two men flogging a woman. Um, And it's definitely,
like specifically portrayed as an erotic act, not as necessarily punishment.
But there were a ton of ancient cults back in
the day that incorporated flagellation and whipping of yourself or
(10:56):
or others, and it could be punishment or as a
way to enter an altered state of consciousness or even
communicate with God. And also to the Kama Sutra mentioned
sexual spanking, slapping, inviting. So this is not new behavior,
which is not surprising. Humans have been figuring out, you know,
but playing around with these lines between pleasure and pain
(11:18):
as long as we have existed. Really well, Kristen, you
mentioned spanking, uh and I mentioned uh flogging, and these
are two things that our favorite characters, the Victorians, were
way into. Oh my gosh, and it makes so much sense.
So Salon Tracy Clark Floory over at Salon spoke with
(11:41):
Deborah Lutts, who was the author of Pleasure Bound, Victorian
Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism all about the popularity
of the so called flage porn in Victorian England. And
it's also too ties in with our podcast a while
back on Fat Bottomed Girls in Victoria, Arian's obsession with
(12:01):
women's behind, which then got into Victorian pornography involving spanking,
lots of dairy aer centered. Yes, it's very debious into
the pornographic introduce. Well, yeah, this flagporn was super popular.
About half of the pornography from eighty centered on flogging.
(12:21):
And this was everything from novels to plays, two lectures,
two poems. Although it wasn't as a lead up to
intercourse necessarily mean flagellation was really the focus of these publications.
And for example, this is the title of an actual
lecture at the time. Get ready because it's a long,
one quote experimental lecture by Colonel Spanker on the exciting
(12:47):
and voluptuous pleasures to be derived from crushing and humiliating
the spirit of a beautiful and modest young lady, as
delivered by him in the Assembly room of the Society
of Aristocratic Flagelence on Spanker. I love it. I would
love to see the publication that that was in that
that whether I doubt it was like a real lecturer
(13:09):
who knows, who knows, We don't know, but I would
I would love to see where that was. I want
to see the accompanying illustration of Colonel Spanker. Oh my god,
do you think he looks like the Kentucky Friendschick and
Colonel maybe did he wear a military uniform I hope so. Um. Well,
then there was a memoir called The Spirit of Flagellation,
(13:30):
or the Memoirs of Mrs Hinton, who kept a school
many years at Kensington. So lovely background information there. Yeah.
And also meanwhile, while this is going on in Victorian England,
hop over to Japan in the Edo period, which lasts
from sixteen o three to eighteen sixty eight. And this
is when you have the emergence of kimbako bondage, which
(13:52):
translates to the beauty of tight binding. So it's a
cross cultural thing as well. Yeah. And so in England
at the time, prostitution is legal and there are a
ton of flagellation brothels where men would go to be
whipped by women or other men. I mean, this was
a big thing. This was a big, like pop culture
secret not so secret obsession. Yeah. And we're going to
(14:16):
talk about the dominatrix in our next episode this week,
but a quick fact preview, Caroline. At those flagellation brothels,
the sort of proto dominatrix, women were often referred to
as whipstresses, yes, or governesses, which says a lot. Yeah, well, yeah.
(14:37):
One illustration of this cultural phenomenon is atheist poet Algernon
Charles Swinburne, who really resented Christianity's restraining sexual expression. And uh,
Swinburne compared the Virgin Mary actually to a kind of
sadistics sexual dominatrix, speaking of dominatrices, and he himself had
been flogged by authorities and eaten up by other boys
(15:01):
while eating and flagellation makes its way into a ton
of his writing, but he was not the only one.
This whole like flogged at eating thing is a theory
behind a lot of the popularity of flage porn, that
it was just like sort of a cultural phenomenon that
you were going to be beaten up basically as part
of your punishment at school, and so. Other theories though,
(15:24):
coming out of the Victorian period when they were so
obsessed with this stuff, was that middle and upperclass men
expect we're expected to control themselves, their wives, their servants,
and women were expected to be submissive, so perhaps men
wanted to lose control. And there were also issues of
closet and homosexuality at the time because lots of flageporn
focuses on men whipping boys, and that whole issue of
(15:46):
men being in control and women being submissive comes up
again when we talked about b DSM and dominate dominatrices.
Today the whole issue of like gender dynamics and gender
norms and who's responsible for what and who has to
be what in our society a theory we see today
a lot too is people losing control. Yeah, I mean,
it's a question too of how much is this are
(16:09):
there may be social influences, are our societal roles possibly
provoking us to want to upturn those a bit behind
closed doors? Or how many of how much of it
too is just simply you know, in the case of
the flogging it Eden when it happened, being like, oh
you know what, I actually kind of like that, and
it's as simple as that. Well, the thing is, though,
(16:32):
a guy named Richard Kraft von Ebbing did not simplify
things at all. He actually is a big reason why
a lot of this has been considered for so long
to be unhealthy deviant behavior. And in the mid eighteen eighties,
in this book Psychopathia Sexualis, von Kraft Ebbing comes up
with the term stadism and masochism based on eighteenth century
(16:56):
aristocrat and author market Asad who wrote Days of Stodom,
and nineteenth century Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher Massok who
wrote Venus in First and von craft Ebbing. I always
want to call him Craft von Ebbing. He characterized it
as a perversion. Well, sure he did, because this is
(17:17):
the same guy we cited in our female Ejaculation episode
where he said that the only women who ejaculated are
weak minded lesbians. So he's not a very tolerant, open
minded sexologist, although harolded it at the time for his genius. Well, yeah,
of course, as was Freud. He so in the early
twentieth century he and Havelock Ellis his buddy, stuck the
(17:40):
terms stadism and masochism together, and the theories that they
developed from that became part of the foundation for their
whole theory of sexual development. Basically, Freud thought sado masochist
personalities stemmed from a child watching the punishment of a sibling,
where that sibling is viewed as a bival for the
(18:01):
father's affection. Then that child begins to identify with the
sibling who's being beaten, imagines enjoying the treatment, and therefore
develops a masochistic fantasy. The child as he grows up
then represses the image and converts it into a fully
eroticized and sadistic fantasy. So that's that's Freud's explanation for this. Alright, Freud,
(18:22):
thanks for that contribution. Yep. Always Well, in the nineteen
thirties we have the earliest heterosexual s and m groups
in the United States, which were mostly centered in New York,
and a lot of them were really into the surrealist
art movement as well and highly influenced by the writings
of the market Assade, including American writer and explorer William Seabrook,
(18:46):
who fun fact, became a hit among hit Parisians at
the time after he allegedly participated in a cannibalistic rite
while traveling to the Ivory Coast. So he was he
was really really cool dude. He was like, hey, I've
done this, and also ps, I'm really into bondage, and
he was really open about it. Yeah, colorful character. He wrote.
(19:10):
My propensity for putting chains on ladies was common knowledge.
It was a sexual abnormality like many another. So he's
basically like, so who cares, I'm doing it anyway? And
in he commissioned artist man Ray, who was a surrealist,
to photograph women wearing bondage gear. And man Ray himself
(19:31):
was really fascinated with the philosophy of the market assad
And also, I mean he he kind of tried to
separate his sexuality from his b D s M fascination
and the photographs that he would take, and also his relationships,
his outright S and M relationships that he had with
(19:54):
wives and girlfriends at the time. Yeah, reading about man Ray,
it's all very complicated. Um, he does definitely, like you said,
try to separate the sexuality from the actual dominating behavior. Um,
there was definitely some beating women with belts and you know,
trying to control them and stuff like that. Yeah, and
(20:14):
where that kind of behavior, at least reading it and
reading his account of it, seems a lot more like
domestic violence than consensual b D s M. Right, he definitely.
Although he worked very closely with Seabrook, he considered Seabrook
to basically be a weirdo, which I'm like, hello pot,
hello kettle. Um, But he considered Seabrook to be such
a weirdo because Seabrook definitely got off on it like
(20:36):
it was definitely part of his sexual preferences basically, and
man Ray was like, oh no, not me, I just
like to it's just aren't philosophy. And he actually, as
part of their work together, Manray helps Seabrook design and
erotic color in which Seabrook's wife was photographed that made
it hard for the war to breathe or swallow. And
(20:57):
apparently Seabrook really enjoyed watching his wife wear it at
dinner parties because she could barely eat or drink anything. Yeah,
and Seabrook also was known to have fancy cocktail parties
and invite important people over and then just in the
middle of the party have women in bondage gear just
come out and then I'm seeing what happened. Yeah, but
(21:17):
the cocktail we NEI tree exactly after that. But but
man Ray's photography was definitely influential in terms of creating
all of these kinds of um erotic sized images of
women tied up or wearing bondage gear that we will
see to being depicted in lots of fashion editorials pretty
(21:40):
much ever since then. Um So Manory was a he
was an interesting figure in all this a bit. I
don't know exactly how I feel about him, but he's
a controversial figure but influential nonetheless, because this was the
thing Caroline and I were talking about this before we
were recording. How you have all of the flag porn
(22:01):
in the Victorian era, and then we have a lot
of stuff happening after World War Two, which we're gonna
talk about in a second. But then there's this massive
gap except for really these surrealists, particularly Seabrooke and man Ray.
So it's kind of a there's sort of filling a
peculiar gap in all of this. Yeah, but I mean
speaking of post war after World War Two, that's when
(22:24):
we really see the gay, b D, s M subcultures emerging.
And it's often referred to as the Old Guard versus
the New Guard, which is more recent, although there is
some discussion about what really constitutes new But anyway, so
you have soldiers returning from the war, and over in
Europe they had really had their first homosocial experience from
many of them. Uh. This is coming from psychotherapist Guy Baldwin.
(22:48):
He basically points out that being part of the military,
there's lots of rule following it's a very exclusive brotherhood,
and so in the early fifties you see the emergence
of the hyper masculine uh dom subculture in contrast to
a lot of the effeminate stereotypes surrounding gay men of
the time. And then in the later fifties we have
(23:08):
emerged sort of the stereotype what we think about when
we think of leather culture, which is that whole leather
biker subculture that sort of revolved around camaraderie, risk taking
in hyper masculine sexuality. So not too far removed although
more leather, but not too far removed from that hyper
masculine military culture well. And speaking of hyper masculine military
(23:30):
culture to pin ups were very big during the war,
and with this too. More after the war we have
the arrival of Betty Page, who we could do an
entire podcast on, but she became an international sex symbol
and pin up and from to nineteen fifty seven an
estimated twenty thousand photos of her were taken, and she has,
(23:54):
for instance, one iconic photo in Playboy for a Christmas
edition where she's holding up mistletoe and wearing nothing but
a Santa hat. Lots of you know, pinupy photos like that,
but also too when she was first starting out, she
met Irving Claw and his sister Paula, who specialized in
bondage photography, so they're all of these photos. She kind
(24:16):
of became the face of this bondage photography, whether she
herself was the one tied up or wearing a ballgag
or the one wielding a whip dress up in more
dominatrix here. And she always looks so delighted though all
of all of her photos. But she's a fascinating figure
who after seven completely drops off. I don't think another
(24:38):
photo of her was even ever taken, except for a
mug shot many years later, But she was I feel
like in terms of our maybe pop cultural iconography, she's
definitely one in the fifties sort of symbolize heterosexual bondage
(24:59):
sex reality. Um. And we move into the sixties into
mainstream culture. There are also a couple of interesting examples
that pop up, such as the Adams family, which totally
has B d s M undertones and outright overtones with
Morticia often getting tied up. Um. And then Carol Queen,
who is a sexologist and chief cultural officer for Good Vibrations,
(25:25):
told alternate that quote m appeals cat suit in the
television show The Avengers back in the sixties is a
perfect example as of what would now be viewed as
fetish garb. And think of Catwoman too or the kit
on Batman. Yes, we're in the same kind of thing. Yeah,
cats suit whip. Yep, we'll talk about that more in
the Dominatrix episode. Don't worry. But when we move into
(25:48):
the nineteen seventies US and we really see formal support
groups emerging, like the Ulenspiegel Society in New York and
the Society of Janice in San Francisco. And when we
look to gay leather subculture in the seventies, uh, they
have bars and biker clubs as the foundations of their groups,
but those morph into social clubs UH and become more
(26:09):
formal organizations, to the point where in nineteen seventy two
we see the publishing of the Leatherman's Handbook. So people
are getting organized, and we shouldn't forget lesbians. They had
their own s and M organizations like Samoa, which first
met in nineteen seventy eight, and the book Coming to
Power Writing and Graphics on Lesbian s and M was
published in nineteen eighty one, and people still talk about
(26:32):
this book and the effect it had on them. It
was basically the first collection of information about lesbian S
and M and their community, and it contains plenty of advice,
theory discussions on the community, and it served as a
major resource for people back then but still now, and
it seems like the eighties in particular was pivotal for
(26:53):
the b D s M community. Obviously this is pre
Internet days, but for the modern b D s M
community taking shape, and also too notably we have Robert
Mapplethorpe's highly controversial photography exhibit the Perfect Moment, which really
showcases that gay leather subculture for the first time. But
(27:14):
it's not until the nineties that the term b D
s M comes about. And of course, with the Internet,
as with other things such as polyamory a sexuality things
we've talked about before on the podcast, the Internet was
pivotal for people really coming together over these shared interests,
anonymously or not, and creating more community and even more
(27:38):
activism around this. But then that basically brings us up
to today, when the American b D s M community
comprises about a thousand diverse groups. And that's I mean,
that doesn't even count. That's just groups, that doesn't even count.
Just like people in the neighborhood, you know, just your neighbors,
your next door neighbors. Yes, Steve over there, you know,
(27:58):
and it's b D s M LA lifestyle. He's a
good guy. Yeah, cool dude. Um. Which although is understandable
at this point kind of understanding this rich history and
also the diversity that we see today, it's understandable why
why the b D s M community might not be
so happy and having their entire community and lifestyle and
(28:20):
history collapsed into one book about a girl meeting a
very wealthy man, right, because there there is so much
to it. There's there's so much more than just tying
someone up. There's so much interesting psychology to talk about
the personalities that are attracted to b D s M
and why. Um. But we will get into that when
(28:42):
we come right back from a quick break. So, you know,
I mentioned at the top of the podcast that there
hasn't historically been a ton of research into b D
s M. Beyond that people have considered it's sort of
an abnormality. Um. But consensual beds and behavior has increasingly
(29:02):
been accepted as an alternative sexuality, not as evidence that
practitioners suffer from psychological disorder or were victims of childhood abuse.
Those two things were like huge theories for a long time. Yeah.
And even when the d s M four came out,
it defined kink and b D s and practices as
(29:23):
paraphelias or unusual sexual fixations, and that designation really stigmatized
the whole practice and made it unclear as to whether
or not say, this kind of sexual deviance, if you
want to call it, that is actually a disorder. So
fast forward to the d s M five, which was
released in May. It's still in there, but it's not
(29:48):
necessarily pathologizing all b D s M community members because
the new definition at least draws a line between consenting
adults playing rough and actual pathology, basically saying like, yeah,
usually the stuff is totally fine unless it is inhibiting
your day to day life and well being. Yeah. And
this was thanks a lot to efforts by advocacy group
(30:10):
National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which fought against certain types
of sexual behavior being classified as markers of mental illness. Um,
I mean, it was to the point where b D
s M could be used in court as justification to
remove kids from custody, and now they're seeing a drop
off in that that just because someone has this preference,
(30:30):
this hobby, this interest, whatever, it doesn't mean that they're
an unfit parents. So at least that's a step forward.
And there are some advocates to even pushing for b
D s M to be recognized as its own sexual orientation,
which is controversial. It is very controversial, but interesting to
think about it in that way. So what brings people
(30:52):
to b D s M. Is it just Christian Gray's
men with lots of disposable income who have mother issues,
Caroline about what we're working with here. Uh, there's so
much more than that, although I'm sure he looks good
in a suit. And so this is coming from the
journal Psychology and Sexuality from and the authors essentially narrowed
down the reasons for being attracted to b D s
(31:15):
M two internal versus external influences. And so they said
that b D s M interests can be either an
intrinsic almost inexplicable part of the self. In other words,
you're born this way. And that's the explanation that's more
common in community literature, or they developed because of external
influences like a partner, friend, or the media. Fifty shades
(31:37):
of greg gets you interested in it? And what's interesting
in terms of gender, You know, people talk a lot
about the roles of a dominant versus a submissive in
these relationships, but the only differences they noted gender wise
were found among submissives. They found that more men than
women cited intrinsic self as the reason that they were
attracted to B D s M, and more women than
(31:59):
men at it external influences. Okay, now, when it comes
though to those external influences, a group of those female
subs said that those external influences eventually became an essential
part of themselves, as if they finally discovered their true
nature or identity. Although that said, an Atlantic video that
(32:20):
was also put together by and A Green who studied earlier,
cited a two thousand nine study in which both men
and women reported a preference for being dominated versus doing
the dominating, which is kind of interesting. Um. But one
thing too, in terms of this intrinsic explanation that you say, is,
you know, it's more common in community literature. There was
(32:42):
one study uh mentioned in one of our sources that
I don't have in front of me right now, which
talked about how most b D s M participants are
aware of their particular kink by the time they're teenagers.
I mean that means that some of them are aware
of it from a very early age. Oh hey, this
feels really good. I like this. I'm drawn to this.
(33:03):
I see this. For instance, Bob Flanagan, who calls himself
a supermasochist and is the focus of the documentary Sick,
talks about how when he was a kid watching cowboys
and Native American TV shows in parts when someone would
get tied up, he was like, oh, hey, I really
like that. So a lot of these things do do
tend to start. We have an awareness of them, whether
(33:26):
we're aware of it or not. Yeah. And the authors
of that Psychology and Sexuality UH study talk about how
it's possible that intrinsic motivation is cited more often in
order to legitimize b d S and possibly in order
to make it to qualify it as a sexual orientation,
but also sort of following in the footsteps of LGBT
(33:48):
community members who have come before, who have worked to
counter discrimination by saying we are born this way. This
is intrinsic. This is uh, you know, part and parcel
of who I am, not something that I just os
for myself one day. But also the researchers say that
this whole intrinsic versus external influence and man versus woman.
(34:08):
It follows previously noted patterns that men are more likely
to say that their sexuality and sexual orientation is set
from birth, whereas women are more likely to understand their
sexuality is fluid and responsive to social contexts and even
different partners. So I mean, I think that's fascinating in
and of itself. Yeah. And I want to say too, though,
that their statistics seem to indicate that women are also
(34:30):
likelier to switch compared to men, which to me corroborates
the fluidity stuff that we hear about a lot when
it comes to women. But what about personalities? Um, there
was a study publish in two thousand and fourteen in
the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality analyzing personalities associated with
(34:53):
DS relationships. So if it found that dom's score higher
than stubs desire for control, extroversion, self esteem, and life satisfaction,
whereas subs scored higher on emotionality. But one important thing
about submissives, even though the word is submissive, and that
might lead you to a lot of word association to
(35:14):
think that they must be inherently weak people. I will
again quote Bob Flannagan who said, by the way, has
cystic fibrosis, or had cystic fibrosis. He died um a
few years ago. He said, quote a massochist is actually
a very strong person. I think some of that strength
is what I used to combat the illness. So there's that. Yeah.
(35:39):
And it turns out that b D s M practitioners
and may actually be better off psychologically than the rest
of us. And this is coming from a study in
the Journal of Sexual Medicine, our favorite journal. But writing
about this, the people are at Life Science said that
participants in the b D s M community were more extroverted,
(35:59):
more open to new experiences, and more conscientious than quote
unquote vanilla participants. They were also less neurotic, a personality
trait marked by anxiety. They point out that b D
s M aficionados also scored lower than the general public
on rejection sensitivity, which is a measure of how paranoid
people are about others. Disliking them. And they said that
(36:21):
people in the scene reported higher levels of well being
during the previous two weeks and people outside of it,
and they reported more secure feelings of attachment in their relationships,
probably because of the trust involved that is imperative for
these kinds of relationships to happen in a healthy way,
(36:42):
as the community advocates. Yeah, and when they broke it
down specifically looking at dominant, submissive, and switch roles, they
found that dominance tended to score the highest in all
of these psychological health measures, submissive scored the lowest, and
switches were in the middle. But even though submissives were
the lowest, they still never scored lower than your average
(37:05):
one of the mill vanilla study participants on mental health
and frequently scored higher. So what's going on then, Well,
the researchers say that, I mean, and this makes sense,
B D s M participants tend to be more aware
of their sexual needs and their desires than these so
called vanilla people they were compared to, and that leads
to less frustration in the bedroom and in relationships overall. Plus,
(37:29):
I mean, they've had to come to terms with their
so called unusual sexual predilections and in choosing to live
that b D s M lifestyle, it takes a lot
of hard work psychologically. You have to come to terms
with a lot you're you're acting in a way that
is different from the norm. And so all of that
psychological work pays off in positive mental health. And so
(37:52):
the lead researchers conclusion to all of this was, Hey,
you know what we should take out of the D
s M all of this stuff which is not linked
to poor mental health. Yeah. And you know a lot
of people point out are there people who are in
the b D s M community who were victims of
abuse as children? Yes, but there are people in every
(38:13):
aspect of life who were had a difficult childhood or
a difficult phase in their lives that they still have
to grapple with to this day. And so that is
not an explicit like definite connection. Yeah. And questions too
of violence and consent and all of these things. It
is so easy for I mean, we fingers tend to
(38:35):
be pointed to this community. But one thing we haven't
addressed with all of this, that we have to talk
about is reconciling b D s M with feminism Because
for a long time, there have been some hard line
feminists who have said, no way, this whole DF stuff
(38:56):
is simply regurgitating patriarchal structure in the bedroom. Any kind
of what would appear to be violent acts in the
bedroom is only you know, perpetuating patterns of domestic abuses
is bad, bad, bad. Yeah, and it's not that I
don't get the point. However, people's sexual lives are their
(39:19):
own to choose and participate in. But we we owe
a lot of gratitude to Katherine Scott over at Bitch,
who did an entire twenty four articles series on b
D s M and kink, and she pulls so much
fascinating stuff to talk about, including she goes all the
way back to the nineteen seventies and eighties Second Way feminism,
and that's when we get a lot of the division
(39:40):
with feminists saying that, you know, you, we just can't
tolerate women being dominated, and women who want to be
dominated for sure, that they're actually damaging feminism. Yeah. She
cites author Kathleen Barry, who wrote I believe it was
female sexual Slaves who described B D S M as
quote a disgus eyes for the act of sexually forcing
(40:02):
a woman against her will, and lesbians involved in S
and m DS relationships, we're not off the hook as well,
because they were accused of replicating quote the very masculine
power dynamics used to perpetuate women's oppression, which is a lot.
But this is also around the time too, that you
have Katherine McKinnon, who is incredibly sex negative, who's basically
(40:25):
saying that you know, penis, vaginal penetration is is all
kinds of bad just to begin with. M Yeah, the
argument was one of the arguments anyway, was essentially that
we as women can never truly consent to a model
that has been shoved down our throats forever and uh
and writing in Miss magazine in n Norma, Ramos says
(40:48):
that women are socialized into actually getting sexual pleasure through
their powerlessness. Essentially, you can't even trust your own sexual desires.
You need to do whatever you can to uproot all
of that and figure out what's wrong with you and
why you feel this way and why you want to
be submissive, because clearly the patriarchy isn't stealing this in
(41:09):
your head and against you haven't been able to tell
from our tone in the past few minutes, Caroline, I
do not by this. I think that that's a very
toxic message and also a really simplistic message in way
to approach this not so simplistic community UM pro b
(41:30):
D s M. Feminist Gale Rubin has written about how
the feminist who condemn female submissives quote mistake their sexual
preferences for a universal system that will or should work
for everybody. In other words, slamming subs is simply bigotry
fueled by personal prejudices. Yeah, and continuing this theme, blogger
(41:54):
Cliff Provocracy says, listen, I don't get on vanilla women's
cases about how maybe they're only vanilla because society discourages
women from unconventional sexual choices. So, you know, don't criticize me.
And this was something too that blogger Jessica Wakeman dealt
with firsthand when a few years ago she wrote an
(42:14):
essay about her preference for spanking in the bedroom and
has also written openly about ds relationship that she had
for a while, And she did an interview with Jezebel
about this and also the flak that she got from
some feminists about saying, you know, how could you be
doing this? How can you be a real feminist into this?
And she said, I thought she put it well, she said,
(42:35):
quote the argument that women who enjoy b d s
M are taught they should be submissive in bed is
insulting to me as a feminist. I'm not a little
girl who needs other people to tell me what's best
for me. I choose to trust the men I play with.
I know what kind of pornography and erotica turns me on,
and so on and so forth. In other words, saying yeah,
I have complete and total agency with these choices that
(42:58):
I'm making that I know, oh, I derive sexual pleasure
from and it's not like she's taking that and then
replicating it out in her day to day life. And
I think that that's what a lot of people have
had problems with in terms of differentiating between sexual fantasy
and real life. Essentially, not to say that sex isn't
(43:21):
real life, but you know what I mean, Yeah, I'm
not very comfortable with the whole damned if you do,
damned if you don't thing in terms of telling women
how they should enjoy what kind of sex well, And
hasn't female sexuality in general been so completely overlooked and
marginalized and or regulated for time immemorial. The feminists of
(43:44):
all people, don't do that to me too. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And you know, it's important to remember the context of
today's b D s M community in which consent is everything.
So there is a line between consensual kink an actual
violence against women. And going back to the bit writer
(44:05):
Katherine Scott, she compares this to the difference between skydiving
and getting pushed out of an airplane. One is all
about personal choice and exhilaration, and the other is something
that you obviously did not consent to and could lead
to severe injury. She writes about how b D s
M places the submissives right to choose, the right to
change their mind, the right to say no, the right
(44:26):
to pleasure front and center. And after all, we're not
questioning the agency of men who seek out the services
of a dominatrix, which will lead us into our next episode.
And an important thing to keep in mind too when
considering the fact that these communities exist, and if it
is something that you hear about and that you think
(44:48):
about and that you want nothing to do with, that's
totally okay. Like the quote unquote mainstreaming of d s
M and just the acceptance of the fact that it
exists and it's not deviant and no people's you know,
child custody shouldn't be taken away from them because they
happen to enjoy a lot of leather. Is not saying that, hey,
(45:10):
you know what, you're going to have to do this
to ball gags for everybody. That's that's not the platform.
I think. In fact, though we do if by we
vanilla sex havers do have plenty to learn from the
b d s M community in terms of establishing trust
and establishing consent because before any of this stuff that
(45:32):
might frighten some of us, because before anything actually goes down,
there's a whole process there. You know, they're there their talks,
there are meals, there are walks in the park, there
are lots of I mean, there's a relationship established and
there's something to be set for that that is far
different from the kind of knee jerk sex that we
(45:56):
deem acceptable, which could be equally if not more damaging
in some ways. Yeah, and I mean in terms of
telling people what they can and can't do. I mean
that leads us to a group that's often underrepresented in
discussions about b DSM and in depictions of b d
s M, which is the community of black women or
women of color who enjoy race play, which is something
(46:16):
that a lot of people are wagging their fingers at
women for participating it, and it is very controversial and
complicated because of our own countries history of actual literal
slave master relationship between whites and blacks. This came up
when Justin Timberlake and Sierra released a video where he
was leading her around on a chain, and a lot
(46:38):
of people got very upset about those depictions. But the
one woman who Catherine Scott quoted, uh said I can't
do race play because I have people in my family
who had to submit to that where they had no choices.
It's too close to home for American black people. Um.
But there were other people quoted who were talking about like,
I know, it's I know, it's a little complicated. It
(47:00):
is then a little controversial, and I would never participate
in anything like this in you know, quote unquote real life,
but it's something that I do behind closed doors that
I just don't talk about. And it's the whole idea
that just because we shouldn't tell any woman in general
that she should not enjoy being a sub. No one
can really tell a person of color that she shouldn't
enjoy race play. It's another aspect of the b D
(47:22):
s M community that people can consent to. Well. I
think one of those people that Catherine Scott talked to
it might have been the woman you just quoted who said, Hey,
if I enjoy this, this doesn't mean that I want
to walk out on the street back into the Jim
Crow era, you know. There again, it's about differentiating sexual
(47:43):
fantasy and playing with taboo and deviance and all that
and what is what the rest of life? You know?
But I mean along these lines, there is a documentary
called Black Pervert coming out this year that's basically navig
dating where people of color fit into the b D
s M landscape, and it's just one of it. Will
(48:06):
it will be when it comes out, one of many
resources documentaries films about this topic, and Kristen and I
didn't even have time to really get into all of them.
We could go on and on and on about this,
but we can't because I don't think anyone wants to
listen to an eighteen hour podcast. But we wanted to
close with recommendations from stuff mom Never told you listeners
(48:29):
on places to go for more information, sources that they
themselves have found helpful. And this is coming from Facebook
because we posted before we did this record this podcast. Hey,
we're gonna be doing this b D s M podcast.
What do you think? Send us your sources? So for
further reading and listening. S and M one oh one
(48:51):
by Jay Wiseman has been quoted as a great resource.
The National Coalition of Sexual Freedom is an organization you
might want a google. Philip Miller and Molly Devin's Screw
the Roses Send Me to Thorn's has been mentioned by
a number of Facebook fans as well as in a
number of sources. Mimstress Matisse is a great resource. She
(49:12):
appears on Dan Savage's Savage Love podcast a Lot to
talk about b D s M. Also cited was the
podcast sex Nerd Sandra Nina Hartley, Stacy Newmar, and Clarice
Thorne in the book Perv by Jesse Barring also has
some good sources in there. Um, So we definitely appreciate
the recommendations. Yeah, and speaking of Clarice Thorne, I'm curious
(49:37):
to look at her recent book, The S and M Feminist,
because I'm sure there was a lot to digest in that.
So we want to hear from listeners now. I know
that there was a little bit of trepidation about us
talking about this because from people who are in the
b D s M community, because I think anytime, you know,
mainstream outlets want to approach b D s M, it's like,
(50:00):
oh no, what are they gonna say now? So we
hope that we did it justice and represented you as
as well as we could. But I know that there
was a lot of stuff that we couldn't talk about,
and there are probably lots of reactions people are having
about this topic, and let's start a conversation. Mom Stuff
at house stuff works dot Com is our email address.
(50:22):
You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast and
messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
to share with you when we come right back from
a quick break. I have one here from Maria. She says,
I really want to thank you ladies. I'm a twenty
six year old woman who dropped out of college. I
(50:43):
knew I wanted my degree and that I wanted to
go back to school, but I was really scared of
going back, but I found your podcast. I can say
you ladies have helped so much as I am back
in school getting my degree. My major is mathematics, and
listening to women in math, engineering, and science really help
me see that I can totally do this. Not only
that I'm doing much more than getting a degree, but
(51:06):
that I'm also helping set an example. Thank you. I
really love listening to the podcast and watching videos on YouTube.
You ladies have answered so many questions that I have
been scared to ask other women. I will let you,
ladies know when I'll be walking and thank you again
for motivating me and seeing getting my degree is totally
worth it. I can't wait to see the new things
I'm going to be learning, not just in school but
(51:28):
on the podcast. So congratulations on this major lifestep Maria,
and thank you for writing in Well. I've got a
let her here from c J in response to our
podcast on the history of fashion modeling, and c J writes,
I used to work for a fashion house and can
confirm a lot of what was said about modeling in
current times. It was my job to do castings, and
(51:48):
I can tell you that the models were considered less
like people and more like objects. Not only did your
body have to fit the clothes properly, but designers and
photographers would talk about your flaws in front of you,
as if you weren't present. As far as minorities, being
a black model has to be hard for the ego.
We thought really hard to employ this one black model
for a particular season. She was clearly the best candidate,
(52:09):
but there was such reluctance from the owner of the label.
We eventually convinced the boss to hire her, but at
the shoot the owner kept complaining that her hair was
quote too ethnic. Now when I see models on the
streets of New York, I have such respect. It takes
a lot to be a model, and although it may
seem glamorous, there is such a strength that must be
had to make it. So Thanks c J, and thanks
(52:31):
to everybody who has written into us, and also who
offered their B D s M sources and suggestions. Your
input makes such a difference always on the podcast, so
thank you, and again, if you want to email us,
Mom Stuff at house stuffworks dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcast
including this one with our sources so you can read along.
(52:54):
Head on over to Stuff Mom Never told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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