Word: bdsm
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...this point, we should make clear that the BDSM these researchers study is consensual. No one in the fledgling BDSM movement argues in favor of actual slavery or rape (though eroticized simulations of such crimes are common). Among the BDSM clubs and support groups, all the reputable ones preach the BDSM mantra: safe, sane and consensual. "Like every other subculture, we have a fringe, an element that doesn't follow the rules," says Susan Wright of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, a BDSM advocacy group formed in 1997 that claims 34 member organizations representing 10,000 people. "But every...
More specific guidelines--always check bound limbs to ensure circulation, for instance--have developed over the decades, she says. BDSM has a rich history. In the 19th century, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing famously applied a French literary term--le sadisme, which described the sexually violent writing style of the Marquis de Sade--to mental patients who exhibited an "association of lust and cruelty." Less famously, Krafft-Ebing named masochism after the bawdy novels of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose most famous work, Venus in Furs (1870), describes the willing enslavement of a dreamy man by a beautiful widow...
More recently, the Internet has helped connect curiosity seekers with BDSM organizations. Doc and Surri, for instance, help lead a North Carolina group that started less than a year ago but already has nearly 700 people on its e-mail list. The calendar of BDSM social events now includes gatherings for every imaginable subgroup--everything from the International Deaf Leather Contest (scheduled in Dallas in August) to the Black Rose convention in the Washington area, a yearly weekend of workshops and parties that draws...
Congemi has a point about the law. It is a bedrock principle of common law that consent is no defense against assault charges, and many prosecutors see BDSM activities like flogging as assault. In the past half-century, many SM participants have been successfully prosecuted. But while most appellate judges have upheld those convictions, a 1999 New York State ruling is altering the landscape. In that case, an appeals court overturned the conviction of Oliver Jovanovic, a Columbia University grad student who had been sentenced to 15 years for kidnapping and sexually abusing an undergrad. Before the alleged assault...
...knotty issues swirling around BDSM, consent was the most difficult for me to understand. No means no, but does yes always mean yes? If you ask someone to pass a flame across your genitals or tie you up for hours or tell you what to eat, are you in your right mind? I pressed Surri repeatedly on these issues. Finally, after a robust drag on her cigarette (which she had asked Doc's permission to smoke), she answered, "What we worry about when we look at our own community and try to make sure abuse isn't happening is whether...