Word: sm
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...linguistic distinction between S&M and SM may seem tiny, but the pop-culture, peep-show version of S&M has little to do with the real lives of those who practice SM (which is why sexologists who study sadomasochism have now also adopted the shorter abbreviation). S&M is Madonna in kinky outfits, Anne Rice chapters that run to the louche--even a recent Dannon ad featuring a woman in a French-maid uniform. Such S&M imagery has become so common that our astonishment at Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of leather and pain 20 years ago now seems...
...halting dabblers who tee-hee their way through spankings, hoping to paddle excitement into their marriage--know it's still taboo. (After all, if it weren't, it would lose its power to excite.) To reconcile the icons with the actual practice, I spent several weeks recently talking to SM practitioners around the U.S.--in New York City and San Francisco, yes, but also in North Carolina and New Mexico. Whether they were nervous novices or experienced dungeon masters leading some of the nation's 250 SM organizations, virtually all of them asked for anonymity. One man said...
Given the silence, measuring SM's popularity is not a precise business, especially since it blurs into the larger category of BDSM, or bondage-discipline-sadomasochism. A 1990 Kinsey Institute report said researchers estimate that 5% to 10% of Americans occasionally engage in SM sex. "The lighter end of BDSM is penetrating bedrooms across America. It's restraint on bedposts, it's spanking, it's fantasy play--and it's all fairly common," says Barnaby Barratt, president-elect of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists. In his quarter-century of private practice as a therapist in southeastern...
Some couples experiment a few times but return to what serious SM-ers call "vanilla" sex. Others become more deeply involved in the SM scene; they use SM props or fantasies every time they have sex. The scene has become so large and varied that it encompasses the rich farrago of coupling practices known as BDSM, which includes not only SM--the erotic enjoyment of inflicting and/or receiving pain--but also BD (bondage/discipline) and DS (domination/submission). BD usually involves physical restraint and a punishment/reward setup (say, Nurse Ratched with a patient). DS relationships are often as emotional as they...
...tell you that they want anesthetic when they go to the dentist as well as you do. What's different is what they use pain for." BDSM-ers like to use athletic analogies: marathoners endure the agony of the last miles so they can savor the accomplishment of finishing. SM, they say, is no different...