In researching the history of consensual sadomasochism, there isn’t a comprehensive body of knowledge to draw upon, no established canon of reference works, no Journal of Sadomasochistic Studies.

Instead, I have data points: case studies, books (often anonymous), anecdotes, images, etc. I’ll admit that sometimes what is and isn’t a data point is decided on the “I know it when I see it” principle. Connecting those points requires a certain amount of guesswork and judgment calls.

For example: Dr. Samuel Johnson, English man of letters of the Enlightenment, and his relationship with his close friend Hester Thrale.  The latter’s posthumous effects, sold at auction in 1823, included a padlock and fetters. Thrale identified it as “Johnson’s padlock, committed to my care in the year 1768.” In 1767 or 1768, Thrale wrote that “our stern philosopher Johnson trusted me… with a secret far dearer to him than his life”. On other occasions , she wrote that “this great, this formidable Doctor Johnson kissed my hand, ay & my foot too upon his knees!” and quoted him saying, “a woman has such power between the ages of twenty five and forty five, that she may tie a man to a post and whip him if she will.” Finally, there is a reference in  Thrale’s journal to “the fetters & padlocks [that] will tell posterity the truth”, and Johnson’s own journal entry, dated 24 March 1771, about “Insane thoughts on fetters and hand-cuffs.” (in Latin) (Pg.387-388)

Johnson scholars have debated the exact meanings of these items and phrases. The more conservative, such as Peter Martin in his Samuel Johnson: A Biography (Belknap Press, 2008) say that the “suggestion that Johnson may have taken a perverse sexual pleasure in such confinement has been discredited” (pg.388) and dismisses “the wild theory that Johnson was a flagellant demanding to be scourged and manacled.” (pg.389)

Johnson was a troubled man, suffering from severe depression (he called it “the black dog”), the twitches and ticks that would today be diagnosed as Tourette’s syndrome, and the habitual counting of obsessive compulsive disorder. (A trait he shared with the Marquis de Sade.)  He lived in fear of going mad, and much of the time he spent at Thrale’s house was as a patient of an informal retreat for therapy. Martin argues that the implements of confinement were more symbolic than literal, and that the confinement to his room at Thrale’s house was just a way of keeping Johnson calm in his worst moments, as he requested. (Pg. 388-390) In other words, it wasn’t a sex thing, and therefore should not be considered a sadomasochistic relationship.

I think that was an over-hasty assessment by Martin. Other scholars don’t dispute the facts but question the subjective quality of Thrale and Johnson’s relationship. Jeffrey Meyer’s Samuel Johnson: The Struggle
(Basic Books, 2008) reconsiders Katherine Balderston’s notes on Thrale’s letters from 1949. Says Meyer:

Despite the overwhelming evidence of Johnson’s darkest secret, his modern biographers have not been able to reconcile his obsession with their exalted image of the great moralist and stern philosopher.  [...] Christopher Hibbert (1971) was cautious and indecisive. Though Hester [Thrale] had said “do not quarrel with your Governess for not using the Rod enough,” Hibbert wrote, in an awkward style that expresses his own uneasiness: “whether or not the rod was actually used, whether or not Johnson’s fantasies [sic] about manacles and fetters were erotic and masochistic in their nature, it is impossible now to say.”

[Pg.6-7]

Other scholars, if they acknowledged the data at all, squeamishly said it was too slender to draw conclusions. This makes me wonder how much evidence about various historical figures’ sexual peccadilloes have been lost by neglect or intent by prejudiced scholars.

Meyers writes:

Johnson submitted to chains and handcuffs, and had his door padlocked, when he felt the onset of madness. But it would have been quite impossible for the tiny Hester, even with the help of several manservants, to restrain and shackle a crazed, rampaging and uncommonly strong Johnson. He had bought these implements to restrain himself during period of madness, he was depressive, not manic, and never had to employ them. But he did actually use them in the closet drama of his ritualistic whippings.

[Pg.360]

Thrale annotated Johnson’s comment about a woman making a man her slave by saying “this he knew of him self was literally and strictly true I am sure.” (Pg. 361) Johnson also told his biographer Boswell: “madmen… are eager for gratifications to soothe their minds, and divert their attention from the mistery which they suffer; but when they grow very ill, pleasure is too weak for them, and they seek pain.” (Pg.361-362)

Much like Sacher-Masoch, Johnson was definitely a highly demanding and controlling masochist, and much like Aurora Rumelin,  Hester Thrale struggled to manage the boundaries between her own life and the demands of her ostensible “slave”. Even when Thrale was dealing with household renovations, sick children and a mother dying of breast cancer, Johnson sent her messages that alternated between grovelling and emotional blackmail, like:

It’s essential to remember our agreement. I wish, my protector, that your authority will always be clear to me, and that you will keep me in that form of slavery which you know so well how to make blissful. [Pg.363]

It’s well established that whipping was nearly universal in homes and schools of this time: Thrale beat her own children frequently, and Johnson had been on both ends of the rod as a student and as a teacher. Why men like Johnson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau became masochistic flagellants, and so many of their contemporaries didn’t, remains a mystery. Johnson was troubled by feelings of sing and guilt through his life, and it’s likely that bondage and flagellation, if only of a mild and largely symbolic nature, gave him at least momentary peace, both satisfying and punishing his sexual desires. Of course, a conservative could argue that Thrale’s reference to “using the Rod” was figurative, not literal.

Johnson’s use of “slavery” is also intriguing, as he was a staunch proponent of abolitionism. Perhaps he saw in slavery, as much as he despised it, a reflection of the abjectness he felt throughout his life, and a confinement that quieted him, and therefore used it as a metaphor.

There’s also the question of whether Johnson and Thrale’s relationship was sexual. There’s no indication that intercourse occurred between them, nor is it clear what Johnson felt when Thrale ministered to him: sensual pleasure or masochistic pleasure? Our modern definition of sex still privileges heterosexual coitus, and other bodily practices that do not fit it may not be considered sexual at all. In this relationship, you can see both a desire for a mother figure and for the physical sensations of confinement and flagellation, neither of which necessarily produce genital arousal.

I’ve completed the first draft of chapter 3, which covers the Enlightenment period, and I’m not sure how much, if anything, of Johnson’s story to include. This aspect of his life was only known long after his death, and does not turn up in the literature on flagellation as does the Madame Lambercier incident in Rousseau’s Confessions. Perhaps a paragraph or two, next to the Rousseau section.

I’m surprised at how much material from AMC’s Mad Men I find for this blog. First there was protagonist Don Draper’s masochistic sessions with a prostitute who slaps his face. Then there was the episode “Mystery Date”, which showed that Don was trying to be faithful to his wife, while a toxic cocktail of lust, fear and rage boiled inside him. Meanwhile, other characters had their own reactions to sexual violence.

And now, in “Man With A Plan”, Don goes full on dominant. Since the season began, he’s been having an affair with his downstairs neighbour Sylvia, the wife of a heart surgeon. While Don’s been lacking in sales meetings, he makes up for it by expertly playing on Sylvia’s Catholic guilt, setting her up for their trysts in the maid’s room.

He overhears Sylvia having a fight with her husband, and avoids them. Later, Sylvia calls him up and says, “No one else will do.” This comes at a time when Don has been feeling unwanted and frustrated, and always has a need for female attention. To get that, he controls women. He meets up with Sylvia in the hotel room he chose, and begins a serious session of dominance. Sylvia obeys, though not to the letter.

“I want you to get on your hands and knees and find my shoes.”

“Now undress yourself, and get back into bed.”

“Don’t ask any more questions. take off your dress.”

“You exist for my pleasure.”

This is how Don likes his women: somewhere else, waiting for him, ready for sex when he gives the word. He tells her not to answer the phone, then calls her, prompting her to masturbate. Later, he sends her a harlot-red dress. As in his professional life, Don exerts control by withholding and unavailability, strategic absence.

And then it all comes to an end. Sylvia just says, “Safeword. It’s been fun. I’m going back to my husband now. Oh, and I need a lift.” Separated from her husband, she could have read a trashy novel about getting ravished by a sheik or something. Instead she had one last fling with Don and got it out of her system.

The Don-Sylvia scenes call back to the Don’s affair with Bobbi Barret, who practices her own brand of strategic masochism to manipulate men. In both situations, Don thinks he’s Mr. alpha male dominant with a woman who’ll do anything, but the women actually know what they’re doing and are topping him from the bottom.

We know that Don hates it when a woman has the upper hand over him, when a woman uses him. The difference is that when Bobbi turns the table on him, he gets angry and leaves her tied to a bed. In “Mystery Date”, when his fever dream of Andrea calls him “sick”, he dreams that he rages and strangles her to death. With Sylvia, he just collapses internally and does as she says. “Please….” he says softly; for a guy like Don, this is crying and kissing her feet.

But it’s over for Don, and he is alone and powerless again. His consolation prize, his beautiful, smart, sexy wife, only has eyes for the recently deceased Bobby Kennedy.

As a handling of sadomasochistic dynamics in a mainstream TV series, this is actually pretty good. Sylvia enjoys her kinky games with Don for a day or two, then decides that it isn’t fun anymore and firmly puts an end to it. She doesn’t play on her Catholic guilt and get moralistic, condemning Don as “sick” or “cruel”, or play the victim. She makes the mature, adult decision that this just isn’t working for her, and she wants to patch things up with her husband.

Don’s dominance collapses like a paper tiger, and suddenly he’s that unwanted Depression-era boy he’s been fleeing most of his life. It’s a good example of the subtle interplay of dominance and submissive, it’s own kind of Hegelian dialectic. One theory is that power goes to the person who is least invested in the transaction. Usually, that’s Don, or at least that is the carefully crafted mask he wears. In this case, he’s the more desperate, the more needy, using Sylia’s obedience to prop up his own sagging ego.

Audio of my presentation on the history of erotic slavery, recorded at Vancouver GRUE 2011

The audio of my presentation on the history of BDSM at the Vancouver GRUE 2012

Baatz, Simon. For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago. HarperCollins, 2008 Amazon

I wish there were more case studies to examine in this field. It’s rare to find a documented sadomasochistic relationship in the pre-modern era; I shudder to think how easily the Munby-Cullwick papers could have been lost. Sometimes one must make do with what one can find. In this case, there’s the case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb who probably would have been remembered as eccentrics if they hadn’t kidnapped and murdered a teenage boy, basically just to prove they could.

After their capture for the murder, the two men were thoroughly examined by physicians, neurologists and psychiatrists, who couldn’t agree on a diagnosis. Eventually they were found competent to stand trial. Their examinations and testimonies revealed both had vivid fantasy lives.

Richard, the dominant of the pair,  imagined himself as a Fantomas-like master criminal (though until the murder plot, he and Nathan engaged in petty arson, vandalism and theft) who could commit daring escapades and evade the authorities with ease, becoming famous in the process. His fantasy extended to what would happen if he was captured, showing a narcissistic and masochistic side.

And such was his notoriety that if he were to be caught and placed in prison, he would attract a crowd of spectators who would simultaneously admire and pity him. The prison guards had whipped and beaten him, he imagined, and as he stood in his cell, bruised and blood, dressed in old, ragged clothes, a group of onlookers, mostly young girls, regarded him through the prison bars with a mixture of fascination, awe, pity, and admiration. “I was abused, but it was a very pleasant though,” Richard said; “the punishment inflicted on me in jail was pleasant; I enjoyed being looked at through the bars, because I was a famous criminal.”

[Pg.44]

This bears a striking resemblance to one of Lovelace’s fantasies in Clarissa. The rake fancies himself omnipotent, but even if captured, he is still beloved by the crowd, and the courtroom is filled with teary-eyed women.

Nathan, the submissive, had his own complex fantasy life:

He imagined himself as a slave, handsome, intelligent, and strong, the strongest man in the world, who had earned the gratitude of the king by saving his life. The kind had offered Nathan his freedom, but Nathan preferred to remain in servitude, protecting the king and saving him from his enemies. When the king chose a slave to fight on his behalf, Nathan was always his choice, and in his battles Nathan was the victor, effortlessly vanquishing hundreds of fighters determined to kill him.

[...]

The fantasy had an enduring central narrative– a powerful slave serving a grateful king– but varied in its details. In one version, the king had first discovered Nathan as a young boy, beaten and abused by slave drivers; he had rescued the boy from neglect and poverty and had made him a member of the royal household. In time Nathan himself had come to possess slaves, despite his own condition of servitude– he marked his slaves by branding a crown on the inner calf of each slave’s leg.

The stronger his feelings for Richard Loeb, the more Richard appropriated the role of the king in Nathan’s fantasy. Richard, as the king, might issue any command, for any reason, at any time, and Nathan would have no choice but to obey. But Nathan had reserved for himself the role of a strong, good-looking, powerful slave whose servitude was more apparent than real, dependent on his own acquiescence, and liable to be dissolved at any moment. It was a curiously contradictory fantasy, one that allowed Nathan to be both submissive and dominant; it gave over authority and power to the king while providing Nathan himself with potency and virility.

[Pg.45-46]

Nathan had a sadistic side too. When he and Richard were planning the kidnapping and murder, he talked about:

One of his [Nathan's] most vivid fantasies, he explained, had always been the image of a gang of German soldiers stripping the clothes off an attractive French girl and raping her while she was tied with ropes to a kitchen table. Sometimes in his fantasy, Nathan was the commanding officer who stood to one side and watched as his men raped the girl; on other occasions he would participate in the rape. If they were to kidnap and kill a child, therefore, they should abduct a young girl; it would give him enormous pleasure, he told Richard, if he could rape her before they killed her.

[Pg.61]

Richard, far more invested in the crime as an intellectual exercise than as a violent act, put his foot down. The kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks involved no sexual violation.

If Leopold and Loeb weren’t killers because of their homosexuality, were they killers because of their kinky fantasies? I think the two men killed as a result of their complex power games, but more generally their sociopathy and lack of empathy. In Nathan’s case, his slave fantasy let him experience a highly liminal state of omnipotence without responsibility.

During your time with the sisters, you gave up all possessions—your hair, which had to be shorn every month, an audiotape sent by your parents, even photographs. How does this relate to the fusion of love and pain?

The Missionaries of Charity set out to live like the poor they serve. We each had two sets of clothes, which we’d wash by hand every day in buckets. We ate rotting vegetables and stale bread that we’d begged from wholesale grocers. We slept in common dormitories, without any privacy, on thin mattresses we’d made ourselves. Living poorly day by day convinces you that life is hard. For a Missionary of Charity, ideal love was self-sacrificing, even to the practice of corporal penance.

Your first session of self-flagellation is imprinted in my mind: “My knees shook. I took the bunch of knotted cords into my hands. From Sister Jeanne’s stall, I heard the beating sounds, one, two, three. . . . I swung harder. The skin of my lower thighs turned red, then red with white streaks as I hit harder.”

When I took that rope whip into my hands, I was scared, I was excited, I hoped that I was on my way to conquering my selfishness and becoming a holy person. When you visit the homes and shrines of various saints, you often see hair shirts or whips or spiked chains on display. This is a religion in which nearly every house of worship, classroom, and private home has as its most prominent feature the image of a bloodied, tortured man. We were taught that wearing spiked chains and beating ourselves allowed us to share in his work of redemption. I know it doesn’t make much sense when you say it just like that, but within that entire system it had its own weird logic.

I’m reminded of Hannah Cullwick and her nun-like devotion to her labours, based on her own private value system. Is this masochism? Of a kind.

The problem with this kind of thinking is what happens when you are in a position to impose it upon others, who have no choice in their conditions. Subsequent investigations have shown that her mission provided a standard of care that would be intolerable in any non-religious institution, and she avoided modern medicine. She followed a medieval line of thought that the soul in the afterlife was all that mattered, not the body in the moral world.

I didn’t even get to subjects like the Hellfire Club. It’s become apparent that this book can’t be an encyclopedic work. It has to be a story, and that means deciding what is and isn’t relevant, and removing the latter, sometimes ruthlessly.

Onward. The next chapter is about Orientalism, and covers centuries from the expulsion of Muslims from Spain in 1492, to Babary Coast white slavery, to the erotics of slavery in 19th century literature, art and sculpture.

After dwelling on this project for the past eight years, I’m also thinking a bit about what would come after this. This isn’t the only book I want to write, nor even the only book on BDSM. Some ideas: a non-fiction book about Story of O, the “threat porn” idea about the use of porn as propaganda (e.g. PETA), a more forward-looking book on the future of the BDSM subculture (will it follow a similar trajectory to gays or transgenders, or a different path?)

The following is a copy of an email I sent to Pinterest after they removed one of the images (replicated above) from my BDSM History board.

To whom it may concern:

On April 25, 2013, I received an email informing me that one of the images in my Pinterest account had been removed. The explanation was, “The reason is, it looks like the pin may have had nudity on it.”

The image in question was created and distributed by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and features actor Jensen Ackles nude and kneeling in such a way that his arms and hands obscure his genitals, wearing chains and with a whip on the floor. The copy reads,  “Whips and chains belong in the bedroom, not in the circus.”

PETA has a long history of using sexually suggestive or explicit imagery in ads and publicity stunts to advance its animal rights cause, though many have questioned the efficacy of this tactic. I chose this image to illustrate PETA’s use of sadomasochistic imagery, part of a recurring trend of sadomasochistic imagery being used in persuasive media such as advertising and propaganda. This is part of my historical research.

A cursory search of “peta” on Pinterest will display numerous other examples of PETA’s advertising, featuring nude or nearly nude men and women (mostly the latter) in sexually suggestive images. This is in addition to countless other pins featuring nude or nearly nude adults in sexually suggestive or explicit settings.

I am at a loss as to why this particular image in question was removed. The only way it differs in degree or kind from many other images on Pinterest is that it features a nude male in a vulnerable position. Am I to understand that an unclothed man is somehow more nude, or the wrong kind of nude, compared to an unclothed woman? Even if the people are posed in such a way that their genitals are not visible?

I understand the necessity of enforcing rules regarding sexually explicit imagery on a service such as Pinterest. However, I do not understand the logic of this particular instance of enforcement, and I do not consider this removal to be just or fair or consistent with the content of Pinterest.

Please explain to me why this particular image is not permitted. I have attached a copy.

Examples of other PETA ads found on Pinterest.

Photo courtesy of CreativNooky

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