Dec 172019
- Is BDSM as a culture losing its trangressive edge? When Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP is selling a $1,350 bondage set, just in time for Christmas, one has to wonder. (CNN, Daily Beast)
- Fashion magazine has a short overview of back-and-forth between the BDSM fringe and the mainstream of fashion and culture.
- The Sexing History podcast has an extended interview with Marabel Morgan, author of The Total Woman in 1973, which might have influenced some ideas on maledom-femsub relationships.
- Tristan Taormino’s Sex Out Loud Podcast has an interview with Pup Amp, host of the Watts the Safeword Youtube channel. He talks about trying to do sex positive education on Youtube while struggling with the platform’s arbitrary and opaque system for regulating sexual content.
- Likewise, the Tom of Finland Foundation has been struggling Instagram and Facebook for posting about erotic art, says LA Weekly.
- There’s always a sadomasochistic subtext to the original James Bond novels, often attributed to young Ian Fleming’s experiences in the flagellant culture of Eton. This is further supported by a collection of intimate letters between Ian Fleming and his wife Ann, says the Irish Times. “‘I long for you even if you whip me because I love being hurt by you and kissed afterwards,’ Ann once wrote to Ian.” (We should be careful about reading such statements too literally.)
- Vox has a roundtable review of the controversial Slave Play, a stage drama that references raceplay and BDSM in the context of race and history.
- Honi Soit asks some difficult questions about sex positivity and edgeplay. “…sex acts that involve scenarios in which women are degraded and abused are widely free from criticism within the framework of sex-positivity; we would be quick to condemn people who expressed bigoted views, but yet we give bigotry accolades when it is eroticised.”
