The History of BDSM

• Filmmaker Magazine has an interview with Angelo Madsen, director of a new documentary on the late Fakir Musafar.
• From the Internet Archive:
  • Rubber Life magazine, 1974
  • Stanton Archive catalog, 1994
  • Scan of the booklet that accompanied a CD recording of Dave Stevens interviewing Betty Page, including a transcript. Published 2001
  • Scans of a 1956 FBI memorandum regarding “Interstate Transportation of Obscene Matters”, with mentions of Bettie Page.

• The Official Bettie Page podcast interviews Jane Garrett, author of a new biography of fetish artist, photographer and publisher John “Willie” Coutts
• Authentically Kinky interviews Fetlife founder John Baku.
• Youtuber Trash Discourse discusses the new (to me, at least) kink of forced masculinization, or “forcemasc”.
• From the Internet Archive
  • Youtuber Evie Lupine has had many struggles with Youtube over her kink education content. That’s why she has archived her videos.
  • Claudia Varrin’s 2002 A guide to New York’s fetish underground
  • West German, multi-lingual BDSM magazine Madame X #18, published 1985
  • A 1927 psychoanalysis journal, which includes “A Tentative Formulation of the Origin of Sadomasochism”
  • Sexual Deviance, by Anthony Storr, published 1964, includes a chapter on sadomasochism
  • The Boarding-School, an anonymous pamphlet of Ff corporal punishment erotica, published 1989 by Ryder Publishing, UK. (No illustrations)

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• The re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States may have far-reaching impacts on the production and distribution of distribution of pornography in the USA, particular kinky material. The US Supreme Court, now right-leaning, might overturn the 1972 Miller decision that protected material as art.
• The Sex and Psychology podcasts interviews Esmee Louise James, author of the new book Kinky History, about the myth of the Victorian vibrator, and how the true history of the vibrator is actually stranger.
• Richard Perez Seves has previously published biographies of kinky artists Charles Guyette, Eric Stanton, and Gene Bilbrew, and his magnum opus is his new biography of John “Willie” Coutts, artist, photographer, and publisher of Bizarre magazine.
• The Nation interviews Anna Poletti, the author of the new novel Hello, World?, about a pair of people who, displaced from their former lives, enter a dominant-submissive relationship. In particular, it talks about how their genders and political backgrounds influenced their kink (e.g. the sub is a man from a privileged background in Orban’s Hungary). It also comes a little too close to the idea of bdsm-as-therapy.
• Archive.org is back online, thankfully, and here are a few new finds:
  • Scan of Carter Stevens Presents Fetish Video Review Vol. 1 No. 03 (1994)
  • Borrow Valerie Steele’s Fetish: fashion, sex and culture (1996)
  • Scan of Shiny Rubberist No.11 (1992)

• Dan Young is doing a Zoom talk BDSM: The History of a Secret Culture on September 29th, 2pm CDT. It will reference a lot of my own work as well as that of Stephen K Stein. Register at Forbidden Tickets.
• Etsy has joined the list of platforms that built their followings hosting BDSM/fetish/kink/queer content (e.g. Tumblr) and then banned it so they could attract investors.
• Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. is a 2024 documentary about the production and reception of Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play. Currently streaming on HBO and Crave.
• The Ukrainian city of Lviv not only has a statue dedicated to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs, it has a themed cafe and hotel in his name too. Cafe menu, hotel, tourist listing, merch
• More finds on Archive.org (you may need to register to read some of these):
  • Vincent Andrews published Synopsis of Homosexual publications surrounding Old Guard, which includes scans of articles from Drummer magazine in the 1970s and 1980s.
  • Michael Grumley’s book Hard Corps: Studies in Leather and Sado Masochism with photos by Ed Gallucci (Penguin, 1977), which provides a look at the pre-HIV leather scene.
  • Gilles Deleuze’s 1989 book Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty, which takes a high-level, philosophical look at masochism and Sacher-Masoch’s work.
  • Concertina: The Lives and Loves of a Dominatrix by Susan Winemaker, 2007.

• Messy Nessy Chic profiles L. Robert and Nativa Richard, who were pioneers of commercialized fetish/BDSM in 1920s and 1930s France, under the name “Yva Richard”. They started in 1914, just before the Great War started, and made their own leather wear and fetish photography, often with Nativa as the model. They operated both as a storefront in Paris and as mail order. The German occupation of France in 1943 ended their glorious run.
• More Archive.org finds:
  • John Samson’s 1977 documentary Dressing for Pleasure, which gives a glimpse of the 1970s UK leather fetish culture.
  • A PDF of the 2002 Mod Con: The secret world of extreme body modification, which looks into the underground of people who have consensually been castrated and other heavy body mods.
  • The documentary Bloodsisters (1995) about lesbian sadomasochists in San Francisco.
• In The New Republic, they talk about the notorious “Project 2025” plan and particularly its emphasis on how “pornography should be outlawed.” The document doesn’t define pornography, but in practice it refers to anything that causes the “normalization” of “non-normative gender expression and identity among young people”. The neo-Puritan element is very strong in American politics right now, and I believe it poses a dire threat to not just queer people and abortion/contraception rights, but kinky people too.
• XBIZ reports how speakers on the National Conservatism Conference were quite explicit that banning pornography for minors is a step towards more restrictions down the road.
• The CARAS Reading Group: History and Theory of Kink and BDSM starts on August 4th, 2024. This will be a monthly meeting on Google Meet. Free for CARAS members, $100 US for others.
• The CineKink film festival is coming on August 1st, 2024.