- A blog of vintage damsel in distress images.
- Whipping as a treatment for depression. (Take this one with a whole shaker of salt.)
- Interview with Steve English, founder of Amsterdam-based DeMask.
Jan 162017
Dec 192016
- The Kinkycast has an interview with Colin Rowntree of Wasteland.com, one of the earliest BDSM-oriented websites and porn producers, dating back to 1994.
- The Advocate has a photo tour of NYC’s kinky gay world.
- Glamour magazine says BDSM people are “consent experts“.
- The Geek Anthropologist on Fifty Shades of Grey, Consumerism and BDSM: Selling Subversive Identities
Nov 152016
- Debunking the Myth that “Fifty Shades” caused a BDSM revolution
- Lee Harrington’s Passion and Soul podcast has an interesting discussion of various models and methods of consent, including the familiar SSC, RACK, and PRICK, but also the “cruising” model as practice by gay men, in which consent is negotiated by breaking norms of eye contact.
- Sex negative Amendment 2 coming in Georgia, by which any group discussing sexuality, such as BDSM educational or social groups, might have to pay “assessments” to the state.
- Kink.com and other adult producers are protesting the condom-mandating Proposition 60 in California
- Photographers upset by “Ask First” stickers at Folsom Street Fair
- The podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You had a trilogy of episodes on kink: the Many Lives of Bettie Page, BDSM 101, and The Professional Dominatrix. Also a blog post on historical whipping women.
- Back in 2012, Catherine Scott began a lengthy series of blog posts on BDSM from a feminist perspective in Bitch magazine.
Oct 152016
- Belier Press is publishing Possibilities, a massive collection of the photography of John Coutts, better known as John Willie, publisher of the classic Bizarre magazine. “Informative Text, including additional Biographical Information about the Photographer, Copious Notes, and Valuable Advice for Serious Collectors”
- For those men whose sexual coming-of-age occurred before the Internet era, there was a certain rite of passage involving going to adult bookstores. gives us a taste of what that vanished era was like, especially for the kinky. “I bought a Swedish nudes magazine to show my friends, but I also bought three BDSM magazines that day.”
- During my first time in New York City, my hosts and I talked about going to La Nouvelle Justine, a BDSM-themed restaurant, but didn’t go. I don’t know how long that lasted, but there was a SM-themed supper club in NYC a few years later, La Maison de Sade, which lasted from c.1999 to 2001. The site also has a review of a 1998 party, SMack.
- My approach to BDSM comes from the humanities, but the STEM fields do their own valuable work. The Science of BDSM has an extensive bibliography on books and journal articles.
- Macho Sluts, an anthology of lesbian BDSM stories by Patrick Califia (then known as Pat), was a groundbreaking work. Carolyn Bronstein’s essay “The Political Uses of Lesbian Romance Fiction: Reading Patrick Califia’s Macho Sluts as a Response to 1980s Anti-Pornography Feminism” provides historical context.
- Rebel Circus has a slide show and short history of Bettie Page.
Sep 212016
- Profile of Henry Kenneth Bulmer, who wrote a series of exploitation novels concerning antebellum slavery, under the pen name of Clint Rockman. This was a sub-genre of novel popular in the 1970s but didn’t last into the 1980s.
- Discussion of the character Iron Bull as a positive depiction of a dominant in the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition, compared to Venus in Furs and Fifty Shades of Grey.
- Advocate’s slideshow on LGBTQ people of color in the leather/festish scene.
- Nine of the most iconic retro BDSM illustrators
- The Rise of BDSM (Sub)culture and Its (Dis)contents: A Literature Review, by Ying-Chao Kao
Aug 172016
- A brief video on the brief history of kittenplay, which appears to be a young and purely internet-based sub-subculture
- Portland, Oregon’s new BDSM-themed club and coffee shop, the Moonfyre Cafe
- The first 10 minutes of a presentation on the kinky origins of comic book superheroine Wonder Woman. The main takeaway is that all descendants of the creator’s family are under a gag order from DC Comics/Warner Bros. not to talk about anything that isn’t already published.
- Remember Second Life? The BDSM scene in that virtual world is still thriving.
- Measure for Measure wasn’t Shakespeare’s only kinky play. There’s a lot in The Taming of the Shrew too.
- More on the lesbian/feminist struggles over SM in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
- Short bit on Victorian flagellation.
Jul 162016
Jun 152016
- A Brief History of the Dominatrix, not terribly deep.
- Dominatrix imagery in fashion photography, also not terribly deep.
- Ever wonder what happened to the Vault, the Mineshaft and other BDSM bars and clubs? Now they’re restaurants you probably can’t afford to eat at.
- An in-depth essay on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Venus in Furs.
- The Political Uses of Lesbian Romance Fiction: Reading Patrick Califia’s Macho Sluts as a Response to 1980s Anti-Pornography Feminism
- History of leather women’s groups in San Francisco
- An essay on Wonder Woman creator and bondage fan William Moulton Marston
- Bet you didn’t know that in 1972, Bernie Sanders wrote an essay about men and women having sadomasochistic fantasies.
