Link Digests – Page 3 – The History of BDSM

Link Digest, April 2023

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Apr 152023

Ketil Slagstad’s paper “Visualizing BDSM and AIDS Activism: Archiving Pleasures, Sanitizing History” explores the development of the Norwegian BDSM scene in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, particularly regarding the impact of HIV. Much as in the USA and UK, gay leathermen were stigmatized as the cause of the disease, and there were many arguments over BDSM’s place in feminism and socialism.
Anne O Nomis writes about recreating the salon of Theresa Berkeley, famed early 19th century professional dominant, for Sky TV’s Sex: A Bonkers History. This includes recreations of the Berkeley Horse, birch rods, cats-o-nine-tails, stinging nettles, canes, and other tools of the dominatrix’s trade.
Puritanism has waxed and waned in American society, and we’re currently seeing a rise of neo-Puritanism that is largely focused on the role of transgender people, but includes any non-heteronormative sexuality, from sex ed in schools to internet porn. On the American Sex podcast, Mike Stabile, of the Free Speech Coalition, talks about censorship and self-monitoring of the adult industry and how censorship comes down first and hardest on the queer and the kinky. Stabile also guests on the Watts the Safeword podcast on similar topics.

Link digest, March 2023

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Mar 162023

Slate magazine has an article of a woman’s recollection of how she joined a Playboy journalist to be his “ticket” to explore New York City’s sexual underworld, circa 1983. “…675 Hudson St. that night was the entry point to a narrow staircase descending to the dark basement entrance to the Hellfire Club. Referred to as “Little Flatiron,” the 1849 triangle building was a natural fit for storied sex clubs, like the Manhole and the Vault, where gays and straights mingled in the brick-lined vaults that crisscrossed underneath the building and extended under the street.”
The American Sex Podcast has an interview with Fetish Diva Midori, who compares and contrasts the American and Japanese BDSM subcultures and explains how they evolved independently.
The Leather Archives and Museum is screening a series of fetish/kink films, including Cruising, In the Realm of the Senses, Hellraiser and Belle de Jour.
For better or worse, online media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are how a lot of people learn about BDSM. When platforms don’t try to exclude BDSM content, they may also end up with a lot of harmful misinformation, like the idea that consensual non-consent means you give up safewords. Mashable has the story.

Link Digest, December 2022

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Dec 272022

The Baffler has a review of Jordan S. Carroll’s Reading the Obscene. This falls into the class of think piece called “The professional-managerial class (PMC) ruined everything (including sex).” The book argues that “Instead of seeing sex as the zone of rationalism suspended, it became the ultimate staging ground for a systematization of life in which everything could be bureaucratized. Thus were PMC erotics born, as a technocratic desexualization of sex itself.” I’m sure this critique would extend to modern BDSM. I’ve encountered this line of thought before, and always considered it unfair. The very PMC-nerdiness of BDSM is what keeps it from being exploitative. (See also “The PMC has sex” excerpt from Catherine Liu’s Virtue Hoarders.)
High fashion intermittently draws on BDSM/fetish for inspiration (like it does with everything else) and Trendhunter showcases 49 fashion magazine editorials that get their kink on. This shows that the aesthetic of BDSM is quite separate from the practice or ethics.
Mardi Gras magazine has an in depth look into the making of Preaching to the Perverted (1997).

Link digest, November 2022

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Nov 282022

Consent is, undeniably, an important part of BDSM, but it’s actually a far more complicated issue. The New Inquiry has an in-depth discussion of sexual consent, and how it can be a difficult thing when structural inequality is so pervasive in our society. (Check out the Consent Mixtape while you’re at it.)
Since the fate of Twitter is uncertain under the new management, I’ve been looking for a fall-back. Mastodon seemed promising, but for some reason there are no BDSM-themed servers. The fall of Switter, a sex worker-themed Mastodon server, may provide some insight.
From the 1980s, an interview with a British woman in fetish fashion for Skin Two magazine.
The Schlockmeisters Youtube channel reviews the other 1969 film version of Venus in Furs.

Link Digest, October 2022

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Oct 162022

Lash of the Penitentes (1936) is a post-Hays Code exploitation film. Producer Henry Revier put together actual documentary footage of religious practices in rural Mexico, sensationalized recreations of certain acts, and a mystery story based on the actual murder of a travel writer living in New Mexico. There are at least two versions, one of which showed a young woman being stripped naked and whipped. This is a classic example of anti-Catholicism being “the pornography of the Puritan”, to quote Richard Hofstadter.
Historia flagellantium (1700) by the Abbe Boileau is one of the classic texts about flagellation, concerning the improper relations between the Franciscan priest Cornelius Adriaensen and his secret, flagellant order of young women. It was preceded by another, anonymous book, The Historie of B. CORNELIS ADRIAENSEN, which also probed into the secret flagellant order of young women.
The Independent examines the literary and cultural legacy of the Marquis de Sade, now that his chateau has opened as a luxury hotel.

Link Digest, September 2022

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Sep 272022

Article on the history of the Carter/Johnson Memorial Library
The Marysue covers how health authorities are asking people to change their sexual practices in light of the new monkeypox virus.
Poly.land writes about the history of polyamorous and non-monogamous films.

Link Digest, August 2022

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Aug 202022

Research into Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and the dominatrix-ish costume of the title character lead me to an in-depth exploration on Scifist.net. The costume was designed by Ronald Cobb. He had only one film credit, but had a long career designing sexy, fetishistic costumes for cabaret shows at Murray’s Club in London in the 1950s.
The Projectionist Booth podcast has an in-depth exploration of The Duke of Burgundy (2014), including an interview with the director, Peter Strickland.
On the 20th anniversary of the landmark BDSM film Secretary, the BBC discusses what made this oddball film a surprise hit, and how it walked so Fifty Shades could run.
Kitty Stryker talks about queerness, BDSM and respectability politics.
Vintage Fetish Art has collected the artwork from various editions of the Marquis de Sade’s novel Justine, from 1799 to 1965.

Link Digest, July 2022

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Jul 172022

Kinbakunomicon has another translated Japanese article about bondage, and accompanying art, from a 1960 issue of Kitan Club.
Los Angeles magazine looks at how the LA BDSM scene has been affected by COVID and how it is recovering.
Russia Beyond profiles the Godzhi BDSM hotel in Moscow, one of many across Russia. It circumvents legal restrictions by listing rooms as “fitting rooms” for devices it rents out.
Lisa Duggan on Substack writes about the relationship between Lydia Laurenson (aka “S&M Feminist” Clarisse Thorn) and “computer engineer, Thielworld monarchist and neoreactionary luminary” Curtis Yarvin (aka “Mencius Moldbug”). “Whatever impact Laurenson may have had on Yarvin’s ideas about sex and gender, she certainly has not mitigated his devotion to Thielian techno-corporate monarchism.”
Dr. Mark Griffiths has been researching the more obscure corners of human sexuality for years, and his blog provides some insights on Nazi fetishism.

Link Digest, June 2022

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Jun 162022

The newly launched Zipper magazine has a feature article on “How the Pandemic Made Us Kinkier“.
Cornell University has an online exhibition on the making of On Our Backs magazine, the pioneering lesbian sex magazine in the early 80s.
Get Your Hands Dirty has an essay on the history of bootblacking, going back to our friend Hannah Cullwick, and the rise of bootblacking contests in the 1990s.
I had long thought Robert Yang’s Hurt Me Plenty was the only videogame to incorporate BDSM themes directly into the gameplay, but further research led to Mighty Jill Off, a platformer game that makes playing it an act of masochism, and Consensual Torture Simulator, a text-only game about a sadist negotiating with a masochist.
By 2022 standards, the nude photos published in Penthouse that cost Vanessa Williams her title as Miss America back in 1984 were a bit tame, and the controversy even more quaint. What I didn’t realize was that the images had her in black leather boots, harness, cuffs and collars, in other words, BDSM gear. Penthouse has always been a little racier than Playboy (within the constraints of the heterosexual male gaze), and would tiptoe onto the side of fetish and kink imagery. Perhaps that was what pushed the pageant into de-crowning Williams. A black Miss America was already a stretch, but one who associated with deviant sexuality was too much.
My interview on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast introduced me to another historical figure with at least an interest in kink: Christian apologist and fantasy writer C.S. Lewis, best known for the Narnia books. He was one of those individuals whose sexuality was hard to pin down; was he closeted homosexual, closeted bisexual, asexual, or just upper-class British? Regardless, he did have an interest, if only theoretical, in the idea of whipping beautiful women, including Lily Greeves, the sister of his friend Arthur.

Link Digest, May 2022

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May 242022

Slate magazine considers the way sex is depicted in current TV shows like Euphoria, And Just Like That and the like. “It’s as if the wide availability of sex—and porn—and frank discussions of various sexual lifestyles have all combined to render purely hedonistic or transgressive approaches to it as retro or passé or even quaint.”
The Betwixt the Sheets podcast has a fascinating look at medieval sexuality, which was quite different from what most might think. There was a lot of discussion about “sodomy”, which then could be defined as any sexual activity other than coitus for the purposes of procreation. It included manual stimulation of the self or other persons, and “femoral intercourse”, i.e. a penis pressed between a person’s thighs. This was also when women were seen as the more sexually active gender, not men. It shows that our modern views of sexuality are not universal.
Evie Lupine provides a video update on the BDSM-related court cases in the news, such as Arnie Hammer and Marilyn Manson situations.
Gayle Rubin speaks on the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1970s and 1980s in a presentation recorded at Cornell in 2022.
The Washington Post mused on the juxtaposition of Balenciaga’s BDSM/fetish themed fashion show being held on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Is money the ultimate fetish?

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