The History of BDSM – Page 27 – Documenting my research in the history of consensual sadomasochism

Link roundup, August 2019

Aug 192019

Vice has a photo essay on the latex dominatrixes and fetishists of Russia.
The deceased alleged child molester Jeffrey Epstein purchased multiple books on BDSM slavery via Amazon, including SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude by Guy Baldwin, SM 101: A Realistic Introduction by Jay Wiseman, and Training with Miss Abernathy: A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners by Christina Abernathy. (Rolling Stone, The Cut) Once again, we kinksters have to explain that just because abusers claim some link to consensual BDSM, it doesn’t indict BDSM as a whole.
A female dominant describes how she sees herself reflected in porn and mainstream media, and it’s not flattering. “What I gleaned from this and pornography is that femdomming was a very specific thing based on coercion, humiliation, and exploitation.” Medium
Slate has an article on the Chinese bondage community, and its struggles in a deeply conservative and heavily surveilled state. “BDSM and bondage are not illegal per se, but China’s laws are vague, and wording like ‘public promiscuity’ in Section 301 of the criminal code can be interpreted in many ways.”
Andrea Zanin, aka SexGeek, wrote an essay on a kind of internalized respectability politics among kinksters, with scene players being suspicious towards lifestylers. “…over the decades of kink’s further mainstreaming, what’s happened is that kink hobbyists have drastically multiplied, and perhaps because of those numbers, many of them now see themselves as safer, saner and more consensual than full-timers because of what they perceive as built-in healthy limits on what they do.”
Cools magazine has an interview with model Kimberly Mae that covers how latex fetishism has moved from Fetlife to Instagram. “Around five years ago an online migration in the fetish community began. Due to data breaches and other reasons, many visual fetishists (think rubber, leather, shibari, etc.) moved away from the Fetlife platform and on to Instagram. I think because we have so much more visibility on Instagram, particularly the latex style is becoming more and more mainstream.”

A Lover’s Pinch wins NLA non-fiction award

Aug 192019

I am proud to announce that A Lover’s Pinch is the co-winner for the Geoff Mains non-fiction book award for 2019, issued by the National Leather Association: International. My book shares this honour with The Sexually Dominant Woman: An Illustrated Guide for Nervous Beginners, written by Janet M. Hardy and published by Greenery Press.

This is the second Geoff Mains award I have won, the other being for the anthology I edited, Our Lives, Our History.

Venus in Furs (1995): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Aug 192019

Written, produced and directed by Victor Nieuwenhuijs. Starring Anne van de Ven as Wanda, and André Arend van de Noord as Severin. IMDB

(Unless otherwise stated, all quotes are from English dub, not the English subtitles.)

Unlike the 1967 Venus in Furs or the 1969 Jesus Franco Venus in Furs, this is pretty close to the original story, though set in the present day. Severin, a young man, falls for a young woman named Wanda. They sign a contract to formalize their dominant-submissive relationship.

Severin/Gregor (van de Noord), Wanda (van de Ven) and “The Greek” (???) at the zoo.

Review: Gene Bilbrew Revealed, by Richard Perez Seves

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Aug 192019

GENE BILBREW REVEALED: The Unsung Legacy of a Fetish Art Pioneer (African American Artists Series) is the latest in Richard Pérez Seves’ series of biographies of fetish artists and publishers.

Pérez Seves’ previous work on Eric Stanton gave an interesting picture of a man, his work and his time. However, the author has less to work with when it comes to Gene Bilbrew.

Venus in Furs (1967): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Aug 152019

Venus in Furs (1967) IMDB

As far as I know, this is the first feature film adaptation of Venus in Furs, or more accurately the first to bear that name. (According to IMDB, there was a short film released in 1965 titled Venus in Furs, though the description sounds nothing like the book.) It was also released the same year that the Velvet Underground released their debut album (having been formed in 1964), which featured the song “Venus in Furs.” I don’t know if there was any direct connection between the two.

Last day of the Metro Vancouver Kink auction

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Aug 102019

The auction to pay for the legal costs of Metro Vancouver Kink ends on Sunday, August 11th, at 12 noon (PST). I helped found MVK in 2007, and one of the things we thought the new organization should do is support the community as a whole, not just members. MVK and its elected board members have paid the price for warning about dangerous people in the community, and they need help to cover their legal costs.

This auction is a great way to get deals on books, in-person education, and more, as well as support a worthy cause.

Also, the GoFundMe for the same cause is still operating.

Link Roundup: July 2019

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Jul 162019

The Historical Blindness podcast has an episode on the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, an absurd porno-Gothic piece of anti-Catholic propaganda from the 1830s.
German industrial metal band Rammstein has a long history of sadomasochistic themes in their lyrics and music videos, along with other transgressions.
Earlier this year, Jack Thompson made history as the first trans person of colour to win the title of International Mister Leather. “I am all the things I am all the time.”
Bustle has a short history of the corset, though it skims over the more fetishistic aspects.
One of the more disturbing developments I’ve witnessed in the past few years is the rise of choking, and specifically non-consensual choking, in vanilla sex. Breath control is risky and frightening enough when done with proper consent and technique. But this is men incorporating it in sex with women with none of that, says the Atlantic.
Videogames are a relatively young medium, and only recently have people begun using them to explore issues of identity and sexuality. Bobbi Sands’ “visual novel”, Knife Sisters, covers kink and BDSM, but has a hard time buying advertisements or getting funding because of its sexual content, even in relatively liberal Sweden.
The blog The Elephant in the Hot Tub: Kink in Context has its own interesting study of the history and psychology of sadomasochism.
Leo Herrera, who made the gay alternate history film The Fathers Project, wrote an essay considering our present, possibly-post-HIV world, and its increasing cultural conservatism in the form of “community guidelines” on Tumblr and Facebook.

Venus in Furs (1969): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jul 152019

There were two films titled Venus in Furs released in 1969. This is the one also known as Paroxismus, directed by Jesus (aka Jess) Franco, and starring James Darren, Barbara McNair and Maria Rohm. It has little to do with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novel Venus im Pelz (aka Venus in Furs). (The other 1969 Venus was directed by Massimo Dallamano.)

Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jul 142019

Not every film I study in this project has a lot to say about sadomasochism. In some cases, these may be single scenes or even brief moments.

Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) is a semi-improvised drama about the exotic dancers at a club and their various struggles in life.

Jo (Jennifer Tilly) has a smoke break outside the Blue Iguana

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jun 252019

The Mask of Fu Manchu is a 1932 adventure thriller.

Many other people have written about the racial and gender politics of this film. Suffice it to say, they’re awful. This was at the peak of “yellow peril” racism in America, portraying a world on the brink of a cataclysmic war between West and East. Asians are portrayed as both vicious and weak, needing a leader like the Western-educated Fu Manchu to lead them.

This was also before the Hays code was put into effect in 1934, and it displays a degree of sex and violence that is still surprising today.

The two villains are both portrayed by white people in yellowface: Boris Karloff as Doctor Fu Manchu and Myrna Loy as his daughter Fa Lo See (“fallacy”?). Before Loy was the ideal American wife Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies, she played “exotic” or “ethnic” women in brown, yellow or black face.

Introduction of Dr. Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff)

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A Lover's Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism