The History of BDSM – Page 8 – Documenting my research in the history of consensual sadomasochism

Link Digest, May 2023

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May 142023

The Imgur image sharing platform is planning a purge of adult content.
Sanctum Unmasked is a podcast series about Los Angeles’ most elite swinger/play party series, perhaps as close as the real world has ever come to the kind of masked orgies for the wealthy and powerful as depicted in movies like Eyes Wide Shut. It gets into the backgrounds of the organizers and the “atmosphere girls”, and describes how the business model slowly shifted into being more like a brothel than a club. It affirms the truism that “money changes everything”, then shows what happens when you add sex and drugs to that.
Flagellation and other forms of physical ordeals have been used in religious practices for millennia, as a means of achieving altered consciousness. Modern paganism in particular has an interesting parallel history with erotic flagellation, via the “father of witchcraft” Gerald Gardner.

Sleeping Beauty (2011): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Apr 242023

Sleeping Beauty is a 2011 erotic drama film from Australia, directed and written by Julia Leigh. Amazon

Lucy (Emily Browning) drifts into paid sex work, as a lingerie-clad server at dinners for wealthy men, then takes a drug that leaves her unconscious as men touch her.

Peter and TammyJo explore Maitresse (1976): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Apr 242023

My friend Dr. TammyJo Eckhart and I explore Maitresse (1976).

Lost in Space S02E25 “The Colonists”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Apr 192023

Lost in Space is a science fiction TV series about a family stranded in deep space. Episode S02E25 “The Colonists” aired March 15, 1967.

Many science fiction or fantasy TV series would include episodes that featured amazonian or matriarchal societies, doubtless for an element of sex appeal and the carnivalesque pleasure of inverting gender roles.

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.

Roseanne S06E23 “Body by Jake”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Apr 082023

Aired May 10, 1994

Roseanne was a popular sitcom in the 1990s, built around the stand up comedy of Roseanne Barr.

Roseanne’s elderly mother suffers a minor hip injury and has to move into her daughter’s house to recover, causing friction with Roseanne and her family. Bev’s friend Jake from the retirement home drops by and reveals that Bev injured herself during sex with him. Roseanne struggles with talking about sexual topics with her mother, and Bev is equally uncomfortable, after a lifetime of sexual ignorance and bad experiences. Roseanne and Bev awkwardly talk it out.

Easy S03E02 “Private Eyes”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Apr 062023

Marika Engelhardt as Lindsay and Nicky Excitement as Hugh

Easy is a 2016 dramedy series about modern sex and romance. It’s loosely an anthology: most of the stories are self-contained, but certain character recur.

“Private Eyes” (season 3, episode 2, aired 10 May 2019) follows Hugh (Nicky Excitement) a technician who works for a private security company. Hugh is a kind of awkward guy, like an overgrown teenager with a fixation on martial arts. He goes on two dates, which end with polite but firm rejections by the women.

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.

O Fantasma (2000): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Feb 042023

O Fantasma is a 2000 Portuguese film directed by Joao Pedro Rodrigues. It concerns Sergio, a young man working as a night time garbage collector in Lisbon, and his sexual development.

Sergio is, to say the least, alienated. He inhabits a largely empty night-time world. While he flirts with a female co-worker, Fatima, his main sexual connections with others are wordless, anonymous sexual encounters with men. Not only does he connect to the company’s mascot dog, he’s animal-like himself. He rarely speaks, and often sniffs and licks people and things. Sergio just doesn’t have the social vocabulary to express his sexual identity. He operates more on intuition.

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).

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A Lover's Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism