The Fetish Show has an interview with Nancy Ava Miller, who helped found a lot of the earliest above-ground BDSM organizations like TES and PEP and Society of Janus that began in the early 1970s. It starts around the 8 minute mark.
Mar 112012
Sep 132010
This personal account comes for VioletWanda, posted on Fetlife as Violet_Wanda (reposted with permission):
I lived and traveled in Europe for several years [1976-1980] and while in Germany, married a very kinky gentleman who introduced me to S&M. The only place to find the toys, the tools, or the experiences, were through specialty operations in the red light districts. That’s right, you PAID. You paid to receive from a pro, you paid to rent a space or a room or a cabin, you paid to rent or buy the toys to do to someone. The sex trade was (and is) legal in certain areas and S&M was an inseparable part and parcel of the sex trade.
Not every op catered to S&M but you only had to ask around to find those who did, and it wasn’t hush-hush or dark or requiring passwords or rituals or secret knocks on doors. All it took was cash and you could be participating or watching, doing to or having done to. You could fulfill any fetish, including those very touchy ones illegal here (though they are cracking down on those too in Europe now) and the extreme ones that are on very few ‘DS limit lists’. There was no separation of areas of the sex trade; gay sex, escort service, prostitution, pornography filming and theaters, virgin bidding, kink from scat to scarring, dwarfs, amputees and animals–all were under one big umbrella and all could be easily found within the zoned areas if you wanted to. You literally walked down the streets in the zoned areas..sometimes in smaller cities there was just a red light on a building exterior. In larger ones it looked like any other party district where crowds bar-hop and bouncers stand at the doors, sounds spilling out into the streets. You entered, and there was always a bar with overpriced drinks to entice you while you waited. You discussed what you wanted, agreed on a price, introduced to the person or people participating in your experience, and went into mazes of (often) not-quite-hidden back rooms meant to entice you to new experiences (and new ways to dispose of your discretionary income). I chatted often with waiting prostitutes who were as curious about me as I was about them.
My worst experience..a cold quonset hut beside a small airstrip in southern Germany where they were doing scat behind flimsy partitions. My best..a very nice place in Amsterdam that was better and cleaner than most high end hotels. My longest lasting..In Frankfurt I saw my first violet ray (violet wand grandparent) and I was hooked on electricity! I brought two German violet rays back to the US with me. One I still have, the other I broke down to learn how to make them, and make them stronger and safer.
I had a vanilla marriage in between and when I resurfaced after the vanilla divorce circa 1995, there was this ‘BDSM’ in the US which was touted as a lifestyle or relationship model and separate from the sex trade. It makes sense to me, having seen Europe’s end, that servicemen who enjoyed Europe’s RL districts and were able to freely engage in everything from gay sex to sado-masochism without reproach or reprisal, may have brought a little of those experiences or influence back with them to a less enlightened society.
I think the basis that made the short-lived ‘European houses myth’ possible is probably rooted in Amsterdam. There are places that are very high-end that look like fine homes with no outward indication that they are businesses. They cater to a more discerning and affluent clientele. No secret handshakes though; just more money.
VioletWanda’s account doesn’t mention any non-commercial BDSM culture in late 1970s Europe. We know that the Society of Janus and TES started in the early 1970s in America, so there must have been a non-commercial BDSM culture in the US. (Or rather, a non-commercial culture in parallel/symbiosis to the commercial one.)
Fetish Diva Midori once reported that the non-commercial BDSM culture, of munches and non-profit groups and so on, doesn’t really exist in Japan. Such a culture, Midori speculated, is a product of the North American do-it-yourself, third-place ethos. Perhaps the same thing is in effect in Europe?
There’s a long historical pattern of Europe having a somewhat more relaxed attitude to sex and sex work, relative to the UK and USA, going back to the mid 19th century. (However, don’t forget that this image is perpetuated by travelers taking the opportunity to cut loose in foreign climes.)
VioletWanda also reports that BDSM activities weren’t a separate subset of the sex trade, which squares with some other observations I’ve collected over the years.
Likewise, the “secret BDSM heterotopia/European houses” myth goes back at least to the days of The Mysteries of Verbena House in 1882, if not earlier. VioletWanda does provide a good explanation of a real world phenomena (high-end European brothels) that contributed to this myth.
Violet Wanda has also written a short history of the violet wand, from quack cure-all to sex toy.
Aug 062010
A Man Called Horse, 1970, dir. Elliot Silverstein IMDB
This movie probably did a lot to inspire the modern primitive movement, portraying a rather familiar story of a “civilized” person being initiated into a “primitive” culture. I’m not going to address the historical or cultural accuracy of this film, as I’m not really qualified and also it’s not terribly relevant to this discussion. (The film claims to be based on authentic sources, but so did Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS.)
Jan 282010
From the UK Guardian:
Back in the mid-60s New York had just one leather bar, and it was inconspicuous and customers would wear their normal clothes and carry a change of costume in a bag, then switch to their chaps and black leather vest in the taxi. They were terrified a friend, even a gay friend, might see them going out in this freaky rig. Sadomasochism still sounded perverted and ever so slightly tacky – sort of New Jersey. And elderly. As if working-class, old gay men who couldn’t compete in the real bars could look appealing in leather, or at least threatening.
….
In 1975 a hardcore S&M monthly magazine, Drummer, started publishing. It had fairly technical information about how to torture and submit to it – we read it with avidity. The whole look and smell of gay New York culture was changing toward beefier bodies, beards, and the odour of brew, harness, sweat, and Crisco. A boyfriend of mine said that New Yorkers were so pale and unhealthy looking that black leather was the only look that suited them.
The leather bars kept pushing farther and farther uptown until they reached 21st Street and 11th Avenue with the Eagle’s Nest. There all the men seemed older and bearded and muscular and over six feet tall. At 5ft 10in I’d never felt short before except in Amsterdam. Now I was a shorty in my own city. To get from the West Village up to the Eagle, gay men had to go past three blocks of projects on Ninth Avenue starting at 16th Street. Gangs who lived in the projects would attack single gay men. We started wearing whistles around our necks to summon other gay men to our defence – a fairly effective system. I thought back to the 50s when everyone was a sissy boy with straightened hair, cologne, and a baby-blue cashmere sweater and penny loafers. Back then we would have been terrified of gangs. Not any more. Now many of us were taking judo classes.
And now the dress code was strict. The Eagle would allow “No hat other than leather cycle caps, western hats, construction hats or uniform hats. No jackets or coats other than leather or western style”.
Jul 012008
The Rubber Betty blog frequently runs complete scans of vintage fetish magazines like AtomAge, along with other classic stuff.
Thanks Betty, for keeping our history alive!
Jun 232008
The Night Porter, 1974, dir. Liliana Cavini IMDB, Wikipedia
If there’s an image that epitomizes 1970s kink, it’s Charlotte Rampling in the Nazi-exploitation classic The Night Porter: topless, wearing an SS officer’s cap, trousers, boots and suspenders, singing something in German to soldiers. It’s an iconic image, perhaps echoing Marlene Dietrich’s equally memorable turns in male and military drag. It’s also rather disturbing, suggesting a kind of fascist chic that no doubt had people making crude theories about the link between deviant sexuality (i.e. fetishism) and deviant politics (i.e. fascism).
Continue reading »Jun 052008
Deforges, Régine. Confessions of O: Conversations with Pauline Réage. Trans. From the Frech by Sabine d’Estrée. Viking Press, 1979.
Algernon Swinburne once wrote a letter to the late Marquis de Sade, expressing his disappointment that Sade’s works weren’t half as disturbing or shocking as he thought they would be after hearing about the suppressed books for so many years. Swinburne claimed that any young girl could create darker and viler tales than the notorious Marquis.
Such as young girl would have been something like the reclusive and notorious Pauline Réage, author of the masterpiece of female masochism, The Story of O. Réage didn’t come on record about her true identity or past until the early 1990s, but before that she did give an interview with a French novelist and publisher, Régine Deforges.
Mar 082007
I bought a “stripped” copy of the 1972 edition of Larry Townsend’s The Leatherman’s Handbook off Ebay. It’s a strange read, considering it was published the year I was born, 1972; unironic use of the word “groovy” for one thing.
Even the terminology is different. Townsend uses S and M to refer to Sadist and Masochist respectively, not Slave and Master. It’s also a glimpse into a time when you couldn’t even mail-order whips and handcuffs.
Townsend’s attitude towards women or heterosexual S/M people is not positive.
While I cannot speak from personal experience, I have discussed this heterosexual bondage scene with several people who are deeply involved in it. I found that in most cases it was the man who desired to submit. Le Grand Marquis to the contrary, I saw the antithesis of the gay leatherman involved in this. Then I found some of the most qualified Ms [masochists] saying it really wouldn’t matter: “If I’m strapped down, maybe with a blindfold over my eyes how can I tell if it’s a man or a woman who shoves that dildo up my ass?”
Thus, I may have been wrong… at least as far as the very deeply involved bottomman is concerned. As to the rest of us- the S [sadist], the less experienced guy, or the casual leather tripper- I must adhere to my original premise. In the hetero scene we have a woman, whom our society usually casts in a submissive role- and who has been emphatically placed in this role by nature’s sexual physiognomy- assuming the master’s stance. The man, who may be a leader in the business world or an otherwise strongly dominant figure, assumes the posture of a crawling slave. Thus, the elements of bondage and humiliation are much the same as ours. But the fetish… the object of adoration is completely different. For most of us, if we’re going to play M, we want to know there’s a cock attached to the S! And we want to know it’s real!
Like Krafft-Ebing, Alfred Kinsey and even Nancy Friday, Townsend’s work is in large part a collection of people’s stories, and those stories rather freely mix fantasy and fact. A large part of the book are stories men have mailed to him, many of them set in a military or paramilitary institution.
