In this fascinating book, Ehrenreich argues that the sexual revolution was initiated and driven by women rather than men. Even among fundamentalist Christians, women became more aggressive in seeking sexual fulfillment and pushed their husbands to try new things. She doesn't say a lot about bdsm, but what she does say is fascinating. Women rather than men have pushed experimentation in the bedroom and the exploration of power exchange. She ties bdsm to America's consumer culture, noting that bdsm is the most American style of sex because it requires the most apparatus. It is also interesting to note that many people were introduced to mild bdsm games at the lingerie and sex toy parties that were once popular. 

This book is currently out of print but any good library should have it. It will probably be reissued soon, so if you want a copy, you might want to check with Amazon every now and then. 
 

Bdsm is becoming more and more interesting to academics, though mostly to social scientists. This is the first book to discuss not what we do, but what we write. Hart, a professor of English and Theater Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, explores lesbian bdsm through the works of Pat Califia and Dorothy Allison with particular attention to the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Hart's comparison of Allison's short bdsm story "Private Rituals" with her award-winning novel Bastard Out of Carolina is particularly interesting. It is a fascinating exploration of how the sexual practices of a tiny minority became central to the debate on sexuality, violence, and gender within our society. It is also quite dense and deeply rooted in literary critism and deconstruction. If you're not at least passingly familiar with works of Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan, you will probably have some trouble getting through it. 

See SandMUtopian Guardian #32 for the full text of this review. 

This is the cheapest edition I've been able to find of this 19th century work by pioneering psychologist Krafft-Ebbing. (Amazon sells the hardcover edition for $28.00.) It catalogs a variety of fetishes and sexual deviations. It is a landmark in the psychological profession's decision to single out some sexual practices as deviant and others as normal. Needless to say, the author is harshly critical of any sexual behavior that is only slightly outside his perception of the norm. If you're just looking for a recounting of various fetishes or unusual sexual practices, a better, and nonjudgmental source is: 

Brenda Love, The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices
(Barricade Books, 1992), hardcover, $29.95, Amazon's Price: $20.97

Love's book lists many more unusual practices, but in brief, encyclopediac detail. 
 
 

This is an odd book. Moser, who is fast becoming the bdsm community's pet sociologist, wrote the first three chapters which present basic definitions of bdsm and a brief synopsis of the academic literature on it. Madeson, an active participant of the bdsm scene in San Francisco, wrote the other nine chapters which describe what bdsmers actually do and include discussions of roles, toys, organizations, relationships, the law, and more. It is concise, to the point, and captures the diversity of bdsm experience. Madeson provides a good description of the bdsm lifestyle and is at her best when describing the diversity of bdsmers, the experiences they enjoy, and especially their relationships. Many bdsmers maintain sexual relations with vanilla friends (and even unknowing spouses) while still regularly indulging their bdsm desires. She needed to say more about this, especially about the problem secret infidelity poses for a community that purports to value trust and honor above all else. This would be a good book to give people you want to come out to. 

For the full text of this review see SandMUtopian Guardian # 30.

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This was the first, and as far as I know, the only effort by linguists to examine and analyze bdsm terminology. It is a massive glossary of our jargon, though it is now somewhat dated. It was published as an aid to linguists, sociologists, and other researchers. The authors amassed most of their data from personal ads, fiction, and other written sources, so it also has some gaps in it. They completely miss the debates within the bdsm community over the definitions of such commonly used terms as slave, submissive, and bottom. Obviously it predates the Internet boom, so it would be an excellent source for someone investigating how bdsm terminology has evolved over the last decade. 

Katherine Ramsland, The Anne Rice Reader: Writers Explore the Universe of Anne Rice
(Eggman 1997), paperback, 359 pages, $12.00.

This is a collection of essays on Anne Rice's work from a number of different perspectives including academics, journalists, and fans. Most deal with her vampire stories, though several cover (at least in part) her more overtly erotic novels. Claudia Varrin's "How Do They Rate? Elliot Slater and Lasher as Love Slaves" and Richard Noll's "Lestat: The Vampire as the Degenerate Genius," are particularly interesting. It also includes two of Rice's previously unpublished short stories and a detailed commentary on the making of the film Interview With a Vampire.

Pain is something talked about a lot in the bdsm community, but not with any great depth or explication. Pain is described as good or bad, burning or stinging and left at that.  While Scarry, a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, is not talking about bdsm pain, but pain in general, much of what she says is applicable to bdsm. Reading this book will forever change the way you think about pain. It is written for academics,though, and is quite dense. Several of her arguments assume the reader is familiar with deconstruction and other forms of literary analysis. 

As Karl Marx said, "there is only one antidote to mental suffering, and that is physical pain." And yet pain is almost invisible to anyone else, unfelt, and unknown. Another person's pain cannot be shared. For that matter, it cannot even be adequately described. Language simply fails at the task. Here too bdsmers match her description. Despite our interest in pain we don't actually talk about it much. We talk about dealing with it and what it does for us, or where it takes us, but not about pain itself, and certainly not heavy pain. Instead, we point out the marks on our bodies that pain has left. We pursue it, revel in it, but have trouble describing it. 

For the full text of this review see SandMUtopian Guardian #30. 

This was the first widely-available academic study on female dominant heterosexual bdsm. Scott, who holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Berkeley, examines the relationship between dominant women and submissive men, focusing primarily on the members of San Francisco's Service of Mankind Church. She attended their meetings and play parties, interviewed many of the members, and even participated in a few of the milder activities. Scott is a perceptive observer. Her study is tightly focused, entertaining, and still worth reading today. The Service of Mankind Church has expanded considerably since she first wrote about it, and now has chapters in other parts of the country. It would have been nice if Scott had looked slightly farther afield. 
 
 

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Stoller, a Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA Medical School, was well-known and respected in his field. He was killed in a traffic accident in 1991 at the age of 66. Much of his research was on sexuality and gender. Interestingly, Stoller's early work was strongly condemnatory of bdsm. In this later book he explores the bdsm community of West Hollywood, interviewing many of its members. While he attacks the Freudian perspective on which much anti-bdsm psychology is based, he remains rather judgmental and is not quite ready to accept what we do. Still, it is a great step forward from his early work such as Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred. 

Shortly before his death, he became interested in the sex industry and produced two books: Porn : Myths for the Twentieth Century and Coming Attractions: The Making of an X-Rated Video. The second is the better of the two. It follows the creation of an adult movie, "Stairway to Paradise" through its entire production and includes interviews with members of the cast including Nina Hartley. A bibliography of his work is available online. 
 

Thompson, a criminologist at Reading University, wrote this book in response to the conviction of fifteen gay 'sadomasochists' in the 1991 Spanner Case in Great Britain. Thompson attacks the foolish psychiatric justifications for labeling bdsm practices as violent and dangerous and the arguments by religious extremists and some left-wing scholars that bdsm cloaks real abuse and leads to rape. His primary focus, though, is refuting the Law Lords' ruling in the Spanner case. He places the case in a larger context, arguing that the ruling was designed not just to limit bdsm activities, but to maintain a whole host of outdated moral restrictions. He rightly points out that each time a sexual minority wins a legal victory, it benefits all sexual minorities. The opposite, of course, also holds true, and the establishment is well aware of this.

Thompson has also written Soft Core: Moral Crusades Against Pornography in Britain and America which is a scathing indictment of both left-wing and right-wing anti-porn crusaders. He argues that the ultimate goal of this moral crusade is to reverse the sexual revolution and curtail the sexual expression of women.

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This book is a revision of the 1983 edition. As in the original, Weinberg has articles from a number of different authors that offer a sociological, and generally less judgmental, perspective on bdsm. Several of the articles in this edition appeared in the older book, such as Pat Califia's oft-reprinted "A Secret Side of Lesbian Sexuality," but about half are completely new. Charles Moser's article is the best of the collection. His survey shows the wide variety of activities in which bdsmers engage and makes the important point that no single bdsm behavior (such as flagellation or bondage) is common to all bdsmers. He also points out that bdsmers are more likely than others to have experimented with a variety of sexual behaviors, and finally puts to rest the myth that most bdsmers were abused as children. [See his interview in Sandmutopia Guardian #4.] 

This book is a good place to start for anyone interested in the sociology and psychology of bdsm. Several articles survey the important literature and all have good bibliographies. This book captures the diversity of opinion among social scientists as they struggle to understand bdsm, but leaves many important questions untouched. 

For the full text of this review see SandMUtopian Guardian # 28.

Also of interest:

• Chris Gosselin, Sexual Variations: Fetishism, Sadomasochism, and Transvestism (an old study)