Analysis: Trans suicide and the way the media reports the trans community - PinkNews.co.uk

Analysis: Trans suicide and the way the media reports the trans community - PinkNews.co.uk:

'via Blog this'

Lucy Meadows death 'could set transgender community free'

Lucy Meadows death 'could set transgender community free':

'via Blog this'

The tragic death of Lucy Meadows could be a "watershed moment" for Britain's transgender community, her MP has claimed.

Graham Jones, the Labour backbencher for Hyndburn, is seeking a debate in parliament on the circumstances leading to Meadows' death. She had endured public humiliation after the media focused on her gender transition.

Jones attacked the "oppressive" nature of Britain's printed press as a petition calling for the Daily Mail to sack columnist Richard Littlejohn, who had singled Meadows out for criticism in a column headlined 'he's not only in the wrong body... he's in the wrong job', approached 200,000 signatures.

"This is a dark moment for the transgender community and the Lucy Meadows case is a deplorable tragedy," Jones told politics.co.uk.

"It also raises the issue about the way the transgender community are treated and I think that they've had an unfair press.

"I think that a debate around the issues of transgender and other minorities will perhaps highlight the oppressive nature of some of the journalistic articles that have appeared over time targeting transgender people. So I think this may be a watershed moment in which transgender people finally get a fair hearing."

The coroner has yet to deliver a final report on the cause of Meadows' death. Police have said no suspicious circumstances are suspected, but the Sum Of Us petition states she "committed suicide" and attacks Littlejohn's "vile article" for having "led to a witchhunt targeting Meadows".

"Everyone has the right to say what they think, but mainstream publications like the Daily Mail shouldn't support and promote this sort of hate," the petition, which by 17:00 GMT on Tuesday had attracted nearly 183,000 signatures, added.

"The Daily Mail needs to ensure that this never happens again - by not only yanking Littlejohn's column and apologizing for the paper's decision to run the hateful opinion piece, but also instituting an editorial review policy that prevents discriminatory writing from ending up in its paper again."

The columnist's article repeatedly referred to Meadows as "he" and criticised her for persisting in her job as a primary school teacher following her gender transition.

Parents and staff were informed Nathan Upton would return as Lucy Meadows in the new year last December.

"Lucy complained of her inability to leave the house by the front door, of movement curtailed, of parents offered money for pictures of her, of pictures lifted without permission from her family's Facebook," trans activist Jane Fae wrote in an article for politics.co.uk published last Friday,

Meadows' MP is now demanding that the regulatory system used to control Britain's broadcast media be applied to the printed press - despite the recent political consensus achieved on the introduction of an independent watchdog.

"My view on this is I'm much less concerned about freedom of the press and far more concerned about the freedom of the British public, the reader," Jones added.

"That freedom is being denied. We do live in an oppressive country as far as the press are concerned. They omit so much of the truth that the reader is unable to make a balanced and fair judgement on the story that's being reported on."

Jones blamed the "press barons" controlling the editorial agenda of national newspapers for the problem.

"They selectively edit their articles denying my constituents and the great British public the opportunity to make a fair and reasonable decision," he added.

Up to 300 transgender activists holding 'I am not afraid' placards gathered outside the offices of the Mail on Monday night in a silent vigil.

The backbench business committee is expected to grant a debate on the issue in April which will take place after the coroner's report is published.

Lies about transgender people (and how to spot a rubbish journalist)

By Paris Lees

Ever been kicked in the face? I have. Violence is common towards children who display gender difference. Poofter, they used to call me. AIDS victim, they’d whisper. Walk like a man, boy, or get a clip ’round the earhole. That last one came from my father. Still, as one matures, so does the nature of the bullying. Instead of gossip and ciggies behind bike-sheds, badmouthing is done by respectable journalists in national newspapers. Take the Telegraph’s Ed West, for example, who seems perfectly comfortable belittling the existence of “transphobia” (hatred towards transgender people). His quotation marks, not mine. Guess he’s never had a kick in the head. In fact, I doubt he has any subjective experience of being trans, and nor will many of his readers. That’s the trouble.

I question everything, now. I recall articles from years back, on various subjects; “facts” stuck in my head; fears I was given; health advice. Were all those items poorly researched too? I see so much rot written about trans people that I just don’t know anymore. Does anyone – from legal correspondents to sports editors – really know what they’re writing about? And, if not, why read their work? News is produced on increasingly small budgets and research is becoming a luxury. Press standards are under scrutiny. Would cynics be better off reading blogs by real experts?

Check out this opinion piece by Ross Clarke, published by the Daily Mail last week: “Beware of the sex-change zealots: Why IS the state so obsessed with whether we’re transgender?” Poor Clarke is outraged because a form asked him if he is transgender. I sympathise. I broke an eyelash once, so I know how upsetting traumas like this can be. Meanwhile, research commissioned by the Equalities Review shows that 73 per cent of trans people have experienced harassment and 47 per cent avoid public facilities for fear of discrimination. But sure, begrudge us a box that acknowledges we exist.

So, how can you tell if what you’re reading is rubbish? I have no idea how much of my daily news is true, but a visit to Islamophobia-Watch.com suggests that trans people are not the only minority group newspapers lie about. Still, there are 6 giveaways for poorly written trans features:

1.   Sex Change. This is seldom used by trans people and has zero medical currency. Authors who use this have nothing valuable to share on trans issues.

2.   Children having “sex changes”. Always false. In the UK, trans surgery is only performed on those aged 18 and above. Children prescribed reversible puberty blockers will have been monitored for years following careful guidelines.

3.   Hermaphrodite. Widely offensive and biologically inaccurate. Humans with biological sex differences are described as intersex. Or people.

4.   Taxpayers/NHS waste of money/cosmetic surgery. Don’t trust anyone who mentions tax during a polemic against trans people. Trans people also pay taxes, and we are more likely to do so when provided with proper healthcare and freedom from discrimination. Nevertheless, “wasteful” trans treatment costs are frequently exaggerated.

5.   “Gender” – in quotation marks. Everyone has a gender identity. Clothing, language, toilets and many other arbitrary social cogs are gendered. Pretending that trans people have imagined their gender is, well, delusional.

6.   Regret. Studies show that an astonishing 98 per cent of people who undergo genital surgery express no regret. Regret usually focuses on surgical results. Any journalist who mentions transition regret, without acknowledging this, has made a terrible mistake.

As Julia Serano notes in the eminently sensible Whipping Girl, traditional media have set stories to tell. It’s true. I was due to appear on morning TV last month but was dropped after I declined to share “before” photos. Must I be reduced to shock, surgery and before-and-after shots? Trans people won various legal rights in 2004, including the right to marry, but, unlike the gay marriage debate, this received scant press. That same year the tabloids were saturated with “jokes” about Big Brother contestant Nadia Almada. There is public appetite for stories about trans people after all: point-and-stare ones.

That said, trans man Luke Anderson received largely positive coverage following his recent Big Brother victory. Are things improving? Or could this be explained by traditional sexism, and the fact that male identities are less open to attack? Or perhaps editors have finally noticed that trans contestants are incredibly popular? The public certainly seem to adore trans people, given the chance to get to know one.

It’s a shame, then, that we are missing out on so many stellar stories; compelling, moving, shocking and funny stories; stories that everyone could identify with, or learn something from, given the opportunity. These narratives are drowned out by the bullies, bigots and dullards; those who spread misinformation on subjects about which they know nothing. For those of us in the know, it’s a real kick in the teeth.

FIVE THINGS I HATE ABOUT BEING A DOMINATRIX IN THE SUMMER.

By Troy Orleans 08.23.05

"Normally, I love my job. I've been a journalist, an editor, a marketing associate, even a radio DJ, but I've never been more intellectually, emotionally and physically stimulated by a job as I have since becoming a professional Dominatrix.

While I could easily rattle off my favourite things about Domming, the heat's got me -- and most Dommes -- pretty cranky. Every day I get an IM from a Mistress friend bitching about how it's too hot to play. How their leather whips are moldering in the humidity. How even if they wanted to play, business is so slow they've had to resort to playing power games with the unwitting guy at the bodega.

Myself, I keep hearing the line from that Siouxsie and the Banshees song, "At 92 degrees, people just get irritable!" Though the Dominatrix stereotype is a screaming shrew with a whip, most of us don't play that game. I'm a sadist, but I'm not a bitch. Since I've got a rep to protect, though, rather than take my frustrations out on my clients, here's a little vent about the five things I hate the most about being a Domme in the summertime.

#1. Whose schedule am I on?

Dommes are glorified freelancers. We may be control freaks, but we're still, when it comes right down to it, in the service industry. So when summer rolls around, we're at the mercy, more so than usual, of our clients' summer schedules. In the battle between golf games, vacations, weekend getaways, traffic jams, half-day Fridays, company outings, kids' summer camp and interleague softball, and the Dominatrix, sad to say, but life usually wins. Your average dungeon is like a ghost town on Saturdays in August.

So what's a Domme to do? Go somewhere she won't be taken for granted. We look for the under served cities that don't get a lot of Domme traffic. You wanna hear kinky? My summer travel plans have included such glamorous vacation hot spots as Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas and New Orleans. New-freakin'-Orleans. In AUGUST! How perverted is THAT?

#2. Even masochists take a break.

Just before Memorial Day, it starts. "Mistress, I'm going to the beach next weekend, so I can't take any marks." By July, even my hardcore maso clients are so prissy about the possibility of getting a mark, I'm "torturing" them with ice cubes. In the last couple of months, I've gotten some really great corporal gear -- a rubber cane, a couple of cool whips -- but I've yet to have a good workout with any of them.

On the bright side, the "no marks" rule does inspire some creative torments. Wrapping him in head to toe with medical bandages, like a mummy … then turning off the A/C. Finding unusual, discreet places to insert needles and other sharp objects. Using a bigger dildo. Forcing him to masturbate with Icy Hot. And my personal favourite: Figging (shoving a large knuckle of peeled ginger where the sun don't shine). Ouch!

#3. Skunky sweat.

While I have, on occasion, treated a good boy to a smothering under my stinky armpit or sweaty ass, it is an entirely different torture when a client comes in bathed in eau de funk. I don't know what it is about male pervs, but almost all of them seem to sweat WAY more than is normal. I'm this close to telling one of my favourite clients to stay away from me until the temperature goes under 70 because he sweats so profusely, I can't stand to touch him.

Even worse are the genuinely smelly ones. It's odd how certain seemingly deep-pocketed clients apparently can't afford to buy soap or deodorant. Or maybe he just thinks that since he's paying me, it shouldn't matter what he smells like. Fortunately, we Mistresses have recourse. A little iced latte-and-asparagus piss shower makes a rather declarative statement -- without leaving any visible marks! And, no, you may not shower afterwards, smelly pants piss-slut.

#4. Wearing any kind of fetish gear is out of the question.

When the thermostat's set to "Hell," there is no fucking way I'm putting on any latex. Or leather. Or even my super sexy, custom fitted PVC catsuit (which arrived in May and is STILL unworn). Normally I get all bent out of shape when a new client asks me to wear lingerie in session. "If you want scantily clad domination, why don't you go see a stripper?" is my usual retort. "She can tease you, give you blue balls and take all your money."

But when it's Africa-hot like it has been for the last few weeks, I have no problem playing in my bra and panties as long as my skin stays away from yours. Except when I'm kicking you in the balls.

#5. The sweat fetishists.

The sweaty clients are pretty gross. Even worse are the clients who get off on sweaty Dommes. Summertime brings out the sweat fetishists, pervy callers who ask if they can lick the sweat off my body. I can barely stand to be touched when I'm hot. So the LEAST erotic thing in the world is having someone run their hot, pasty tongue all over my skin. I don't care how devourably sexy he is.

And if a guy can take his hand off his dick long enough to think about it, would you really want to lick a Mistress who caters to sweat fetishists? Me, I'm just thinking about how many tongues might have booked before me. Gross!"

http://www.blacktable.com/orleans050823.htm

Sub Drop

Here is an article I found, written by David Williams - enjoy

Sub Drop is a term used to describe the after effects of a scene, both physical changes in the submissive's body and mental and emotional results of the scene on the submissives mind. While the physical effects usually occur shortly after the scene, the mental and emotional drop may take days to manifest and thus are often not thought of as a result of the scene.

It is important to note that sub drop is not a sign of a bad scene or lack of enjoyment. Sub drop actually most often occurs after a very intense scene where the submissive completely releases and finds sub space and a sense of euphoria. Thus, in fact, the better the scene, the better the chance for sub drop of either kind.

Aftercare and attention to small signs can help identify sub drop quickly. Simply noticing different behaviour patterns or actions can make dealing with it much easier when caught in earlier stages. This is another reason why knowing your play partner is important.

Physical Sub Drop

Physical sub drop comes from two sources, sometimes mixed together, in some people they suffer one but not the other. Both are the result of the strenuous ordeal of a scene on the submissives body. While it may seem they just stand there and take it, in fact there is much going on and much energy being spent during a scene on the submissives part.

The first form of physical sub drop is a lowering of body temperature in the extremities, stiffness, numbness, and an over all tingling sensation. This is caused by a centralization of the bodies blood supply. The body sees the scene as a form of trauma and one of the first defence mechanisms for this in the human anatomy is to suck the blood supply into the main torso to protect the vital organs and brain.

The result of this action by the body is decreased blood flow to the arms and legs. This often results in very cold limbs after a scene and lack of sensations. When a submissives limbs are inordinately cold after a scene or when they complain of tingling, numbness, lack of sensation, stiffness, aches, or muscle cramps, these are often from lack of blood flow. A vigorous rubbing of the limbs will help to restore blood flow quickly.

Often this will leave a submissive wobbly after a scene and unsure of their grasp on items. If a submissive feels this way after a scene then it is best to have them sit down, legs extended and arms at their side while you rub the limbs to restore control. Crossing the legs or folding the arms can impede the return of blood flow and should be avoided. Laying down flat is a better way for this but is hard to do at play parties and such.

When rubbing the arms and legs, apply gentle pressure and release as you rub, this helps open the passages up to allow a greater blood flow. Cramps can be dealt with by applying a point of pressure to the direct area cramping, pushing in very gently and then releasing. This causes a fast flow of blood to sweep away the built up acids causing the cramp.

Understand that these physical manifestations are completely natural and not a weakness on the submissives part. Stretching out before a scene or after can also help lessen these effects somewhat but don't push too hard, a submissive can actually damage themselves by doing too much when their limbs lack full sensation. The basics work best, better to do small repetitive stretches rather then one big one.

Important Note: If the submissive is not in shape and used to stretching, do not expect her/him to suddenly be doing intense stretching before or after a scene. Stretching can tear muscles and stress tendons very easily.

The second form physical drop can take is the result of substances and chemicals in your body; namely, sugar, adrenaline, and endorphins. These naturally occurring substances interplay with one another to bring a gambit of results much akin to the after effects of a strenuous workout.

Eating a light high protein, low carbohydrate meal an hour or so before the scene can help alleviate a lot of symptoms, just make sure to have enough digestive time before you play and make sure not to over eat and be stuffed Lots of vegetables will also add nutrients that can help the submissive recover from a strenuous scene and of course, plenty of water before and after the scene will help as well.

When a submissive is scened often their body uses a great amount of energy. After the scene is over they will feel an intense craving for sweets. This is not bad, this is their body craving sugar to replace the energy lost during the scene. Sometimes this craving is accompanied by a shaky feeling. Sugar crashes can also bring about mood swings, grumpiness, irritability, and sadness in some cases.

The best rule of thumb to follow with this is: The simpler the sugar, the faster the results. Fructose, sugar found naturally in fruits, is easy for the body to metabolize and use fast. Apple juice, grape juice, any sort of natural fruit juice will help to restore the blood sugar level fast. Soda and processed sugar take longer to produce the same results but will eventually get the job done.

Adrenaline is often released during moments of pain and stress. It creates a feeling of energy and strength, often allowing a submissive to take more in a scene or to play longer then normal. When the adrenaline rush is over though, often it will bring about a feeling of weakness, shakes, and irritability.

Adrenaline is sort of like an octane booster in our bodies. It boosts the octane there already and causes the body to burn through the sugar in the system faster. Usually adrenaline crashes and sugar crashes occur together, once the body is no longer in overdrive, it has burned up a lot of energy and needs to replace it, fast.

Endorphins are released during periods of heavy muscular exertion or pain. Not surprisingly, they are often released during a good scene and tend to bring a very euphoric feeling to the submissive. When the effect passes though, the feeling of euphoria can crash into a feeling of melancholy. Imagine feeling no pain and just as blissful as can be and suddenly that is gone. You don't feel bad, but you don't feel as good any more either. By itself this crash will not often affect the submissive much but, in conjunction with the sugar and adrenaline crashes, it can enhance their results.

It should also be noted that replacing lost hydration (drinking a lot of water), replacing salts (drinking Gatorade) can also help with these things as well. Muscular cramps can be caused also by a loss of potassium in the system during play, eating a banana or drinking Gatorade will help restore this quickly. Think of the physical aftercare like that of an athlete after a tough competition. The submissives body will often crave the same care and refuelling as an athlete's would after a great exertion of effort.

After a scene and aftercare, it is common for submissives to feel hungry. Eating nothing but junk food can cause a very tired and weighty feeling. Remember, the body has used a lot of nutrients in the scene and needs those replaced. Proteins (meats, cheeses, nuts) will help the body recover but may be too heavy for immediately after a scene.

There is nothing wrong with craving sugary treats after a scene as long as you balance it out with a good meal as well later on. The results of eating only junk food can be a very bloated feeling later that night or the next day which can trigger aspects of mental sub drop (feeling unattractive, bloated, depressed). Eating a good light meal of proteins and lots of veggies will replenish the body of the nutrients lost during a scene. It is

advisable to do this when the submissive has recovered sufficiently from the scene later that same day.

If the submissive does eat treats directly after, balance that with intake of water to help flush the system as well to avoid a tired feeling. Fresh fruit is always a good thing to have on hand after a scene as it can satisfy the sweet craving, provide simple sugars, and will not leave the system bogged down with junk food.

Mental Sub Drop

This form of Sub Drop is much harder to typify. It varies in such a great degree from person to person but usually takes the forms of guilt, anxiety, melancholy, depression, and or agitation. While this may happen immediately or within a few hours accompanying physical sub drop, it may also take several days to occur. It is not unheard of for it to happen a week or so after a hard scene.

Several factors may affect mental sub drop and should be discussed before play begins. Things such as mood altering medications, mental conditions, ongoing therapy, or recent events in the submissives life. It is the responsibility of both parties to share this information before a scene to avoid surprise results. That is not saying that sub drop is caused by mental instability...mental sub drop happens with or without these factors, they just may contribute and thus should be known beforehand.

While there are mental aspects which coincide with the physical sub drop, the term Mental Sub Drop is most often used with a period after a scene when the submissive is overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, isolation, and/or depression. This can happen days afterwards and can happen with a new play partner or someone you have played with a dozen or more times. It is not indicative of a bad scene and should not be taken as regret. It is quite simply the last effect of the intensity of a scene . . . the final burn out on the emotions.

Submissives often will have a carefree feeling after a good scene, a lessening of stress and worries. When this feeling fades it can be replaced by other, less then desirable emotions. The gambit of negative emotions is so wide as to be nearly impossible to list here but the root cause is the same. It is coming down off an emotional high. It's that simple.

Imagine riding a roller coaster, all the dips and spins and drops and climbing higher and higher. It's a very exciting ride. Now imagine going from that directly into a 12 hour wait in a doctors office, with no magazines or TV. Imagine going from that much stimulation to nothing so quick and then imagine the effect of that on your mind. This is a very crude example but it can help you understand where some of the mental sub drop comes from.

Sub drop can also be brought about by a feeling of disconnection. During the scene a feeling of intense intimacy can be created for the submissive (and dominant too BTW) and if that contact is not maintained in some way, a feeling of loss can set in. A feeling of isolation and disconnection is created in the void left behind. During a scene a submissive looks to the dominant for a feeling of safety, allowing themselves to feel vulnerable and exposed. That feeling of vulnerability can lead to a feeling of desertion if

there is no continued contact with the submissive. They can feel used and left behind or cast aside.

Guilt and shame are also very common feelings experienced during sub drop. Sometimes these feelings are brought about by social stigmas given to BDSM play and sexual activity, sometimes they are from social stigmas about gender roles (this is especially prevalent with male submissives), sometimes they are the result of the feelings of loneliness and isolation, but most often they are a combination of all of these factors.

Many times, especially for new submissives, social perceptions of sexual roles and acceptable practices can cause confusion in the days following a scene. Society tends to look upon "kink" in a very unfavourable light and drums that into people's heads through the media, religion, and social arch types we are encouraged to look up to. It can be traumatic when you first venture outside what is considered the normal sexual activities and left alone, some people will have a deep seated feeling of guilt or shame set in based upon these social ideals.

Mental sub drop can have long lasting effects as well. A very bad occurrence with no care given can damage or destroy a relationship, the bond of trust being severed between the two. As with all emotional things, sub drop can influence future reactions to scenes as well. It is important that every effort is made to make sure that a scening experience ends as a positive thing and not a bad experience.

The best way to deal with mental sub drop is simple, ACE:

A after care directly after the scene. C contact in the days following the scene E expression of positive reinforcement to the submissive

Aftercare should be more then just making sure the submissive is OK physically. It should also be a period of positive reinforcement, reassurance, and connection. The submissive is especially vulnerable in the period directly after a scene before they have regained their wits, they need to feel safe, valued, and cared for during this period so that the whole scene experience is a positive one.

Contact is essential to making sure the experience remains positive for the submissive. Not just casual contact either, be prepared to really listen and allow the submissive to express what they are feeling. Many times deep emotions come up during this period and providing a receptive outlet for them, you can help the submissive explore all the things conjured up by the scene.

Positive reinforcement is one of the most crucial aspects of aftercare. With a few kind words you can allow the submissive to feel pride in themselves. Don't butter them up or blow sunshine up their ass . . . express honest thoughts and emotions to them. Compliment them on how they did and what they did well. This single aspect of after care will have the greatest affect on avoiding severe mental sub drop. Making it a positive experience can help dispel any guilt or shame felt later.

Male Submission – The Worm

Male Submission – The Worm

By ted_subby on February 26, 2013

As the first in a series of articles focusing on male submission, this article presents thoughts about one of the archetypes of male submission, the “worm.”

Men and women are different, of course, and in some cases that goes beyond the obvious physical characteristics. Almost all of the articles on The Submissive Guide are valid regardless of gender, but there are sometimes subtle differences in application of advice even in the emotional and mental aspects of submission.

One common archetype of submissive men is the worm, a man who wants to be humiliated, degraded, and tormented as much as possible by most any and every dominant woman he encounters. Depending upon the male sub’s orientation, he may want to be treated this way by only dominant women, only dominant men, or regardless of gender. There are submissive women who fit the worm mindset but I believe that it is a much more common desire with submissive men. It is such a common mindset for some sub men that it is a stereotype within the BDSM community that almost all sub men are worms, which is not at all true. Also, the worm type of sub men is sometimes not respected by others even within the BDSM community, which is unfortunate because we should all be allowed to be who we want to be, as long as it is Safe, Sane, and Consensual (SSC).

Not all submissive men are worms. In fact, I believe that only a small percentage of submissive men are worms. It is not at all reasonable to believe that just because a man is submissive, that makes him a worm. Every individual is unique and has his own needs and desires, which often have nothing to do with being a worm.

What is a worm?

Even that varies by individual and many who enjoy this type of submission may not even classify themselves with the term “worm.” The term “worm” is offensive to some sub men who do not identify as a worm.

In general, a worm enjoys when a dominant, who fits his gender orientation or desire, treats him as a lowly sub-human who must never stand, must never use furniture, must never eat human food, must never make eye contact, must serve as a human toilet, must never be temporarily free from suffering of some sort, and so on. Often, worms enjoy being dominated by a group, though this is not always the case.

Many subs who are not worms enjoy many of these mindsets and even when some of these mindsets are in place 24/7 that does not necessarily make a specific submissive a worm. A worm is mainly the overall mindset of being treated as a sub-human to most every dominant as often as possible. In some cases being a worm is a fantasy where the reality is being a worm part of the time or being only partially a worm, or even being a worm only in the imagination. Note that the term “worm” does not refer to acting like an earthworm, it is a slang term.

There are subs who might be offended that I list an activity they enjoy, such as not being allowed to use the furniture, and categorize that as being a worm. For clarification, the term worm is subjective and it is not the specific activities which classify a worm. For example, if a sub is openly loved and cherished by a dominant and part of that love is manifested in the dominant’s requirement that the sub do not use the furniture, then that is likely not a worm dynamic. By contrast, if the dominant and other dominants think of the sub with disdain (whether real or in role-play) and sometimes kick the sub who is on the floor, then that may be a worm they are kicking.

As with most every sub, a worm has limits. For clarification, breaking an arm is a limit for all BDSM subs, but it’s a limit nonetheless. Many worms would not consent to particular activities, even ones which are commonly associated with worms. For example, a sub man may be a worm but not consent to being involved in anything in the bathroom. Also, many worms only want to be a worm some of the time or to only be treated as a worm by one dominant or by a select few. All worms are unique.

Many worms want to be treated online as a worm by everyone who contacts them, even from the first message. The idea of a dominant sending a message such as “Hi, I saw your profile and you seem interesting” may break the fantasy of some worms who might prefer a message such as “You are a disgusting pig and I demand that you send me a reverential e-mail in return!”

However, and this is very important, it is inappropriate to send someone an initial message containing non-consensual domination such as in my “disgusting pig” example. If a user’s profile explicitly indicates permission to send a domination type message, then that constitutes consent but otherwise there is no consent until the sub provides consent. Unless domination consent is given, an initial message should be polite and neutral, without any domination in it.

Similarly, it is inappropriate for a sub to send an initial message of submission, unless the dominant’s profile specifically provides consent for that. Many dominant women on FetLife receive frequent messages out of the blue from sub men such as “Mistress, I worship you and want to submit to you spitting on me and anything else you want!” This is completely inappropriate as an unsolicited initial message unless the woman’s profile specifically indicates something like “You must always address me as Mistress and grovel at my feet so do not send me a message unless you are worshipping me.” Otherwise, if you are a sub male sending an initial message to a dominant woman, please be polite such as commenting on something non-sexual you like in their profile or on a group message board comment they posted, and if she wants you to submit to her then that can happen later once she gives you consent, not in the initial unsolicited message.

Why would a submissive man want to be a worm?

The worm dynamic may seem very undesirable to many subs. The answer to why is unique to the individual. Why do any of us want to be the type of subs we are? As long as it is safe, sane, and consensual, then a worm should be free to explore his identity and desires. We should all recognize that there are many different submissive mindsets within BDSM and just because we may not like specific mindsets, that does not make those mindsets any less valid to others.

Is it safe and sane to submit to sub-human treatment by every dominant? That depends upon the situation. For example, if attending a BDSM party by a trusted host in which it is known that attending worms will be free to be worms, and if there is some sort of screening process such as only invited guests are attending, then yes it can be safe and sane. Just as with any sub, a worm should judge the situation for safety.

Difficulties of  Worms

There are difficulties which are somewhat unique to worms. From what I have read on FetLife and other web sites, dominant women generally do not want a worm as a long term partner and instead often want a strong man who submits. If the worm is a strong man, there may still be great compatibility if the dominant woman enjoys treating the sub as a worm a certain amount of the time. However, I have seen comments from many dominant women that they do not enjoy the worm dynamic at all, so as with everything else it is up to the individual. Finding a long term compatible partner is difficult for most everyone, not just worms.

Another difficulty for worms is that it seems to me that there are a whole lot more submissive men who are worms of some sort than there are dominant women who enjoy the male worm dynamic. I have seen comments and profiles of dominant women who do enjoy the worm dynamic, but I have also noticed that many of those dominant women who enjoy the worm dynamic are also Pro Dommes and/or Financial Dominants. Consequently, many submissive men who are worms often feel the need or, in cases of an enjoyment of Financial Domination, the desire to pay money to be treated as the worm they enjoy being. In some cases paying money fits the worm dynamic, but there are also many worms who do not want to be financially dominated.

Is it too much to ask to find a long term partner who is a dominant woman but does not need money to change hands early in the relationship? It is not too much to ask, but as with any compatibility it is not easy finding the right match.

How does a man know when a dominant woman requires money? If a dominant requires money, then usually there is a reference to money in the her profile such as “I enjoy Financial Domination,” “I love being spoiled,” being a member of Financial Dominant groups, or being a Pro Dominant. References such as those do not necessarily mean that they require money but it is often an indicator that they do. As usual, it is recommended to read the entire profile. This is actually a common issue with sub men who are looking for a dominant woman, especially sub men who are worms, in trying to ascertain whether a particular dominant woman who enjoys the worm dynamic would require money to change hands.

Doesn’t being treated as a worm mean that the man just does not want a loving relationship at all? As with everything, that depends upon the individual. Many worms do want a loving relationship with the display of love sometimes, though generally not always, being through the worm dynamic, despite how contradictory that seems. I know one FetLife user whose loving dominant wife treats him as a very low worm literally crawling in the mud of their backyard and being intermittently chained and beaten in his own muck for an entire weekend, and as a much less worm-type BDSM slave the rest of the time.

In fact, even for submissive men who are not worms, many of them enjoy when their partner is “mean” to them in some of the worm-like ways or in different ways. And there should not really be any quotes around the word “mean,” many subs desire or need truly mean treatment from their dominants. It is a paradox: “I want you to do to me things I don’t want you to do.” There are informational web sites for dominant women on how to be mean to their man, and many Femdom fictional stories are about a woman being intentionally mean to the man they love. Being loving and mean at the same time is a talent. And the usual caveat applies, not all sub men enjoy when their dominant is mean to them, it is completely up to individual preferences and it is not reasonable to assume that a man being a sub implies that he enjoys anyone being mean to him.

Personally, I enjoy the worm dynamic from a fantasy standpoint but the reality of more than just a taste of it from my dominant wife, even in a safe environment, would be difficult for me at best. Fantasy versus reality will be the subject of my next article on male submission.

So if you meet a worm, then please treat him with respect because everyone deserves the right to be who they want to be. Or … if you and he both consent, then feel free to treat him with the lack of respect he deserves.

Related

Male Submission – Fantasy vs Reality

Male Submission - Selfishness

Submissive Guide

Male Submission – Fantasy vs Reality

Male Submission – Fantasy vs Reality

By ted_subby on March 26, 2013

In part 1 of my series of articles on male submission I wrote about one archetype of male submission “The Worm.”  For clarification, a large majority of male submissives do not fit that mindset as there are plenty of other dynamics. However, one topic which is common to many male submissives is that the fantasy of desires and the reality of those desires are often quite different. Of course, fantasy vs reality is not unique to male submission or to BDSM. Most everyone has as-yet-unfulfilled hopes or desires of some sort and the reality of those desires is often different from the ideal of what we believe that we want. For male submissives with BDSM desires, this issue seems to be common.

Many dominant women on FetLife comment about submissive men who contact them but have difficulty ultimately making a meaningful connection. From what they indicate, this is due to many issues including men who don’t actually want to meet at all, men who are rude, and so on. One common issue is the difference between the fantasy and the reality of the male submissive’s desires. This issue has nothing to do with rudeness, being a fake, or even lack of communication, it is often a legitimate difficulty for subs, trying to understand what may be best left in the realm of fantasy.

Fantasizing for Many Years

Many male submissives have had fantasies for a long time before ever thinking about fulfilling those desires. Often these fantasies are not initiated by exposure to BDSM through books, the the internet, or a partner, the fantasies may have originated from relatively innocent childhood experiences or observations. Consequently, many male submissives have many years of developing very strong and often detailed fantasies. These fantasies are often not a vague feeling of wanting to submit or to be dominated, the fantasies are often very detailed and can become quite extreme. After all, for many years they are only fantasies and there is no risk of anything actually occurring, so it is safe to fantasize about extreme situations.

And then at some point he may decide to reach for his dreams in trying to find someone to share with in making his fantasy a reality. And that is where it gets tricky. Yes it’s difficult for most everyone to find a compatible partner but in the case of a submissive with very strong and sometimes extreme fantasies, there is often recognition that it may be even more difficult to find someone compatible. This can lead to one of a few different reactions. A sub man may focus on his desires to the exclusion of the desires of a potential partner. A sub man may go in the other direction and state “I will do anything for you, Mistress! No limits!” Or a sub man may take a middle ground. From what I read, dominant women encounter both of the extremes much more than we might think, considering how unreasonable those extremes seem to be.

What is wrong with focusing on your desires? Nothing, but if you do not also focus on the desires of a potential partner, then you may not be able to find a partner at all without seeing a Pro Domme. It is very reasonable to be specific in what you want and it is typically considered as a positive to provide that sort of open communication over the course of a relationship. However, accosting a dominant woman with your desires before even establishing a dialog, and just focusing on your own desires, are not typically desirable or productive approaches. In addition, if you are not flexible in how you would interact with a partner, then that would likely add difficulty to the ability to find a partner. On the other hand, what is wrong with telling a dominant that you will do anything with no limits? It likely isn’t true that you have no limits whatsoever with someone you have never met before, or if it is true then that would be scary for most any dominant as it is not a safe or sane approach. If someone does take you up on your offer for no limits, beware!

Regardless of the communication approach, a submissive man who has rather extreme and well-developed fantasies may not understand how much of it he may actually desire or even be able to tolerate. Taking the “worm” archetype as an example, one sub man may believe that he would absolutely love to be literally stepped on by everyone at a BDSM party but if that were to actually occur he may find that he is in over his head, literally!

Fear

And that’s where fear can become a big factor. A sub man may have what he considers extreme fantasies and become fearful if and when there comes a time to potentially experience any of those fantasies. He may communicate his desires in an effective way with a potential partner and successfully negotiate a meeting, but chicken out at the last minute as realization sets in that he may actually experience what he has been fantasizing about for many years. Add that to the very common general fear of rejection, which can be more acute when one is rejected regarding something they have dreamed about for many years.

BDSM with someone new can be scary! Relationships can be scary. And factor in what a sub may consider to be extreme, whatever that is, and the combination of different fears can make a sub freeze up. I have encountered male subs who have backed out of a meeting due to these sorts of fears and I have read comments from dominant women who have experienced last minute cancelations from sub men. Hopefully when this occurs there is contact with the one they were supposed to meet to communicate the issue instead of simply no-showing, but even with communication it is extremely disappointing for a dominant to spend all of the time and effort in getting to know a sub man only to have him get cold feet and cancel a meeting. There is no catch-all solution to fear, of course, but hopefully a slow approach without quickly diving into the deep end of the pool, and getting to know the person as much as reasonably possible before approaching a fearful event such as an in-person meeting, would help alleviate the sudden intensity of fear which may arise at the last moment.

This is the same sort of fear many of us have when attending our first munch. What if I make a fool out of myself? What if the whole thing is a huge disappointment? There are some who do not feel much of this sort of fear and it greatly depends upon the individual. Many of us do not know how we will react but it seems reasonable to expect at least some fear to arise in these new situations, and to prepare ourselves emotionally for that likelihood so that we may examine the source of the fear and try to cope with it.

Will I enjoy it at all?

In addition to the reality being potentially more frightening than a long-standing fantasy, there are many who fantasize about situations they would not want in reality. Continuing with the “worm” example, maybe a guy fantasizes about being humiliated by people he barely knows but he has a realization that this would not actually be enjoyable at all, or maybe the thought about being trampled unmercifully is exciting but he knows in reality that he would not enjoy it. It is very helpful to have this realization to be able to avoid miscommunication with potential partners, but it is understandable and common for subs to just not know for certain what they would actually enjoy.

Often we don’t know which of our fantasies we would enjoy for certain. It makes sense in that case to communicate this with a potential partner and, if possible, experiment with mild experiences. For example, if someone has fantasized for a long time about being tied down and spanked unmercifully but has never experienced any BDSM, they may be helped by initially trying a mild spanking even if that risks seeming like a potential disappointment for not allowing something more severe. Communication ahead of time should alleviate disappointment and also help build trust. Starting slowly is smart and should not be a disappointment to anyone.

Another type of fear is experienced by a man in a committed relationship with someone who is not into BDSM. Often a man will keep his BDSM fantasies and desires secret from his significant other for years before finally opening up, or sometimes he never opens up and either just bottles up his feelings or secretly seeks elsewhere for satisfaction, which is a situation which can cause significant pain for everyone involved. It is scary for many men to reveal their BDSM desires for fear of being rejected by their partner. It may seem strange to think of a man in a loving and committed relationship not feeling the trust that his partner would accept him for who he is, but this is a very common issue without a one-size-fits-all answer.

Reality in a Relationship

The issue of fantasy vs reality also sometimes comes up during a relationship. After a submissive man reveals his BDSM desires to a significant other, the reality often does not match what he would expect. I will use my own situation as an example. For over a decade before I ever experienced any BDSM, I frequently fantasized about being whipped. Once I met my wife over 15 years ago and we began to communicate our deepest desires, she was interested in whipping me so we tried it out. However, the reality was not particularly fun for me and I learned that whipping can cause me pain. It hurt!

I was able to bear the pain but it wasn’t that much fun so we stopped our occasional brief whipping sessions. That was quite disappointing for me at the time because I had fantasized about something but couldn’t really tolerate much of it or enjoy it. Our relationship was great even back then but I figured that whipping or any pain play would need to just stay in fantasy, lesson learned. As it turns out, it took me a long time to realize that what I enjoyed in fantasy about being whipped was not the pain, it was the emotional feeling of being tortured or victimized by a sadist so that once BDSM re-entered our lives over a year ago and the approach my Princess takes is different, whipping is great. Yes it still hurts a lot and I do not like the pain itself, but I love the emotions and the overall experience of being whipped in addition to how I believe it helps our overall D/s dynamic, plus my Princess enjoys the freedom she has to let loose her “inner devil”. It happens sometimes that a fantasy is fulfilled only to find that it is not enjoyable, or at least not initially.

I have read comments from others that reality almost never lives up to the fantasy, as if fantasy is almost always better. However, speaking as one who fantasizes about BDSM almost every day of my adult life I can say that reality can very well be better, because strong physical feelings are involved and that typically greatly amplifies the experience. From before I met my wife and experienced a whipping, or even afterwards, the fantasy of being whipped can be enjoyable and, depending upon how well the mind can go into the realm of fantasy, fantasies can be emotionally rewarding. But the actual reality blows those fantasy feelings out of the water as the intensity of reality is much greater. And for me, luckily, the reality is much more enjoyable.

As a summary:

• Many submissive men have fantasies which have been developed over many years, sometimes leading to a focus on extreme and/or specific situations despite not having experienced anything
• This may lead to misunderstandings with potential partners between fantasies and actual desires as the sub man may not even be able to recognize the difference at first
• This may also lead to last minute fears of experiencing extreme situations or fears of disappointment and rejection
• To help alleviate the stress of fear, take things slowly with a potential partner and become comfortable communicating before you get to a potential point of fear
• Many people fantasize about things they would not enjoy
• Reality will likely be different from fantasy in many ways, it may be more or less enjoyable but expect that reality will typically be more intense of an experience

Related: 

Male Submission - Selfishness

Male Submission – The Worm

Male Submission - Selfishness

As you all know, I am a huge fan of The Submissive Guide and it's posts. 

I have put together a few of their 'Male Submission' posts for you below. Enjoy

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Male Submission – Selfishness

By ted_subby on May 21, 2013

The title of this article may seem self-contradictory but submission means different things to different people and also almost all human beings are selfish to at least some degree at some point in our lives. Many submissives gain pleasure directly from the pleasure of their dominant and they are clearly not the target of this article. However, this issue comes up surprisingly frequently for some male submissives.

One definition of selfish (from the Encarta Dictionary online) is “concerned with your own interests, needs, and wishes while ignoring those of others.” I think that most agree that regardless of your BDSM orientation it is beneficial to be concerned with your own interests, needs, and wishes. If your needs are not being met in a relationship, then it is usually in everyone’s best interests to address the situation.

However, when someone does not also care about the interests of others, especially of a partner, that is where it becomes selfish.

But isn’t the nature of someone being submissive mean that they are not selfish by definition? Perhaps, but that depends upon the individual and on their definition of submissive. Also, we are all human beings with some level of irrational emotion, and occasional selfishness is common for many people. Selfishness may even be beneficial at times to overcome an issue, but that is not a topic for this article.

One definition of submissive (from Encarta) is “giving in or tending to give in to the demands or authority of others.” For BDSM submission I would add to that definition “…to whom we have agreed to submit.” However, many people who identify as BDSM submissive do not necessarily fit that definition. And therein lies potential difficulty in compatibility.

On FetLife I frequently see many dominant women post that male submissives are very difficult to find. At first when I read comments like this I would figuratively thump my head with my hand and say to myself “There are plenty of male submissives, that’s one reason Pro Dommes are so popular!” However, in delving further into the discussions, these dominant women are referring to the dictionary version of submission, someone who obeys the authority of a dominant, whereas many guys who identify as submissive are actually what we refer to nowadays as a bottom. That is just one of many potential reasons for incompatibility but it seems to be somewhat common.

For example, a guy who enjoys being whipped but does not want to cede authority will often refer to himself as a submissive but based upon the dictionary (and the understanding of most within the BDSM community, I believe) he is not submissive at all. Or maybe a guy enjoys yielding a certain level of authority to a dominant holding a whip during a session, and in that case while he is submissive to a certain degree it is very limited. There is nothing right or wrong, or better or worse, for wanting to be submissive to a small degree or not at all, but it may be confusing to others for a guy to refer to himself as submissive without further explanation.

There are plenty of male submissives, even considering the dictionary definition, but I believe that the psychology behind the submission of some guys is another potential reason why some of them are incompatible with many dominant women. Namely, many submissive guys are selfish, and very few dominants want a selfish sub. For clarification, I am not indicating that all or most submissive guys are selfish, it is simply that many sub guys appear to be selfish based upon their own comments and interactions in focusing only on their own desires without expressing any care for the desires of potential partners.

From what I read, there is a frequent disconnect in guys who are not submissive or are very limited in their submission sometimes contacting dominants with messages of “I will do anything you say!” which is clearly not the case. This is a communication and self-realization issue, not one of selfishness.

As I indicated in my previous Submissive Guide male submission article about Fantasy vs Reality, many male subs (and bottoms) have fantasized for a very long time about their version of submission and many have detailed and specific fantasies which have been rolling around in their minds for many years, developing to the nth degree. In some cases these sub guys do not want submission in most any other form, and if a dominant will not do what fits their fantasies then the dominant isn’t worth their time. For example, a male sub may want to be treated as a school boy in a role-play scene and anything else might not be enjoyable. In my view this is not selfishness per se, because people have needs to be addressed and addressing needs is not being selfish, but often male subs when contacting a potential dominant partner will focus only on their own needs or desires and not express any caring about the needs or desires of the dominant. This is often very annoying and unattractive to a dominant because dominants have needs and desires, too, they are not put on earth for the purpose of satisfying a sub’s desires. I have read dominant women refer to this issue as being thought of as a “fetish delivery system,” something which very few would enjoy being.

A simple version of this type of interaction is that the male sub indicates that he wants A, B, and C and when the dominant brings up his or her own needs and desires, a selfish sub completely ignores that and returns the focus to A, B, and C. For example, “I will let you tie me down and whip me, I will worship your feet and butt, I will let you grab my hair and yell in my face!” While the language appears to be one of a submissive (“I will let you…”), this example is actually an indication of specific requests and in many cases if the dominant wants to modify A, B, and C or otherwise address the dominant’s desires then that would be unacceptable to this sub. Again, expressing desires is not selfishness but if this male sub does not reciprocate by paying attention to the needs and desires of the dominant, as is sometimes the case, then that is selfish and typically leads to a very unproductive discussion unless the dominant happens to exactly enjoy A, B, and C and doesn’t mind putting up with a selfish sub.

Is it wrong not to compromise in what you enjoy? Not at all, that isn’t the issue, we each enjoy whatever we enjoy. It may be difficult to find a partner who fits exactly what you want, but if you need or want A, B, and C and nothing else would be enjoyable, then in my view it is not helpful to deny that. In fact, it is in my view best to be open about that and not pretend otherwise.

However, if you do not also care about the needs and desires of a potential dominant, then that is a selfish attitude and typically not desired by dominants even if BDSM interests coincide.

I am sure that selfishness exists in some people from all BDSM orientations, and perhaps for some subs it may be desirable to partner with a selfish dominant as long as the sub’s needs are met. Selfishness is not a trait which I would desire in a dominant but to each their own. However, in my view very few dominants find selfishness in a sub to be a desirable trait so it would benefit those who portray through their own interactions that they are selfish to do a reality check and recognize that the desires and needs of a partner are important.

In other words, as a discussion with a potential dominant partner progresses to the appropriate point to discuss BDSM needs and desires, while it is important to discuss your own needs and desires it is beneficial to you to pay attention and address the needs and desires of the dominant. Being a selfish-seeming sub will likely not find you a partner, unless you are willing to pay money for it.

In fact, if you actually do not particularly care about the needs and desires of a partner, then a Pro Domme is probably your best option because then you can get what you want while a Pro Domme would get at least part of what they want which is the payment. Pretending to care about the needs and desires of a partner is usually not a good approach because the truth will usually be revealed at some point.

On the other hand, if you do care about the needs and desires of a potential partner, communicate that. If in your discussions you focus only on your own needs and desires, then you may appear to be selfish even if you are not actually selfish.

Many dominant women post on FetLife that many male subs are fakes in that the guys claim to be submissive but are not. Many dominant women on FetLife receive a glut of messages from guys who want to play, often with a list of specific kinky desires and in some cases the messages are sent without even having read the woman’s profile. Many of these messages may be ignored or given a brief and polite negative response but there are also some sub guys who lie in pretending that they want to fulfill a dominant’s desires. Lies are much more harmful because a dominant might be led down the garden path thinking that the interactions will be mutually enjoyable, only to be left with at best an experience of wasted time or worse an experience in being used for another’s pleasure, something which rarely appeals to a dominant. Usually, though, a dominant will at some point recognize the selfish liar and the liar will not get what he wants.

More often than lying, many sub guys are just unsure of what they want. Their fantasies may be indicating to them what they want but the reality of whether or not they would actually enjoy it is unknown to them ahead of time. This is a very common issue, especially for those who are new to acting upon their own BDSM desires which in many cases is later in life, so that they may think they know what they want but it is new territory for them. It is not lying and not selfishness, just unknown and in that case it would be most beneficial to be open and honest about the situation. “I have strong desires for X, Y, and Z but I am inexperienced and not 100% certain that I would enjoy it.” Being open and honest is a very beneficial approach in most every situation.

This entire article may seem strange and confusing. From what I read, some submissives sometimes go in the other direction in wanting to please their dominant with not enough attention to their own needs and desires.

So, as a submissive, how do I know whether or not I am being selfish on the one hand or not addressing my needs on the other hand? There is no cookie-cutter answer but as long as you express a desire for your partner to have their needs and desires met, and consider carefully what they say, while also addressing the importance of your own needs and desires, then you are probably on safe ground. The Submissive Guide has many good articles about ensuring that your own needs and desires are addressed without being or appearing to be selfish.

I am not immune to selfishness myself, of course. My BDSM desires are mostly for consensual non-consent which, although not confined to a small set of specific activities, are important to me. In my 20s before I met my Princess who is my wife of over 15 years, I did not know much about submission (there was no Submissive Guide or even the internet back then) and I focused only on my own desires. I was lucky enough to enjoy one BDSM scene back then and looking back I now know why the dominant never called me back for another session, because I was selfish and in our discussions before and after I only focused on my own needs and desires. I am glad that I did not meet my Princess in my 20s because, being much more selfish back then, and I was not ready.

In summary:

Many male subs portray themselves through their own words that they are selfish in that they do not actually care what a potential dominant partner wants or needs

Having specific desires or wanting very limited or no submission is perfectly fine, and it would be beneficial to be open and honest about this instead of pretending otherwise

If you identify as a submissive but truly do not particularly care about the desires or needs of a dominant, it is often harmful to lie about it and you will likely not get what you want, and you risk hurting others and yourself in the process; it is probably best to consider going to a Pro Domme who, if you find the right one for your desires, will likely do what you want for a fee

It is not selfish to ensure that your needs and wants are addressed, it is only selfish if you do not care about the needs and wants of your dominant

Listen to what a dominant potential partner wants. You do not have to accede to it, because being a BDSM submissive does not mean being submissive to everyone, but it is helpful to recognize a dominant’s desires and have a care for fulfilling at least some of them so that you may have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Related: 

Male Submission – Fantasy vs Reality

Male Submission – The Worm

Dogma dominates studies of kink

Here is an article I discovered regarding BDSM and American College education. I don't think in the UK, we're anywhere near discussing it in our universities.

Scholars in Bondage

Dogma dominates studies of kink

By Camille Paglia 

Once confined to the murky shadows of the sexual underworld, sadomasochism and its recreational correlate, bondage and domination, have emerged into startling visibility and mainstream acceptance in books, movies, and merchandising. Two years ago, E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey, a British trilogy that began as a reworking of the popular Twilight series of vampire novels and films, became a worldwide best seller that addicted its mostly women readers to graphic fantasies of erotic masochism. Last December, Harvard University granted official campus status to an undergraduate bondage and domination club. In January, Kink, a documentary produced by the actor James Franco about a successful San Francisco-based company specializing in online "fetish entertainment," premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Three books from university presses dramatize the degree to which once taboo sexual subjects have gained academic legitimacy. Margot Weiss'sTechniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (Duke University Press, 2011) and Staci Newmahr's Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (Indiana University Press, 2011) record first-person ethnographic explorations of BDSM communities in two large American cities. (The relatively new abbreviation BDSM incorporates bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadomasochism.) Danielle J. Lindemann's Dominatrix: Gender, Eroticism, and Control in the Dungeon (University of Chicago Press, 2012) documents the world of professional dominatrixes in New York and San Francisco.

These books embody the dramatic changes in American academe over the past 40 years, propelled by social movements such as the sexual revolution, second-wave feminism, and gay liberation. It seems like centuries ago that, as a graduate student in 1970, I was vainly searching for a faculty sponsor for my doctoral dissertation, later titled Sexual Personae, which was—hard to imagine now—the only project on sex being proposed or pursued at the Yale Graduate School. (Rescue finally came in the deus ex machina of Harold Bloom, whose classes I had never taken. Summoning me to his office, Bloom announced, "My dear, I am the only one who can direct that dissertation!") Finding a teaching job in that repressive climate proved even more difficult. By the mid- to late-1970s, however, the gold rush was on, as women's studies programs mushroomed nationwide, partly as a quick-fix administrative strategy to increase the number of women faculty on embarrassingly male-heavy campuses.

Today's market for sex topics is wide open. Major university presses balk at little these days, short of apologias for paedophilia or bestiality, and even those may be looming. However, despite the refreshing candour displayed by the three books under review, a startling prudery remains in the way their provocative subjects have been buried in a sludge of opaque theorizing, which will inevitably prevent these books from reaching a wider audience. Weiss, Newmahr, and Lindemann come through as smart, lively women, but their natural voices have been squelched by the dreary protocols of gender studies.

It is unclear whether the grave problems with these books stemmed from the authors' wary job manoeuvring in a depressed market or were imposed by an authoritarian academic apparatus of politically correct advisers and outside readers. But the result is a deplorable waste. What could and should have been enduring contributions to both scholarship and cultural criticism have been deeply damaged by the authors' rote recitation of theoretical clichés.

Margot Weiss, a product of the department of cultural anthropology and the women's studies program at Duke University, is an assistant professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University. In her absorbing portrait of San Francisco as "a queer Sodom by the sea," Weiss surveys the gradual transformation of BDSM from the "more outlaw" era of gay leathermen in Folsom Street bars of the pre-AIDS era to today's largely heterosexual scene in affluent Silicon Valley, where high-tech workers congregate at private parties or convivial "munches" at chain restaurants with convenient parking lots. During her three-year fieldwork, Weiss became an archivist for the Society of Janus, which was founded in San Francisco in 1974 as America's second BDSM-support group. (The first was the Eulenspiegel Society, founded three years earlier in New York.) She also enrolled in "Dungeon Monitor" training, where she learned safety guidelines for "play parties," including proper use of whips and floggers and the adoption of a "safe word" to terminate scenes.

Weiss's colourful cast of characters includes Lady Thendara and her husband, Latex Mustang, who spend virtually all their spare time and considerable income on an elaborate BDSM lifestyle. Mustang insists, "It's no different than owning a boat." We meet "Francesca, a white, bisexual pain slut bottom in her late 40s," and "heteroflexible" Lily, age 29, who "identifies as a bottom/sub." Uncle Abdul, an electrical engineer in his 60s, "identifies as a bi techno-sadist."

Weiss lists but avoids detailing BDSM practices, which range from the benign (spanking, "corsetry and waist training") to the grisly ("labial and scrotal inflation"). We also hear about "incest play" and the baffling "erotic vomiting." Weiss attended workshops in "Beginning Rope Bondage," "Hot Wax Play," and "Interrogation Scenes" (Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, uniformed Nazis). Her "all-time favourite workshop title": "Tit Torture for an Uncertain World."

Equipment for BDSM activities can be acquired as pricey customized gear at specialty shops. Quality handcrafted floggers run from $150 to $300, while a zippered black-leather body bag goes for $1,395. But even ordinary objects, such as table-tennis paddles, can be adapted as "good pervertables." Home Depot is sometimes dubbed "Home Dungeon" for its tempting offerings, such as rope, eye bolts, and wooden paint stirrers, which we are told make "great, stingy paddles." The thrifty take note: Rattan to make canes can be cheaply purchased in bulk at garden-supply stores.

A recurrent problem with Weiss's book is that, despite its claim to be merely descriptive, it is full of reflex judgments borrowed wholesale from the current ideology of gender studies, which has become an insular dogma with its own priesthood and god (Michel Foucault). Weiss does not trust her own fascinating material to generate ideas. She detours so often into nervous quotation of fashionable academics that she short-shrifts her 61 interview subjects, who are barely glimpsed except in a list at the back.

One feels the pressure on her to bang the drum of a pretentious theorizing for which she has little facility and perhaps no real sympathy. There are clunkers: "These binaries rely on the social construction of risk." And howlers: "In what follows, I unfold the thickness of such loadedness." Or this résumé of the circular thinking of Judith Butler, the long overrated doyenne of gender studies: "In Butler's work, intelligibility provides a horizon of recognition for subjectivity itself, within which all subjects are either recognizable or unrecognizable as subjects." Weiss speaks of her own "positionality" and "Foucauldian framework," but she seems unaware that Foucauldian analysis is based on Saussurean linguistics, a system of contested and indeed dubious validity for interpreting the untidy realm of physical experience. As for Butler, there are few signs in her work that she has yet done the systematic inquiry into basic anthropology and biology that academe should expect from theorists of gender.

Furthermore, Weiss is lured by the reflex Marxism of current academe into reducing everything to economics: "With its endless paraphernalia, BDSM is a prime example of late-capitalist sexuality"; BDSM is "a paradigmatic consumer sexuality." Or this mind-boggling assertion: "Late capitalism itself produces the transgressiveness of sex¬—its fantasized location as outside of or compensatory for alienated labour." Sex was never transgressive before capitalism? Tell that to the Hebrew captives in Babylon or to Roman moralists during the early Empire!

The constricted frame of reference of the gender-studies milieu from which Weiss emerged is shown by her repeated slighting references to "U.S. social hierarchies." But without a comparative study of and allusion to non-American hierarchies, past and present, such remarks are facile and otiose. The collapse of scholarly standards in ideology-driven academe is sadly revealed by Weiss's failure, in her list of the 18 books of anthropology that most strongly contributed to her project, to cite any work published before 1984—as if the prior century of distinguished anthropology, with its bold documentation of transcultural sexual practices, did not exist. Gender-theory groupthink leads to bizarre formulations such as this, from Weiss's introduction: "SM performances are deeply tied to capitalist cultural formations." The preposterousness of that would have been obvious had Weiss ever dipped into the voluminous works of the Marquis de Sade, one of the most original and important writers of the past three centuries and a pivotal influence on Nietzsche. But incredibly, none of the three authors under review seem to have read a page of Sade. It is scandalous that the slick, game-playing Foucault (whose attempt to rival Nietzsche was an abysmal failure) has completely supplanted Sade, a mammoth cultural presence in the 1960s via Grove Press paperbacks that reprinted Simone de Beauvoir's seminal essay, "Must We Burn Sade?"

Weiss is so busy with superfluous citations that she ignores what her interviewees actually tell her when it doesn't fit her a priori system. Thus any references to religion or spirituality are passed by without comment. She also refuses to consider or inquire about any psychological aspect to her subjects' sexual proclivities, no matter how much pain is inflicted or suffered. She declares that she rejects the "etiological approach": Any search for "the causation of or motivation for BDSM desires" would mean that "marginalized sexualities" must be "explained and diagnosed as individual deviations." To avoid any ripple in the smooth surface of liberal tolerance, therefore, flogging, cutting, branding, and the rest of the menu of consensual torture must be assumed to be meaning-free—no different than taking your coffee with cream or without. (These books approvingly quote BDSM players comparing what they do to extreme but blatantly nonsexual sports like rock climbing and sky diving.) Weiss's neutrality here would be more palatable if she were indeed merely recording or chronicling, but her own biases are palpably invested in her avoidance of religion and her moralistic stands on economics.

Staci Newmahr, an assistant professor of sociology at Buffalo State College, did her ethnographic research in a "loud, large Northeastern metropolis" that she mysteriously calls "Caeden." The city has five SM organizations, three public "play spaces," and three private dungeons for play parties. Newmahr went "deeply immersive" in Caeden: While informing everyone that she was a researcher, she also became a participant, taking the alias "Dakota" and logging over a hundred hours a week in the SM scene. (Newmahr prefers the term "SM" to "the newer and trendier" BDSM.) Members of the SM community in Caeden are less affluent than those in Weiss's Bay Area sample but just as overwhelmingly white. Newmahr did 20 "loosely structured" interviews, which included off-topic conversation. Her portraits are sharply observed and represent a significant contribution to contemporary sociology.

Newmahr captures how her subjects, even before they entered SM, viewed themselves as "outsiders" who lived "on the fringe of social acceptance." Most are overweight, but it's never remarked on. Several women are over six feet tall, generally a social disadvantage elsewhere. Newmahr gets answers from her subjects to questions about the past that Weiss never asked: Some men are small-statured or have vivid, angry memories of being bullied at school. Newmahr notes the "pervasive social awkwardness" in the scene, the "ill-fitting, outdated clothing" and the women's lack of makeup and jewellery. The men often have little interest in sports and own cars of middling quality.

In describing her subjects' style of "blunt speaking" and boasting, as well as their disconcerting invasion of personal space in conversation, however, Newmahr does not mention social class, about which she says little in her book. I would hazard a guess that she was uncovering the difference between lower-middle-class and upper-middle-class manners—the latter characterizing the world she customarily inhabits as an academic. These fine distinctions are insufficiently observed in the United States, where liberal political discourse too often employs a simplistic dichotomy between rich and poor. Both Weiss and Newmahr observe how often their subjects' casual conversations focus on science fiction or computer software. But Newmahr shows superior deductive skills when she connects this to the Caeden community's "affinity for complicated techniques and well-made toys." Where Weiss sees only rank consumerism, Newmahr recognizes an operative aesthetic of "geekiness as cool."

Despite her wealth of assembled data, Newmahr still stumbles into the weeds of academic theory. We get "hermeneutic" this and "hegemonic" that and trip over showy obstacles like "discursive inaccessibility." There are empty phrases ("As Foucault illustrated so powerfully") as well as a lockstep parade of the usual suspects, like the automatically venerated Butler. Even more troublesome are Newmahr's semi fictionalized sections, which she posits as intrinsic to the genre of "auto-ethnography": "The postmodern view of ethnography as a jointly constructed narrative rather than an accurate objective depiction of social reality has gained support in recent years." Her accounts are "not necessarily verbatim" but "edited or blended, resulting in representations not entirely true to time and space simultaneously"; they are "creative representations of authentic experiences."

But is this questionable practice defensible in scholarly terms? The postmodernist slide away from the search for factual truth undermines the entire raison d'être of universities and the professors who ought to serve them. It is cringe-making that students are being fed this postmodernist gruel: History is a narrative; every narrative is a fiction; objectivity is impossible, so who cares what's real and what's not? Newmahr declares, "All ethnographic work is on some level 'about' the ethnographer" (a claim that begs for refutation). Peculiarly, she then decides to exclude her own personal responses to her SM experiences because it might invite voyeurism. But she can't have it both ways, fictionalizing her material (inescapably "about" her) and yet arbitrarily concealing herself.

Where this diffidence becomes unsettling and even alarming is in Newmahr's graphic descriptions of scenes she witnessed or participated in. The first night she enters an SM club, she sees a woman in a nurse's uniform "quietly nailing a man's scrotum to a wooden board," as he "hissed and screamed." Newmahr was "taken aback" by this horrific spectacle but tells us nothing more.

Newmahr's refusal to comment on this activity, to which I would apply a term like "barbaric" (a concept evidently falling outside the anesthetized world of academic theory), becomes even more glaring when the object of abuse is herself. On one occasion, she lies on a bed in a deserted apartment, where a stranger straddles her and presses a thick cord on her throat until her breathing nearly stops; he smashes her in the face again and again with the back of his hand and draws a razor blade across her cheek. Except for a momentary panic at her isolation and potential danger, we learn nothing of her reaction. Newmahr's flat affect, always disconcerting, becomes positively chilling when she says of a sadist and masochist indulging in "edgeplay": "Only the bottom is risking her life, and only the top is risking a prison sentence."

Despite its defects, this book contains tantalizing possibilities for a more flexible approach to gender studies. At times, Newmahr uses theatre metaphors like "social scripts," derived from Erving Goffman, the great Canadian-American sociologist whose work in such pioneering books as The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) was one of Foucault's primary and deviously unacknowledged sources. Newmahr intriguingly describes SM as "improvisational theatre," where "observers drift from scene to scene" and where the performers must act as if the audience is not there. But this excellent train of thought is not followed or developed.

Like Weiss, Newmahr tries to evade making judgments: She shies away from "the ultimately unhelpful questions about whether SM is or is not deviant sex." Nevertheless, she comes close to a breakthrough at the very end of her book, when quoting a Caeden resident who sees SM play as a way "to connect with the animalistic part of our beings." But because nature and biology are erased from the Foucauldian worldview, with its strict social constructionism, that hint is not followed up on. Post structuralism is myopically obsessed with modern bourgeois society. It is hopelessly ignorant of prehistoric or agrarian cultures, where tribal rituals monitored and invoked the primitive forces of nature.

When she acutely declares that "issues of power are at the core of SM play," Newmahr is unable to progress, because the only power that exists for post structuralism resides in society—which every major religion teaches is limited and evanescent. In the absence of knowledge of the historical origin and evolution of social hierarchies, Newmahr ends up with strained conclusions—for instance, that in the structured play of SM "the erotic is desexualized," which is absurd on the face of it. Her own hunches are more reliable, as when she rightly calls SM "a carnal experience"—without realizing she has broken a law of the claustrophobic Foucauldian universe, where nothing exists except refractions of language and where the body is merely a passive recipient of oppressive social power.

Danielle Lindemann, who earned her doctorate in sociology from Columbia University, is a research scholar at Vanderbilt University. Dominatrix has vibrant passages of sparkling writing that demonstrate Lindemann's talent and promise as a culture critic. Her personality charmingly surfaces even in the acknowledgments, where she hails the "giant, cheap margaritas" at the Dallas BBQ chain as "influential in the successful completion of this project." Her knack for compelling scene-setting is shown at the start of the very first chapter:

One night, I realize I've accidentally stepped on a man rolled up in a carpet. We're at a Scene party in the basement of a restaurant in New York's East Village. I approach the bar and put my foot on what I assume is a step, when I hear a faint "Oof!" The man is laid out in front of the bar, fully submerged in the rug, his face peering out of a roughly cut hole. I step off and apologize, but I am immediately "corrected" by a nearby domme.

"That's okay, sweetie—he likes it!" She proceeds to kick the carpet repeatedly and with great force in her platform boots, while the other people at the bar look on with a mixture of nonchalance and delight. The man in the rug beams the whole time. I return to the table where I've been sitting.

"I just accidentally stepped on a guy rolled in a rug," I tell the group of people who've brought me to the party.

"Carpet Guy's here?" one responds.

Lindemann adroitly positions herself as a respectful but bemused observer, like Alice in a perverse Wonderland. Unlike Weiss and Newmahr, she maintains her professional objectivity and atonement to ordinary social standards by preserving her outsider's stance and declining to become a participant in the world she is studying. Lindemann is brisk and discerning as she explores the world of professional dominatrixes ("pro-dommes"), mainly in New York but also in San Francisco. Pro-¬dommes, who call their work spaces "dungeons" or "houses" (short for "houses of pain"), are rarely "full service," that is, providing sex. Instead they cater to a broad range of tastes and desires, which Lindemann organizes into three types: "pain-producing dominant, non-pain-producing dominant, and fetishistic."

Requested scenarios include smothering (categorized with choking as "breath play"), mummification (encasing in plastic wrap and duct tape), infantilism (a man put in diapers), "splash" (playing with messy food like creamed corn or pies), animal transformation (a man becoming a puppy or pony), "French-maid servitude" (a man donning a maid's uniform to clean house), "prison/interrogation fantasies," and "secret-agent/hostage fantasies." Rarities reported by Lindemann include a "leprechaun fetishist" and a client "aroused by a Hillary Clinton mask."

The audacious voices of Lindemann's pro-dommes fairly leap off the page. These fierce women have a haughty sense of métier. "I will not recite dialogue," they proclaim on their Web sites. To bossy customer demands, one pro-domme replies, "I am dominant. You are submissive. You serve me."

Another instantly rejects any client who says, "I want." She insists on "etiquette, protocols," and hangs up on callers who fail to show due respect. It is proper for prospective clients to begin, "Mistress, I want to serve you. My enjoyments are ... "

Pro-dommes often call their payment a "tribute" rather than a fee, as if they were sovereign nations or celestial divinities. In written correspondence with Lindemann, some pro-dommes habitually capitalized "Me." What comes strongly across is the mystique surrounding pro-dommes, with their special expertise and their disdainful separation from the world of prostitution. The Internet, rather than magazines, has become the preferred advertising medium. One pro-domme says flatly, "Print is dead. Nobody who can afford to see me doesn't have a computer."

Another of Lindemann's disarming chapter openings: "I'm sitting in a basement dungeon in Queens, and the first thing I notice is the cheerleading outfit emblazoned with the word 'SLUT' hanging on the back of the door." What a marvellous book this would have made had Lindemann sustained that clear, engaging, reportorial style! But as in everything blighted by post structuralism these days, we soon hit the obscurantist shallows. We hear about the "dialectical process," "instantiation," "discursive constitutions," and that dread phenomenon, "normative, gendered tropes." Insights about drag are credulously attributed to Butler that were basic to discussions 40 years ago of transvestism in Shakespeare's comedies and that were soon superseded by David Bowie's avant-garde experiments with androgyny in music and fashion.

As this book began to veer astray, I felt that Lindemann's mind was like a sleek yacht built for exhilarating grace and speed but commandeered by moldy tyrants for mundane use as a sluggish freighter. Her book is woefully burdened by the ugly junk she is forced to carry in this uncertain climate, where teaching jobs are so scarce. The very first paragraph of her acknowledgments shows what has happened to this and countless other academic books: Lindemann effusively thanks a Princeton professor "for giving me the idea that Bourdieu may have had something to say about pro-dommes' claims to artistic purity." Well, the dull Pierre Bourdieu, another pumped-up idol forced on American undergraduates these days, had little useful to say about that or anything else about art, beyond his parochial grounding in French literature and culture. (No, Bourdieu did not discover the class-based origin of taste: That was established long ago by others, above all the Marxist scholar Arnold Hauser in his magisterial 1951 study, The Social History of Art.) The leaden Bourdieu chapters bring Lindemann's momentum to a humiliating halt and effectively destroy the reach of this valuable book beyond the dusty corridors of academe.

Lindemann stays cautiously neutral about the acrimonious, long-running debate among feminists over whether sadomasochism is progressive or reactionary. But she so distracts herself with paying due homage to academic shibboleths that she doesn't pursue her own leads—as when a San Francisco pro-domme describes what she does as "performance art." Lindemann should have investigated the genre of performance art as it developed from the 1960s and 70s on (thanks to Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, Eleanor Antin, and Bowie), which would have given her a superb cultural analogue. She notes pro-dommes' ability to "create environments" and separately draws a very striking parallel to the Stanislavski theory of actors' total identification with their characters. But neither of these exciting ideas is fleshed out.

Buried in a footnote at the back is a glimmer of what could have made a sensational book: Lindemann says that pro-dominance "may have more in common with other theatrical pursuits than with prostitution." "I was recently struck to find, during a visit to the Barnard College library," she writes, "that the books about strippers were sandwiched between texts relating to pantomime and vaudeville, while the texts about prostitutes inhabited a different aisle." Yes, modern burlesque was in fact born in the 1930s and 40s in vaudeville houses that had gone seedy because of competition from movies. Lindemann was poised to place pro-dommes' work into theatre history—a tremendous advance that did not happen.

The lamentable gaps in the elite education that Lindemann received at Princeton and Columbia are exposed in her two-page "Appendix C: Historical Context," which is an unmitigated disaster. Two millennia since ancient Rome are surveyed in the blink of an eye, and we are confidently told, on the basis of no evidence, that the professional dominatrix is "a fundamentally postmodern social invention." Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (author of the 1870 SM novel Venus in Furs) are mentioned in passing, but only via an academic book published less than a decade ago. There is no reference to the immense prostitution industry in 19th-century Paris, where flagellation was called "le vice anglais" (the English vice) because of its popularity among brothel-haunting Englishmen abroad.

All three books under review betray a dismaying lack of general cultural knowledge—most crucially of so central a work as Pauline Réage's infamous novel of sadomasochistic fantasy, The Story of O, which was published in 1954 and made into a moody 1975 movie with a groundbreaking Euro-synth score by Pierre Bachelet. The long list of items missing from the research backgrounds and thought process of these books is topped by Luis Buñuel's classic film Belle de Jour (1967), in which Catherine Deneuve dreamily plays a bored, affluent Parisian wife moonlighting in a fetish brothel. Today's formalized scenarios of bondage and sadomasochism belong to a tradition, but post structuralism, with its compulsive fragmentations and dematerializations, is incapable of recognizing cultural transmission over time.

These three authors have not been trained to be alert to historical content or implications. For example, they never notice the medieval connotations of the word "dungeon" or reflect on the Victorian associations of corsets and French maids (lauded even by Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell). It never dawns on Weiss to ask why a San Francisco slave auction is called a "Byzantine Bazaar," nor does Newmahr wonder why the lumber to which she is cuffed for flogging is called a "St. Andrew's cross."

To analyze the challenging extremes of contemporary sexual expression, one would need to begin in the 1790s with Sade, Gothic novels, and the Romantic femme fatale, who becomes the woman with a whip in Swinburne's poetry and Aubrey Beardsley's drawings and turns into the vampires and sphinxes of late-19th-century Symbolist art, leading directly to movie vamps from Theda Bara to Sharon Stone. And where is Weimar Berlin in these three books? Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical The Berlin Stories, set in a doomed playground of sexual experimentation and decadent excess, was transformed into a play, a musical, and a major movie, Cabaret (1972), which has had a profound and enduring cultural influence (as on Madonna's videos and tours). The brilliant Helmut Newton, born in Weimar Berlin, introduced its sadomasochistic sensibility and fetish regalia to high-fashion photography, starting in the 1960s. Weimar's sadomasochism and transvestism as portrayed in Luchino Visconti's film The Damned (1969) helped inspire British glam rock. Nazi sadomasochism was also memorably re-dramatized by Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling in Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974).

Where is the Velvet Underground? The menacing song "Venus in Furs," based on Sacher-Masoch's novel, was a highlight of the group's debut 1967 album. On tour with the Velvets that same year, Mary Woronov did a dominatrix whip dance with the poet Gerard Malanga in Andy Warhol's psychedelic multimedia show, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Other SM motifs have woven in and out of pop music: a brutal bondage billboard on Los Angeles's Sunset Strip for the Rolling Stones' 1976 album, Black and Blue, was taken down after fierce feminist protests; dominatrix gear and attitude were affected onstage by Grace Jones, Prince, Pat Benatar, and heavy-metal "hair" groups like Mötley Crüe.

I was very disappointed to see Xaviera Hollander go unmentioned. That vivacious Dutch Madame's feisty memoir, The Happy Hooker (1971), detailing her bondage and fetish services, sold 15 million copies worldwide. But there is no excuse whatever for the absence in these books of Tom of Finland, whose prolific drawings of priapic musclemen formed the aesthetic of gay leathermen following World War II. And the most shocking omission of them all: Tom's devotee, Robert Mapplethorpe, whose luminous homoerotic photos of the sadomasochistic underworld sparked a national crisis over arts funding in the 1980s. Yet our three authors and their army of advisers found plenty of time to parse the meanderings of every minor gender theorist who stirred in the past 20 years.

These books never manage to explain sadomasochism or sexual fantasies of any kind. In addition to its rejection of biology, post structuralism has no psychology, because without a concept of the coherent, independent individual (rather than a mass of ironically dissolving subjectivities), there is no self to see. One of the numerous flaws in Foucault's system (as I argued in my attack on post structuralism, "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders," published in Arion in 1991) is his inability to understand symbolic thought—which is why post structuralism is such a clumsy tool for approaching art. But without a grasp of symbolism, one cannot understand the dream process, poetic imagination, or the ritual theatre of sadomasochism, with its symbolic psychodramas. Freud's analysis of guilt and repression, as well as his theory of "family romance," remains indispensable, in my view, for understanding sex in the modern Western world. Surely current SM paradigms carry some psychological baggage from childhood, imprinted by parents as our first, dimly felt authority figures.

The mystery of sadomasochism was one of the chief issues I investigated in Sexual Personae (Yale University Press, 1990). My interest in the subject began with my childhood puzzlement over lurid scenes of martyrdom in Catholic iconography, notably a polychrome plaster statue in my baptismal church of a pretty St. Sebastian pierced by arrows. I traced the theme everywhere from flagellation in ancient fertility cults through Michelangelo's neoplatonic bondage fantasy, "Dying Slave," to the surreal poems of Emily Dickinson, whom I called "Amherst's Madame de Sade." I speak simply as a student of sexuality: I have had no direct contact of any kind with sadomasochism—except that I once had an author photo taken in front of a purple velvet curtain in the waiting room of a dungeon in a midtown Manhattan office building (which may be the very one where Lindemann's book begins).

In researching sadomasochism, I did not begin with a priori assumptions or with the desire to placate academic moguls. I let the evidence suggest the theories. My conclusion, after wide reading in anthropology and psychology, was that sadomasochism is an archaic ritual form that descends from prehistoric nature cults and that erupts in sophisticated "late" phases of culture, when a civilization has become too large and diffuse and is starting to weaken or decline. I state in Sexual Personae that "sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted," and that its "primitive urges" have never been fully tamed: "My theory is that whenever sexual freedom is sought or achieved, sadomasochism will not be far behind."

Sadomasochism's punitive hierarchical structure is ultimately a religious longing for order, marked by ceremonies of penance and absolution. Its rhythmic abuse of the body, which can indeed become pathological if pushed to excess, is paradoxically a reinvigoration, a trancelike magical realignment with natural energies. Hence the symbolic use of leather—primitive animal hide—for whips and fetish clothing. By redefining the boundaries of the body, SM limits and disciplines the over expanded consciousness of "late" phases, which are plagued by free-floating doubts and anxieties.

What is to be done about the low scholarly standards in the analysis of sex? A map of reform is desperately needed. Current discourse in gender theory is amateurishly shot through with the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority, as if we have been flung back to medieval theology. For all their putative leftism, gender theorists routinely mimic and flatter academic power with the unctuous obsequiousness of flunkies in the Vatican Curia.

First of all, every gender studies curriculum must build biology into its program; without knowledge of biology, gender studies slides into propaganda. Second, the study of ancient tribal and agrarian cultures is crucial to end the present narrow focus on modern capitalist society. Third, the cynical disdain for religion that permeates high-level academe must end. (I am speaking as an atheist.) It is precisely the blindness to spiritual quest patterns that has most disabled the three books under review.

The exhausted post structuralism pervading American universities is abject philistinism masquerading as advanced thought. Everywhere, young scholars labour in bondage to a corrupt and incestuous academic establishment. But these "mind-forg'd manacles" (in William Blake's phrase) can be broken in an instant. All it takes is the will to be free.