1

PLEASE HURT ME:

A FEMINIST PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF WOMENS
CONSENSUAL SADOMASOCHISTIC SEXUAL PRACTICES

A dissertation
Presented to the faculty
of
The Gordon F. Demer
Institute o f Advanced Psychological Studies
Adelphi University

In partial fulfillment
o f the requirements for the degree o f
Doctor o f Philosophy in Clinical Psychology

By
Jennifer Marion, M.A.
June 2016

ProQuest Number: 10144190

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COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Karen Lombardi, Ph.D., Committee Chair

Joseph Newirth, Ph.D., Committee Member
Michael O Loughlin, Ph.D., Committee Member
Richard Garner, Ph.D., Outside Reader

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project has only come to be through the caring attention of many midwives.

I would like to begin by thanking my advisor, Dr. Karen Lombardi. Karen, your passion and
your warmth have been an immeasurable resource to me throughout graduate school. Thank you
for believing in my ideas and for always challenging me. I also offer my gratitude to Dr. Joseph
Newirth: thank you for lightening the burden o f this difficult work that we do with your
company, wisdom, and humor. Dr. Michael O Loughlin, thank you teaching me how to bear
witness to the unspeakable. Karen, Joe, and Michael: the things that I have learned from you will
be at the core o f identity as a clinician for the rest of my career. Even more importantly, each of
you has given me a model for how to live a passionately engaged intellectual life. You always
inspire me to keep thinking, keep caring, and keep fighting. Thank you as well to my outside
reader, Dr. Richard Gamer, who has graciously offered to lend his time and his mind in order to
help me develop my work.

I am so lucky to have the loving support o f my coven: Sophia, Cassie, Hazel, Cricket, and Clara.
Your brilliant minds have inspired me, and your ideas about gender, masochism, sex, and love
are woven into the fabric o f my writing. Your wonderful company has meant so much to me over
the past few years, and I look forward to a lifetime o f talking, writing, eating, and laughing
together. I also give my thanks to my dear friend Gabby, for being there at the beginning and
helping to turn this idea into a reality.

Thank you to my parents, for always prioritizing and investing in my education. I could never
have made this journey without your generous support.

Thank you to Catherine, for keeping me sane and for making a space where new things
could grow.

My heart is full o f gratitude for Ted, for your unwavering faith in me. You have incited me to
grow and you have held me together through many cycles o f breakdown and rebirth. Thank you
for playing with me, and thank you for surviving.

And my utmost gratitude goes to my participants, who generously shared the most intimate
parts o f themselves in order to make this research possible. Your stories and your ideas
have transformed me; I hope that I have done them justice.

TABLE O F CONTENTS
A b s tra c t...................................................................................................................................................... 5
C h ap ter 1: In tro d u ctio n ..........................................................................................................................7
The Feminist Sex Wars, Past and P resent........................................................................................9
Precarious Borders: Defining Perversion in Psychoanalysis........................................................15
The Framework and Aims o f this Study......................................................................................... 22
Organization o f this Study................................................................................................................26
C h ap ter 2: M ethodology...................................................................................................................... 29
Researchers Motivations and Biases............................................................................................. 29
Recruitment.........................................................................................................................................31
Interviewing........................................................................................................................................33
Analysis................................................................................................................................................36
C h ap ter 3: C ontext an d D efinitions...................................................................................................39
History: Where did BDSM Come From?....................................................................................... 39
The Structure and Ethics o f the Kink Community........................................................................ 40
Glossary.............................................................................................................................................. 42
References........................................................................................................................................... 48
C h ap ter 4: S carlett................................................................................................................................ 49
Narrative............................................................................................................................................. 50
Thematic analysis.............................................................................................................................. 75
C h ap ter 5: R ob in ....................................................................................................................................87
Narrative............................................................................................................................................. 88
Thematic Analysis........................................................................................................................... 109
C h ap ter 6: M arg o t.............................................................................................................................. 117
Narrative............................................................................................................................................118
Thematic Analysis........................................................................................................................... 140
C h ap ter 7: Discussion.......................................................................................................................... 152
Regulation and Dysregulation....................................................................................................... 154
Getting Me into You and You into M e......................................................................................... 163
Play and Rescripting........................................................................................................................ 175
Conclusion: Repetition or R ep air?................................................................................................190
Research Limitations and Future Directions.................................................................................194
References...............................................................................................................................................199

ABSTRACT
This qualitative study examines the psychological functions of consensual, erotic
sadomasochism in the lives o f women. It responds to existing psychoanalytic and feminist
theories in which sadomasochism is understood as a harmful repetition of personal or cultural
traumas, and considers the validity of these theories through a detailed examination of three indepth case studies. Three women aged 22-24 participated in three semi-structured interviews
each, during which they discussed their participation in BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, and
masochism) in the context o f their developmental, sexual, and relational histories. This
dissertation presents narrative accounts of each womans life history and participation in BDSM,
along with thematic analyses o f the important conscious and unconscious emotional themes in
these stories. These findings suggest that the psychological meanings o f erotic sadomasochism
for these participants are complex and multifaceted, and that engaging in BDSM may function
simultaneously to provide sensory and affective stimulation or soothing, to defend against or to
overcome barriers to intimacy with ones partner, and to rescript past experiences of violation.
It concludes that womens participation in erotic sadomasochism may indeed involve elements of
traumatic repetition, but may also involve elements of pleasure-seeking, psychological healing,
and positive developmental growth.

Sexuality is something that we ourselves create - it is our own creation, and much
more than the discovery o f a secret side o f our desire. We have to understand that with
our desires, through our desires, go new forms of relationships, new forms o f love, new
forms o f creation. Sex is not a fatality: its a possibility for creative life.

Michel Foucault, Sexual Choice, Sexual Act, 1997

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Almost a century ago, Freud (1929) asserted that human nature is defined by the conflict
between the feral erotic drive and societys prohibitions. Todays sexual mores, however, would
have been unrecognizable in tum-of-the-century Vienna. Although conservative backlash is alive
and well, popular attitudes in the United States appear to be moving consistently towards evergreater sexual liberalism. Forms o f sexual expression that were once at the fringes of social
permissibility - such as masturbation and premarital sex - are now widely considered normal,
and a new fringe that includes queer, trans, asexual, and polyamorous sexual and gender
orientations are vying for mainstream acceptance. Not only is sexuality de-repressed in our
culture - its incited. Rather than struggling to reign in our sexual appetites, we are called upon
to consume an ever-expanding supply o f sexual media in the form of fashion, lingerie, marital
aids, magazines, television shows, pornography, internet articles, and self-help manuals.
Psychoanalysis has played both engine and critic to this liberalization of sexuality. In The
History o f Sexuality, Foucault (1976) described Freudian psychoanalysis as a technology o f
power that placed sexuality at the heart o f the human subject. Ironically, over the course o f the
last century psychoanalysis has moved away from its focus on sex, positing new drives - such as
ego cohesion or attachment - as the central sources o f human motivation (Dimen, 2003; Green,

2002; Holtzman & Kulish, 2012). Has psychoanalysis simply re-invented itself to address the
more prominent conflicts o f our changing culture? Is sex no longer as relevant to our work in the
era o f de-repression? This project is aligned with those writers who answer decidedly no,
calling for a renewed study o f the psychodynamics o f sexuality (see Green, 2002; Saketopoulou
2015; Stein, 2008). If Freudian drive theory is out-of-date in our present cultural landscape, then
now, more than ever, psychoanalysis has an opportunity and an obligation to create new ways of
thinking about sex.
This study specifically calls for an in-depth examination o f BDSM (bondage, discipline,
sadism, and masochism) or kinky sexualities. Today, BDSM is trendy: bondage fashions grace
the covers o f fashion magazines, superstars write pop songs declaring their passion for S&M,
and 50 Shades o f Grey is a national bestseller with a movie contract and a tie-in lingerie
franchise. Although the film, music, and fashion industries have been borrowing imagery from
S/M culture since at least the 1980s, today far more people are aware and accepting o f BDSM as
a sexual subculture in its own right, thanks in large part to the internets proliferation o f BDSMrelated pornography and information (Sisson 2007, p. 16). As the narratives in this study will
attest to, young people today are likely encounter kink as an option while forming their sexual
identities, and the intrigued may be led to the websites, classes, and parties where the BDSM
subculture is reproduced. This increased popular access to the world o f BDSM makes
psychoanalytic research in this area particularly urgent. As more and more patients who engage
in these activities bring this material into our practices, will we be prepared to respond
thoughtfully?
This study uses a feminist psychoanalytic lens to examine the role of BDSM in the
psychic lives o f women. At their best, feminist and psychoanalytic theories offer frameworks for
examining the interpenetrations of cultural, relational, and intrapsychic life. At the same time,

10

they are both value-laden ideologies with their own complex histories in relation to the changing
sexual landscape o f the past century. By using these frameworks o f analysis, this project inherits,
and must respond to, those legacies. In this chapter, I examine tensions in the history o f feminist
and psychoanalytic thought regarding the meanings of perverse sexualities. I go on to outline
the aims o f the present study. Finally, I describe the organization o f the following chapters.

The Feminist Sex Wars, Past and Present

The so-called sexual revolution o f the 1960s and 70s marked a shift in American
culture towards more liberal sexual attitudes, including growing acceptance o f sex outside o f
marriage, the legalization o f abortion, the increased visibility of homosexuality and other sexual
subcultures, relaxed laws regarding the distribution o f pornography, and more explicit sexual
themes in popular literature and films (D Emilio & Freedman 2002, p. 343).While the sexual
revolution is often associated with the countercultural movements o f the era, it was also driven in
large part by consumer capitalism. Playboy magazines founder Hugh Hefner, for example,
created an entire commodity culture around the philosophy and lifestyle of sexual liberation
(D Emilio &Freedman 2002, p. 303; Glick 2000, p. 26).
Feminism underwent its own changes during this era: where the liberal feminists o f the
second wave were primarily concerned with gaining gender equality in the public spheres o f
education and work, radical feminists brought attention to the private spheres o f love, sex, and
domestic labor (Chamallas 2010, p. 159). The increasing sexualization of popular culture now
came under feminist scrutiny. Inspired by the Marxist ideals o f the New Left, radical feminists
argued that society is structured by a patriarchal power system in which women represent a
subordinated class. Insisting that the personal is political, radical feminists believed that love
and sex were at the heart o f womens inequality: as Mackinnon (1983) put it, sexuality is to

11

feminism what work is to M arxism.... both sexuality and work focus on what is most ones own,
and what is most taken away by what the theory critiques (p. 49). From this perspective, male
sexual violence against women is not an aberration, but is in fact a ubiquitous tool o f oppression
(Mackinnon 1983, p. 59).
In the 1970s, radical feminist organizations focused their attention on the ever-increasing
availability of pornography, which they believe furthered the normalization o f male sexual
violence. In their view, pornography was the theory that led to the practice of rape, and being
exposed to pornography constituted a violation o f womens civil rights (Mackinnon 1983).
Activists including Adrienne Rich, Gloria Steinem, and Andrea Dworkin co-founded Women
Against Pornography (WAP), one o f several organizations that attempted to raise public
consciousness about the violent themes in heterosexual pornography, as well as in pop culture
and advertisements that portrayed female submission as sexy (Williams 1979, p. 25). WAP
and others engaged in extensive legal advocacy to restrict the production and distribution of
pornography.
In addition to advocating for legal and cultural change, radical feminists called on
individual women to examine the ways in which their own experiences were shaped by the
system o f male domination (Snyder-Hall 2010). They believed that patriarchy leads women to be
complicit in their own oppression through the internalization o f ideas about what is normal or
desirable in male-female relations. In the words of Mackinnon (1983),

sexual desire in women, at least in our culture, is socially constructed as that by which we
come to want our own self-annihilation. That is, our subordination is eroticized... in fact, we
get off on it to a degree, if nowhere near as much as men do. This is our stake in this
system... that is killing us (p. 54).

12

Because o f this, some radical feminists argued that women should abdicate certain sexual
practices. Some went so far as to suggest that the only solution was political lesbianism; others
focused their critiques on what they saw as transparently violent forms o f sexuality, such as sex
work and BDSM (Snyder-Hall 2010, p. 258). Many women, however, registered their dissent
from this radical feminist agenda, arguing that it is judgmental and exclusionary for feminists to
condemn certain forms o f sexual expression. Vance (1982) characterized the two poles of this
debate as protectionist vs. expansionist feminism. The protectionists were attempting to
reign in the dangers o f male sexual violence in order to secure a future in which female sexuality
could be safely enjoyed; the expansionists, on the other hand, believed it was possible and
important for women to pursue sexual pleasure and exploration in the present (Vance 1982, p. 2).
These conflicts came to a head in 1982 at the highly-publicized Barnard Conference on
Sexuality, which was organized by a group o f women who felt that feminist discourse had been
stifled by an excessive focus on male violence. These organizers hoped to create a movement
that speaks as powerfully in favor of sexual pleasure as it does against sexual danger (Vance
1982, p. 3). Ironically, these efforts at integrating disparate feminist discourses actually led to
more vehement conflict, with WAP and their allies picketing the conference wearing shirts that
said for a feminist sexuality; against S/M. These events solidified the ranks of so-called pro
sex vs. anti-S/M feminists in what became known as the feminist sex wars of the 1980s
(Glick 2000; Vance, 1982).
The central argument o f the pro-sex feminists was that feminism should promote
womens ability to explore their sexual desires freely, safely, and without shame, and that
policing forms o f sexual expression is counter-productive to this goal (Glick 2000, p. 20; SnyderHall, p. 257). They believed that dominant power structures are not fully determining of

13

womens sexuality, and that S/M, when practiced safely and consensually, was not a form o f
violence; in fact, S/M offered women forms o f sexual community and pleasure outside o f
heteronormative institutions like marriage (Glick 2000, p. 22; Hart 1998, p. 56). Pro-sex
feminists were also critical o f their comrades attempts to delineate good sexual acts from the
bad; writes Hart (1998), boundaries dissolve immediately when feminists attempt to secure
differences between being penetrated with a finger, a fist, or a dildo; being held firmly, held
down, tied up, handcuffed, or chained (p. 58).
Anti-S/M feminists, on the other hand, believed that S/M is a distinctly violent form of
sexuality that is harmful to women individually and as a class. They argued that consensual
sadomasochism is a contradiction in terms, because women cannot freely choose to be sexually
dominated when sexual domination is the very context of their day-to-day lives. In her
introduction to the collection Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist, Robin Ruth Linden
(1982) writes that feminism must not yield to the liberal ideology of the sexual revolution that
urges us to uncritically embrace all erotic feeling and expression (p. 4). Women who defend
S/M, according to anti-S/M feminists, are not liberated - they are under the sway o f a
patriarchal false consciousness which leads them to desire their own degradation (Hunt 1987, p.
87; Linden 1982, p. 4; Rubin 1981, p. 211). Further, Linden (1982) refutes the idea that
sadomasochistic role play could have a beneficial, cathartic effect. She argues instead that
engaging in play domination habituates the participants to these experiences, thus creating a
desire for increasingly intense sadomasochistic experiences instead o f exhausting it; to
emphasize this point, she compares BDSM to the Stanford Prison Experiments and the Nazi
genocide (Linden 1982, p. 10).
The conflict between the pro- and anti-S/M feminists derived in part from the precarious
alliance between feminism and gay liberation. Two o f the loudest voices in favor o f pro-sex

14

feminism were Pat Califia and Gayle Rubin, who were among the cofounders o f Samois, a San
Francisco-based lesbian BDSM group. Their affiliation with a growing queer political movement
was an important part o f their objection to groups like WAP: while radical feminists were
examining power inequalities in heterosexual relationships, lesbians like Rubin and Califia were
contending with state violence directed at sexual deviants, in the form o f police raids on queer
institutions and news articles that sensationalized the dangerous world of gay S/M (Rubin
1981, p. 202). In this context, feminist opposition to S/M appeared to undermine the goals o f gay
liberation, when the two should be working in concert. Pro-sex feminists saw the sexual
prescriptiveness o f the radical feminists as co-extensive with the anti-sex attitudes o f the
dominant culture, and they pointed out that WAP had a habit of forming alliances with
conservative politicians in their efforts to control the spread o f sexual media (Brooke, 1979;
Califia 1986; Glick, p. 21). They also accused anti-S/M feminists o f dividing the movement
through egregious acts o f segregation, including the formal exclusion of S/M practitioners from
important organizations such as the National Organization o f Women (Hart 1998, p. 40-41).
Radical feminist organizations were quite successful throughout the 80s and 90s in
helping to pass legislation related to rape, stalking, sex trafficking, and domestic violence
(Chamallas 2010, p. 160; Showden 2009, p. 169). Despite these legal gains, their influence on
popular sentiments waned as sexual liberalism gained an ever-stronger foothold in popular
culture. The so-called postfeminists of this era, including Naomi Wolf, Cathy Young, and
Camille Paglia, were promoting the idea that claims o f male domination were far overblown, and
that feminism had charged women to cultivate a phony victim mentality (Showden 2009, p.
172). Although these views were extreme, they helped to create a caricature of the radical
feminists as anti-male, anti-sex, anti-femininity, and anti-fun (Snyder-Hall 2010, p. 258). The
girl power feminism o f the 90s shifted the focus away from oppression, and called for women

15

to celebrate whatever gave them confidence - including traditional forms o f femininity and
seductiveness. This form o f pop feminism declared that women today are confident in their
bodies and with their sexuality and do not need a political movement to tell them what is
demeaning and what is liberating (Showden 2009, p. 170).
During the same era, sex-positive feminist ideas were being elaborated in LGBT activism
and the growing academic field o f queer theory (Glick 2000, p. 20). In her highly influential
book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler (1990) elaborated Foucaults theory o f power and sexuality.
She argued, like the Marxist-influenced radical feminists before her, that there is no sexuality
outside o f existing power structures; however, she also suggested that it is possible to destabilize
power structures from within through queer repetitions o f existing codes (e.g. as drag queens
queer normative femininity). This idea o f Butlers (1990) draws heavily from the more utopian
strands in Foucaults thinking, in which he describes emergent queer subcultures as viable
alternatives to dominant, institutionalized and hierarchical forms o f sexuality. For example,
Foucault (1997) described gay S/M subcultures as laboratories o f sexual experimentation
where men invent new forms o f pleasure and relationship (p. 162). Butlers (1990)
popularization o f these ideas generated a wide body o f queer theory in which non-normative
sexual practices are lauded as a form of political resistance in themselves (Glick 2000).
Feminism today bears the histories of these different strands o f thought. While
discussions have largely migrated from the rallies and conferences o f the 70s to college
classrooms, online blogs, and pop feminist websites, the same fundamental questions raised
during the sex wars remain under lively debate. Ironically, contemporary sex-positive and sexcritical feminists each accuse the other camp o f focusing too narrowly on individual choice.
Some argue that mainstream feminism continues to judge and trivialize the decisions made by
women involved in traditional gender or sexual roles, such as sex work, submissive sexuality,

16

or stay-at-home motherhood (Snyder-Hall 2010, p. 256). Others criticize sex positive feminisms
valorization of personal choice in matters o f sexuality while neglecting cultural analysis and
collective action (Glick 2000; Showden 2009). Snyder-Hall (2010) argues that contemporary
feminism, at its best, is defined by the values o f pluralism, self-determination, and
nonjudgementalness (p. 256). The third-wave, in her view, attempts to integrate the warring
camps o f the 2nd wave and to strike a balance between feminisms conflicting goals of gender
equality and sexual liberation (p. 258). It recognizes that women make a wide variety o f choices
as they attempt to balance contradictory demands, including pleasure, safety, and economic
security. In Snyder-Halls (2010) version of the third wave, women respect one anothers
decisions, while still attempting to cultivate feminist consciousness - the ability to examine the
meaning o f ones choices in the context o f the sex/gender power system (p. 259). Chamallas
(2010) also identifies the new feminisms with a more complex and integrative perspective on
sexuality and power: they highlight that we are agents and victims simultaneously; that we are
women and members o f other social groups simultaneously; and that our identity is constantly
shifting and unstable because it is not natural or fixed, but socially constructed (p. 165).

Precarious Borders: Defining Normality and Perversion in Psychoanalysis

In popular parlance, the word perversion suggests both a moral corruption and a
psycho-sexual disorder. This dual implication reflects the historical usages of the term. In the
church o f the Middle Ages and Renaissance, sexually aberrant acts were considered dire crimes
against God and the state: homosexuality, for example, was punishable by death in many
countries during the 1600s and 1700s (Block & Aedrians 2013, p. 276). Psychiatry emerged as
an autonomous discipline during the secularization o f the early 1800s and began to take control

17

o f domains o f judgment that were previously handled by the clergy. By the mid-century,
perversion was defined as a disease o f the sexual instinct; the sinful sex acts that were once
considered voluntary abandonments o f freedom were now considered evidence of underlying
pathology that could be cured rather than punished (Block & Aedrians 2013, p. 278). In the latter
half o f the century, sexology became a major sub-discipline of psychiatry, and texts proliferated
that aimed to categorize, describe, and explain the sexual perversions.
The most famous among these taxonomies were Krafft-Ebings (1886) Psychopathia
Sexualis and Elliss (1899) Studies in the Psychology o f Sex. These texts are remarkable in the
weighty role that they ascribe to sexuality in human experience; writes Krafft-Ebing (1886):

Sexual feeling is the root of all ethics, and no doubt of aestheticism and religion. The sublimest
virtues, even the sacrifice of the self, may spring from sexual life, which, however, on account of
its sensual power, may easily degenerate into the lowest passion and the basest vice (p 199).

These texts also share an evident tension between the impulses to normalize and to pathologize
sexual diversity. Krafft-Ebings (1886) earlier taxonomy is the more condemnatory in tone,
detailing the grotesque, shocking, and violent acts committed by sexual criminals. At the same
time, its theoretical discussions begin to blur the line between normality and perversion. KrafftEbing (1886) describes the sexual instinct as naturally fluid and malleable, containing the
potential to spread in every direction and reach into adjacent spheres (p. 217); for example,
the feeling o f overwhelming love for another person may reach such a heightened state that it
transforms into masochistic perversion (p. 202). Elliss (1899) Studies in the Psychology o f Sex is
more explicitly progressive, aiming to catalogue the full range o f human sexuality and to
promote the decriminalization o f victimless sex crimes. As a radical secularist, Ellis and his

18

colleagues believed that sexual proclivities fall along a normal distribution and cannot be divided
neatly into the categories o f normal and perverse. Like Krafft-Ebing (1886), Ellis (1899)
believed that the sex drive was malleable and could be impressed upon by emotionally
arousing events (e.g. witnessing a whipping in childhood could lead to adult sexual fantasies of
whipping) (p. 207). While both Krafft-Ebing and Ellis maintain the established belief that a
congenital weakness predisposes certain individuals to perversion, they also dispute the idea that
only deviant forms o f sexuality are worthy o f analysis. These sexological investigations paved
the way for psychoanalysis by suggesting that for all people - normal and perverse - the
development o f sexuality may be more complex than has ever been previously understood.
Freuds earliest theories drew heavily from the sexological texts o f the late 18th century,
and he inherited from his forerunners an ambivalence regarding the distinction between
normality and perversion (Block & Adriens 2013, p. 282). Like Krafft-Ebing (1886) and Ellis
(1899), Freud (1905) believed that sexual predilections are easily shaped by chance associations,
and that sexual energy can spill-over into other domains of psychological experience. At times,
Freud appears to ally himself explicitly with Elliss mission o f depathologization. In his (1905a)
Fragment o f an Analysis o f a Case o f Hysteria, for example, he calls on the medical profession
to cease inserting moral judgments into its discussions o f sexual deviation. He writes:

We must leam to speak without indignation of what we call the sexual perversions... The
uncertainty in regard to the boundaries of what is to be called normal sexual life, when we take
different races and different epochs into account, should in itself be enough to cool the zealot's
ardour.... The sexual life of each one of us extends to a slight degreenow in this direction, now
in thatbeyond the narrow lines imposed as the standard of normality. The perversions are
neither bestial nor degenerate in the emotional sense of the word.

19

Freud (1905b) reiterates these views in the first o f the Three Essays on Sexuality, writing that it
is inappropriate. ..to use the word perversion as a term o f reproach because perverse elements
are always present in healthy sexuality (p. 26). In this essay Freud goes on elaborate his schema
o f psychosexual development in childhood, writing that the erotic drive normally passes through
a series o f perverse forms - oral, anal, and phallic, as well as narcissistic, scopophilic,
exhibitionist, and sadistic - before it reaches its adult, heterosexual, genital orientation (Freud
1905b). In these formulations Freud enacts a dramatic figure-ground reversal: where the term
perversion was previously used to denote deviation from the normal reproductive sex drive,
Freud now suggests that reproductive sexuality is actually a deviation from our original
polymorphous perversity (Freud 1905b, p. 50; Nobus 2006, p. 8).
While in these moments Freud seems to move towards collapsing the hierarchy between
normality and perversion, at other times he repeatedly reasserts it. Leo Bersani (1986) describes
these shifts as moments o f textual embarrassment, revealing Freuds anxious need to undo his
own more radical theoretical gestures (p. 2). In one moment, Freud (1905b) is suggesting that it
is only natural that we take pleasure in the preparatory sexual acts (e.g. oral sex) that are
eroticized by the component drives; in the next, hes saying that the normal reaction to such acts
is disgust (e.g. repulsion at the smell o f genitals) (p. 149). Similarly, at one point Freud allows
that the perversions should be considered pathological only when they completely replace the
normal sexual function (Freud 1905b, p. 158); but soon enough, he is suggesting that a certain
amount o f perverse admixture might be too much. We are left with the confusing idea that
normality is somehow a matter o f percentages: a little perverse pleasure is acceptable, but
things become pathological when one lingers too long on acts that should normally be
traversed rapidly en route to intercourse (Freud 1905b., p. 150).

20

Since the relational turn in American psychoanalysis, sexuality has most often been
theorized within the frameworks o f self-psychology and object relations theory (Dimen 2003, p.
278). Perversion is now typically understood as a defensive strategy for maintaining the integrity
o f the self or preserving attachments to beloved objects. This shift is evident, for example, in the
2012 collection The Clinical Problem o f Masochism, in which all twelve contributing analysts
share the belief that masochistic phenomena are solutions to psychological and emotional
problems, and that some form o f early trauma, loss, deprivation, or narcissistic injury underlies
adult masochism (Holztman &Kulish 2012, p. 1-2). Some theorists who write from this
perspective suggest a new set o f criteria for defining perversion. For Kemberg (1995), Bach
(1995) and Benjamin (1988), for example, whether or not a sex act is perverse depends on the
relational context in which it occurs. This means that kinky sexual acts like power exchange,
punishment, or bondage could be psychologically healthy so long as they occur within an
emotionally intimate, committed, mutually loving relationship (Dimen 2003, p. 283). Dimen
(2003) critiques this apparently inclusive gesture, suggesting that these new criteria are simply
moral judgements in disguise, with the family values o f love and commitment replacing
Freuds heterosexual genitality as the standard o f psychological health (p. 283). Like Freud
before us, we relationally-influenced psychoanalytic writers struggle to balance our concerns
about perverse sexuality with our wish to avoid stigmatizing patients, and end up twisted into
strange compromises. We allow for a little perversity - en route to heterosexual intercourse, or
within the marital bed - while still maintaining a separate category for the "real" perverts. When
perversion relocates from sex to relatedness, writes Dimen (2003), its moral baggage comes
along (p. 282).
A troubling consequence o f the shift away from drive theory is that many psychoanalytic
writers now generalize from a perverse sexual drive to an entire perverse character structure

21

(Downing 2006, p. 150; Dimen 2003, p. 282). By and large, the authors in The Clinical Problem
o f Masochism see erotic masochism as continuous with characterological masochism, and do not
distinguish between those who seek pain consciously and unconsciously (Kulish & Holtzman,
2012). This is a significant departure from Freuds (1905a,b) view that perversion is the
negative o f neurosis. Freud (1905a,b,) wrote that where neurotics repress their perverse
fantasies and express them through symptoms, perverts act out these fantasies in their sex lives
and otherwise function normally (p. 161, p. 50). In contrast, the analysts who have most
famously written on the topic o f perversion in the last 50 years have uniformly suggested that
perverts struggle profoundly with everyday relating (Downing 2006, p. 150). Here are a few
ways that perverse patients have been described: as dominated by hatred and incapable of wholeobject relating (Bach 1995; Kemberg 1995); as selfish, impatient, patently unempathic and
ungenerous, as well as mean and coldly aloof (Khan 1979, p. 15); as people whose relationships
[tend] toward death, or, at any rate, towards deadness, numbness, the exhaustion of sensation
(Benjamin 1988, p. 66); and as one whose fundamental relation to existence is one of sham,
counterfeit, forgery, fraudulence, deceit, cheating, [and] trickery (Chasseguet-Smirgel 1985, p.
81).
Downing (2006) points out that the way psychoanalytic writers have described perverse
patients sexual lives tends to be curiously contradictory:

On the one hand, there is the tendency to see perversion as a transgressive, disruptive and
dangerous force, a metonymy for the human desire and capacity to break down the social
hierarchy and overturn meanings...on the other hand, there is the tendency to see perversion as
conservative, rigid, and fixated, a mentality or practice concerned with... the endless unchanging
repetition of a script carefully constructed in advance. The tendency then, is towards a polarized

22

view of perversion that labels it either an ultra-conservative phenomenon or else a dangerously

transgressive one. (p. 153)

These conflicting stereotypes, suggests Downing (2006), may say more about our cultural fears
and desires surrounding perverse sexuality than they do about the actual experiences o f people
engaged in these practices (p. 154). Dimen (2003) agrees that psychoanalysts are just as
vulnerable as is the culture at large to the ick factor - our repulsion towards the sexually
unfamiliar, intensified by our shame-laden identification o f perverse desire within ourselves,
which we then project into the patients about whom we write (p. 259). Dimen (2003) urges us to
turn our critical scrutiny away from our patients and towards ourselves. Is there not a perverse
admixture o f love, aggression, disgust, and pleasure in the therapists penetrating encounter with
her patients psychosexual reality? And are not our fields practices o f naming, blaming, truth
framing, and shaming in relation to sexual life a form o f perverse, life-destroying domination
(p. 284)?
Given the fraught moral territory of writing about perversion, some suggest dropping the
project altogether. Dimen (2003) suggests that the idea o f perversion is simply a tool that
cultures use to draw boundaries around what is sexually permissible; for the practicing analyst,
the idea is clinically superfluous (p. 280). When we employ the term in our writing, she
suggests, we do nothing more than preserve a traditional discourse, perpetuate an oppression,
and make people feel bad (p. 282). Some psychologists have applied this critique by advocating
for the removal o f sexual sadism and masochism from the DSM. Kleinplatz and Moser (2005),
for example, compare the inclusion o f these paraphilias in the DSM-IV to the inclusion of
homosexuality before 1973, arguing that the inclusion of these disorders reflects shifting
cultural taboos rather than any real evidence o f psychiatric illness (p. 66). (Although sexual

sadism and masochism are still included in the DSM-5, some o f the criteria have been changed
to better exclude consensual BDSM; see McManus et al 2013). It remains to be seen how our
field will respond to the cultures increasing liberal attitudes about sexual diversity, and whether
the concept o f perversion will persist, fade, or be re-worked in theoretical frameworks.

The Fram ew ork and Aims of this Study

This study explores the experiences o f women who participate in consensual BDSM,
focusing on the psychological dynamics of their sexual lives. I am writing about women in
particular because I hope to bring together feminist and psychoanalytic conversations
surrounding the nature o f sadomasochism. My central aim in undertaking this project is to help
to introduce specificity and complexity into the literature, and to model a way of thinking about
patients who are involved in these practices. In this study I ask: what attracts certain women to
sexual practices that dramatize the dynamics o f power and pain? And how might engaging in
BDSM shape womens internal and external lives for the better or for the worse?
In order to do so, my project attempts to bridge between the lived experiences o f my
participants and existing theory, hopefully creating a productive dialogue between the two. Here
my project is inspired by Stollers (1991) study o f the BDSM community in West Hollywood
and Weilles (2002) case studies o f BDSM practitioners, both o f which merge ethnographic
research with psychodynamic analysis. I share with these theorists the belief that extensive,
detailed information about our patients sexual lives must be central in our theorizing: as Stoller
(1991) put it, our field has cooked up a soup with too few ingredients... Most psychoanalytic
theories o f sadism and masochism are oiled water masquerading as gourmet's delight" (p. 5). To
balance ethnography and analysis is a tricky endeavor, as there is always the pull to make cases

24

fit the theory. I hope to avoid this pitfall as much as possible by committing to what Downing
(2006) calls the ethics o f specificity - the refusal to be reductive or to generalize when
considering the possible meanings o f a persons sexual life (p. 161). Keeping in mind that lived
experience always exceeds the power o f theory to explain, I look for moments where my
participants experiences contradict the theoretical framework I m applying. My project also
follows Weilles (2002) example in examining the power dynamics of the researcher-subject
configuration and giving more credibility to the voices o f those under investigation (p. 135). I
oppose the idea that sexual perverts are especially prone to acting compulsively and without
reflection. In fact, I would argue that the women in my study are more likely than most to have
thought about the psychological meanings of their sexual lives, simply because o f the extent to
which these questions are discussed within the BDSM community. I take seriously my
participants own ideas and try to put them into conversation with the existing literature.
One question that this study does not try to answer is whether people who engage in
sadomasochistic sex share some common psychopathology. Much has already been written on
this topic: as Ive reviewed in this chapter, many psychoanalysts have proposed that
sadomasochistic sexuality is linked to a perverse psychological structure with its own set of
defenses and deficits. Empirical researchers have also addressed this question, with most finding
the opposite: that individuals who participate in BDSM do not appear to vary significantly from
controls with respect to psychopathology (Wismeijer & van Assen, 2013). However, this study
refrains from making claims in either direction for several reasons. First, I believe that it is
theoretically unsound to designate certain sexual acts as perverse, given the historical
contingency o f what is considered normal in the realm o f sex (Foucault 1967). Second, I
believe that we cannot make generalizations about the psychological meaning o f sexual acts,
because what sex looks like from the outside may have little to do with what it means on the

25

inside: inside o f a particular community, relationship, or individual psyche. Finally, I believe that
in our clinical work it is counterproductive to designate certain patients as perverse and treat
their sexual lives as inherently problematic. Doing so introduces shame into the room (or, more
likely, amplifies the patients existing shame), which inevitably shuts down the psychic space
needed to think critically about ones own desires and practices (Dimen 2003, p. 266). For
evidence o f this problem, look no further than my second participant, Robin, who quit her
therapy in the midst o f an abusive relationship - at a time when she desperately needed help because she felt that her therapist was judgmental o f her interest in BDSM. If we wish to help
such patients, we must begin from a place o f curiosity.
That said, this project does not ignore the possibility that sadomasochistic sexual
practices might sometimes have harmful psychological or relational effects. Indeed, a major goal
o f this project is to understand the conflicts and compromises that underlie my participants
sexual lives. My analyses take into serious consideration the ideas o f anti-S/M feminists and
psychoanalysts who understand BDSM as a harmful unconscious enactment derived from
patriarchal ideology or from childhood trauma. However, I depart from these perspectives in that
I believe all forms o f sexual expression can be examined in this way, because all sexuality is a
compromise formation - an inherently conflictual mixture o f desire and defense, love and hatred,
creativity and destructiveness (see Stein 1998, Corbett 2001, Weille 2002; and Dimen 2003).
Indeed, I would argue that the same terms that some writers have applied to perversion - bland,
compulsive, repetitive, joyless, etc. - could just as easily be applied to many normative sexual
practices. I am in agreement with Kleinplatz and Moser (2005) when they write that any kind of
sex can be disturbed or disturbing, life-affirming or growth-enhancing (p. 65). Understanding
sexuality as a non-hierarchical spectrum allows me to examine my participants sexual practices

26

as unique, complex constellations o f psychological meaning, rather than reducing them to

deviations from the norm.
This project also attempts to capture some of the experience-near and embodied aspects
o f BDSM practices. Here I am responding to Ruth Stein's (2008) appeal to psychoanalysts to
find a new language for discussing sexuality. Our discipline, as she and Saketopoulou (2015)
each point out, is expert at talking about sex in a way that is symbolic, systematizing, and
intellectualized. However, these modes o f speech fail to capture something essential about
sexuality - its mysterious and sensual qualities. In our theorizing, writes Stein (2008), we seem
to forget or repress how different we are when we are sexual, how great the discrepancy is
between sexuality and daily life (p. 44). Atlas (2016) likewise warns us against assuming that
sexuality is determined by early attachment patterns, highlighting the enigmatic and existential
dimensions o f eroticism that inherently resist understanding (p. 16). For this reason,
Saketopoulou (2015) urges us to embrace the sensual and non-rational aspects of sex: the
exuberant, generative, unsettling and challenging mess that sexuality can become when the
undecipherable occurs (p. 255). In my interviews and my writing about them, I hope to leave
room for the enigmatic nature o f desire. I also recognize that sexual pleasure does not exist
primarily in the register o f object relations and symbols, but in the register o f the body. I
therefore try to capture some o f the sensory and affective rhythms o f BDSM - in other words,
what makes these practices sexy.
This focus on pleasure is consistent with the feminist aims o f my project (Saketopoulou
2015; Vance 1982). I align my work with the integrative goals of the 1982 Barnard conference
and with recent third-wave feminist perspectives: I view my participants as sexual agents and
victims simultaneously, and I explore how both the pursuit o f pleasure and adaptations to danger
shape womens sexual lives. In the words o f Vance (1982),

27

Sexuality is simultaneously the domain of restriction, repression, and danger as well as a

domain of exploration, pleasure, and agency. To focus only on pleasure and gratification ignores
the patriarchal structure in which women act, yet to speak only of sexual violence and
oppression ignores womens experience with sexual agency and choice (p. 1).

Despite feminisms many gains over the course o f the past century, it is still normative
for American women to experience threatened or actual sexual violence. Around 19% of
American women will be raped in their lifetime, and another 44% will experience other forms of
unwanted sexual contact; 15% will experience stalking, and 22% will be subjected to severe
physical violence by a romantic partner (Breiding et al. 2014). All three o f the participants I
discuss in this study have had unwanted sexual experiences with men, within and outside o f the
BDSM community. For this reason, it is an important goal of my project to examine the
relationship between the consensual, role-played violence and domination o f BDSM and the real
violence and domination that continue to shape womens lives. How are my participants sexual
practices a response to growing up in sexual milieus in which their pleasure, self-determination,
and bodily integrity are threatened? And in what ways do BDSM practices and communities
either perpetuate these problems or offer alternatives?

Organization of this Study

This introductory chapter has provided an overview of the psychoanalytic and feminist
histories in which this project is embedded. I have attempted to explain how my study builds
upon strengths and responds to problems in the existing literature.

28

In chapter 2 , 1 explain the methodology of the study: how participants were recruited,
how the interviews were structured, and how the data were analyzed. This chapter also includes
some information about my subjective experience of conducting this study, including my
motivations and biases as a researcher and my experience of the interviews.
Chapter 3 is an introduction to the BDSM community for the layperson reader,
explaining the subcultures basic structure, commonly-used terms, and shared values and social
rules. This information is drawn from my familiarity with the BDSM community, information
provided by my participants, and several self-help guides to BDSM.
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are case studies o f three o f my participants (two women and one
female-bodied and femme-presenting genderqueer person). Each chapter will begin with a
detailed narrative explication o f the persons life as they presented it in the interview, beginning
with childhood and leading up to their involvement with BDSM. The identifying information in
these narratives (names o f people, places, and institutions) has been disguised, but everything
else is unchanged. The second part of each chapter is an analysis of the major themes in the
participants narrative, derived from a process of coding and peer verification.
The final chapter o f this study brings the thematic analyses o f the previous three chapters
into conversation with some relevant feminist and psychoanalytic theory. This chapter is by no
means a comprehensive examination of the existing literature on sadomasochism. Instead, I draw
eclectically from several schools of thought to examine some pressing questions raised by my
participants narratives. I focus in particular on the intersection of feminist and psychoanalytic
theory in order to examine issues o f power, pleasure, violence, trauma, and agency in womens
lives. I use the data o f my participants lived experiences - as well as their own thoughts about
these questions - to enrich and to critically evaluate some existing ways of thinking about

29

BDSM, and to point the way towards new theoretical frameworks. I end by discussing some
limitations of the present study and promising areas for future research.

30

CH A PTER 2: M ETH ODOLOG Y

R esearchers M otivations and Biases

The first time that I read Benjamins (1988) The Bonds o f Love, I felt transformed.
Benjamins writing answered questions I didnt yet know I had, and knotted together disparate
strands of my personal and intellectual life. Here was a link between my dual interests in
psychoanalysis and political theory; a partial answer to the question o f how, exactly, systems of
power become installed in the psyche; a bridge to my mothers experience as a feminist and a
student of psychology during the sexual revolution; and a key to decoding the unspoken,
gendered dynamics o f love, power, and aggression that shaped my family life and my social
world. More than ever before, I saw vividly the compromises that the women I knew were
willing to make in their relationships with men, and the way that our desires had become tangled
up with sacrifice and suffering. The Bonds o f Love was also my gateway to a world of eyeopening feminist and relational psychoanalytic theory that would lead me to pursue a graduate
degree in clinical psychology.
Four years later, I was living in New York City and beginning graduate school; at the
same time, I was following friends to BDSM parties in underground dungeons or lofts, where I
watched women laugh, cry, and moan in pleasure as they were tied up and beaten. Prompted by a
friend who was curious about how my field understands her kinks, I picked up The Bonds o f
Love for a second time - and was surprised by what I found there. This time around, I found
m yself perpetually frustrated by Benjamins (1988) conflation of womens unconscious,
relational masochism and consensual, erotic masochistic play - which seemed to me to be two
very different things. I also started to hear a condescending tone in Benjamins (1988) writing.

31

Those poor, misguided masochistic women, she seemed to say, offering up their agency in
pursuit o f an idealized experience o f recognition that they will never really receive. While
Benjamin (1988) was explaining how sadomasochistic relating inevitably leads to emotional
numbness and death (p. 66), I was scribbling objections in the margins. Where in this account
were the obvious pleasures o f sadomasochism: the playful collaboration between top and bottom,
the ecstatic blending o f pain and pleasure, the fantastic release of coming totally undone?
Curious about what contemporary psychoanalysts were saying on these topics, I began I
began to attend presentations on kink and perversion. I was pleased to find a great deal of
complex, interesting, and non-stigmatizing thought about patients who engage in these practices.
However, when it came time for the audience Q&As, the conversation would inevitably turn to
the question o f trauma repetition - especially if the patient in question was a woman. During
these discussions I would become uncomfortably aware o f my identification with two groups
who seemed to perpetually misunderstand one another. Once, I went to see a presentation by a
sex therapist who was explaining BDSM to psychoanalytic trainees, intending to de-mystify and
de-stigmatize the practice. However, as I watched the presenter flip through a Powerpoint filled
with images o f people engaged in kinky scenarios - mostly nude women in submissive poses - a
rock began to grow in my stomach. When the Q&A began, I shot up my hand and asked where
the images had come from, and the presenter confirmed my suspicion: he had lifted them from
women's Fetlife accounts without their knowledge. Riding the subway home filled with rage, I
began to compose in my head the polemic I would later post online. What feats of splitting must
it require, I asked, to give a presentation on the importance o f consent while enacting such a
blatant violation?
Needless to say, my anxieties about straddling these two communities were kicked into
high gear as I began to plan my own study o f BDSM practitioners. How could I expect anyone to

32

speak to me openly about their non-normative sexual practices, given my affiliation with a field
that routinely treats such people as emotionally broken or morally corrupt? How could I try to
understand these womens erotic lives using the frameworks of my profession without reifying
the inherent power differential between researcher and subject? The best solution to this dilemma
I could find was to prioritize transparency over neutrality. From my initial recruitment letter
through the interviews, I was open with participants about my own identifications, intentions,
and developing ideas about the meanings of BDSM. This of course means that the material I
analyze is shaped by my own subjectivity, perhaps more so than it would be in a study with a
more objective interview protocol. On the other hand, I believe that by taking a more
collaborative stance I was able to mitigate another way that researchers shape their interview
data: through the unspoken influence o f their symbolic authority. Here I draw from the relational
psychoanalytic tradition, which acknowledges that silence and objectivity is itself a way of
contributing to the interpersonal field (Wachtel 1982). Rather than regarding my data as
contaminated by my subjective involvement, 1 acknowledge that my conscious and
unconscious influence was inevitable and something that must be thought about as I analyze the
data that I gathered. Accordingly, in this chapter I note some ways in which my subjectivity
shaped the selection o f participants and the course o f the interviews.

R ecruiting P articipants

Method o f recruitment.

I recruited my participants through several channels: referrals from a

friend who is well-connected in the BDSM community, posting ads on the Facebook group
Queer Exchange and on a Fetlife group for female submissives, and, in one case, reaching out

33

directly to someone on Fetlife after reading their writing. After making initial contact, I would
send the following statement to introduce the study:

Dear X.,
Thank you for your interest in my study! Heres a bit more information so that you can decide
whether youre interested in participating.
If you decide to participate, we would choose some times and a private place to meet (the
easiest place would be the clinic where I work in lower Manhattan). We would meet three
times, each for 2 hours. I would record these interviews and transcribe them. You would be
compensated $30 total for your participation, plus reimbursement for any unusual travel costs.
Throughout the process, we would discuss how to disguise any identifying information to
protect your privacy - including using a pseudonym to identify you. If I ever decide Id like to
publish or present my findings from this study, I would ask your permission first.
During our open-ended interviews, I would try to get an in-depth understanding of your
sexuality, but also you as a person - who you are in your family and in your romantic
relationships, your gender identity, etc. We would focus on what feels the most important and
relevant to you. My goal is to generate some ideas together about how your sexual practices fit
in with your overall identity.
In this study I am working from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective. This means that I do
not assume that there is anything pathological about BDSM, but I do believe that our sexual
desires and choices have meaning - both cultural and personal. My hope is that this study will
help introduce some complexity into the conversations about BDSM that are taking place in
my field and in the culture at large.
Please let me know if you have any questions for me!

34

In total, 11 people wrote to me to say that were interested in participating, and 7 respondents
ultimately decided to participate. Because o f my methods o f recruitment - reaching out to
friends-of-friends, posting in a queer-oriented group, and describing my study as feminist
psychoanalytic in perspective - my respondents tended to be quite demographically similar to
my own social group: feminist-identified young women, queer or queer-friendly, mostly white
and well-educated, and interested in thinking about their own psychology. One o f these
respondents dropped out after our first interview because she had a mental health crisis; another
completed two interviews and then fell out o f touch. O f the five remaining participants, three are
described in this study. I selected these participants to write about simply because they were the
interviews that I found the most thought-provoking.
The three participants whose interviews make up the data o f this study are quite homogenous
demographically. Each is in hir early twenties, identifies as white, has at least some college
education, and was living in New York City at the time of the interviews. Two identify as cisgender women, and one identifies as a female-bodied, mostly femme-presenting genderqueer
person and uses she/her or they/them pronouns. Each has had sexual experiences with both
men and women, but romantic relationships mostly with men.

Interviewing

Participants completed three two-hour interviews each, with a gap of one to four weeks
between interviews. Interviews were conducted at the Demer Institute clinic in Manhattan,
except in one case in which it was necessary to conduct an interview over Skype.
My style o f interviewing was semi-structured and guided by psychoanalytic interviewing
techniques (Fowler and Perry 2005). My first task in the interviews was to set the frame by

35

discussing consent, confidentiality, time commitment, and compensation. I then asked each
participant to pick a pseudonym by which they would like to be identified, and gathered basic
demographic information. Next, I explained the purpose of the interviews and asked participants
if they had any questions for me about the study. I then suggested to participants that we use an
overarching structure for the interviews. In the first interview, we would focus on their lives
leading up to getting involved in kink. In the second, we would focus on their experience of
getting involved in kink and the evolution o f their identity as a kinky person. In the third, we
would continue to talk about their present involvement in BDSM, and then reflect together on the
role o f BDSM in their lives and any themes that had emerged in our discussions.
As participants began to tell me their stories, I attempted to strike a balance between
providing structure and allowing for free association, and between developing breadth versus
depth o f content. While I often asked factual questions to establish a narrative of the participants
life, I also utilized the psychoanalytic techniques of empathic reflection and interpretation to help
participants develop unconscious or pre-conscious emotional themes. I also relied heavily on
supportive interventions to facilitate the exploration of difficult topics at a relatively quick pace
(Fowler & Perry 2005, p. 323). These techniques included expressing empathy and addressing
participants anxiety about the interviewing process. Although I did not typically make
transference interpretations, I did ask participants about their experience of interviewing and
addressed any conflicts that I thought might be impeding our alliance, given Fowler & Perrys
(2005) finding that a positive alliance between interviewee and interviewer is one of the most
important factors in gathering a depth of dynamic material (p. 317).
Although my subjective experience of conducting the interviews was different with each
person, I can offer some general impressions. Looking back, I see that I made special efforts to
create an atmosphere that was friendly, supportive, and nonjudgmental. I believe that this was

36

related to my anxiety that my participants would feel suspicious of me as a representative of the

field o f psychology, given its history o f authoritarianism and pathologization of sexual
minorities. At times I dealt with this anxiety by eagerly affirming my in-group status - for
example by making it clear that I was familiar with the lingo, settings, and public figures o f the
BDSM community that my participants described. I was also more casually conversational with
my participants than 1 would be with a patient, and I was quite open in answering questions
about myself. This stance was partially unconscious, but partially intentional. Overall, I do think
that it was helpful to create a collaborative atmosphere in which participants did not feel like
they had to justify their identities, and could therefore take risks in their thinking. On the other
hand, my pull to reassure participants o f my understanding probably closed down some
important avenues o f exploration. For example, in retrospect there are many instances where I
wish I had had asked a participant what a term meant to her, rather than assuming that we shared
the same definition. My reactions during the interviews may also have curtailed my participants
ability to express ambivalence: for example, if I quickly smiled and nodded when a participant
told me that so-and-so was such a kind, respectful top, this might have discouraged her from
describing times that she felt threatened by that person.
My participants, for their part, expressed a generally positive experience o f the interview
process. All three said at one point or another that the experience felt like therapy, and that it
had helped them verbalize parts o f their experience that they had not yet fully considered. Most
participants had some questions about my intentions in conducting the study and my familiarity
with BDSM, and some expressed concerns about being pathologized - all of which I responded
to as honestly as possible. Overall, I found my participants to be quite open and engaged in
thinking with me about the meaning of their experiences - especially as young people who were
relatively new to the scene and still figuring out their place in it. I observed that over the course

37

o f our discussions, participants relationships to BDSM changed significantly, sometimes in

ways that felt very connected to our conversations. Interestingly, some participants seemed to
become more positive and excited about their engagement in BDSM, while others seemed to
become more concerned about it and to withdraw from the scene.
An interesting complication in this study is my contact with participants outside of the
interviews. One participant, Margot, was already an acquaintance, and someone I had watched
perform kink scenes at public events. The other two, Robin and Scarlett, were not part o f my
social circle, but we three ended up attending the same party at one point during the study - after
I had begun interviewing Scarlett and before I had met Robin. All three participants also sent me
friend invitations on Fetlife during or after our interviews, which I accepted. This gave me
access to a world o f information about their kinky lives - lists o f their sexual interests, logs of
their online conversations with friends, public writings about their experiences, fantasies, and
ideas, and intimate photos. Since several participants already knew each other (most notably,
Robin and Scarlett had dated in the past), I also learned information about some participants
second-hand. All o f this outside information inevitably influenced my thinking about each
participant, but I do not include it explicitly in my analysis - both to keep the scope o f the project
to a manageable size, and because I do not have my participants consent to do so. The one
exception is my experience o f watching Scarlett perform a rope demonstration at a party, which
became a topic o f discussion in our interviews and which she gave me permission to write about.

Them atic Analysis

All interviews were recorded and transcribed within one month o f the final interview, and
the audio files were subsequently deleted.

38

My first step in processing the interviews was to create a narrative outline of each
participants life, which I then filled in with details from the transcripts until I arrived at the
lengthy narratives that make up the first section of each chapter. Although the narratives are
presented as an objective recounting o f the facts of the participants life, they are shaped by
my subjectivity as a researcher. My hand is present in several ways: in the initial decisions I
made about what to ask in the interviews; in my re-organization of the material to fit a linear
narrative structure; in my selection of what details to include or exclude; and in my re-wording
o f what the participants have told me. I have attempted to adapt my narratives to the flow of each
participants story by not imposing a consistent structure across chapters. For example, one
participant may tend to mark the periods of her life by her romantic relationships, while another
might differentiate the time before and after an important geographical move. I have tried to
capture these emergent organizing frameworks through the subheadings I use to divide up each
narrative.
After creating these narratives, I subjected each transcript to a process of qualitative
coding in order to arrive at a set o f central themes following Saldanas (2012) guidelines. First, I
read over each transcript in full to orient m yself to the material. Then I completed an initial
coding cycle, generating a large number o f codes - words or short phrases intended to capture
the main idea o f what the participant was saying (Saldana 2012, 3). During this phase 1 generated
approximately 1 code per every 3 or 4 sentences. The psychoanalytic perspective of this study
served as filter for this process, shaping which aspects of the material I chose to code (Saldana
2012, 7). For example, I paid special attention to statements about emotions and relational
dynamics, and I sometimes based codes on interpretations of what might be occurring
unconsciously for the participant. For example, if a participant said he blamed me - I mean, I
blamed him, I might write reversal - who is to blame? or if a participant suddenly changed

39

the subject when I asked her about feeling angry, I might write avoidance o f aggression?
Next, I completed a second cycle of coding in which I listed the codes from all three transcripts
and then sorted them and identified the most prominent codes. I eventually arrived at a coding
scheme with hierarchically-organized groups and sub-groups of related codes (Saldana 2012,
9). At the top o f this hierarchy are 5-10 central themes that I believe connect the material across
the three transcripts. After completing this process, I gathered input from a peer who read the de
identified transcripts once through and created her own list of prominent themes, which I used to
alter and develop my own list o f themes. Finally, I re-coded the original transcripts using these
themes to check their applicability, and modified the themes where appropriate.

40

CHAPTER 3: CONTEXT AND DEFINITIONS

For my participants, becoming involved in BDSM is not just about sex: its about joining
a community with its own vocabulary, values, and social organization. In this chapter, I provide
a brief overview o f the structure o f the BDSM community, followed by a glossary of definitions
that may be helpful in understanding the following chapters.

History: Where did BDSM Come From?

Our earliest accounts o f people engaging in what would today be considered SM activities
date from 17th century Europe. These accounts include medical literature - for example,
references to flagellation as a remedy for male erectile dysfunction - and descriptions o f brothels
that specialized in beatings and bondage (Sisson 2007, p. 19-20). The terms sadism and
masochism themselves were coined by Krafft-Ebing in 1890 and derive from the 18th- and 19,hcentury literary works o f the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who were only
two o f many European authors writing erotic novels that featured dominance and submission. By
the first two decades o f the 20th century in the United States, communities had formed around the
production and sale o f S/M related equipment, apparel, and erotica. Those involved in these
trades held private S/M parties in their homes, advertising their gatherings using code words in
underground magazines (Sisson 2007, p. 21-22).
In the early 1970s, S/M gained in public visibility because o f the rise of gay leather bars in
major US cities (Rubin 1981, p. 202). S/M support groups began to form and grow as an offshoot
o f these communities, gaining quickly in heterosexual membership. The most famous o f these
organizations are the Eugenspiel Society (TES) in New York and the Society o f Janus in San

41

Francisco, which have both survived to this day. The goal o f these groups was to organize
existing S/M networks, to provide educational support regarding safety and technique, and to
host regular S/M parties (Sisson 2007, p. 25). In the 1980s, the visibility o f these subcultures
grew rapidly because o f gaining membership and because o f their involvement in anti-AIDS
activism. In 1984 the first public S/M festival, the Folsom Street Fair, was held in San Francisco,
and in the following years popular television stations began to run news stories cracking open
the S/M subculture (Sisson 2007, p. 26). In the late 80s and 90s, popular culture began to adopt
the imagery o f S/M, with bondage fashions and sadomasochistic themes appearing in movies and
fashion magazines. Growing access to the internet in the 90s also facilitated the development of
inter-city BDSM communities (Sisson 2007, p. 27).

The Structure and Ethics of the Kink Community

Today, consensual sadomasochism may be referred to by a variety of terms, including S/M

(sadism and masochism or slave and master), D/S (dominance and submission) BDSM (bondage,
discipline, sadism, and masochism), or simply kink, which refers more broadly to
sadomasochism and fetish play. Kink communities are mostly organized through online sites, the
most popular o f which is Fetlife. As the Facebook of kink, Fetlife allows kinksters to create
individual profiles where they can describe themselves and their interests, post photos, write
notes and journals, and post messages on friends walls. Fetlife users can also create or join
groups formed around shared interests where they can read and post to forums. They can also use
the site to create or find local events where they can meet other players in person.
In major cities like New York, the BDSM scene is often highly organized and designed to
facilitate new members entry into the community. Munches - informal meet-ups where no

42

play takes place - offer a low-pressure venue to meet other players, and some parties might be
specifically advertised for beginners. Experienced players also offer classes on different BDSM
skills in order to teach new or intermediate players how to engage in BDSM safely. As players
enter the BDSM scene, they will be able to choose from a wide range o f parties and events with
different themes and moods - for example, parties focusing on bondage, leather or latex-themed
parties, parties designed for younger players, queer-oriented parties, etc. Parties may take place
at a dungeon space that is equipped for BDSM play (often a space that is also used by
professional doms) or at a general party space. Parties typically have a set of rules about consent,
sobriety, safety, etc., which are enforced by a DM (dungeon master) during the event.
A period o f BDSM play is often referred to as a scene, which is understood to be
consensual, collaborative, and mutually defined (Sisson 2007, p. 32). A scene is typically
negotiated and planned ahead o f time, with players discussing what fantasies they would like to
play out and what they do and do not consent to; the scene then has a defined beginning and end
point during which the players adopt their roles. The BDSM community emphasizes clear,
affirmative consent as a fundamental aspect o f engaging in play; whether a scene is considered
violent/assaultive is not based on the activities, but the presence or absence of consent. (Pitagora
2013, p. 28). BDSM communities often use the axiom Safe, Sane, and Consensual to refer to
the guiding principles o f the community: all activities engaged in will be approached with a mind
towards the physical and emotional safety of the players, within reasonable limits of what can be
safely achieved, and with full consent of all participants. More recently, some have switched to
using the phrase Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) in order to avoid the stigmatizing
implications o f the word sane and to acknowledge that safety is a relative term, and that
what matters is both players measured awareness of the risks involved (Pitagora 2013, p. 30).

43

Those who consider themselves part o f the kink community may participate in a very
wide range o f activities that differ in myriad ways - for example:

Types o f roles adopted: from none at all to a variety of power dynamics and role plays:
e.g. dominant/submissive, doctor/patient, mommy/baby, master/slave, kidnapper/victim,
etc.
Types o f acts involved: from conventional erotic acts like intercourse and oral sex to
bondage, sensation play, various types o f pain play and beating like spanking, biting,
and flogging, edge and fear play like choking or knife play, fetish play such as object
worship, verbal humiliation, etc.
Number, roles, and genders o f people playing: for example, a scene could involve one
person tying themselves in a rope suspension, a female dominatrix flogging a male sub,
three female tops co-topping a female slave, a cuckold fetishist watching his wife being
topped by another man, etc.
Degree o f privacy: alone in a bedroom, at a party but in a quiet comer, with a small
audience observing, or front-and-center at a show or demonstration
Mood of the scene: earnest or playful, cruel or loving, slow and methodical or quick and
rough, etc.
Duration o f the scene: from a quick spanking to a weekend-long gauntlet to 24/7 play

Glossary of Terms

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A ftercare: providing care and attention to a participant - usually the bottom - after a BDSM
scene. This may involve physical contact, providing food and water, and/or verbal processing of
the scene.

Bondage: Restricting the bottoms bodily movements with rope, cuffs, chains, etc. Some
bondage may be highly elaborate and used for aesthetic reasons (e.g. Shibari).

Bottom: The person in a BDSM scene who takes the passive, submissive, or receptive role.

B rat: A style o f bottoming in which the bottom is reluctant and bratty and fights back or
complains as ze is topped.

B reath play: Play involving the restriction of oxygen to the brain through choking or
smothering.

C hastity play/orgasm control: Play that involves restricting the bottom s ability to have sex,
masturbate, or orgasm, either during the scene or while the top and bottom are apart.

Cis-gender: Identifying as the same gender one was assigned at birth (i.e. not transgender).

C ollar: A leather, metal, or rope collar worn around the bottoms neck. Collars often have
symbolic meaning - a top may collar a bottom to signify their commitment to one another, or a
bottom may put on a collar to mark the beginning o f the scene.

45

Compersion: A term created by the poly community to describe positive feelings of happiness,
warmth, and affection in reaction to ones partner having romantic experiences with another
partner.

Default world: A term sometimes used by kinksters to refer to the world outside of the BDSM
community.

Drop: A feeling o f collapsed energy or depression following a BDSM scene, most often by the
bottom partner.

Dominance/Submission: a dynamic involving significant power exchange, where one player

controls what happens and the other complies.

Dom/Dominatrix: The masculine and feminine terms for the person who takes the dominant
role in a BDSM scene.

Exhibitionism/voyeurism: Play that centers around public and/or elicit exposure - may or may
not be framed as humiliating

Edgeplay: A term applied to activities that players deem to be on the edge of what is safe,
tolerable, or acceptable. Often applied to activities with a high level of risk, such as fire play or
asphyxiation, or with strong social taboos, such as scat play or zoophilia.

Fantasy rape/consensual nonconsent: Scenes that enact a forced, unwanted sexual encounter.

46

Fear play: Scenes that are designed to evoke feelings o f fear in the bottom.

Fetlife: An online social network for kinksters that includes profiles, messaging, forums, groups,
and listings o f local events.

Fisting: Placing or attempting to place the entire hand in the rectum or vagina.

Hard limits: Kink activities that a person does not want to engage in under any circumstances.

Humiliation: Evoking feelings of embarrassment or shame in the bottom through verbal

degradation or putting them in compromising situations

Impact play: Using hands or toys to inflict sensations through impact with the bottoms body:
includes whipping, flogging, spanking, paddling, cropping, and caning. Toys are often
categorized based on whether they produce a more acute, stingy sensation (e.g. a whip) or
more diffuse, thuddy sensation (e.g. a paddle).

Medical play: Play that imitates medical scenarios or utilizes medical equipment and techniques,
including needles and play-piercing, blood play, catheterization, speculums, etc.

Munch: An informal meet-up, usually at a restaurant, where BDSM players can get to know one
another without any expectation of playing.

47

Negotiation: Planning out a scene ahead of time by discussing each players interests, fantasies,
and limits.

Power exchange: Play that involves one person giving control over to another person.

Punishment: Scenes in which pain, beatings, degradation, etc. are framed as a punishment for
the bottom having done something wrong.

Sadism/masochism: Play that focuses on the giving and receiving o f emotional or physical pain.

Safe-word: A mutually-agreed upon word that will stop the play immediately. This allows the
bottom to express resistance and suffering - to play the role of victim - without
communicating to the top that ze is really withdrawing consent.

Scat: playing with feces.

Service topping: Topping where the focus is on pleasuring the bottom or fulfilling zir fantasies.

Sensory restriction: using gags, blindfolds, darkness, and bondage to limit the bottoms ability
to take in or react to sensory information.

Scene: The designated period o f time during which the players adopt roles and engage in
sadomasochistic or fetish play. Can also be used to refer to the BDSM community, as in the
scene.

48

Scene name: A name adopted by players to use in the scene in order to protect their identity.
Scene names may hold symbolic meaning or express aspects of ones kink identity.

Sensation play: inflicting sensations (painful or otherwise) in ways other than impact: For
example clothespins, needles, Wattenberg wheels, cutting, scratching, tickling, electric shocks,
hot wax, etc.

Slave/Master: A scene o f extreme domination and submission in which the top fully owns and
controls the bottom.

Subspace: An altered mental state that bottoms sometimes enter into, often characterized by a
pleasant floating sensation and very warm interpersonal feelings.

Suspension: bondage that is used to suspend the bottom from a tie point on a ceiling or piece
o f bondage furniture.

Switch: A person who takes both top and bottom roles.

Top: The person in a BDSM scene who takes the active, dominant, or penetrative role.

Topping from the bottom: When a bottom attempts to direct the tops actions during the scene.
This term can be used to criticize over-controlling bottoms, or can be used positively to express
the bottoms wish to be an active participant in deciding what happens.

49

TNG: A term used to refer to The Next Generation o f kinksters. This label is often applied to
events or groups that are advertised to kinksters aged 18-35.

Vanilla: Not kinky. Can be applied to types o f sex, people, or communities.

24/7 play: A relationship in which players permanently occupy their designated roles.

References

The following books and websites may be useful for those who are interested in learning more
about the world of BDSM. They are written as colloquial, self-help-style guides for getting
involved in the BDSM community, learning about ones own interests, and playing safely and
ethically.

Miller, P. (1995). Screw the Roses, Send me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery o f
Sadomasochism. Fairfield, CT: Mystic Rose Books.

Wiseman, J. S M 101: A Realistic Introduction. Emeryville, CA: Greenery Press.

Hardy, J.W. and Easton D. (2015). The New Topping Book. Emeryville, CA: Greenery Press.

Hardy, J. W. and Easton D. (2015). The New Bottoming Book. Emeryville, CA: Greenery Press.

50

C H A PTE R 4: SCA R LETT

Scarlett found out about the study from the advertisement that I placed on a Facebook
group called Queer Exchange. At the time o f our first interview, Scarlett was 22 years old and
had been involved in the public kink scene for several months.
Scarlett is small, pretty, freckled and pale, with wavy hair dyed a deep shade o f red to
match her scene name (she chose to be identified by this name in our interviews). She has a fast,
intense way o f speaking, coming across as both anxious and very engaged. Scarlett expressed
excitement about the study from our first meeting; she said that she had thought a lot about how
to reconcile her engagement in BDSM with her feminist values. Over the course o f the two
months during which we met, I could see that Scarlett was using our conversations to help make
decisions about her life. For example, Scarlett decided to break up with her boyfriend following
a long conversation about the matter in our interviews. For my part, I often experienced Scarlett
like an eager little sister: I identified with her story and struggles, and I felt an affectionate wish
to guide and mentor her. At times, I wished I could take her on as a psychotherapy patient; at
other times, I wished we could be friends.
An interesting twist in our research relationship occurred when, during our first
interview, Scarlett and I realized that we were both planning to attend the same rope bondagethemed party two weeks later. Scarlett seemed to have no objections to seeing each other in this
other context, and said that she would be alright with me writing about the experience. I was
surprised to see at the party that Scarlett was demo-bottoming that night - that is, serving as a
rope bottom for the party organizer to teach a series o f ties before the free play part o f the
party began. Seeing Scarlett engaged in a BDSM scene added dimension to my understanding of
her erotic life; it also helped me think about the transference and counter-transference aspects of

51

our relationship. I will discuss this experience further in the narrative and thematic analysis that
follow.
My narrative description of Scarletts life is divided into five parts. In the first, I describe
her early family relationships and her sexual development from childhood through adolescence.
In the second, I look at her college years, including her experiences o f unwanted sex and
harassment and her subsequent mental health struggles. The next three sections examine aspects
of her BDSM identity: becoming involved in the BDSM scene after college, her first romantic
relationship that involved kinky sex, and her present fantasies and desires. Following the
narrative description, I will examine the emotional and relational themes that form connective
threads between these phases o f Scarletts life.

Narrative

Early family relationships and sexual development

Scarlett was bom, along with her fraternal twin brother, to middle-class parents in a large
Midwestern city. Her parents divorced when she was a toddler, and each remarried soon after.
Scarlett and her twin brother lived primarily with her mother and stepfather, and would visit their
father, stepmother, and paternal half-brother for summers and holidays.
Scarletts narrative o f her family life did not include much information about early
childhood; instead, she focused on her experiences in adolescence and her struggles with her
mother around independence. Scarlett described herself as a mature, thoughtful teenager who
cared about schoolwork and had no interest in drinking or drugs: the worst thing I ever did was
break curfew [by ten minutes]. Despite her good character, Scarlett felt that her mother treated

52

her as a problem child who needed to be monitored and disciplined. For example, she related
one story in which she had taken up an acting class at school without her mothers permission: I
had all this free time [at school] and it was killing me - I was bored... so I took an acting class
and lied about it. Her mother grounded her when she found out, telling Scarlett that she didnt
want her to overwhelm herself. Scarlett told this anecdote to illustrate her sense that her mother
was more interested in making decisions on Scarletts behalf than in understanding what Scarlett
actually wanted or was capable of. In some ways, her mothers scrutiny was successful in
controlling Scarletts behavior, because she was constantly afraid o f getting in trouble. But, in
Scarletts opinion, it also marred their relationship and impeded Scarletts development. As she
puts it, I was scared o f everything. I was scared to go out and do stuff... I was in fear o f my
mother. It sucked to feel like I was getting punished for something I hadnt done wrong.
Another difficulty in Scarletts relationship with her mother arose around the topic o f sex.
One o f the first things that Scarlett told me about her family was that we never talked about sex,
ever. Scarlett learned about sex from a book that her mother had handed to her while joking,
lets not talk about it again until youre thirty! Since she realized that her mother did not want
her to ask questions about sex, Scarlett figured things out with her friends; she remembers in
middle school reading a magazine article together about different types o f penises and feeling
titillated. Scarlett also learned about her sexuality through the fantasy novels o f Tamora Pierce,
which include descriptions o f the heroines erotic adventures. Scarlett would bookmark the sex
scenes to read and masturbate to in the tub. She achieved her first orgasm this way at age 12: I
had been doing it [masturbating] for a while and I was like, OK, this feels good... and then it
finally worked, and I was like, oh shit! Thats amazing! Even before she began to masturbate,
Scarlett remembers having fantasies that involved power dynamics. In them, she played an
active role patterned after Tamora Pierces heroines: women who know what they want and are

53

in control o f whats happening. I wanted to b e ... the bad bitch in charge. As a young child,
Scarlett remembers having this very elaborate fantasy about [a boy I had a crush on].... the park
was a kingdom, and he was fighting a dragon, and he got hurt, and I was the one who saved the
day. I took him back to my place and took care of him and kissed him.
Scarlett describes her sexuality during middle school as very abstract; she fantasized
and masturbated, but had little knowledge about real partnered sex. She dated a football player,
but remembers that when he tried to kiss her at the movies, she shoved him away - she was upset
that he was making a move in front o f her friends, and she was repelled by the feeling o f his
tongue suddenly in her mouth. Scarletts first long-term relationship began in 9,h grade, with a
boy named Matt. Scarlett felt a comfortable kinship with Matt: we were dorks... [after kissing
for the first time] we were so nervous around each other that we couldnt talk for weeks. Matt
was a good partner to figure stuff out with sexually, because we were both very much on the
same page about the fact that we didnt really know anything. Scarlett had mixed feelings about
her readiness for partnered sex. In some ways, she felt ready: I was young, at 15, but I felt very
mature at the time. But Scarlett and Matt had a few false starts where they would begin to
have penetrative sex and then decide that they didnt feel ready. When they finally did, Scarlett
felt upset afterwards that the act had felt matter-of-fact and not special. In response, Matt
suggested that they stop having sex for a while and take time to talk about it. Scarlett was
touched by his sensitivity: looking back... thats one o f the nicest things he did... I dont know
a lot o f teenage boys who would be willing to put the brakes on sex. Throughout their four-year
sexual relationship, Scarlett felt that she and Matt were on the same page - they both enjoyed
exploring and trying new things, but in a context where there was a lot o f mutual caring... about
safety and everyone being OK. Over time, the pair played with things that Scarlett would now
think o f as kinky, although at the time it never crossed my mind that this wasnt what everyone

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did. While she wouldnt call herself a masochist at that age, she remembers liking sex that was
a little rougher. Scarlett also enjoyed being a tease: I liked being in charge, and I liked
pinning [him] down and making [him] wait for it. In retrospect, Scarlett appreciates the stability
o f this relationship and the opportunity to develop sexually with a trusted, long-term partner.
Although Scarletts relationship with Matt felt safe and pleasurable to her, it was a
magnet for her mothers anxiety. The two never spoke about whether Scarlett was sexually
active, but her mother expressed her concerns indirectly through surveillance and rule-setting.
For example, Scarlett had a strict curfew, and her mother would sit up watching the clock to
make sure she made it. She and Matt were also not allowed be alone together in her bedroom,
and they were allowed to lie down while watching a movie, or sit up and share a blanket, but not
both at the same time. Because o f these rules, the couple usually had sex at M atts house, where
they were allowed privacy. For some time, Scarlett wasnt sure whether her mother knew she
was sexually active, but when she was 17, she learned indirectly through her gynecologist that
her mother did know. Still, the two avoided the topic. It was clear to Scarlett that it was not a
safe space to talk about any o f that. Scarlett was disappointed by her mothers unavailability in
this area: it sucks to be 16 and be having all these feelings and feel like I cant tell my mom
anything... I [thought] I would get in trouble for having sex. When I asked Scarlett where she
thinks her mothers anxieties around Scarletts sexuality came from, she said that her mother
grew up in a conservative household with parents who slept in separate beds. She added that
during her mothers divorce from her stepfather, she picked up [that] they hadnt had sex in a
long tim e... [I think that my mother] had compartmentalized it as a thing that didnt need to be
dealt with.
While she said relatively little about her relationship with her father, Scarlett described
him as more laid back [than my m other]... he generally trusted me more. She wonders,

though, if this was simply because he was less involved in her life. She remembers that he did
also have hang ups about my love life. He disapproved of Scarlett having a boyfriend in high
school, and repeatedly told her to break up with him. Both o f Scarletts parents were concerned
I was going to marry my high school boyfriend and make the same mistakes that they did.
They didnt understand, she said, that she had learned from their mistakes and planned to live
differently. Both parents, in their own way, blew things out o f proportion when it came to
judging and criticizing on Scarletts decisions. When it came time for college, Scarlett was
grateful to get out o f the house where they couldnt control me anymore.
Scarlett did not say much about her relationship with her brother during our interviews,
except that she and he shared a close group o f friends during high school. She also noted that her
parents were more lax when it came to disciplining him. Scarlett believes that some of this
treatment was due to the fact that her twin brother was very introverted and quiet, making her
look wild in comparison. Scarlett used to joke that if Brendan brought a girl home they would
lock the door and be like, go have fun. When the two were in college, Scarlet felt that her
parents were more accepting when Brendan brought home romantic partners than when she did.

College years

After finishing high school, Scarlett moved to Boston for college and studied theater.
Scarlett had broken up with Matt after graduation, and started seeing someone new during her
freshman year. This relationship felt very different: less safe, because they were not sexually
exclusive, and less satisfying, because he seemed adverse to the kind of sexual exploration she
had done with Matt. When Scarlett proposed something that she thought o f as relatively tame like tying up her wrists with a bandana - he told her that he wasnt interested in doing anything

56

weird. Scarlett felt shamed and restricted by his response - like theres a big ol line o f trying
new things that we cant cross. At the same time, Scarlett was beginning to go to parties with a
friend who had started a kink club at her school. Scarlett found it liberating and surprisingly fun
to spend time with these new friends who did drugs, hung out naked, and cuddled. Some of the
kink activities that she observed, like flogging, were shocking and hard to imagine herself ever
doing; others, like the leather collar she tried on, seemed to click with her sexuality. Still, the
parties felt very outside o f my life, and Scarlett held back from participating because she had a
boyfriend.
After breaking up with her boyfriend later that year, Scarlett began to experiment more
with casual sex. She was excited to be sexually independent and to try new things, but overall, it
wasnt a positive experience. Scarlett had a number of one- or two-night stands, usually while
drunk, with partners who she described straight cis men who werent really down with kink
stuff. These partners did not seem interested in her pleasure or desires, and when the experience
was over they would say, that was fun, you should leave now. She was usually left feeling
disrespected and uncared for. Scarlett also experimented with kissing her female friends during
this time and once had a threesome with a male friend and his girlfriend, but she thought of these
experiences as just fun rather than an indication o f her sexual orientation.
While she was studying abroad during her junior year, Scarlett had a traumatic sexual
experience that felt like the culmination of her year o f unsatisfying hook-ups. After a party
with her fellow students and professors where everyone got wasted, she continued to drink at a
bar with friends, and ran into a boy who she had once kissed at a party. Nearly black-out drunk,
she followed him home to his apartment. Her memory for the rest o f the night is spotty. She
remembers that he kept pressuring her to have sex without a condom, and that she kept saying
no. Eventually she told him that she had a condom in her bag, and he put it on and began to

57

penetrate her. During this experience, everything felt wrong; the sex was rough and painful,
and she said youre hurting me, but he didnt stop; at one point he rolled her on top o f him and
was moving her body with his hands, and she felt too drunk to control her body and resist. She
tried to say no, but cant remember if the words came out, or if perhaps she said it too quietly
to be heard. When the boy had climaxed, he rolled off o f Scarlett and fell asleep. At one point
during the night, she remembers that he walked to the bathroom and took a shit with the door
open. Later Scarlett tried to see if she could wake him, and then made the walk back to her
apartment in the middle o f the night. On her walk she was harassed in the street - first by a man
masturbating as he watched her walk by, and then by a group o f men who offered her a ride
home, and then threatened to rape her when she refused. Alone in her bed, the emotional impact
of what had happened began to hit her, and she felt a growing sense of horror and disgust. This
was intensified when she felt excruciating pain inside her body and realized that the used
condom was in her vagina - he couldnt even be bothered to clean up after himself. Crying
now, Scarlett realized that something bad had happened, and felt that she could not tell anyone.
She called her ex-boyfriend Alex sobbing, but didnt want to tell him that she had had sex with
another boy, so she told him about the street harassment instead. Later she told friends in her
program that she had had really bad sex that night.
The following year, back at college, Scarlett resumed dating Alex. Several months later,
she received a phone call in the middle o f the night and heard a m ans voice saying he was Alex
and trying to initiate phone sex. Confused and half-asleep, she initially believed that it was him
and started to talk with him, but then realized something was off and hung up. When he called
again, she hung up and called the local police. The female police officer who received Scarletts
call expressed disbelief that Scarlett couldnt recognize the difference between a stranger and her
boyfriend; she said that Scarlett should not file a report, because if she did, everyone would find

58

out that Scarlett was being slutty with another man. Scarlett did not file a report, but did tell
Alex what was happening. He eventually picked up a call from the harasser and yelled at him,
which ended the calls.
These experiences contributed to a decline in Scarletts mental health during her junior
year o f college. Scarlett was feeling a lot of guilt about her experience while abroad: [I was]
blaming m yself... like if I hadnt done X, Y, and Z then this wouldnt have happened. And
obviously I was asking for it. Eventually, suicidal thoughts led her to seek help from her school
counseling center. Unfortunately, she was not particularly helped by this treatment; her counselor
told her she didnt seem to need treatment, which Scarlett thinks happened because she was so
good at analyzing m yself... and lay[ing] it all out. Still, Scarlett insisted that she needed to see a
psychiatrist. During her psychiatric assessment, Scarlett responded to questions about her
symptoms and began to think, wow, Im a fucking wreck. I dont know why Im still here.
These thoughts led her o ff the rails and she had what she now knows was a panic attack. She
was subsequently diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and prescribed Ativan and Zoloft.
Scarletts mental health struggles during this year became intertwined with her
relationship with Alex. After returning from abroad, she had difficulty trusting Alex in a way she
hadnt in the past. The first time they had sex, Alex climaxed very quickly, and afterwards
Scarlett told him that the sex had felt super not-mutual and triggering. She believes that this
criticism went to his head, because after that he would have trouble becoming aroused when
they had sex, and he told her he felt insecure and inadequate. Scarlett, for her part, would get so
upset [when we attempted sex] that it would end with me crying. The pair got in the habit o f
avoiding sex. When they were intimate, the sex was very vanilla. Scarlett was realizing that
she wanted sex that felt more kinky and aggressive, but when she expressed this to him, nothing
would happen. She tried to engage him by asking about his desires and fantasies, but was

59

disappointed to find that there was literally nothing. She tried introducing toys to their sex life,
like restraints and nipple clamps, but he was reluctant about using them. Scarlett felt deeply
rejected by Alex: its a terrible feeling to be with someone who clearly doesnt give a fuck
about this thing that you want. As she was trying to regain a sense o f sexual normality, Scarlett
felt she had discovered a terrible catch-22: its like you [either] want to fuck me and you dont
respect me as a person, or you respect me as a person and dont want to fuck me. This feeling
was so terrible that Scarlett feels that her relationship with Alex fucked me up as much as being
raped did.
What eventually helped Scarlett the most was starting a blog where she wrote about her
experiences o f assault and harassment. Here, she began to process her feelings o f shame.
Although she recognized intellectually that she had internalized a culture o f victim-blaming, she
still had trouble forgiving herself: I know that if this happened to anyone else, I would never tell
her that it was her fault - but [I was] telling m yself that its mine. Writing the blog helped her to
push back against these feelings. Scarlett was surprised to find that many women wrote
comments on her post about their own experiences of assault, saying that they had never told
anyone, and thanking her for making them feel less alone. Scarlett was encouraged by this
positive response and continued to write about the problem o f sexual violence of college
campuses. She went on to write a play about this topic for her senior thesis, and felt surprised
and proud that so many people showed up to its performance.
Although by this time Scarletts work around issues o f sexual violence had become an
important part o f her life, she had not yet told her parents about being assaulted. She felt that
they couldnt be trusted to respond well; she expected them to be angry at her for being sexually
active, and to tell her that she was to blame for what happened. Scarletts mother eventually
found out, however, from a mutual Facebook friend who posted a link to Scarletts blog. After

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reading her writing, Scarletts mother called her in tears. Scarlett was out drinking at the time
and didnt want to speak to her mother, who she heard as demanding that Scarlett take care of
her. Scarlett told her that she needed to calm down: its 11 o clock on a Saturday night,
youre very emotional, and its not something I can effectively help w ith... I cant just sit on the
phone and listen to you cry about this. While Scarlett told her mother that her tone sounded
angry, her mother kept repeating, you assume the worst of me. In retrospect, Scarlett
understands that her mother was hurt because Scarlett would rather share her experiences with
the whole world than share them with her mother. Looking back, Scarlett feels that this
confrontation was a catalyst for more open relationship. Although the two still dont discuss sex
directly, Scarlett is happy that her mother acknowledges that she is sexually active, and does not
react negatively when Scarlett refers to spending the night with someone.
After Scarletts mother found out about the assaults, she asked Scarlett to tell her father:
she was worried that he would be mad if he found out they had been keeping it from him.
Scarlett felt pressured by her mother, who didnt seem to understand that its the survivors
choice to decide who they tell. Eventually, however, she conceded and spoke to her father. His
first reaction was to try to gather the facts about what happened. Then, Scarlett says, he began
questioning how I reacted and the fact that I didnt report it. Things escalated from there. She
remembers him implying that she had been raped because she drank irresponsibly, criticizing
my [anti-rape] activism, and eventually calling her ungrateful and saying I act like a bitch
sometimes. Scarlett felt yelled at and like her father had told her she was not a good daughter.
In retrospect, Scarlett sees that he didnt know how to process what she had told him, and, in a
typical manner, he reacted by becoming angry and concrete rather than responding with
compassion. He later apologized for responding in that way. To some extent, Scarlett seems to
forgive her father for not knowing how damaging his response would be; at the same time, she is

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frustrated by his ongoing ignorance and insensitivity surrounding the experiences of survivors.
For example, her father recently told her that a relative was once convicted for molesting his
stepchildren; when Scarlett told him she didnt want to visit with this relative at Christmas, her
father became angry with her for being stubborn, saying, how could you be upset about
something that happened forty years ago?

Becoming involved in kink

Scarlett broke up with Alex during her senior year o f college because he couldnt handle
my anxiety. In the wake o f this breakup, Scarlett began reconsider aspects of her sexual
identity. For one, she began to identify as bisexual and to actively pursue dating women.
Although she felt like a teenager again because she was so inexperienced with women, she
also felt more trusting towards women and femme-presenting people because I had been raped
by a man. At this time, Scarlett also began to fully acknowledge to herself that she is someone
who enjoys pain during sex and that she wanted to learn more about kink. In an effort to meet
new people, Scarlett joined an online dating website and made an account on Fetlife. Soon she
began messaging Mark, whose profile emphasized his experience with rope bondage. She moved
to New York City before they could meet up, but they kept chatting online. In New York,
Scarlett went alone to her first kinky party: a female- and trans-exclusive party that, she was
surprised to find, was more focused on sex than BDSM play. Not knowing anyone, Scarlett felt
uncomfortable and shy. For her next foray into the BDSM world, she took Mark up on his offer
to put her in touch with his friends in the New York BDSM scene. This was how she met Robin,
a female-bodied genderqueer kinkster, who brought her to a small rope-bondage-oriented party.
Scarlett remembers the evening fondly: Robin did some light bondage on Scarlett, the two

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watched other peoples scenes at the party, and they ending up talking as a group all night and
getting breakfast in the morning. Scarlett was happy to have found a group o f common souls
who shared her interests in politics and philosophy as well as kink.
At the third kink event Scarlett attended - a queer, consent-oriented play party that Robin
helped to host - she engaged in her first impact scene as a bottom. Looking back, Scarlett
believes that she agreed to the scene in part to prove herself as a kinky person. She had a
stereotypical idea o f what constitutes real BDSM - dungeons and getting smacked around
- and she thought that perhaps her rope play experiences didnt count. In this scene, Scarlett
was co-topped for close to an hour by two friends, a man and a woman. The pair used pretty
much everything on me, meaning all o f the impact toys in their arsenal. At first, Scarlett tried to
keep quiet in spite o f the pain: I didnt want to be dramatic about it.... I just wanted to take it.
But after her friend reassured her that it was okay to make noise - and that they wouldnt stop
unless she used her safe word - she began to yelp and swear at them. She soon realized that it
was a fun dynamic to be a brat. As the scene went on, Scarlett began to interact with the
audience, teasing them by saying, hey, you wanna try this? You wanna get in here? Scarlett
realized that she enjoyed the performative aspect o f bottoming - especially showing off how
much she could take and being praised afterwards. Scarlett didnt know how to gauge the
severity o f the scene while it was happening, but she was surprised and proud afterwards to see
her bruises and to be told by a hardcore masochist in the audience that her endurance was
impressive. Although the scene was not sexually arousing for Scarlett, she felt excited by the
endorphin rush. She also felt comfortable and unafraid because despite their beating the shit
out o f me, it had been a really casual [and] lighthearted scene.
Because she felt so good right after they ended the scene, Scarlett told her friends that she
didnt need any aftercare. However, about 45 minutes later, Scarlett dropped. She felt sad,

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uncomfortable, and anxious; she remembers thinking to herself, do people on the street know
that there are people hanging from the ceiling getting whacked with things? Why is no one
panicking? When she got home, these doubts became more personal, as she realized I just
willingly let someone really wail on me, and I didnt dislike it. Scarletts experiences and the
desires they were arousing in her felt totally confusing. Why did she want to do these things, and
what was she supposed to feel afterwards? Was this a kind o f sex, even if nothing explicitly
sexual happened? What would it mean do these things in private versus in public, with a
romantic partner or with friends?
Because o f these confusing feelings, Scarlett tried to enter the kink scene slowly and
thoughtfully. She only attended a party about once a month, and played a bit with friends in
private, making an effort to build trusting relationships. She also played more frequently with
women or genderqueer partners, whom she felt more comfortable entrusting with her safety.
Scarletts relationship with Robin was a resource in this regard, as Robin served as a mentor who
emphasized consent and safety in kink play. Sometimes Scarlett felt condescended to by Robins
protectiveness; still, she was glad to have her guidance, and to gain legitimacy through her
affiliation with a well-connected player.
As Scarlett explored the BDSM world, her initial feelings o f anxiety faded. She began to
experience kink as highly empowering - it was the first time I had ever been in a position where
1 was expected to fully express what I wanted. Being asked exactly what she wanted by partners
created an impetus for Scarlett to learn about her own likes and dislikes. In terms o f limits,
Scarlett found that it was not any particular acts that triggered a bad reaction during a scene, but
a particular relational experience: feeling like whats happening is not a mutual thing... feeling
disconnected and like my partners not really there and not really invested in what were doing,
or theyre not considering me. This feeling o f disconnection and disrespect, more than anything

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else, is what reminded her o f being assaulted. She found that impact play generally did not
trigger her (she thinks because her experience o f assault was not violent), but it also wasnt her
main interest. What was most exciting to her was rope bondage. She remembers that even in high
school she had some sense o f this interest - she worked with ropes as a theater technician, and
was excited by the idea that they could be used sexually. Scarlett also appreciated the aesthetics
o f bondage: I was an artsy person, so... when I started realizing there was a thing that was
combining sex and... something I found to be really beautiful, that was really appealing.
Scarlett continued to find that the performative and exhibitionist aspects o f play particularly
exciting. She also started to take dominant roles - first by co-topping with a friend - which
tapped in to her earlier experiences o f pleasure in flicking with [boys] [and] teasing them for
hours.
An interesting aspect o f Scarletts kink life is her adoption o f Scarlett not only as a
scene name but as a persona. Originally, Scarlett began to shape this persona by wearing black
lace and red lipstick to parties, switching into a different state o f mind that helped her to psych
herself up and overcome her shyness and awkwardness. Over time the persona has developed to
encapsulate many facets o f her kink identity, and it does not feel like a character she adopts, but
like a genuine part o f me that I m expressing. Scarlett is a little bit femme-fatale-ish, very
flirtatious, very fiery. She enters parties with confidence, making sure everyone knows who I
am. Scarlett is also a switchy role that incorporates both submissive dominant states: when
bottoming, she communicates to her top, you need to earn [my submission]: I could also beat
the shit out o f you and Im going to remind you o f that.
Between our first and second interview, I had the opportunity to watch Scarlett in
action at a rope bondage party, where she served as a demo-bottom for a lesson taught by the
party organizer, Andreus. I remember not quite recognizing her at first. I knew Scarlett as a cute,

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nervous, bookish girl in glasses and jeans; but dressed in a lacy black teddy, red hair loose and
voluminous, and lips painted scarlet, she truly passed as a formidable femme fatale. Andreus
him self is a professional performer who brings to my mind a sturdy, handsome pirate; the two
made a beautiful pair. As Andreus moved her deftly through a series o f ties, using his body and
the ropes to shift the tension and weight, I saw different faces o f the Scarlett persona emerge
one by one. In one moment, she was kicking and swearing as Andreus teased her by restricting
her movement and making jokes about her helplessness to the crowd; her toughness and bravado
shined through. Yet in the next moment, Scarlett became the perfect romantic lead, melting
against Andreus as he held her small body, tilting her head back to as if to offer up her neck to a
vampire lover. The scene ended with Andreas demonstrating a hair tie, which left Scarlett
positioned on one tip-toe with her hair pulling her upward towards the ceiling. Here she closed
her eyes in quiet, intense concentration, looking like a ballet dancer frozen in time.
Scarlett and I discussed her experience o f this scene at our next meeting. She told me that
she has a great deal o f trust for Andreus despite not knowing him very well; partially because he
is well-vetted by her friends, and partially because of his confidence and respectfulness. Scarlett
said that she enjoyed the performative aspect o f the scene - showing off and having the
audiences rapt attention. She also enjoyed the predicament bondage element at the end, which
she described as a mind fuck, since relieving the pain o f balancing on her toe would mean
inducing a searing pain on her scalp. She liked that the audience was watching her struggle,
adding pressure to be good at it. During the scene, Scarletts focus moved between her
connection to Andreus and her role as an actress. In moments, she felt subbier, like when
Andreus would look in her eyes, touch her, and tug on her hair; but overall, she felt more
controlled, thinking about how the scene looked to the audience.

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As her involvement in BDSM has grown, Scarlett has had to make decisions about
whether to hide this part o f her life in other contexts. She wondered what it might mean to be out
as kinky in terms o f her desired career as civil rights lawyer working in sexual assault legislation.
She knows the difference between BDSM and abuse, but would her colleagues and clients? After
our conversation, Scarlett decided to write a post on her blog about the importance of owning
your sexual desires in the wake o f sexual assault - and revealed in this post that she is involved
in kink. She was pleased to receive many comments and messages from readers who had felt
ashamed o f their kinky desires and who appreciated her openness. When I asked Scarlett whether
her mother might see this post, she said that she might, and that she felt ambivalent about this
possibility. On the one hand, talking about sex after an assault is really important - like, how
are you handling that, how do you feel, do you feel safe, is this something thats healthy for
you? She would like to be able to have these conversations with her mother. On the other hand,
she doesnt feel that her mother needs to know the details of her sexual interests. I asked Scarlett
how she thought her mother would react to reading the post, and she replied, I think shed be
super not dow n... [but] I also think my parents have started to defer to my authority a little bit on
this sort o f thing... I think if I sat down and was like, heres my argument, this is why I believe
this is a feminist act [and] safe and good and positive... I dont think they could really argue with
that. And who knows - she added - maybe they secretly are really into that stuff.

Mixing love and kink

Although Scarlett was dating Robin during her first months entering the kink scene, the
nature o f their relationship was confusing. Scarlett w asnt sure she was ready to have sex
because she was still in all sorts o f weird trigger-y places from her assaults and from beginning

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to train as a rape crisis counselor. Plus, she was intimidated by Robin - they were cool,
opinionated, and knowledgeable, and Scarlett was green, both at kink and at being with a female
bodied partner. Scarlett had heard Robin say that they didnt have the patience to train new
kink partners. Robin seemed OK with forgoing sex because they were polyamorous and
therefore had other people they could have sex with, but Scarlett felt ambivalent about this
arrangement. On the one hand, she was relieved that she wasnt letting Robin down by being
sexually unavailable; on the other hand, it made her feel like less o f a legitimate entity in
Robins romantic life. At times Scarlett wondered why Robin kept [her] around: I dont know
how to fuck you and I dont know how to do kink stuff with you, so Im sort of useless. This
feeling was confirmed for Scarlett when Robin broke up with their primary partner and then
abruptly broke up with Scarlett without a discussion.
Several months later, Scarlett began dating Greg. This relationship became a focus of
Scarletts narrative, because it was unfolding during our interviews. Scarlett met Greg online,
and after a brief online conversation about politics, they went out for drinks together, and things
moved quickly from there: he asked to kiss her outside the bar, and then asked her to go home
with him. Scarlett liked that he was assertive, that he asked for her consent, and that they shared
the common ground o f being queer, having feminist politics, and having a sexual assault history.
She had a good gut feeling o f trust and attraction. That first night, Scarlett told Greg she didnt
want to have penetrative sex, but they fooled around. The experience was strange for Scarlett:
it felt like things were moving fast, but it also felt strangely casual. She remembers them
exchanging oral sex in his messy bedroom with the Simpsons playing on the TV and his cat
climbing on the bed. Scarlett was used to hook-ups that were drunken, fast, and driven - you
were there to rip each others clothes off. She wondered if Gregs casual attitude meant that he
didnt like her that much. However, they two continued to date, and she now looks at this initial

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experience as a positive experience - it was a shift for me in terms o f what sex should be and
what it can be.
On their second date, Scarlett made dinner with Greg and asked him if he wanted to play
with rope, and he said yes. This was Scarletts first time topping on her own and in private.
Scarlett was excited by her power to tease Greg and to guide him between fear and pleasure.
When he indicated that he was overwhelmed and needed to end the scene, Scarlett enjoyed a
playfully evil feeling - like, ha, I broke you! Afterwards the two had penetrative sex, and
Scarlett felt a sense o f victory: she had successfully mixed kink and sex and reclaimed her
sexuality. Both Scarlett and Greg felt that her taking a dominant role that night set an important
tone for the relationship: for him it was new and exciting, because he was used to being the top,
and for Scarlett it meant that she felt more comfortable eventually subbing to him. She was
happy that they were on the same page, in that they both liked switching roles. It also felt
affirming to be with a queer man, as opposed to the straight men she had dated in the past. As
they continued to have sex, Greg began to take dominant roles, and Scarlett had her first
experiences o f feeling submissive, as opposed to just bottoming.
As she became closer to Greg, Scarlett began to feel anxious about how fast things were
moving. She was disoriented by the paradoxical pairing o f their intense sexual intimacy with
their relative lack o f familiarity. She was also worrying that their play might be affecting Greg in
ways she didnt understand. For example, Scarlett knew that when she penetrated Greg with a
strap-on, it brought up feelings for him related to his having been sexually abused by a man, but
Scarlett didnt know any details about this abuse. She didnt want to pry, but she felt confused
and worried that what he was thinking during their play might be quite different from what she
was thinking. She also began to notice differences in their sexual preferences and styles: while
Scarlett wanted to play with things like bondage, pain, control, and breath play, Greg seemed

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more interested in gender fucking and power dynamics. The mere fact of a being topped by a
woman felt excitingly transgressive for him, but Scarlett wanted more. Scarlett sometimes got
the sense that he wasnt really into the dominant roles she asked him to take up. When he
didnt know how to do something the way Scarlett wanted - like use a flogger or a belt - she
would try to explain, but he would get frustrated at her for topping from the bottom. Scarlett was
frustrated too: she wished he could just do what she wanted with competence and enthusiasm.
Over time, Greg began to accuse Scarlett o f not really liking to top him, while she began to
worry that he only liked bottoming.
On top o f these conflicts in their sex life, Scarlett was concerned that getting closer to
Greg was not good for her mental health. She had been avoiding love and sex for some time
when they got together, and she wasnt sure that she was ready to start again. In her past
relationships, Scarlett felt her anxiety had made her act like a crazy psycho girlfriend: she
want[ed] to be in constant contact, she was prone to dumping everything on her partners,
and she couldnt tolerate distance after a fight and would demand we have to fix this right
now! She wanted to take thing slow with in order to avoid feeling crazy again - yet she
quickly felt herself being drawn in by Greg, and she hated it. Part o f her wanted to put on
the breaks and carefully analyze the situation before things got even more intense. Her fears
were exacerbated as a pattern emerged where Greg would pull away from her in times o f stress,
leaving her feeling deprived. At times the two butted heads over whose needs were more
important when they were both feeling bad - Scarletts need for closeness, or Gregs need for
alone time. Ironically, as she and Greg got closer, Scarlett felt lonelier, and she [couldnt] shake
the feeling that its all going to go away. Scarlett thought maybe she would be able to handle
Gregs comings and goings if she had good support network, but she had left her closest friends
behind when she moved to New York.

Scarlett told me in our second interview that she thought opening up her relationship with
Greg to polyamory might help her feel better about the relationship. She valued having Greg as
her emotional confidante, but she was excited to explore her sexuality and she wanted to play
with partners with a variety o f gender identities and kinks. She especially wanted to bottom to
skilled, confident tops. She also wondered if dating multiple people would help her feel less
clingy towards Greg. However, she wasnt sure this was the best solution - maybe what she
really needed wasnt more lovers, but more friends? After what happened with Robin, Scarlett
was worried that being poly could introduce drama and instability into her relationship with
Greg. At the beginning o f our third interview - which took place a few weeks after the second Scarlett told me that she had broken up with Greg. He had been acting flakey and cancelling
plans, which made her feel unimportant - like a glorified fuck buddy. After telling him this,
they had a conversation over text message where he said he wanted to bottom more, and Scarlett
realized that his lack o f enthusiasm about topping her made her lose interest in topping him.
They reached an impasse and decided to break up.

Achieving subspace

These days, Scarlett is less concerned about being considered legitimate in the kink
scene, which means that she can think less about what is expected o f her and more about what
she wants to explore. What is most compelling to her right now is pursuing the experience o f
submission, which has a special meaning for Scarlett. Although she had done a lot of
bottoming, she had only ever felt fully subby with Greg. When Scarlett enters into sub space, it
feels like a profound shift in her perceptual and sensate experience:

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Its not a state of hyper-focus, its a state of... its almost relaxing.... Im aware of whats
happening, but Im not overanalyzing it and Im not waiting for the next thing to happen and Im
not uncomfortable with the thing thats happening, its just happening. Um, and Im definitely in
tune with whats the situation, and Im aware of my body and how my body feels, but Im not
focusing on any one thing too much, its more... its kind of floaty. And my awareness sort of
centers around my partner, like, what theyre doing and just the current... its very grounded for
me, in that I feel very present in whats happening as opposed to what might happen or what did
happen.

Her relational role shifts in this state as well:

I get very kitten-ish... and puppy-ish. I really want to make you happy and I really want you to
think Im great. Im not a sub who likes being degraded... I like doing what you want because Im
a good girl and you want me, you want me to be there and you want to be doing that.... I spend a
lot of time watching [my partner], trying to absorb them. I think people who are in domme mode
are the hottest thing ever. Its so sexy and I want to take it all in.... not only are you domming, you
want to dominate me specifically - you want to do that to me and I want to let you.

Sub space, for Scarlett, is a special state of vulnerability that is hard to achieve. It can be difficult
to find partners who she trusts enough to let go - and even then, she has trouble not being a
brat and... trying to take back control. Scarlett has always had trouble with relaxing during sex;
she often feels way too aware o f where I am and whats happening, and not sure I want to be
there.... or not that I dont want to be there, but I cant focus, I m focusing on everything else.
Entering sub space means overcoming these barriers to relaxation and pleasure.

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Scarlett cant enter sub space at will, but she does have many ideas about what sorts o f
conditions could facilitate that shift in consciousness. When I asked her what would go into an
ideal scene, Scarlett described the following:

Theres some sort of power play early - [1 like it] when someone grabs my hair and its like, OK,
its on, this is happening. Her partner would put her collar around her neck, putting her in a
submissive state of mind while simultaneously reminding her that this is something I want, that
Im doing for myself. Then there would be some bondage - a chest harness or a painful leg bind to
begin building pain. Throughout this the top would be telling her why theyre doing what theyre
doing, saying things like Im tying your legs so I can fuck you and you cant stop me. Then there
would be sensation play like scratching and kissing, and pressure on her neck to cause a head-rush
feeling and make her feel disoriented. At this point it all hits me at once, like this is it, I just have
to get used to whats happening. Then her top would begin alternating excruciating teasing sexual
contact and painful contact, while asking her, do you like that? Tell me this is what you want.
Talking to her in this way would help her feel connected to her top, reminding her that they are
equals even though she has given up her power. After a long while, her top would tell her, Im
going to fuck you and youre going to come for me. She would orgasm first, or they would orgasm
simultaneously. Afterwards, her partner would pick up the pieces and help her come back to
reality, and she would be like a total kitten... curling up.

Scarlett went on to elaborate on some o f the important elements of this fantasy:

Environmental conditions. Some particular ambient conditions can help Scarlett to feel outside
o f things enough to slip into a different state o f mind. Certain types o f soothing, sexy music
help her bring her attention to the present moment, and being in a private setting helps as well.

Although Scarlett still considers performativity to be an important part of her sexuality, it is at

odds with feeling submissive; if shes being watched by an audience, she tends to stay in
control and very aware o f whats happening around her.

An intentional, confident top. Perhaps the most important aspect o f Scarletts fantasy is being
topped by a partner who is confident, skilled, and intentional. Scarlett fantasizes about a top who
already knows her body and her desires: someone who will give her what she wants without her
having to ask for it. In her words, when someone is unsure o f what theyre doing its hard for
m e... if you dont know what youre doing Im not going to trust you... and let go. Although
Scarlett could enter into sub space in her sexual play with Greg, she was often pulled out o f it
when she sensed his hesitation - for example, when he would pull his hand away from her throat
before she wanted him to, and she would feel annoyed and try to move his hand back in place.
Scarlett felt she could not release control if she had to direct Greg and explain what she wanted.
Scarlett experienced Andreus as a much better top in this regard: he was skillful and confident,
and could read her responses and adapt without breaking the flow o f the scene. Andreuss
physical largeness and strength didnt hurt, either - I like being overpowered by someone w hos
bigger than me and can throw me around.

Teasing, pain, and bondage. Scarlett goes on to describe several ways of being touched that
help her enter into sub space. She experiences BDSM as adding more intense and complex
sensations to the experience o f sex, which is already a state where there are so many sensations
and feelings already and everythings so heightened. Scarlett loves to have her neck touched,
which feels very intimate and vulnerable, and having her airway blocked causes a head rush that
disconnects [her] from reality and snaps her into a different state. Being bound in rope is

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another important element because it takes away Scarletts ability to micro-manage whats
happening. This allows her to overcome anxieties that can get in the way o f pleasure: I need to
have the choice taken away... I need someone to push me that far. The bondage keeps her from
physically resisting as her partner inflicts arousing and painful sensations that might be
frightening at first. The pain inflicted by her partner serves a focusing purpose: it draws her
attention away from distractions and into the moment. Specifically, she needs consistent,
building pain that is mixed with sexual stimulation - pain without pleasure just hurts rather
than feeling good, and something like a single, hard bite is just distracting. Scarlett particularly
enjoys the pain o f tight bondage, because it creates a consistent pressure that she slowly
absorbs over the course o f the scene. In her fantasy, painful and disorienting forms o f touch
like spanking, scratching, and pinching are combined with gentle touch, and especially sexually
teasing caresses that heightens her arousal. Scarlett attributes the pleasure she finds in pain to
endorphins, just like the pleasure an athlete pushing her limits might feel. When she feels very
turned on or close to orgasm, being hurt doesnt even hurt - it just feels like another thing that
feels good. The result o f these intense, building sensation is a climax that leads to feeling like a
lump on the floor... because youre so blissed out... Thats such a uniquely awesome feeling.

Feeling dominated and used.

As our discussion o f Scarletts fantasy went on, a paradox

seemed to emerge around the idea o f being dominated or forced in BDSM scenes. On the
one hand, Scarlett imagines her partner asking her to affirm that she likes whats happening; on
the other hand, she wants to feel like her top is inflicting things on her and that she has to shut
up... and deal with it. Does Scarlett want her partner to do things to her that she does not enjoy?
At one point, Scarlett said that it would be sexy for her top to deliberately ignore her desires and
follow his own agenda. The thrill o f losing control - and the idea that her partner could do

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anything to me - is a turn-on. Later, though, she said that she would never go along with
something her top was doing if it wasnt something that really turned her on. Scarlett wants to
feel as i f she is being subjected to her partners desires against her will, even though what they
are playing out is in reality a mutually-negotiated scenario.
Scarlett also expressed conflicting feelings around the idea o f feeling used or
degraded: when I let my brain turn off and I dont overthink it, its something I want. [But]
then when I overthink it, I get upset about it. At one point, she said that being degraded was
what worked the best to put her into sub space; she doesnt want to be humiliated or called a
slut, but she does want to be totally dominated. Later, she explained that feeling used can
be a turn-on, but only when it feels like youre doing what you want with my body because you
want me that badly. Scarlett loves the feeling o f being intensely wanted, and the feeling o f her
partner being possessive o f her. Feeling used is not OK, however, if it feels degrading; she
doesnt want to feel like her partner is saying, youre worthless, you dont mean anything to
me. She added that I dont have any issue with being called a slut if I m your slut.

Recovery.

Even with a strong in-scene connection, Scarlett often feels uncomfortable after re-

emerging from sub space: when I sort o f snap out o f it, Im like, oh my god, I cant believe I let
you do that to me. This is why, so far, its been important for Scarlett to sub only to romantic
partners. With a partner, the emotional intimacy is protective: she knows they are in loving,
egalitarian relationship, and can use that information to comfort herself if she starts to feel
degraded by the experience o f submitting. After breaking up with Greg, Scarlett is thinking about
whether she might be able to explore submission with casual partners in the future. She knows
that after-care will be especially important if she does. To recover, she needs to be reassured by
her partner that w ere still on the same page here, and that was a scene and not life.

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Thematic Analysis

Being seen and unseen

Themes o f wishing to be seen and going unseen run throughout Scarletts narrative. As a
teenager, Scarlett felt fundamentally ignored and misunderstood by her parents: a lot o f times it
felt like they werent listening to what was actually happening, they were reacting to what they
thought was happening. She felt that her mother made a particular point o f refusing to
acknowledge her developing sexuality, leaving Scarlett alone with these new feelings. Scarlett
felt closely monitored, yet frustratingly unseen - the good, creative things that she pursued, like
acting classes or new relationships, were likely to be misinterpreted by her mother as dangerous
or shameful.
Scarlett responds in a number o f different ways to feeling unseen by her parents.
Sometimes she hides things from them, like the story o f her rape, because she doesnt trust them
to respond well. I understand this hiding as both self-protective and as a way of punishing her
parents for the ways that she has felt painfully misunderstood by them. At the same time, Scarlett
is aware o f her longing to be recognized by her parents, especially her mother. Although she was
grateful to escape her mothers control when she left for college, she felt a sense o f lingering
sadness about the emotional distance between them. When Scarlett blogs about her experience of
sexual assault - knowing that her mother could find the link to this post - 1 see this as a hopeful
gesture, an unconscious bid for her mother to see and understand. At the same time, there may be
an angry wish to force her mother to see something that she would rather turn away from.
In the wake o f being sexually assaulted, Scarlett was crushed by the thought that I cant
tell anyone. Although this sort o f shameful silence is a common response to the trauma of being

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raped, I believe that it has particular resonance for Scarlett, given her history o f feeling that she
must hide her sexual life. Scarletts eventual anti-rape blogging and theater work involve a
protest against invisibility, in which Scarlett overcomes her shame by publicly sharing intimate
aspects o f her life with a broad audience. At first, it felt horrifying... [to] put all o f my secrets
out there, but Scarlett was spurred on by the outpouring o f positive feedback and gratitude that
her work received. As she continued to write her blog, Scarlett demanded that she be seen in all
o f her complexity: her sexuality, talent, and strength, as well as her vulnerability and
victimization.
When Scarlett began to attend BDSM parties, she dressed demurely and blended in,
observing quietly from the sidelines. Soon, however, she drew on her love of acting to embody a
role as a beautiful femme fatale, which gave her the confidence to be visible. Scarlett stresses
that her scene persona is not a character she puts on: its a real representation of many dormant
elements inside o f her - sexy, brave, coy, playful, dominant, submissive - put front and center.
Although the first time she was beaten Scarlett was afraid to make noise, her friends egged her
on and soon she was loving the performative and exhibitionist aspects o f playing in public. She
found great pleasure in this newfound visibility: in contrast to her m others turning away, all
eyes are now on Scarletts sexual self. Scarlett tells me, I didnt have a space to express that for
such a long time in my life.... I was so self-conscious. To be in a space where Im choosing to be
seen as sexual and choosing the way in which I m seen as sexual, and to relish in that attention, I
think for me is a very empowering thing.
In our interviews together, I felt that this theme running through Scarletts psychic life
became expressed in our relationship as interviewer and interviewee. I often felt Scarletts
nervousness and excitement in having my rapt attention, and her strong desire for my approval. I
m yself felt quite drawn into this role as loving witness: quite literally, when I watch Scarlett

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perform as a rope bottom, but also in my own tender impulse to reassure Scarlett that I
understand her and that I am proud of her. Scarlett told me towards the end o f our interviews that
she believes that its very important, in the wake o f sexual trauma, to talk about how it has
impacted your sexuality. This is a conversation that she wishes she could have with her mother;
instead, she has had it with me. Interestingly, one o f the things Scarlett wanted to know about me
was how I manage dilemmas o f visibility: do I ever hide my research topic from people in the
field? Do my parents know about my interest in kink? I answered her honestly and spoke about
my own decision to prioritize transparency over self-protection; the next week, Scarlett told me
that she had written a blog post coming out as kinky.

Fear and trust

Some o f the most frequently-appearing ideas in Scarletts interviews are fear, anxiety,
lack o f trust, and hypervigilance. Scarlett describes her mother as an overly cautious woman who
took too many preventative measures for [things] that [were] not an issue. Scarlett believes
that this contributed to her own tendency towards shyness and being scared to go out and do
stuff. In particular, Scarlett was constantly afraid o f doing something wrong and eliciting her
parents disapproval. Scarlett describes her parents as tending to overreact to small things with
irrational, disproportionate anger, which was especially upsetting to Scarlett because it was
simultaneously denied - theyll be yelling at me and theyll be like Im not yelling at you! Im
not mad! Overall, Scarlett felt that her parents did not trust her and that she could not trust
them: each was always waiting for the other to do something wrong.
Scarlett continues to struggle with anxiety and difficulty trusting others as an adult,
especially in the wake o f her sexual assault. Her emotional distress following this event

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culminated in a panic attack as she listed her symptoms to her psychiatrist and realized, wow,
Im a fucking wreck. In her romantic relationship at this time, Scarlett felt that she clung to
Alex out o f anxiety, demanding that he stay in close contact and worrying that he might be dead
if she couldnt reach him on the phone. Eventually, Alex dumped Scarlett because my anxiety
was too much for him to handle.
When Scarlett began to enter the BDSM scene, she was nervous and shy, and it took her
a while to work up the nerve to play. During her first experience o f being beaten, she seems to
feel strong and powerful; but afterwards, she dropped into a very anxious state and felt that she
needed to flee this strange and dangerous place where she has found herself: do people on the
street know that there are people hanging from the ceiling getting whacked with things? Like,
why is no one panicking? As she continued to experiment with new types of play, she was
cautious about only playing with trusted partners, and still she found that it could be hard to
relax. Scarlett is liable to become hypervigilant when she is bottoming: she scans the
environment, monitoring everything that is happening, waiting for something to go wrong and
trying to micro-manage her partner. As she detailed in her fantasy of the perfect scene, Scarlett
struggles to create the conditions under which she can trick h erself into relaxing and shutting
down her brain. Sometimes, when this works, Scarlett can enter into subspace: a feeling o f total
trust and relaxation that is completed different from her everyday experience.
At the same time that her sadomasochistic scenes are designed to sooth her anxiety,
Scarlett seeks out experiences that challenge her ability to tolerate intense fear and anxiety.
While in some cases anxiety seems to inhibit her erotic enjoyment, at other times fear feels very
close to excitement. For example, Scarlett loves the vulnerability o f being choked about the
neck: its the part o f my body that feels the most delicate... like you could really fuck me up if
you did that wrong. And thats sort o f terrifying and exciting. Scarlett tells me that she is

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interested in exploring more scenes incorporating fear play, in which her top would create the
illusion that she could become serious injured or knocked out: she imagines that being brought
so close to serious danger would be thrilling. However, Scarlett makes clear that in order to
proceed with this type o f scene, she would need to play with someone who she trusted
completely: I dont think theres anyone in my life right now that Id feel ok to do that [with].

Control

Closely linked to Scarletts anxieties are her feelings about being in and out o f
control - a theme that is quite ubiquitous in her interviews. In her teenage years, Scarlett felt
controlled by her parents overactive scrutiny o f her choices. Simultaneously, she was
developing into a person who has a strong need to be in control: to know everything ahead of
time so that she can carefully analyze interactions before making decisions. Scarlett describes
herself as a consent baby from a young age who would not accept a kiss from her middle
school boyfriend because he did not ask her permission beforehand. She seems to have learned
early on to be hypervigilant to things happening to her against her will or without warning. In her
adult romantic relationships, Scarlett is aware that her anxiety leads her to become controlling of
her partners, demanding that they stay in constant communication and that arguments be
resolved right away, rather than allowing for space.
In addition to this interpersonal dimension of control, Scarlett often talks about being in
control or out o f control regarding her own emotions. For example, when she is interviewed
about her anxiety symptoms in college and has to describe their severity, Scarlett feels so out of
control that she has a panic attack. Scarlett seems to feel a great deal o f shame about becoming
out o f control in this way. Later, she is insulted that her rape crisis counseling job requires a

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letter from her psychiatrist - she feels that this is their way o f saying, we dont trust you to have
your shit under control. I wonder if for Scarlett, out o f control states are associated with her
parents unpredictable, blown-out-of-proportion emotional responses. She tells me that it is sort
o f horrifying to notice how angrily she can react when she is upset - just like her parents.
At the same time as she feels ashamed about this out-of-control part of herself, Scarlett
realizes that she puts herself at a disadvantage when she tries to hide it. For example, when she
seeks counseling during college, Scarletts therapist tells her that she doesnt need to remain in
treatment because she seems to have everything under control. Scarlett is disappointed that she
has tricked this therapist by being articulate and self-reflective, and has thus cheated herself out
o f dearly-needed help. Scarlett also describes trying to keep her emotions under control in her
relationship with Greg, but finding that she cannot slow down the process of falling in love. She
is learning that emotions arent something I can control all the time.
In her erotic life, Scarlett has always been excited by the dynamics of control. In her
earliest fantasies, she identified with and idealized heroines who know what they want and are
in control. These heroines form a template for one side o f Scarletts developing sexuality, as she
finds that she enjoys having erotic control over her boyfriend, pinning him and teasing him.
Scarlett continues to develop this dominant role as she becomes involved in BDSM, and she
takes great pleasure in her power to control Gregs erotic experience when she tops. Scarlett also
discovered at a young age that she enjoys taking the submissive position in games of power
exchange. However, following her experience of sexual assault - which took place while she was
so drunk that she had lost control o f her body - Scarlet struggles with her fears about giving up
control during sex. Often she finds herself micro-managing and topping from the bottom.
Sometimes, when she feels out o f control in an erotic experience, Scarlett can start to question
her own desire: I m way too aware o f where I am and whats happening, and not sure I want to

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be there.... or not that I dont want to be there, but I cant focus. Her fears about being subjected
to something against her will seem to take over.
Scarlett is aware that her need for control can stand in the way of pleasure. For example,
she believes that she needs to hold her vibrator in a very specific way to get off, and she gets
distracted if her partner isnt doing it the right way - but she wonders if maybe she just relaxed
and didnt try to interfere, she would find that she could come from different types o f sensation.
Scarlett uses BDSM, in part, as a way to try to break through this barrier: she wants her top to be
strong enough to take control away from her and override her doubts, tying her up and pushing
her to experience intense sensations. It is exciting to imagine that her partner could do anything
to me and she would be powerless to stop it. However, after these types o f experiences,
Scarletts anxieties about being out of control seem to flood back in, as she thinks I cant believe
I let you do that to me.

Mutuality, equality, and symmetry

A second theme that is closely linked to Scarletts anxieties about being vulnerable with
others is her concern about mutuality, equality, and symmetry in intimate relationships. Scarlett
stresses many times that in order for her to feel safe in romantic and sexual scenarios, she and
her partner must be equal in their levels o f desire, dependence, vulnerability, and power. Most of
Scarletts sexual relationships during college felt uncomfortably asymmetrical: she describes her
casual hook-ups as existing on an emotional continuum with the experience o f being raped, in
terms o f feeling used and disrespected. In contrast, Scarletts high school relationship with Matt
felt safe, pleasurable, and playful. Scarletts comfort in this relationship seems linked to feelings
o f sameness and mutuality: she describes Matt as very similar to her in being nerdy, shy, and

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sexually inexperienced, and she appreciated their mutually-held interest in one anothers pleasure
and safety. Similarly, Scarlett was drawn to Greg on their first date because the two had so much
in common: being queer, being switches, having experiences of sexual violation in their history,
and being very focused on consent. Scarlett seemed to experience both Matt and Greg as not
like other boys and more emotionally attuned to her experiences o f vulnerability as a woman.
With both o f these men, Scarlett seems to develop an intimacy based on a sort of twinship
fantasy - which is interesting, considering that she herself has a male biological twin.
Unfortunately, Scarlett did not say much about her twin in our interviews, so it is unclear how
her feelings about him may be connected to these dynamics.
Over time, Scarletts relationships with both Alex and Greg seems to suffer from a
deteriorating sense o f mutuality. She is no longer sure what theyre thinking or whether they
want the same things romantically or sexually, and this makes her quite anxious. When her
partners mental state seems to be out o f sync with her own during sex, Scarlett often interprets it
as either a rejection or a violation: either they are half-hearted about the experience, or they are
only interested in getting off and not in who she is or what she wants. Scarlett says, The biggest
thing that will snap me out is if I feel like my partner is not engaged. I can sense it if someone is
going through the motions or thinking o f something else.... I end up feeling terrible and really
insecure, and really sad and rejected and mopey.
In terms o f her BDSM play, Scarlett needs to feel sure that we both want to be here and
were on the same page in order to enter into a scene o f power exchange. Her fantasy of an
ideal scene expresses a longing for perfect attunement - a partner whose desire and excitement
match her own, who knows exactly what she wants and who wants exactly the same thing. As
she comes out o f a scene, Scarlett often craves reassurance that that was a scene and not life
and that she and her partner are still in an equal, respectful relationship. Switching seems to serve

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a similar protective function for Scarlett, as in her relationship with Greg: by topping him during
the first night together, Scarlett proved to herself that they were equals in terms of power,
and she could later return to this idea to comfort herself while taking a submissive role.

Who takes care of whom?

Another theme running throughout Scarletts interviews is her tendency to fall into a
caregiver role and her concerns about whether someone will be available to take care of her. At
times, Scarlett seems to be placed in a caregiving position vis a vis her mother - managing her
anxiety and anger rather than receiving her care and concern. This dynamic is evident when
Scarletts mother finds out that she was raped and calls her crying; Scarlett feels pressured by her
mothers emotional demands and tells her, in frustration, that there is nothing she can do to help
her in this moment. Scarlett also tends to fall into a caregiving role in her friendships and
romantic relationships. She says o f her current circle o f friends, I love them so much, [but] they
need me to take care o f them all the tim e.... I think people are like, oh well youre a counselor
at the hospital, which means you are extra qualified to take care o f all my problems. In some
ways, this is a positive and powerful identity for Scarlett; in her earliest fantasies she enjoys
saving princes from peril and nursing them back to health. However, Scarlett can also feel
overwhelmed by and resentful o f her friends demands.
Scarlett knows that on some level, she very much longs for someone to take care of
everything and be there when I need them to be. The few experiences that Scarlett describes of
feeling supported by others - for example, her high school boyfriend, or her lady crew of close
friends during college - are very moving and important to her. Entering the kink scene as a
novice - being new and shy and needing help - allows Scarlett to experience being in the

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dependent role. Robin becomes her scene parent and takes her under her wing. Robin is her
guide, teacher, protector, and role model; she is both tough and caring towards Scarlett, a sort of
mixed mother-father figure. Scarlett idealizes Robin and longs for her attention and approval, but
also feels embarrassed by her dependence, and sometimes resentful o f being condescended to by
Robin.
In her sexual life before kink, Scarlett was used to taking the role o f servicing her
partners and being responsible for her own pleasure. It was frustrating for Scarlett to always have
to wonder during sex, are we here for you or are we here for both o f us?... I really want to be
with someone who really wants it to be about me sometimes. In the context o f these
experiences, taking a submissive role during sex can feel like a great relief for Scarlett, because it
means letting someone else make the decisions and take responsibility for her experience. She
longs for a top who will carefully attend to her, doing the physical and emotional labor necessary
to track her responses, induce experiences o f pleasure, pain, fear, and excitement, and eventually
get her off. Scarlett enjoys topping, too, but sometimes it seems to inspire a feeling o f envy for
the bottom s experience o f being taken care of: after Ive been domming more and topping
more, I get really subby. Scarletts conflict and eventual break-up with Greg seem very related
to the question o f who takes care of whom, in both their emotional and sexual relationship.
Scarlett came to realize that the pair wanted opposite things when they got upset - he wanted to
withdraw, and she wanted to draw closer - and his needs seemed to be trumping hers. Likewise,
in their sexual relationship, each wanted to have their need to be topped met by the other, and
each feared their partner did not really want to do this work.

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Being w anted, special, and good

Closely connected to Scarletts wishes for care and for recognition is her wish to be the
object o f others desire and approval. In adolescence, Scarletts mother often made her feel as if
she was bad when Scarlett saw herself as good: Scarlett was mature, rule-abiding, and a
talented and creative student, but felt that her mother had already decided she was a problem
child and could only see her through that lens. In particular, her mother communicated
indirectly that being sexual was linked to badness. At some moments in her narrative, Scarlett
seems to hold on confidently to her sense that she is good, smart, competent, and special, and to
feel angry at others who try to shame or degrade her; at other times, she seems to feel that she is
really bad, leading her to anxiously seek the approval o f others.
In her first sexual relationship, Scarletts spontaneous impulses are received with pleasure
and care by Matt, creating a sense o f goodness in connection to her sexual self; however, in
college her partners begin to treat her kinky desires as weird, echoing her mothers disapproval.
Later, when Scarlett attended her first kinky parties, she felt conflicted about her curiosity,
thinking, this is not me. I m a bad girl when I m doing this. This isnt what the nice boys at my
school want. In college, Scarlett has sex in order to exercise her agency and seek out pleasure,
but she also seems quite concerned with gaining her partners approval. Scarlett experiences
being raped as the culmination o f a series o f unpleasant sexual encounters in which she feels not
special and degraded by her partners, cast aside as soon as the experience is over. Scarlett is
flooded by shame following her assault and avoids telling anyone - especially her parents because she is afraid that they would be disappointed in me. Her need for validation at this
point in her life is so strong that she experiences being sexually rejected by her boyfriend as
worse than being raped.

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In her adult sexual life, Scarlett is aware that she longs to feel special, sexy, loved, and
appreciated. Scarlett can take all kinds o f pain, domination, and even degradation so long as she
feels important to her partner; what is truly intolerable is feeling that her partner doesnt want to
be there, or that she is just another submissive woman, interchangeable with any other. Scarlett
seems to experience these worries and desires quite intensely in her relationship with Robin. On
the one hand she loves feeling chosen by Robin, who she knows w ont give the time to someone
if they dont think that theyre special; on the other hand, Scarlett hates that she is too
inexperienced to satisfy Robin sexually, which makes her feel useless and unwanted. In some
ways, this relationship mirrors Scarletts relationship with her mother, in which Scarlett seeks
love and approval from an other who can be controlling and difficult to please.
I also understand Scarletts fantasies about being possessed by a lover as related to her
early experiences o f longing for approval in relation to her mother. Scarlett tells me that in order
to enjoy being degraded by her partner, she must also feel she belongs to them: you can call me
a slut as long as Im your slut. This type of play can help Scarlett to rework her anxieties about
being shameful and unwanted, as she plays with the idea that she can be bad and still be
completely desired by her partner, owned and therefore protected from rejection and
abandonment. At the same time, Scarlett sees that there may be something unhealthy or
dangerous in this desire to belong completely to another person. Her tattoo, which reads I
belong deeply to myself, and her collar, which symbolized my ownership over my own
submissiveness, are ways o f reminding herself and her partners that she cannot truly be
owned by anyone but herself.

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CHAPTER 5: ROBIN

I contacted Robin late in my interviewing process because I happened to read a blog

entry that she had posted on Fetlife. In her writing, Robin described playing with a man who had
repeatedly violated her consent and left her feeling traumatized. Because of my interest in the
relationship between BDSM and abuse, I reached out to Robin and asked if she would be willing
to talk more with me, either informally or as a participant in my study. She said that she was
interested, and we discussed the question of whether it made sense for her to participate, given
that she identifies as genderqueer. Robin told me that she still presented as a woman in many
contexts, and that she does have the experiences that are the experiences o f a woman.... it
doesnt feel like Im so far outside o f that that I feel uncomfortable with [participating]. We also
both agreed that her experience o f violation with the BDSM scene was probably related to being
female-bodied and femme-presenting.
Robin is 22 years old and uses she/her or they/them pronouns, depending on the context.
For the sake o f this study, Robin gave me permission to refer to her as a woman and using
feminine pronouns. Her look is tough but put-together, with a mix o f feminine and masculine
signifiers: a tall but womanly figure in androgynous clothes, dyed blue hair with a shaved
undercut, cat-eye makeup and black painted nails, and a voice that rumbles around in the bottom
o f her register. Robin was quite open as she spoke about very difficult events in her life, but she
sometimes seemed to be communicating from somewhere far away; her slow monotone and
many pauses and urns lent a depressive quality to the interviews. I experienced her as quite
intellectual, sharp, and dark, with a sly, sarcastic smile creeping in around the edges. Robin and I
met twice in person and once over Skype because I had moved to another state before we were
able to schedule our final interview.

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Narrative

Early Family Life

Robin grew up in a small town in the Northeast with her father, a high school principal,
and her mother, a school improvement specialist involved in special education. For part of her
childhood, Robins 11-years-elder half-brother from her fathers previous marriage also lived
with the family. Robin described her family environment as a pressure cooker. Right away, she
told me that her father was always really, really hard on m e... he wanted perfection in whatever
way he conceived it... and that sort of escalated into him definitely being emotionally abusive.
When I asked for an example, Robin recalled being in the 5th grade and struggling with a phonic
learning disorder: she didnt know how to spell a word, so he told her to look it up in the
dictionary, but she couldnt figure out the first letter. Robins father began screaming at her;
he told me I was stupid and all o f these things, and then... left the house. Robin was alone in
the house and began to panic, thinking that her mistake had caused him to abandon the family for
good. She went to her neighbors house for help, but when her father found out, this upset him
even more because it was involving outsiders in the family business.
As a child, Robin never considered her fathers treatment unfair. Instead, she was
always looking to please, looking to do anything to get some sort o f validation from him,
believing that if she just worked hard enough he would really love her. She remembers trying to
flatter him by telling him that she, too, wanted to be a principal. The approval that she was
seeking from her father came very rarely, and it never seemed to last.
Looking back, Robin understands that her father was a very unhappy person. He never
had friends, and he was estranged from his only sibling, a brother who he rejected because o f his

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leftist politics and because his course in life didnt follow the same rigid path that Robins
father had taken. Robin said that although I dont think he would admit that hes lonely... 1
cant imagine how one could not be lonely [in his situation]. She now knows that her father had
had a disturbingly abusive childhood and that his father had once tried to murder the family.
Compared to what he endured as a kid, Robin believes the abuse her father dished out was
relatively mild. I would say my grandfather was a sadist... [whereas my father] never much
enjoyed making people suffer... he lacks the self-reflection in many ways to know what hes
doing. Robin thinks that her dads abusiveness stemmed from a warped morality that values
hyper-honesty at the expense o f protecting peoples feelings.
Robin was very close with her mother growing up, although she added that her mother
had post-partum depression after Robin was bom which complicated things (she did not
elaborate). Robin remembers her parents relationship as not at all affectionate and marked by
constant tension and devaluation. Robins mother told her that her father was really kind when
the couple first met, but that he began to be cruel when she became pregnant, leading her to feel
lied to and trapped. Robin grew up hearing her father talk to her mother like shes an idiot,
such that Robin was surprised to learn later on that her mother is an expert in her field and highly
valued at the school where she works. She has a striking memory o f her mother stabbing a knife
into the linoleum countertop during a fight - shocking because my mother doesnt have a
temper and rarely fought back. To some extent, Robins mother was her ally, witnessing and
acknowledging the way that her father treated both of them. She did the best that she could to
shield me from [the abuse]... but, you know, its never enough. As Robin got older, her mother
would say things like just wait until he dies... hes not healthy, so if we wait it out then w ell be
out o f it. At one point the two discussed moving out and her mother began saving up money,

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but she just got too afraid, especially because her father had managed to get child custody in
his first divorce, and she didnt want to lose Robin. Over the years, Robin has watched her
mother go back and forth about how she feels about him; overall she seems resigned to his
behavior and tries not to let it get to her. She added that her mothers memory o f the things that
her father has done is quite poor, which she understands as a survival thing - like if you pretend
that it didnt happen, then its not as bad as it really is.
Robin remembers her childhood as rather isolated and lonely. She was not close with any
o f her extended family, and she had few lasting friendships: [friends] might stick around for a
year or so before I realized I didnt have much in common with them. She later put it another
way, saying that at some point in her friendships, she would decide that there was some
problem .. .and the solution to the problem was to just leave. She wonders if this was because
she choose the wrong people to befriend, or because she was anxious about relying too much on
others: not trusting others w as... the survival technique. School was an area o f some solace for
Robin: she was a precocious child who was very academically oriented and always has
really good relationships with teachers. However, this part of her life was complicated by her
father, who treated her like an adult prematurely and constantly monitored and critiqued her
school work.
Looking bac, Robin wonders how much of her sense o f being different and unliked was
in her head. For example, she remembers that she was planning to not attend her high school
graduation, but got roped into filming it, and was surprised to see that she was mentioned in
three o f the four graduation speeches. [For some reason] I didnt feel like I mattered that much
in the scheme o f things.

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Mental health struggles in adolescence

In the 8(h grade, Robin had an emotional break down that led to a series of
hospitalizations over the next several years. It started when she was working on a class project
with a partner who hadnt done her share of the work, leading Robin to stay up all night trying to
finish it. Robins father came down on me really hard for that, telling her she should have
managed her time better. Robin finally snapped under the pressure of his criticism and cut her
wrists with a razor blade for the first time. When I asked Robin to elaborate on what she was
feeling at the time, she said, I felt like something broke, and that I just couldnt do it anymore...
[I felt that] I was just stupid and worthless.. .1 knew I was going to get the project done... but I
couldnt sit with all o f those feelings... feeling like total dirt... I needed to outwardly express
that. Over time, cutting became a control thing for Robin: everything else in my life I have
no control over, but I do have control over what I do to my body. When I asked whether the
cutting gave her relief, she said maybe a little bit... but it was never the kind of relief I wanted.
After two months, Robin finally told an online friend about cutting herself, and her friend
convinced her to tell her mother about it. Robin did so while she and her mother were leaving on
a car trip. Robin cant remember how she felt about telling or how her mother reacted, but she
remembers her mom calling her pediatrician, who advised her to take Robin to the hospital.
During her first inpatient stay, Robin had a really terrible therapist, and she did not feel
at all prepared to return to her life when she was discharged. One seemingly positive outcome of
the hospitalization, however, was that Robins father apologized to her about how he had
treated me, implying that he understood that his abuse had played a role in her depression; he
even offered to move out of the house. However, soon everything went back to exactly the way
it was. Robins father resumed speaking to her with harsh criticism, and talked about her

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depression as a pathology that was totally independent o f the context of our family life... that
was easier for him to deal with that recognizing that he actually had a problem. After seeing
him respond in this way, Robins orientation towards her father shifted. She realized that
nothings going to change and that she could never gain his approval, and she became more
antagonistic towards him, Robin remembers a time in high school when the family was out to
dinner and her father, drunk, began to graphically describe something really upsetting and
violent. Robin repeatedly asked him to stop, saying that she didnt feel mentally stable enough
to hear it; but instead o f stopping, he got really nasty about it. That was the first time that
Robin acted out any sort o f anger towards others - I threw a glass at his head, she laughs. It
was the only way I could figure out to make myself heard... [to say] Im setting a boundary and
youre trampling all over it, and I need you to stop.
Robin began cutting again shortly after her discharge, leading to a second
hospitalization. This time around, Robin was done with the bullshit of inpatient treatment and
felt cynical about the possibility o f getting better. Soon after her second release from the
hospital, she made a suicide attempt. Robin had gotten into a fight with her father - she doesnt
remember what about - and brought the last razor that her parents hadnt confiscated with her
on a walk to a nearby lake. The razor turned out to be too dull to be effective - It was like this
frantic trying to keep bleeding, but it wasnt quite working... [so] I just stayed there for a while
and felt so ... defeated. After an hour or so, Robin returned home in the midst of a panic attack,
and her parents drove her to a new hospital for her third inpatient stay. Robins third and fourth
hospitalizations were particularly traumatic for her. She was really horrendously over
medicated. .. I was a total zombie, and she was essentially kept in solitary... I was apparently
not being super helpful in these bullshit groups, so they kept me in a room filling out
worksheets that seemed irrelevant to her illness - it was pretty ridiculous. Looking back, she

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remembers being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Oppositional Defiant
disorder, both o f which now sound absurd and so off-base that its kind of funny; to Robin,
its clear that she was suffering from the effects of her fathers emotional abuse. In total, Robin
was hospitalized four times within a year and half. She spent that time feeling, in sum, hopeless,
angry with myself, angry with everyone else... [and] definitely ashamed, cause, you know, small
town, everyone knows whats happening.
Following this period in her life, Robins role in her family shifted. While her older halfbrother dealt with their dad by disengaging and keeping his head down, Robin took the
opposite approach and became more defiant: I wasnt going to sit around and let him walk all
over m e... I was going to say something about it... I wasnt going to play by his rules because
they were incredibly unfair. When I asked Robin whether her view o f herself shifted during this
time as well, she said that I think I became more apathetic about m yself... without needing to
make him happy, I sort o f just didnt care. Robin did stop feeling such strong urges to harm
herself, and she was motivated to stop by watching a friend go downhill - cutting herself and
using drugs - until she eventually died from an overdose.
During high school, Robin mostly felt numb: she suppressed everything, just not dealing
with it... keeping m yself super busy and not feeling much. She threw herself into her
academic work and became very active in model UN - which, ironically, gained her some
approval from her father. Robin found a therapist during high school, a feminist psychoanalyst
kind of person who was okay, [but] not super helpful, and took antidepressant medication on
and off. In her senior year, Robin began to have dissociative experiences in which she would feel
removed from her body and unaware o f whether she was acting normally. At one point, this
Robin found herself in this state of being not really there most of the time for a stretch of a few
months, which made her feel terrified that she was going insane. Still, at other times, feelings

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started popping up again: she would suddenly start sobbing or yelling, with no understanding of
where the feeling came from. During college, these symptoms would evolve into panic attacks
and fainting spells.

Sexual development

When I asked about her early sexual development, Robin said that she was sexualized
from a very young age. She remembers working in a restaurant at 14 and being hit on by a
college-age male coworker who didnt believe her when she told him her age - I had developed
breasts much earlier than most o f my peers. Getting sexual attention at this age felt weird:
Its only been very recently that Ive felt like Im at all attractive... so there was this disconnect
between the way people treated me and the way I saw myself. There was also a difference
between my life outside o f school where most of the sexualization happened, and my life at
school where I always felt like the ugly duckling, and the outsider. As a teenager, getting sexual
attention did not feel validating for Robin, although it would later in her life - eventually, casual
sex would become a way for her to affirm that she was attractive and worthwhile.
Within Robins family, sexuality was not discussed; it wasnt an environment where
conversation was invited in general. Robin believes she began masturbating really rather
young, although she did not specify at what age. She remembers having a lot of weird fantasies
pretty young that sort o f surrounded some degree of humiliation and coercion, like one in which
I had to have sex with someone publically and there were people watching. In retrospect, it
was also pretty obvious that she had a different relationship with pain than other people
might. For example, she remembers hurting her knee as a child and playing with the tens unit at
the doctors office, seeing how high she could turn it up until the shocks were intolerable.

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Robin first remembers having sexual feelings towards boys in the 5th grade, and towards
girls in the 7,h grade. Around this age she fooled around with a female friend, and felt confused
by the experience. She had the idea that she either had to be straight or a lesbian, and so she
mostly pushed away her attraction to women until the end of high school, when she finally
admitted to herself that she was bisexual. During high school, Robin dated Ryan, who she met
during her hospitalizations. Ryan was such a mess and had a terrible temper, although he
never directed his anger at Robin. The two did not have intercourse, but Robin gave Ryan oral
sex, which was enjoyable but also felt like something she was doing for his sake rather than her
own. She did not feel strongly about it either way at the time: it just felt like theres no reason
for me not to do this, so I might as well... [and] it didnt feel like it emotionally should matter, so
it didnt.
After breaking up with Ryan during high school, Robin did not sleep with anyone else
until she moved to a new city for college. During her first year, she hooked up with a couple of
people, but she had little to say about these experiences. Her sexual awakening occurred when
she was spending the summer in Vermont after her freshman year. Robin ended up sleeping with
a number o f the jazz musicians who she was living with: I have a bad habit o f sleeping with
everyone in a friend group. Her first really positive sexual experience was with one of these
boys - he was the first person who really cared about my experience... [I was] attracted to him
and cared for him, and it was really good. Later that summer, she began dating another boy,
Adam, while continuing to date and sleep with other people. Robin was glad to have had this
experience because it taught her that she could have sexual relationships that were caring and
respectful, whether or not she was monogamously committed to her partners. When she went
back to school for the next semester, Robin began to have an absurd amount of casual sex with
partners who she met on an online dating site. Most o f this sex was bad; in retrospect, Robin

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believes that she was looking for company and affirmation during a time in her life when she felt
lonely.
Robin began to identify as genderqueer after taking a gender and womens studies course
in college and realizing that there was a term for someone who did not identify as male or
female. This idea resonated with Robin: growing up I never felt any sort of affinity towards any
representations o f women that I saw... I really just didnt ever think about gender. It just wasnt
part o f my conception o f myself. Over time, Robin felt more and more uncomfortable with
being placed in this one category that didnt feel right. She and a friend who was assigned
male at birth began discussing these feelings, and eventually they both decided that the label
genderqueer seems more accurate than anything else has felt. Although Robin acknowledged
that she chooses to identify this way partially for political reasons, part o f it is just genuinely...
[that] being cast as a woman never felt quite right. At the time o f our interview, Robin was
presenting as genderqueer in some areas of her life, but as a woman in others because its just
easier not be [out.]

Becoming involved in kink

Robin dropped out o f college during the second semester o f her sophomore year because
she was overwhelmed by her school work. Soon afterwards, she joined Fetlife at the suggestion
o f an online friend, but she was turned off when her inbox was immediately flooded by the
super creepy messages that new women on the site inevitably receive from men. Eventually,
Robin began dating a new partner, Mark, who had certain kinks (she didnt specify which).
Robin wasnt sure at this time whether she had kinky interests herself, since the two mostly
explored his fantasies - it w asnt super mutual. Looking back, that relationship feels not

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important to Robin - not problematic, but not fulfilling. It was a bridge, however, for Robin to
begin to meet other partners and explore the public kink scene. Early on, Robin messaged
George on OKCupid, who was a well-known rope top in the Boston scene and who had
photographs o f his bondage work in his profile. Robin sent him a really stupid message
complimenting his photos, and he asked her out to coffee. After their first meeting, George tied
Robin up for the first time, and it was mind blowing. Robin said about the pleasure o f this
scene:

it was very intimate, but still had this layer of aggression to it... I really like the process of being
tied, more than just being tied itself... the transitions between being free and then bound and then
free again. [George] did a very good job of very deliberately taking me through that process... I
turned to goo. It was just amazing.

Although the scene was not explicitly sexual, it was definitely really arousing. This
experience confirmed for Robin that BDSM was a good fit for me.
Soon afterwards, George took Robin to a munch. She found the other people there kind
o f weird - nerdy, but not interested in the topics she cared about, like philosophy and sociology
- and she didnt hit it o f f with any of them. Soon after, she went to a private rope class with
George, which initiated her very rapid introduction to the public scene. Soon, through her
connection to George, Robin was getting many offers to play from people who assumed she was
experienced; as Robin puts it, its very easy to become famous in a subculture. Robin wasnt
sure o f what she wanted out o f her early explorations; she didnt have any particular fantasies, so
she used to kink as a way o f trying things out and seeing if anything stuck. Over time, Robin
realized that Im much more a masochist than anything else, and she developed a reputation as

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a really heavy bottom. At first, Robin found this attention flattering, but she also felt that she
didnt quite deserve it - [its] a weird sort of kink version of imposter syndrome.
Robin eventually broke up with Mark as she became more involved in masochistic play
and he was disturbed by the bruises. She continued to play with George, who she experienced
as a trustworthy partner and (to this day) a good friend. She respects that George is careful and
conscientious about introducing new partners to kink play, initiating conversations about consent
and safety; she cant imagine anyone who would have been a better person to introduce me to
the scene. Robins bondage scenes with George were always erotically-charged, although the
two never had penetrative sex. They did not explicitly negotiate their scenes ahead of time, but
they did discuss her interests; it was sort o f organic-feeling... he would provoke me into talking
about things I would be interested in, and then he sort o f conformed what he would be doing to
the things I said that I wanted. Robin appreciated Georges way of being attentive to her well
being without asking her to explicitly define her limits: it was like dirty talk, but in a way where
he could get an idea o f where I was at, and then he would check in [during and after the scene].
Her one regret is that these positive early experiences with George made her believe, naively,
that none o f her partners would ever cross a line. This turned out to be decidedly not the case.

Luke

After about two months o f playing in the public scene, George introduced Robin to Luke,
an older man and close friend o f Georges who lived in New Jersey. Robin began talking with
Luke online, and very quickly they arranged for him to visit Robin in Boston. Robin wanted to
play with Luke because he was super well known and it was some affirmation o f my worth that
someone who could [play with] anyone would be interested in me at all. Luke rented a hotel

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room and took her out to a nice restaurant. Looking back, Robin vaguely remembers that he was
pleasant company and that she enjoyed talking to him - he had a lot of big ideas about how
things work... and I was naive. She felt no trepidation following him back to the hotel room to
play. The two did not negotiate the scene beforehand, although she knew from their online
conversations that he was going to beat me and stuff. One o f the only limits she set was that
she didnt want the beating to be role-played as punishment for something she had done
wrong, because I dont want to have anything go near that part o f my experience growing u p ...
that doesnt turn me on. Thats just an immediate stop. I cant do that.
Without describing details o f their scene, Robin recalled that [he beat me] much more
severely than I ever had [been beaten] before. At first Robin described the scene as pretty
good, but as we continued to talk about it, she recalled having mashed up conflicting feelings.
It was the first time that she cried during a scene, and looking back, she thinks this was more out
o f fear than pain - I didnt know when he was going to stop or if he was going to stop... I was
crying and hiding in the comer. At the same time, she was very clearly aroused; even if in my
head this wasnt turning me on, my body was saying something totally different. Robin was left
with a sense o f confusion: part o f me is enjoying this, part of me is terrified, and I dont know if
that feeling o f being terrified is part o f enjoying it. Another central aspect o f Robins experience
during the scene was being very concerned with not failing. In part, this made her feel out-ofcontrol - I didnt know how to [make it stop]... I wasnt going to safe-word because you just
dont do that - you should be able to take it. At the same time, she liked the endurance aspect of
the scene - pushing through and... being able to withstand it.
When the scene came to an end, [Luke] seemed to have some interest in my wellbeing...
there was some semblance o f aftercare. They fell asleep together in the hotel, but in the middle
of the night, Robin jolted awake from a nightmare. She doesnt recall its contents, but she

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remembers awakening to the sound of screaming. The next night she slept over at Georges,
and he told her that she was talking in her sleep and having nightmares. Robin wrote o f f these
experiences as drop. She next saw Luke at a BDSM convention several weeks later, and they
went to a hotel room together to play. She remembers that he was taking Prednisone at the time I should have been more worried about it... that he would want to do stuff while on something
that makes it really easy for you to fly into a rage. The only detail of their scene that she
recalled in our interview was that he locked me in the closet for a while, and I just felt really
em pty... hollowed out and worn out and just not really myself anymore.
After these two scenes, Robin began visiting Luke at his place about once a month, and
things went downhill. As she got to know him better, she learned that he is a person who is
very hard to please. He would often complain about his other past or present play partners,
saying that they had too many limits or werent subservient enough. Robin recalls bitterly about
his fiancee, she had too much o f a mind o f her own; she was an actual person instead o f just
someone who existed for his whims alone. Robin now understands that these complaints were
also threats, and that she was taking them in. At this point, Robin identified as submissive and so
felt obligated to meet Lukes expectations: I had to maintain my physical appearance, I have to
make sure I dont have too many limits, I have to constantly please him because I dont want to
be another disappointment. Once, she listened to Luke complain about how ugly a partner
looked after buzzing off her hair; later, Robin shaved her head, and felt terrified to see him, like
hes going to throw me off to the side because I cut my hair.
While Robin preferred low-budget play without too many props, scenes at Lukes
house were highly elaborate and theatrical. This was especially difficult for Robin, because it
seemed to take away her ability to renegotiate their play. Luke would have a detailed, conceptual
scene planned out ahead o f time, and if Robin objected to any part o f it, the whole thing would

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be ruined. For example, Luke once planned an evolution scene that started out with Robin in
the role o f a fish, which he simulated by using an evil stick (a small carbon-fiber rod that is
snapped against the skin) to create fish scale marks on her legs. Robin broke down nearly
immediately when Luke started applying the marks because they reminded her o f her scars from
cutting; she felt disgusted and ashamed as she remembered that period of her life. When she
asked Luke to stop, he chastised her for failing to mention this beforehand when they were
discussing limits, and told her that if she stopped now, they would have nothing to do for the rest
o f the weekend. Robin relented, because being trapped in an apartment with someone who is
disappointed in [me].... that prospect was enough to make me keep going. The next day, after
four or five hours o f no breaks, no food, no water, just being worn down and worn down and
worn down, Luke attempted to put Robin into the final rope suspension that would mark the end
o f her evolution, but Robin fainted as he was rigging her up. Robin left this experience feeling
broken; like I cant even do a simple thing that would have made it over, and would have
made him happy.
Looking back on her relationship with Luke, Robin sees a clear dynamic o f domination
and manipulation that she was not aware o f at the time. Luke was not a partner who cared about
her experience: it was literally just what he wanted and nothing to do with what I wanted. Over
time, she felt that he pushed her limits over and over again, leading her to do things that she did
not want to do; no to him just meant try again another time and maybe I ll wear you down
enough. For example, Robin would tolerate anal sex with Luke, but at some point during a
scene he wanted to do ass-to-mouth - penetrating her anally and then orally. Robin said that
she would not, which was the first time I had just straight-up said no to anything. Lukes
reaction was to unilaterally end the scene, untying her and leaving her alone to clean herself up.
The disdain was tangible... I went into the bathroom and I just sobbed... I felt like such a fuck-

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up. The next day Luke asked for her to perform ass-to-mouth again, and she allowed it because
she couldnt deal with that feeling [of being a fuck-up] anymore. As time went on, Robin
started telling Luke that she needed to do shorter scenes and get more aftercare, but she felt that
her requests fell on deaf ears.
Except for these vivid moments o f shame over her own failure, Robin has a hard time
saying what she felt when she played with Luke. Its hard to recognize the thoughts and feeling
that youre experiencing at the moment because youre just so overwhelmed. In retrospect, she
believes that her ability to endure their scenes depended on dissociating during most o f the time
they were together, and re-writing their interactions in her head. As Robin puts it, I dont think I
ever enjoyed what was happening [in the moment]... it was only after the fact that I could work
things in my memory enough to be like, yeah, that was really hot. It was a way o f me justifying
to myself this is an OK thing to be doing. Even as Robin began to register her unhappiness with
aspects o f their relationship, she continued to visit Luke because to quit would be to admit yes,
I m a failure. She still wanted to make Luke happy and to uphold her reputation as a heavy
bottom; a lot o f my self-worth got tied up in how much o f this I could tolerate. She remembers
believing that Luke could change; that it could go back to like the first time [we played
together], when there was something redeeming about it.
As their play continued, Robins mental health was slipping. She would find herself
sobbing and panicked on the bus back home after spending the weekend at Lukes, and she
would need to stay with a friend the following night because I would feel so broken that I
wouldnt want to be alone. This was not always comforting, however. She remembers often
staying with her play partner Alex, telling him that she didnt want to play on those nights
because I couldnt stand to have anyone touch me like that. But Alex would sometimes push
her into doing a heavy masochistic scene anyway, suggesting that you should be able to handle

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this [because] you play with Luke. Robin began to have panic attacks more and more
frequently, which eventually led her to quit her job. She also stopped seeing her therapist around
the same time because she was very judgmental about kink, and I didnt think I could be honest
with her. Things felt especially confusing when Robin turned to Luke for support, calling him
on the phone to talk about her problems and finding that sometimes he would talk to me like he
cared. Still, neither she nor Luke connected her breakdown to their relationship, and Robin felt
obligated to put on a happy face when she was with him.
The last time that Robin played with Luke was the first time that they played in public
together. As Luke began to tie her up, Robin immediately felt panicked and embarrassed. He
tried to comfort her by saying you shouldnt w orry... everyone in the room knows youre
playing with the biggest sadist around. Luke gagged Robin so that she couldnt speak, and then
to tease her, he flagged me for scat (put a brown bandana in her pocket, indicating that she was
interested in playing with shit) and engaged people at the party to say humiliating things to her.
Robin managed to escape her binds by wiggling out and untying herself. Sobbing, she told Luke
that what he had done was not OK - she had told him before that public humiliation was a hard
limit. He apologized shortly. The next time Robin saw him, she brought it up again, saying how
upsetting it had been, and found that he was really minimizing, like, I was just goofing around,
theres no reason to take it so seriously. Robin told Luke that he was mistreating her by not
taking her experience o f violation seriously, but she felt that he dismissed her concern. During
the same period o f time, Robin was becoming more and more disillusioned with Lukes
supposed intellect that had so charmed her at first. As she learned more about consent culture
and gender politics, it became clear to her that Lukes ideas were misogynist and transphobic,
but when she challenged him on these points, he dismissed her again. Robin decided she was
through and ended their relationship.

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Looking back, Robin feels that she didnt really understand what had happened between
her and Luke until around 6 months after they stopped talking. By this time, her mental health
had mostly recovered; however, when she realized that their whole relationship had been
traumatizing, I was transported back into that state o f constant panic. Robin didnt know who
to turn to for help with processing these feelings. She was afraid to tell her friends because most
of them were also friends with Luke - especially George, who she thought might well choose
Luke, his older friend, over her. The first person who she reached out to was Adam, a
transgender man who had once played with Luke and who ran a consent-oriented group in the
city. At first, Robin told Adam about her experiences without using Lukes name, but Adam
eventually asked to know who it was because he was planning a party and wanted to bar this
person from entering. Robin told him it was Luke, and felt that his response was very validating.
This gave Robin confidence to tell other party organizers what had happened so that they could
make sure she and Luke would not end up at the same party. Several o f the people who she
reached out to told her that they were not surprised by her story and that and were happy to
ban him. Later, Robin saw that Luke had posted something publically on Fetlife about how he
chooses play partners, stressing how much he values careful communication and negotiation.
Angered, she wrote an anonymous reaction post, which Luke found through a mutual friend,
leading to a series o f private message exchanges between them. Luke wrote what she described
as half apologies while telling her that she shared the responsibility because she had not clearly
communicated her needs and limits to him. She responded that this was wrong: she had tried to
communicate her needs, but Luke manipulated her by creating an environment in which saying
no had severe consequences. Furthered angered by these exchanges, Robin decided to post
publically about their relationship, referring to Luke with a pseudonym. Although she expected
to get a lot o f bullshit in response to this post, the comments were mostly very supportive, and

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eventually several o f Lukes other former partners - recognizing him from what she had written
- reached out to her to commiserate.
Despite this public support, Robin felt perpetually anxious and preoccupied during this
time in her life. She stayed connected to the BDSM world, but when she attempted to do scenes,
she would usually have frighteningly intense emotional reactions. She remembers an experience
with a partner in which, seemingly out of the blue, she was completely transported to an
experience with Luke, curled up and sobbing and unable to speak. Her partner tried to comfort
her, but the way he touched her reminded her o f Luke, and she reacted by trying to shake him
off; it was really terrifying for both o f us. She still felt the urge to bottom, but her desires felt
more confusing than ever: I couldnt tell the difference between things that I actually liked and
things that I thought I liked because I wanted to make him happy. Because of this confusion,
Robin decided to stop bottoming for about a year, remaining involved in kink only socially or as
a top.

Current emotional and sexual life

Although Robin is feeling steadier these days, she is not what she would call happy.
She feels like she isnt functional or a productive member o f society since dropping out of
college, and she doesnt know what she wants to do with her life from here on out. Robin has
repetitive negative thoughts about herself, like once people get to know me, theyll realize Im
not worth their time. Im just going to end up disappointing everyone... every time I do
something that I do well, its like, well, that was just happenstance. Sometimes it helps Robin
to think o f her self-criticisms as her fathers voice in her head - positioning it as this other thing
makes it a little more manageable. Robin continues to have occasional experiences of

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derealization, sometimes when she is feeling overwhelmed, and sometimes arising seemingly at
random. She also has frequent suicidal thoughts, but these have been with her since around the 4lh
grade - it fluctuates... but its always just in the back of my head. Although these thoughts can
be frightening, they can also be a sort of comforting safety net for Robin, because feeling like
I have that as an option is empowering in some way - it represents a way out of her suffering
that only she can control. Robin has not acted on those ideas because I feel like I have to go
through all the various forms o f treatment before I can say... well Ive tried it all and Im not
better, so theres no reason to keep going... I m just suffering for absolutely no reason.
Robin spent most o f the past year feeling really jaded by her experiences with Luke
and with other play partners. These days, she feels a mixture o f concern and resentment towards
people who are new to the BDSM scene and who still think this is fun; my response in my
head is just, give it a year and someone will have really fucked you over and you probably will
have bailed by then. Still, coming forward about her experiences with Luke has had an
unexpectedly positive impact on Robins life: it connected her to a community o f kinksters who
explicitly valued consent and safety. [They made safe spaces for me to participate in kink... and
were willing to make their policies in accordance with that... that validated me and made me feel
like some things in the kink scene arent as bad as one might imagine. Through these friends,
Robin began helping to run Cakehole, a queer, consent-oriented party.
Although Robin now feels supported by her social circle, she continues to struggle with
maintaining close relationships. [I go] back and forth between thinking no one cares, and then
realizing that some people care, and that makes me anxious... that Im going to let them down.
She has noticed that when her romantic relationships get to around the one-year mark, she
tends to freak out and feel like I cant do this anymore. Robin has learned to prepare her
partners for these moments - I might need a lot o f affirmation right now cause Im going to get

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really scared, and eventually Ill move past being scared. Robin is also aware that she is way
too willing to accept people treating me like shit. The individual and group therapy that she
received at an intensive outpatient treatment program was an important sounding board that
helped her learn to set boundaries in her relationships and articulate her needs.
Robin has enjoyed learning more about herself as a top in this past year; she thinks of
topping as a really important part o f my sexuality but still secondary to bottoming. She
tends to play on the sillier, light-hearted side o f the spectrum.... Im definitely mean, but its
always laughing and smiling and fun. She enjoys pushing people around and being physically
dominating... I definitely really like ball-busting. She also enjoys a certain kind o f topping that
feels more sexual and intimate, and can give Robin an intoxicating feeling o f having power
over someone.
At the time o f our second interview, Robin had recently resumed playing as a bottom.
Although she still worries that bottoming could tip her into dangerous emotional territory, she
feels that masochism is an essential part of her sexuality and that she would not feel satisfied
without it. She is trying to approach bottoming with more thoughtfulness and limits than she had
in the past. She is very intentional about not playing when she is feeling depressed, because it
[would feel] too much like self-harm by proxy. She is also focusing on rope bottoming and
physical masochism rather than D/s power dynamics, because she is worried that they could be
unhealthy for her. Robin also avoids certain toys or types of marks and bruises also feel
associated with her traumatic experiences: I would rather be punched and kicked... thats
something that Luke would never do - thats too much physical effort for him. She agreed with
me that there is something more intimate about these types of rough body play compared to
Lukes theatrical scenes. Robin has noticed that very intense physical scenes do not usually
destabilize her emotionally; what impacts her the most are things like degradation and

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objectification. To play with these dynamics, Robin needs to feel appreciated and respected by
her partner: basically being treated like a human being that deserves to feel happy and safe.
This allows her to enter into a degrading scene but come out of it trusting that she is respected
and cared for.
Robin still sometimes feels a desire to be submissive, but this part o f her sexuality is
difficult for her to think about. Submitting to someone elses control feels dangerously close to
the traumatizing dynamics o f her relationships with her father and with Luke, and it also clashes
with her anarchist and feminist political beliefs. Robin sometimes feels like these desires must be
held in the realm o f fantasy, apart from her everyday life and identity; however, sometimes
they arise unbidden in her relationships with men. For example, with one o f her partners this year
Robin would often feel a strong urge to make him happy, and she would do service-y things
for him without even realizing that was what she was doing. These days, Robin notices a
submissive feeling that seems to flow naturally out o f her profound attraction to and respect for
Andreus. She feels understood by him, and this leads her to want to care for him: I just want to
do things to make his life easier... Im like, yes, I ll clean your apartment! When can I start? Can
I cook you dinner? Are you taking care o f yourself? Robin says about this side o f herself, I like
feeling useful... its validating... it just makes me feel like Im doing something right. When
Robin does perform a service type o f submissive role, its important to her that her helpfulness
is recognized: if youre not getting a thank you... its like, well do you care, does this matter to
you? Because it matters to m e. Robin does feel cared for and appreciated by Andreus, but she
is still conflicted about playing out these roles. Her submissiveness makes her open to the sort of
manipulation that Luke subjected her to, and she wonders, how do I know I m not falling into
that pattern? How do I know I m not living out what I would have needed from my dad in terms
o f validation?

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Thematic Analysis

Submission vs. defiance

Robins narrative centers around two major relationships in her life - with her father and
with Luke - in which she feels profoundly dominated and controlled. As a child, Robin loves and
idealizes her father and tries desperately to please him. She learns that the price to pay for failing
to meet his expectations is abandonment - emotional or physical - and so she endures his harsh
scrutiny and criticism. Robin submits to his dominion over her life; she sees herself through his
eyes and takes his voice into her head, joining him in attacking the weak part of herself. Still,
some o f her most vivid memories from childhood are moments that raised the possibility o f
protest: her estranged leftist uncle who lives by his own rules, or her mother stabbing a knife into
the kitchen counter.
In middle school, Robin makes her own first gesture of protest against her fathers
cruelty; however, even then the rage is directed against herself in the form of cutting her own
body. Robin spends the next two years in and out of hospitals, and her fathers control over her
life becomes generalized to an entire system: she must submit to the laws of the hospital, throw
away her sharps, accept diagnoses that ring false, endure bullshit treatments and drugs that turn
her into a zombie. At the same time, Robin realizes that her father will not receive the
desperately important message that she has been trying to communicate about how her love for
him is destroying her. Robin begins to know about how she has been failed by her father. She
sees that the game is rigged, and she doesnt want to play anymore. When her father fills her
mind up with violent images at dinner one night, she throws this violence back at him with a
glass aimed at his head.

I ll

When Robin enters into her kink relationship with Luke, the rules are nearly identical to
those with her father, although now they are framed as a mutually-agreed-upon game. Robin
identifies as submissive and views it as her role to meet every demand of this hard-to-please
man: to keep her appearance to his standards, make herself open to whatever he wants to do with
her body, and avoid disappointing him at all costs. Robin maintains her submissive state o f mind
throughout months o f play in which Luke subjects her to humiliating, pleasureless, and
physically exhausting scenes. Again, the cost of failure is abandonment, leaving her sobbing
alone on the bathroom floor. As with her father, Robin hangs on to the fantasy that if only she
can do everything perfectly right, Luke will finally be happy, and the good, loving object will be
restored. Robin dutifully takes on Lukes desires as her own, working hard to convince herself
that their scenes are fun rather than traumatizing.
Also like with her father, Robins first gesture o f protest against Luke involves an attack
on her own body: she shaves her head after he complains about another partner who made herself
ugly by doing the same. I believe that this is a psychologically complex moment for Robin. It
expresses her anger and her agency by defying Lukes explicit wishes, but I wonder if it is also a
self-attack that expresses her own sense o f ugliness and therefore conforms to Lukes view of
her. Robin finds that when she goes to see him after the haircut she is fixll o f panic about being
kicked to the curb - 1 believe that she both desperately wants to be released from Lukes
control and is terribly afraid o f this possibility. As in her adolescence, towards the end o f Robins
relationship with Luke, Robin enters a period o f emotional breakdown that coincides with a
gradual disillusionment; she alternates between anger at him and anger at herself, and continues
to reach out for him in hopes o f receiving reparative care. Finally, though, she reaches a limit.
Once she realizes how traumatizing the relationship was for her, she switches into a mode of
defiance, arguing with him online and posting public notes about how he violated her consent.

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Looking back on her relationship with Luke, Robin is very conscious of how her desire
for validation can lead her into self-destructive relationships with men. She is learning about her
desire to please others, and practicing saying no and setting limits. She is gathering examples
o f relationships that are based on mutual care, in which she can reasonably expect that her needs
and boundaries will be respected. Still, feeling close to others can awaken Robins urge to submit
without her even realizing it. She seems to be building an alternative fantasy in which her
submission is structured less around enduring cruelty and violation, and more around providing
care to a partner who shows his appreciation for what she offers.

Shame and self-hatred

Robins narrative is full o f references to her lifelong feelings of deep shame and selfhatred. Almost all o f the shameful labels that she applies to herself are her fathers: quitter,
failure, weak, not a productive member of society. These days, Robin is able to understand
her self-critical inner monologue as her fathers voice inside her head. In addition to an
internalization o f her father as an attacking object, I see Robins self-hatred as rage towards her
father that is turned against herself. This is evident to me when Robin snaps in response to her
fathers criticisms and cuts her own body for the first time.
Robin describes how her difficulty believing in her own worth has led her to use sex as a
way o f seeking validation at several points in her life. Robins quick rise to fame in the kink
scene provides this validation, but she also ends up feeling a sense of imposter syndrome - like
she cant possible deserve all o f this positive attention. Robin believes that she was initially
attracted to Luke because o f his fame in the scene - playing with him would validate her
legitimacy as a hardcore bottom, and would make her feel special because someone who could

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choose anyone chose her. Robins sense of shame is triggered most intensely when she fails to
live up to the expectations o f her father or Luke. When these men show their disappointment in
her, Robin feels broken, like dirt - like I cant even do a simple thing. Despite many years of
work in therapy, Robin still has trouble believing that she will not inevitably disappoint the
people who are close to her.

Violation and helplessness

In Robins relationships with both her father and Luke, she describes experiences of
intense impingement, overstimulation, and violation that she feels helpless to stop. This dynamic
is evident in Robins story about her father telling her a graphically violent story: when she asks
him to stop in order to protect her emotional well-being, he only become more belligerent about
trying to upset her. Robin feels desperately and ragefully helpless to stop this intrusion and set a
boundary. She is symbolically violated throughout her relationship with her father, as he
penetrates her mind and deposits his toxic, hateful feelings.
With Luke, Robin enters into a relationship in which she appears to be empowered with
the ability to give her consent and set limits; however, she soon finds that these limits are not
respected. Instead, Robin seems to experience most of her play with Luke as an onslaught of
overwhelming, frightening stimulation that she must helplessly endure. In their first scene
together, Robin finds herself cowering in the comer, terrified that the beating will never end.
Robin next describes feeling violated when Luke uses the evil stick to make marks on her body
that remind her o f her cutting scars. I believe that this feels particularly violating to Robin
because it involves Luke intruding on her past and linking himself to her father; it is also a
symbolic appropriation o f the one activity, cutting, that gave Robin a feeling of control during

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her adolescence. Each o f the next two violations that Robin describes involve Luke subjecting
her to a humiliating act that she has explicitly said she is not willing to do. Each one also
involves associating Robin with shit, exposing her deepest feelings o f shame.
Robin seems to understand that these violations by her father and Luke are not just things
that have happened to her from the outside, but which also have a major place in her inner life.
For example, although Luke at times simply ignores Robins limits or manipulates her into a
comer, at other times it is Robins own, internally-enforced resistance to saying no that keeps
the violence from ending. Robin also describes eroticizing scenes o f coercion and humiliation
in her early fantasies, such as having her privacy violated by being forced to have sex in public.

Dissociation

Dissociation in response to traumatic overstimulation is a theme running through Robins

narrative. Robins first mention of dissociation is in her description o f her mother, who she says
has a poor memory for the way her father has mistreated her over the years; Robin says that this
is a survival thing. In contrast, Robin seems to recall her fathers early verbal abuse, although
it is not clear how much o f her memory has been recovered through many years o f therapy.
Robins dissociation regarding her early relationship with her father is most evident in the slow,
flat manner with which she describes the events and the way that her language is punctuated with
many urns and pauses.
Robin first begins to experience dissociative symptoms in high school, following her
series of hospitalizations. During this time, Robin makes an effort to throw herself into school,
and her emotions go underground. She begins to have periods o f derealization in which she feels
she is floating outside of her body; at one point she feels this way almost all the time for months,

and worries that shes losing her mind. At the same time, emotions burst through the surface of
her deadened psychic life seemingly at random, leaving her crying or full of rage for unknown
reasons. In college, the split-off parts of Robins experience appear in fainting spells and panic
attacks.
In her play with Luke, Robin relies heavily on her ability to dissociate in order to tolerate
overwhelming experiences. During their play, she feels empty, hollowed out, not myself
anymore; her terror and anger are not registered, but manifest themselves in nightmares after
the fact. In fact, it is not until a year and a half after ending their relationship that Robin realizes
that it had been traumatizing. Robin is once again plunged into panic as this formerly split-off
experience o f terrible danger comes flooding back in.

Escape

Robin feels perpetually trapped and tied to bad objects - her father, the hospital, Luke - just as
her mother was trapped by her father when he seduced her with kindness and got her pregnant,
only to switch like Jekyll and Hyde and become cruel. At one point during Robins childhood
her mother began to save up money and plan for the two o f them to run away together. However,
this fantasy collapsed because her mother was afraid that this would not be a true escape:
Robins father would entrap her by gaining custody and things would be even worse than before.
For Robin, escape becomes a desirable strategy for self-protection. Throughout her
childhood, when things start to feel bad or dangerous in her friendships, the solution is to
leave. She keeps her relationships short and avoids making commitments, because commitment
can easily begin to feel like entrapment. Robin holds onto the possibility of suicide as the
ultimate escape from the internal objects that continue to persecute her and keep her from ever

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feeling happy. In part, her suicidal thoughts feel comforting and empowering, because suicide
represents an escape route that no one can take away from her. In her highly pleasurable bondage
play with George, Robin enjoys the shifting tension between being bound and being free. This
play symbolizes a flexibility and movement that has felt impossible to achieve in her most
important relationships.

Getting help and seeking witnesses

Punctuating Robins narrative are moments in which she ventures outside of her
relationships with her father and with Luke in order to seek help. Throughout her childhood,
Robins mother bears witness to her fathers violence, but she is ineffective as a source of help.
She, like Robin, remains emotionally bound to the father in spite o f his abuse, and she
communicates that there is no hope of change or escape. Once, when little Robin believes that
she has caused her father to abandon the family, she goes to a neighbors house for help. Her
fathers rageful response confirms her mothers belief that speaking up about the abuse will only
make things worse.
Interestingly, Robins decision to end her relationship with Luke comes after the first
time that they play together in public. Robin says that the reason this led to their break up was
because he explicitly violated the hard limit she had set against public humiliation. However, I
wonder whether playing in public also made Robin able to register her sense of violation in a
way she hadnt before. For the first time, there were witnesses to Robins relationship with Luke,
and I suspect that this helped Robin to break the spell and see, from outside o f herself, how
damaging it had become.

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After ending things with Luke, Robin is at first afraid to tell others about how he treated
her; she fears that they will take his side and leave her alone with her suffering. When she does
start to tell other kinksters, she is pleasantly surprised to find that they affirm her experience and
that they are willing to take concrete action by banning him from parties. This may be the first
time in Robins life that she is protected in this way. Robin gains confidence and publically
describes what happened with Luke in a note on Fetlife, and she receives a great deal o f support;
still, she is filled with anxiety. I wonder if on a gut level she cannot help but feel that speaking
out can only bring retaliation and further entrapment and persecution, rather than freedom.

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CH A PTER 6: M ARGOT

Margot is a friend o f a friend who I had met a few times before beginning the study.
Margot expressed interest in the study when I mentioned it at a party, and she became the first
person who I interviewed, with each o f our three meetings about a month apart. When we began
the interviews, Margot was 24 and had been involved in kink for about two years, playing in the
scene and working as a professional dominatrix.
Margot is slender and energetic, looking simultaneously child-like, tough, and sexual in
her short-shorts and heavy work boots. Her vibrant red hair frames a pale and freckled face, and
she speaks with wide open eyes often wandering towards the ceiling with a mischievous smile.
The narrative that she presented was less organized than that o f my other participants, which I
believe was due in part to my relative inexperience in providing a frame for the interviews, and
in part to Margots way o f experiencing herself in contradictory pieces. More than with my other
participants, I often found m yself confused about what Margot felt or what she wanted, as we
moved quickly from one topic to another. I felt that I was always trying to keep up, reflecting
intense but fleeting feelings to try to give them more weight and grounding. By our third
interview, I felt some concern as I saw Margot becoming more solemn; the manic excitement
with which she described her erotic adventures seemed to be giving way to anxiety as she
pondered the meanings and repercussions o f her choices. In the narrative that follows, I try to
present an organized narrative o f Margots life, while also capturing these contradictions and
shifts in her self-states.

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Narrative

Childhood and Adolescence

Margot grew up in the western United States with her mother, father, and younger sister.
She describes herself as an extremely shy and anxious child who had trouble participating in
things because I would just get so flustered and cry. From childhood through adolescence,
Margot was so afraid o f talking to authority figures that she could not raise her hand during
class; in elementary school she would have accidents because she was too embarrassed to ask to
use the restroom. Margot had a lisp and was dyslexic, but because she was so shy, she had
trouble getting the help that she needed from her teachers. When Margot was 8, her family
moved to a school district where Margot could get more support and her sister could take more
advanced classes. Margot remembers feeling excited about the move, thinking it was romantic to
get to start a new life. After the move, Margots father joined her mother in working from home.
As a child Margot suffered from recurrent nightmares about her mother disappearing. In
her dreams she would go into the basement of their home to her mothers office and find her
mother there but not paying attention; then, suddenly, she would disappear or run away. In
some o f her dreams, Margot would chase her mother down the street to keep her from leaving
the family, crying I cant live without you! Other times she would find that someone else had
moved in: creatures, human-like or lizard-like, who were evil presences. Margot would have
to defend herself and her oblivious younger sister from these creatures, and either she would
fail and her sister would get hurt, or Margot would save her sister and then be unable to save
herself.

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To ward o ff these nightmares, little Margot would tell herself bed time stories. The first
one she remembers came from a book about a w olf who is hunting the Easter bunny. Margot
would repeat in her head the part o f the story where the w olf falls through the ice into freezing
water and then is pulled out by the bunny, half-dead. Later, Margot would tell herself stories
about the trials o f male heroes from her favorite books and movies. The protagonists were
always male because they could be hurt more and I wouldnt feel bad about it... they could go
on crazy adventures. Margot would repeat the same 5-minute plot over and over in her head,
forcing herself to focus on the most painful moments in the story. It was almost torturous, says
Margot, but the feeling this generated was strong enough to block out the bad dreams.
Margot didnt feel sexually aroused during these fantasies, but there was a certain excitement to
them. She remembers getting great pleasure from playing a game where she imagined she was in
the Hoth world from Star Wars; she would fling herself face-down in the snow and think, I ll
just suffer here until someone finds me!
Margot got her period at 12, and hated it: she had terribly painful cramps, and was scared
of using a tampon, feeling that it was unnatural to have something inside her and wishing that her
mother could show her how to use it properly. Margots mother told her to use a mirror to look at
her vulva and figure it out, but Margot found the idea unnerving. Margot tried to masturbate a
few times in early puberty, knowing that it was supposed to give her pleasure, but her body felt
numb and unappealing, like sticking her hand in a bowl o f warm jello.
Soon after her first period, Margot started to exercise and diet. Food was Margots
comfort during childhood, and she felt she had a chubby body compared to her slender
younger sister; Margot says that she hated her because she was so much skinnier than me.
Margot started exercising at the incitement of a friend who she felt was smarter than her; this
friend asked her to train together at running the mile so they wouldnt be so slow in gym class.

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The other girl was just a little bit faster than Margot, but just as self-critical, and they
inspired each other to improve. Together, the two started doing Weight Watchers, and Margot
found that it was satisfying to keep track of the numbers and prove to herself that she was able to
eat within her allotted points. On some level, Margot knew that the total points added up to far
less than a normal 2000 calorie diet, but she was suspending reality as she engaged in this
challenge. M argots dieting made her even more obsessed with food than she had been before;
she began cutting out certain foods and trying to cook all o f her own meals in order to control the
calories. Margot also began trying to force her sister to eat and getting angry if she wouldnt,
which Margot looks back on with guilt, wondering if she contributed to her sisters OCD
symptoms.
Within two months, Margot had stopped her period and lost 40 lbs, and she was
achieving perfect grades. Margot felt a thrilling sense o f control and accomplishment, having
transformed herself from a squishy little girl into a smart, pretty girl. At first, M argots
parents were happy about these changes, but eventually they realized that this has gone off the
deep end. Margot had strong, contradictory feelings in response to her parents forbidding her
from exercising and hiding her Weight Watchers materials. On the one hand, she felt terrified
at the prospect o f having no means to purge when she felt she had eaten too much. On the other
hand, it was a relief to have her parents take responsibility and tell her to stop when she was
feeling so tired and worn out, like my body was ready to collapse... I needed someone else to
be in control at that point. Soon it felt like everyone was collaborating to intervene in Margots
eating disorder - her teachers were not allowing her to participate in sports, and she realized that
her track coach was weighing her, but not her teammates. These adults began to notice and
comment if she lost weight or threw away half her lunch. Margot found the attention confusing
because she had grown up feeling invisible. It felt good, like people care about me, it seems

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like for the first time, but also dangerous because their attention threatened what was most
important to her - restricting and exercising.
Superficially, Margot cooperated with her psychologists and nutritionists, agreeing to
gain weight before exercising again. At the same time, she felt that ending her extreme habits
would cause a collapse in her will power. Margot wondered who she would be if she wasnt one
o f the fastest girls on her team and at the top o f her classes; she wondered, what am I going to
think about if Im not thinking about restricting? In her first two years o f high school, Margot
continued to struggle with obsessive thoughts about food and impulses to restrict and over
exercise. She was especially plagued by competitive feelings: there were girls I would
absolutely hate, I couldnt stand them because they were thinner than me. Margot also felt
guilty that her eating disorder was not as bad as other girls, that she never completely
stopped eating.
Margot went to therapy throughout these years, but mostly found it frustrating. At first,
she tried to turn the therapy into something to get good at, to succeed by complying with the
rules for how much weight she needed to gain. At the same time, Margot was frustrated by this
obligation: the message that if you dont succeed in this then youre not allowed to go back to
your life. As the work went on, Margot found it repetitive - her therapist would ask the same
questions, and she would give the same answers week after week. Not only did this feel like a
waste o f time, it also made her feel more confused, as if her experience was losing its
realness: the more I was forced to talk about something the less I understood it. These
sessions made her angry, and sometimes she wouldnt want to speak at all. Margot was also
annoyed that her therapist asked about her sexuality, which didnt feel connected to her
depression or her eating disorder. Eventually, Margot ended the treatment and began receiving
acupuncture, which, in contrast to the therapy, she found very healing. She confided in her

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acupuncturist about her feeling of collapsing strength, and this woman explained to her about the
elements o f her spirit, connecting the different parts o f my body [and] telling her the stories
behind them... and the emotional path to go down. Margot also relief in the experience of
subjecting her body to something somewhat painful and finding that she was able to stop the pain
by keeping herself calm.
During her junior year o f high school, Margot convinced her mother to let her take
antidepressants, to which she attributes a major shift in her sense o f self. Margot began to feel
less afraid, less angry, and less competitive. Within a week o f taking antidepressants, Margot
became more able to speak her mind. She also found that she was now able to make friends
with the girls she had so hated, feeling her envy shift into admiration and attraction. Perhaps the
greatest change in Margot was that she began to feel sexual. She realized that, ironically, in her
quest to be physically perfect, she had starved away her sexual appetite, and that once she
started putting food back in me her sexual hunger was aroused. Despite these changes in her
emotional life, Margot continued to struggle with eating, and in her senior year o f high school
she began to purge for the first time. Margot found it relieving to [get] this food out that was
making me uncomfortable, giving her the feeling o f returning to zero. Purging allowed
Margot to eat the things that she had previously forbidden herself because she knew she could
throw them back up.
Margot feels that her life before college was so boring. She was seen as the good,
quiet, smart kid... I didnt do anything interesting, so I didnt get invited to anything interesting.
As Margot looked forward to college, she started to plan how to shed this identity. She told her
parents she had applied to the Ivy League, but in reality she applied to only one school because
o f its creative writing program. Margot saw this as a way o f asserting control over her fate.

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College years

Margot viewed college as a chance to present her newly sexual self. She began to make
art and writing with sexual themes; she was fascinated by sex, but felt guiltily that she might not
have the right to comment on something she had never experienced. Margot would make out
with male friends during her first year o f college and hope it would lead to something more, but
when she told them that she was a virgin, they would stop short; she thinks that maybe [they
assumed] I would have gotten more attached than I thought I would have. By her second year o f
school, Margot just really wanted to lose my virginity.
Margots first sexual experience was with a graduate student, Mark, who was a teaching
assistant for her drawing class. After their spring semester together ended, she went to M arks
art show, and afterwards the two split a bottle of vodka. The last thing that Margot remembers
before blacking out is kissing him and then tripping into a hedge and being too drunk to get up
and walk. When Margot found herself waking up in M arks bed, she thought to herself, oh my
gosh, its going to happen! Margot told him she wanted to have sex, but Mark told her that they
already had. Margot then noticed that there was blood everywhere, soaked down to the
mattress. She found out that he had not used protection, so she went to the pharmacy to buy a
package o f Plan B, and then she noticed her injuries: scratches on her knees and face from
falling, and a urinary tract infection caused by his rough penetration. That day, Margot felt both
scared and excited. She felt lucky that she got to have sex with someone extremely
experienced; plus, everyone says their first time is terrible, [and] I dont have to remember
that. It would be years before Margot came to understood this experience as a date rape. At the
time, Mark told Margot that she couldnt tell anyone because she was his student and he might
get in trouble. Margot was thrilled by the idea of having a secret affair with an older man. Her

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one requirement was that he tell her if he started sleeping with someone else, because this is
very new to me and Im not sure how prepared I am for that.
While at home that summer, Margot started a project in which she created an online
persona and started a blog: she pretended that she was a virgin, and documented her adventures
in flirting online and dating. She was interested in the experiences o f playing the fantasy role
o f a virginal young woman and being fetishized for it. Margot described the experience as
silly and fun; she found that when she actually met her dates in person, she would soon drop
the act because I m not a good liar. However, in one instance, Margot met up with a nice and
sweet boy who was a virgin and with whom she maintained her persona as the two began to
date. Even though Margot was not attracted to him, she decided to sleep with him as an
experiment. She waited until they were in bed together to tell him the truth - that she was not a
virgin, and not looking for a relationship. The experience was terrible because Margot felt so
guilty and shitty about m yself because she was using him for my project.
When she returned to campus in the fall, Margot began sleeping with Mark again. At
times, she fantasized about having a romantic relationship with him - going out on the town,
being seen together in public. At first, Margot idealized Mark for his artistry and his popularity,
as well as his ability to expose her to new things. Over time, she began to see his pretentiousness,
but she still had fun when they were together; and although she could see how unequal their
power was in the relationship, this imbalance and the secrecy felt really hot: I enjoyed having
this little pocket world that I entered with this artist. Still, Margot began to lose trust in Mark
when she learned that he had lied to her about sleeping with another girl over the summer (a girl
with whom Margot ended up becoming best friends). Margot began to resent the fact that the
only way to be special to Mark was to [continue] to aid his sex life. In order to beat him at his
own game, Margot began racking up her own number o f casual sex partners, finding that she

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felt worthless if Mark was sleeping with someone else and she wasnt. As Margot began to feel
more powerful, she found that her interest in Mark waned.
In the midst o f this relationship, Margot was taking a creative writing course that
changed up a lot for me. She read a story in this class about a woman who, like her, loses her
virginity and ends up going on all these sexual adventures. Margot was both fascinated and
infuriated with the characters passivity - things just keep happening to her, she says. Inspired,
Margot wrote her own story about a woman who sets off on a road trip to Disneyland with a
man, and then cuts to a scene o f them lying in bed after fucking - what else? theres nothing
else - as the mans other lovers begin to parade in and out of the room. The story then jumps
back to the womans time in middle school, when she gets her first period and is mocked for
having little boobs. Margot was proud of this story, feeling that it conveyed a deep sense o f
anger, as well as the depression and nothingness that the character falls into when her sexual
urges stop being fed. Margot gave this story to Mark to read; he was freaked out and didnt
want to talk to her for a while afterwards.
In an art class that she was taking that same year, Margot created a performance piece
based on the story o f Saint Margaret. As Margot tells it, Saint Margaret was a woman who
refused the marriage o f a Roman soldier because she had dedicated her virginity to God. The
soldier threw Margaret in a brothel as punishment, where he sentences her to be tortured and
eventually to have her breasts cut off. Margot was fascinated by looking at images of Saint
Margaret holding her amputated breasts on a platter and imagining her excruciating pain, as well
as her unimaginable strength. In her performance piece Margot created faux-breasts out of frozen
milk and held these molds against her chest, using her body heat to melt them. Margot wanted to
reclaim Saint Margarets experience o f female suffering, which she felt had been appropriated
and sanctified by the Church. Margot asked Mark to film this performance, three times over

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because she couldnt get it right. The first time, the two ended up fucking on the studio floor.
Afterwards, Mark asked her if they could have a threesome with one of her female friends.
Margot was enraged by the presumptuousness of this request, thinking I dont want you
involved in my life in any other way than sleeping together. The next time they tried to film the
performance, Margot began to notice the submissive posture that she was adopting and worried
that Mark might be aroused by it. The irony became clear to Margot: she was trying to honor a
woman who had resisted male sexual domination, yet she was making herself into an erotic
object for a man with whom she had willingly entered into this really unfair power exchange.
Disillusioned, Margot suddenly lost all o f her idealizing feelings towards Mark, and decided that
she would not give an ounce more energy towards caring about him.
After ending this relationship, Margot continued seek constant stimulation through
drinking, trying new drugs, having sex with new partners, and getting involved in weird shit.
Although Margot presented herself as completely fearless, she was very afraid of being idle.
Looking back, Margot sees these activities as a way of procrastinating - if I m out doing stuff
thats just as important as taking care of m yself or doing homework or writing. Sleeping around
and making it clear that she just liked to fuck made Margot feel powerful - like she could do
whatever she wanted and never get in trouble. Margot says, if someone started to get a crush
on me, I felt like I told [them] what Im about, so I dont have to acknowledge [their] crush at all
- if youre going to make a big deal about this w ere just not going to fuck anymore. Margot
remembers telling herself adamantly that she didnt want a relationship - that it would just get in
the way o f all o f the fun exploring she was doing. Still, she does remember feeling jealous o f her
roommates, who she describes as the hottest, happiest couple in the world, it seemed.
Sometimes she felt like their teenage daughter, living in their mess and hearing them having

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sex in the room next door. This feeling would make Margot want to escape the house and go
sleep with someone.
Margot returned to therapy in her last year of college because she was feeling suicidally
depressed. She believes that her hormones had gone off kilter because she was taking Implanon
in order to have sex with Mark, who did not like to use condoms. The Implanon also made her
period irregular, and she had started sleeping with a new man who didnt want to have sex with
her when she had her period, giving Margot the feeling that Mark was sabotaging her sex life.
Margots new psychiatrist prescribed her Seroquel, which was awful but did help snap me out
o f it.

Sex work

After graduation, Margot moved to New York City and began working first at
waitressing jobs, and then as a stripper. She had been taking aerials and silks classes, and she
was attracted to the physical challenge o f stripping, which she thought o f as really athletic,
beautiful thing. Plus, she thought stripping would allow her to explore her interests in
performance, gender, and sexuality; it would let her play a role as a pretty, graceful woman,
hoping this might teach her how to take care o f myself. Looking back, Margot also
understands that it was thrilling for her to do something shocking and to be objectified. Margot
thought that stripping would come naturally to her because o f her good body and strength, but
she soon found that she was awful at it. She wasnt making money, and she felt scared of
failing; she wasnt used to failing. One day, Margot ended up chatting with patron at her club
who told her he was a dominant in the BDSM community. Intrigued, Margot followed him home
to see his dungeon, not understanding that he was planning do a scene with her. He asked Margot

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what she was into, and she said endurance, he proceeded to beat me with everything he had.
Margot found this very intense scene both exciting and overwhelming. Afterward, the man told
Margot that she is a great bottom, and that she would make a great top. He offered to help her set
up an ad as a professional dominatrix, and, intrigued, Margot agreed.
At the time o f our first interview, Margot had been working as a pro domme for about a
year, and was beginning to do more switch, submissive, and full-service work. Margot is doing
things these days that she never would have imagined a few years ago; at the same time, she
realizes that she has always been interested in the idea o f sex as a commodity and becoming a
fantasy object. Margot spent much o f our second interview sorting out her thoughts about what
she likes and dislikes as a professional sex worker. In terms of the content of her sessions,
Margot has realized that she doesnt enjoy purely physical scenes like caning someone for an
hour. Her favorite sessions are the ones where people come to me for m e having read her
writing online and looking to act out some o f her own fetishes, like food play. In these types of
scenes, she feels that she is using her own mind to be creative, whereas in more generic scenes
she can feel really bored.
Margot has complex feelings about the role o f intimacy in her professional work. On the
one hand, she described often feeling intensely emotional and connected during her professional
scenes, especially when she is bottoming. For example, she remembers being caned by a client
who beat her much harder than she thought a client should be allowed to: she says that she did
get off on it, enjoying the exciting conflict between the good, adrenaline feeling and feeling
shitty about m yself for letting this man batter her and leave long-lasting marks. She
described another scene with a man who flew her down to Florida for a night o f hot play in
which he tied a bag over my head... I cried, it was wonderful. However, she became frustrated
with this man when he wanted to keep spending time with her and when he tried to stir up drama

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by turning her against her friend Delilah, who has previously rejected him. Margot doesnt mind
doing these very intense, emotional things with clients, but afterwards I dont want to cuddle; I
dont really care about you. And outside o f their scenes, Margot feels that Im not going to get
that emotionally involved with these people... I had an intense experience and thats it. Thats all
I need from you if youre not going to pay me anymore. Margot sees her sex work as selfish and
instrumental: all o f these people, theyre really just fueling my lifestyle, which is not about
them at all. Still, since beginning to do full service work, Margot has found that incorporating
sex into her scenes often makes it easier because its a way o f negotiating in... a sort of
tenderness or something thats a more traditional human interaction. A t the same time, having
sex with clients can feel more like acting or role play, which feels less vulnerable to Margot
than just being beaten.
During our interviews, Margot was seeing a new client with whom she felt unusually
engaged - its more emotional and intellectual than just showing up and doing my job for a
couple o f hours. In their first scene, Margot met this man at the Yale club wearing a butt plug
under her clothes, and as he introduced her around he would secretly pinch her very hard and
whisper verbal degradations in her ear. Later, when he was fucking her in their hotel room, they
both realized they had gone overtime. When the man told Margot to stop watching the clock, she
immediately complied because she was in such a submissive headspace; afterwards she felt
guilty for getting caught up and acting unprofessionally. Before their second scene, the man
asked Margot to compose a 2000 word essay on why she liked playing with him. She brought
this essay to the fancy restaurant where the two had dinner, with Margot wearing her clients exwifes wedding ring. As she read the essay aloud, the man made Margot watch him eat and
pinched her under the table. Margot loved exercising intellectual muscles to write for and play
with this man, but she also felt conflicted, wondering if she was putting in more effort than she

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should for a client. By our third interview, Margot was questioning the viability of sex work in
general. She was concerned about how she might transition out of sex work into the regular job
market. These girls in the scene who are sex workers [are fetishized]... but what happens to
these girls? This scene is very small, and what happens when I want to leave it?

Two vignettes

During our interviews, Margot did not provide a narrative of her experience of getting involved
in the BDSM scene; instead, she described a series o f scenes and relationships that had made an
impact on her in the past year. I will describe two of these below.

Becoming the hole.

At the time o f our first interview, Margot had recently ended a D/s

relationship with Samuel that had been conducted mostly online. With Samuels help, Margot
created an enduring metaphor for her kink identity: the hole. Margot says of herself as the
hole, as soon as Im not consuming things, I feel lost... as long as youre putting things in the
hole, then the hole is happy; once you stop using the hole, it doesnt really exist. It was this
whole fear of when Im not being used anymore, who am I? Margot realized that the hole is
gluttonous - it wants to take in every possible experience, to push things to the extreme.
Accordingly, Margot gave this partner consent to do pretty much anything; typically, he would
give Margot physically and emotionally painful assignments to complete. Margot felt that their
relationship worked because it was compartmentalized, set apart from the rest of M argots life,
which allowed to explore her most extreme fantasies. However, over time Margot began to
experience their play as a monster that is not going to exist unless Im constantly feeding it life
support. Her partner was becoming negligent, and she felt alone in building fantasies,

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eroticizing his assignments and playing them out. He also seemed oblivious to Margots
emotional experience: things would happen and Id be absolutely devastated because this
person is not aware o f how much Im suffering emotionally and how much its affecting my
life. As Margot felt less and less supported by this partner, she also felt that has was asking for
more support from her: [at first] I got to be the hole... [but] once his life... was in the shit, he
needed me to be a girl and be someone to support him. At that point, Margot realized that she
had no desire to continue playing with him - I dont have a relationship with you [outside of
kink]... youre not really a person who I respect... I didnt really feel bad saying its over.
Through this relationship, Margot came to understand that she loves to suffer and she wants
her partners to rip my guts out, but she also needs there to be some control and guidance from
the other person - I cant be alone in anchoring myself back down.

The bathtub shoot.

In our second interview, Margot described a scene that she had set up with

a photographer whose work she admired. The two arranged a photo shoot of a disturbing scene
in which Margot was sitting in a bathtub full with my piss, and he shoved his hand down my
throat and I vomited, and then he shoved his fingers in my cunt. This was one o f the hardest
scenes Margot had ever endured, and it led to her developing a serious vaginal infection. With
great pain in her voice, Margot described having to spend the rest o f the week with this
photographer, feeling physically and emotionally terrible, but trying to tell herself that this is
why I do BDSM - 1 want to feel conflicted. Margot was frustrated to find that she spent the
week taking care o f him and reassuring him... [when] I was the one whose body got fucked up.
Although when they first met Margot had told this photographer that she wanted to make a real
connection with him, after he left she realized that she wanted nothing to do with him: just
because he did this really intense thing to me, Im not one o f his partners.

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Paulo

During our interviews, Margot was dating Paulo, a doctor by profession who is
experienced in medical fetish play. Margot described finding Paulos fetishes scary; although
she finds that medical piercings and sutures hurt less than impact play, they take more emotional
strength to endure. Still, Margot noted that when she plays with Paulo, these things become
very easy for me to eroticize; she finds that there is something very exciting about being able
to calm yourself down in a moment of fear.

A weekend with Paulo.

Margot began our second interview by telling me about the very intense

weekend she had just had. On Saturday she went to a party hosted by Paulo where she had
agreed to bottom for an arterial tapping demonstration. Margot was very afraid thinking about
the large needles piercing her body, but she was able pump m yself up for it as the scene
approached. She felt excited by the crowd watching her, and as the blood began to flow out of
her body, Margot experienced the most intense adrenaline rush Ive ever felt. Its like when you
snort drugs - it hits you that quickly. Paulo brought over two white canvasses, and Margot used
the blood pumping from her arm to paint. Afterwards, Margot felt in an altered state but
extremely nauseous. She felt so intensely connected to Paulo because he had literally been
in control o f whether I live or die and because youre helping me produce this art when I
havent been able to do that in so long... creating an actual performance and creating a physical
product. When a woman came up to buy one o f M argots blood paintings, she began to cry with
gratitude. Later that same night, Margot performed a second scene with a friend. First, she put
medical staples into her friends arms and legs and used ribbons to tie her to a Saint Andrews

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cross; then she stapled balloons to her friends body and popped them one by one, causing her
friend to jump and rip out the staples.
After this night, on the way back to Paulos house, Margot could not stop talking.
Often Margot feels that she acts like a dumb girl - she has trouble articulating her ideas and
gets too embarrassed to ask other people questions, so shell just default to telling anecdotes
about herself. But this night, Margot felt disinhibited, able to be vulnerable and share her
feelings. Paulo needed to sleep before work in the morning, so Margot stayed up all night writing
interview questions that she would like to ask Paulo. However, as she wrote, Marot began to
feel frustrated with the sterility o f her interview idea - it seemed so impersonal... why the
fuck would he want to answer these questions from one of his lovers? Margot switched to
writing a list o f reasons that shes attracted to Paulo, which then turned into a poem for Paulo
asking the question, why do you like me? Margot felt disturbed by her selfishness - even when
shes trying to get to know someone else, it always comes back to her.
The next night, Margot went to another party where she felt obligated to do something
big because her friend had gotten her in for free. High on a mix o f MDMA, cocaine, and speed,
Margot agreed to get fisted by her friend. The experience was very painful - Margot does not
like being fisted, her body was up-tight from the drugs, and her friend used heavy-duty medical
gloves that were painfully textured. At the end o f this night, Margot went back to Paulos house
and found that he had bought a box of Plan B so that we could have sex and he could come
inside o f me. Margot told me, laughing, that she found this gesture kind o f romantic... its
sweet and also kind o f fucked up. This experience was particularly poignant for Margot because
Paulo knows that she will feel absolutely miserable for days afterwards from the hormones in
the pill, so that he will need to take care o f her.

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With the extra estrogen in her system, and coming down from the drugs and adrenaline o f
the weekend, Margot was hit with a painful depression. Although Margot is often seen by others
in the BDSM community as competent and well-put-together, she often feels that she has no
idea what shes doing with her life. During our last interview, Margot was particularly worried
about her failure as an artist. From the beginning, Margot had hoped that BDSM would be a way
o f collecting experiences in order to fuel her artwork - and yes I ve written about it, yes Ive
drawn about it, but these pieces are hoarded away rather than shared, sold, or developed.
Some o f the scenes that Margot performs do feel like real art, but theyre always ephemeral.
Margot wonders, so many people will not experience what I experienced in a weekend in a
year. But what exactly do I have to show for it? And how can she use these experience to
communicate something to an audience outside o f the scene? How can she make art that her
parents would buy? Margot is also frustrated with herself for depending on others to set up her
performances and photo shoots. She worries, have I gotten dumber? Have I lost some o f the
critical thinking skills that I had before because Im not stopping and thinking about things, just
continually throwing myself into experiences?

Love, power, and jealousy with Paulo.

During our third interview, Margot told me, very

sheepishly and under her breath, that Paulo had said I love you to her for the first time
recently. At the time, Margot felt too shy to say it back out loud - she had to mouth the words
olive juice in reply. Margot felt very excited by this turn o f events, but also scared, like it
would be dumb for me to believe it. Margot wonders what kind o f love it is that he feels - I
dont think its the I m going to marry you and have your babies ty p e... maybe more like I
want to get you pregnant and abort your babies. Paulo went on to tell Margot that he was sorry
that he had difficulties with intimacy because o f his past, and Margot admitted that she had the

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same problem. When Margot became quiet, Paulo asked what she was thinking, and Margot
admitted that she was fantasizing about one day being collared by him. Margot felt very
embarrassed, as if this was basically the equivalent of saying I want to be your girlfriend.
Margot told me that when things get more romantic in relationships, she feels scared that they
will run away, and so she clams up.
Over the course o f our next two interviews, Margot expressed many complicated feelings
about the dynamics o f power in her relationship with Paulo. At first, Margot said that she likes
that she and Paulo can switch power roles: [I can] play with his emotions as much as he plays
with mine - and we talk about it, which is nice. Later, though, Margot told me that their power
exchange really only goes one way. She recalled that once when they were having sex, she asked
Paulo half-jokingly if she could slap him in the face, and he said no and punched her in the
face - that was him letting me know thats not the way this works. Margot says this exchange
was fun because she likes being told no. The no is a sort o f mental or emotional bondage
that gives Margot something secure to hold onto - it starts to define things a bit. This security
and definition is part o f why Margot fantasizes about a more formal D/s relationship with Paulo.
Margot also expressed mixed feelings about the line between play and reality in hers and
Paulos sadomasochistic dynamics. At first, she expressed gratitude that their scenes of power
exchange were bounded, and that afterwards they both get to be human again. Often, Margot
can fall into experiencing herself as an unthinking thing even outside o f her BDSM scenes; she
really really likes that Paulo want me to be human and asks her to think about and express
her own desires, rather than making all o f the decisions in their relationship and letting her be
along for the ride. Later, though, this line did not seem to clear. She told me that Paulo often
teases her by saying youre a dumb girl - 1 like dumb girls. This teasing elicits mixed feeling
in Margot - on some level she likes it and finds it sexy to be playfully degraded, but this

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statement also taps into her real fears. She wonders - does Paulo really think Im dumb? And if
he says it enough times, will I start to really believe it?
A persistent conflict for Margot in her relationship with Paulo is how far to push her
boundaries around the types o f extreme medical scenes that he enjoys. In our third interview,
Margot told me that she and Paulo had had a fight recently, during which she said to him, you
should just suture my mouth shut. Paulo ran with the idea and asked Margot to bottom to a
mouth suturing scene at an upcoming party. Margot was scared at first, but became increasingly
excited about the idea as the week went on. She finally agreed because she felt that Ive already
masturbated about it so it has to happen... Ive already built it up in my head so much... I ve
tricked myself into thinking that nothing else would be satisfying. Still, Margot felt a little bit
stupid for agreeing because she knew that having scars on her mouth might prevent her from
offering oral sex to full-service clients the next week, meaning she would lose money. She
wondered if she had agreed to the scene just to prove to Paulo that she is willing to give him
more than she gives to her clients. Even though Margot knows that this was her choice,
sometimes it still feels as if their relationship is not quite fair.
Margot also spoke at length about the dynamics around jealousy in her open relationship
with Paulo. She feels very jealous o f Paulos other partners, especially the one who is a lawyer a girl with a real job. Since their exchange o f I love yous, Margot feels unsure about what,
exactly, Paulo does with and feels for these women, but she feels too embarrassed to ask for
clarification. Instead, Margot often finds herself eroticizing this jealousy by asking Paulo to
describe his past partners in detail; she has become a little bit obsessed about recreating [scenes
that he did with past partners]. It turns Margot on to explore the psychology of trespassing on
this other persons intimate history. Margot is not sine why she finds this trespassing so sexy,
but she wonders if shes trying to do something to Paulo emotionally - there are a lot o f things I

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end up doing because they make someone else feel more uncomfortable or more conflicted than I
do.
For her part, Margot often plays with other people at parties, and she regularly has sex
with her friend Rick. Margot feels very comfortable around Rick, but romantically indifferent.
She is not jealous o f his other partners, though she does envy him when he has crazy
experiences without her. She likes that she has a key and can go over to his house anytime, and
that she can tell him about her professional scenes, since she worries that Paulo might get upset if
she expresses too much enthusiasm about doing sex work. However, M argots feelings about
Rick as a sexual partner are intense and conflicted. At one point, Margot told me that she
sometimes will go over to Ricks house after a difficult professional scene because she wants to
be held by someone. However, she then said that she usually feels cold around Rick and
doesnt want him to touch her or kiss her, just fuck her; and sometimes, while they have sex,
Margot gets so emotional that it hurts, and I dont like it. Margot explained that having
professional sessions in which she feels destroyed put her in a state where she is able to have
good sex with Rick.
In our last interview, Margot told me about a recent disagreement with Paulo that was
weighing on her mind. It began when Margot was with Paulo and telling a group o f friends a
story about a recent party where Paulo had instructed someone to fist Margot while she was
black-out drunk. Paulo pulled her aside and told her angrily that she could not tell people
something like that - he had been accused of consent violations in the past, and he has to protect
his reputation. Paulo told her that the male dom is probably the loneliest group of people in the
scene because its easiest to throw the blame on them. Paulo accused Margot and her friends of
being dangerous and [not living] in the real world. Margot felt chastised and apologized to
Paulo. Then, later, Paulo told Margot some gossip he had heard about Rick violating a womans

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consent in a recent scene. Thinking o f what Paulo had said about how male doms need to protect
their reputations, Margot told Rick what she had heard. When Paulo found out, he became angry
again, telling Margot that he cant trust her to keep her mouth shut about private conversations.
Margot felt very flustered and upset by this exchange, and was worrying that she was simply not
fit for a serious relationship because she doesnt understand the rules. She also felt that she has
ruined her hopes o f Rick and Paulo becoming friends. Paulo told Margot that to regain his trust,
she must go one month without talking to anyone about him. Margot felt conflicted about this
request; she wasnt sure it was fair, but she was also scared that if she disagreed Paulo might
leave her. Margot told me that she knows she needs to have some serious discussions with Paulo,
but she gets tongue-tied in these types of situations. Shes scared of fucking up and ruining a
good thing. Plus, Margot wonders if she could find someone else, a partner from the real
world, who would be OK with her sex work and her lifestyle.

Some current thoughts about BDSM

Playing with men vs. women. Towards the end of our interviews, Margot reflected on the
experience o f playing with men vs. women. She described a recent performance in which a
group o f female friends wore strap-ons and gang-banged Margot in front o f an audience.
Although she was being penetrated and spanked, Margot didnt feel submissive; instead, it felt
fun and exhilarating... like we were all this well-choreographed dance. It was wonderful.
Although Margot has a lot o f sex with women, she somehow forgets that shes having sex - it
feels fun and casual rather than emotional and raw. With the female friends she has made in the
scene, there is a sense o f shared identity - being a girl and doing these fucked up things... being
animalistic and crazy together. At the same time, she believes that BDSM has deepened her

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intimacy with women. She described her friendship with Betty, who started out as a play partner
who played the daughter to Margots daddy role. At that time, Margot didnt care much
about her - she just liked to look good by [dragging] around this hot, sad chick and making
everyone jealous. But recently, Margot has realized that she feels deep love for Betty.
Still, this love for Betty is very different from what Margot can feel towards her male
partners. With men, Margot often feels romantic and vulnerable, like she exposing a part of
herself that is usually hidden. Although Margot hates the deeply sad and pathetic feelings she
gets after fighting with Paulo, she also knows that a woman could never make her feel this way.
Upon reflection, Margot realized that when she bottoms to a man she is often trying to open
something up inside o f herself, and trying as hard as possible to make [my partner] see that.
Margot isnt sure exactly what part o f herself shes trying to expose. It doesnt feel like a weak
part o f her, and its also not the part of her that drives her to do crazy and shocking things. But
in some ways, it feels like reaching this part o f herself is the goal o f everything Margot does.

The limitations o f BDSM.

As we wrapped up our time together, Margot reflected on the ways

that BDSM has served her as a tool for making that initial connection with someone through
shared kinky interests. The intense physical contact and high emotions of a scene can make you
feel extremely connected with a total stranger, the way you would feel if you had been dating
for a year. However, Margot has also realized over the years that that feeling isnt really real
- the connection is in a bubble, and when the scene ends its common to find that you dont
really have anything in common past your shared kinks. Because o f this, BDSM can end up
being little more than a form o f escapism. Margot has also become more concerned about the
emotional manipulation that is the insidious dark side o f BDSM - the way that power
dynamics can bleed out o f scenes and into relationships, and how easy it can be to use people.

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Recently, Margot has been trying to be more careful about who I play with and how they
represent me. She has also been dismayed to realize how often she has used people, as a hole
that relentlessly takes in people and experiences without much regard fo r the things that fe e d
it. As the hole, Margot can be fickle - once you stop feeding it, its gone. Margot is trying
to change this part o f herself, especially in her new relationship with Paulo: she doesnt want to
just use him for his expertise and connections. More and more, Margot wants to have a
relationship with the person, and not just a kink relationship. She feels very lucky to have made
true friends through BDSM - people who she wants to have more than a bubble with.

Thematic Analysis

The hole: emptiness and appetite

The hole is a highly complex and layered metaphor, capturing many o f M argots
different self-states and conflicting desires. At its core, the hole represents an internal state of
emptiness and hunger. At times, this emptiness appears to be a safe, desirable state for Margot; at
other times, it represents her failure and collapse. Sometimes Margot seems to enjoy the holes
voracious appetite, taking pleasure in being constantly fed; still at other times, this unending
consumption feels compulsive and hollow.
Although Margot arrived consciously at the metaphor of the hole during her first year
in the BDSM scene, she believes that the idea had been with her for a long time. Margot
describes herself as a child who relied on food for comfort, suggesting that the need to be filled
up with something may have been a part o f her early experience. As a teenager, Margot
switches to responding to her hungers through deprivation. Triumph over her hungers and

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maintaining an internal state o f emptiness is exhausting, but it also makes Margot feel strong;
when she is no longer able to restrict in this way, she feels her will collapse. Towards the end of
high school, Margot is no longer starving herself, and she feels her sexual desire return; however,
she often feels discomfort with taking in forbidden foods and holding them in her body. She
begins to rely on purging in order to return to zero.
In college and beyond, Margot seems to switch into a mode of endless consumption. The
hole comes to represent M argots need to be constantly stimulated by novel and intense
experiences, sexual or otherwise. Margot describes this consumption as a protest against her
adolescent self-deprivation; still, wanting remains immensely complicated for Margot. Although
she gives herself permission to seek nourishment, the hole also symbolizes her feeling that her
appetite can never be truly satisfied. The hole moves from experience to experience, partner to
partner, but never finding anything it can really subsist on: once you stop feeding it, or once you
dont have the right food for it... its gone. In her adult life, Margot still seems to struggle with
asking for the right food - for example, she feels too embarrassed to let Paulo know that she
wants a committed relationship. Rather than asking for what she really wants, Margot sometimes
seems to take in indiscriminately and try to subsist on what she finds; but then nothing seems to
register as nourishment, staying inside o f her and making her feel full. At times, Margot
describes the hole as a way o f fleeing from a terrifying sense of nothingness: as soon as Im not
consuming things, I feel lo st... Once you stop using the hole it doesnt really exist.
Sometimes Margot sees her habits o f endless consumption as at odds with what she wants
to achieve in her life - it can be a way o f procrastinating from doing things like taking care o f
myself and writing. Margot wants to have something to show for all o f her crazy experiences:
she wants to take things in, hold them in her mind, and transform them into art that she can give
back to the world. However, sometimes she is not sure that she has these capacities inside o f her.

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The hole can represent a compromise in the face of her feeling of failure: if she cant give
anything to the world, the least she can do is offer herself as a hole to be used and enjoyed by
others. But on some level, this does not feel like enough to Margot: 1 want to be the hole, but I
[also] want to be special - to be seen as a person with specific, knowable contents. Margot
appreciates that Paulo forces her to confront this fantasy o f herself as an unthinking thing - he
wants me to be human, and this inspires Margot to try to learn about her own desires and ideas.

Love and dependency

Closely related to the theme of the hole in M argots narrative are themes of love and
dependency. Margots description o f herself as a child highlights the centrality o f conflicts
around dependence: I wanted to be taken care o f but I didnt want to have to ask to be taken
care of. Little Margot needed extra help from her teachers, but she was overwhelmed with
anxiety at the prospect o f asking for it. M argots memories o f her childhood nightmares also
involve the terror o f being abandoned by someone she depends on and being forced to fend for
herself.
Attractions, crushes, dating, and romance are conspicuously missing from Margots
description o f her adolescence. As puberty sets in, she bows out of this world and becomes
inwardly focused on her disordered eating, which takes away her sexual appetite. When it comes
back at the end o f high school, Margot becomes obsessed with sex, but seems to take a
distanced and objective stance towards this interest. She sets out to lose her virginity in college,
but the possibility o f intimacy or love does not seem to occur to her. When she first gets involved
with the teacher, Margot does seem to have idealizing, romantic feelings, but these are shut down
when he defines the terms o f their secret affair. Margot convinces [herself] that she isnt

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interested in romance and suppresses her fantasies o f being a real couple. For the rest of
college, Margot pursues sex without attachment, firmly blocking her partners bids for intimacy:
if youre going to make a big deal about this, then were just not going to fuck anymore.
As an adult, Margot has realized that she is very cynical about love. She tells me about
spending time with her hippie friends, whose ideas about infinite love ring completely false to
her: when you go to these parties with Burners... youve gotta hug everyone; everyones gotta
feel the love... but I dont feel the love!... its ridiculous to me. Although Margot has fun with
these friends, their constant affection can make her feel like jumping out o f my skin... because it
was just too much. Margot also feels alienated from more traditional forms of love and romance
- she doesnt know how shes supposed to act when she goes on dates or what the rules are for
being someones girlfriend. BDSM, in contrast, allows her rearrange the emotions associated
with romance - the love and the longing, the pain and jealousy - in a way that fits for her and
feels honest. Through the BDSM scene and through sex work, Margot pursues alternative
forms o f erotic contact in which she gets to make up her own rules along with her partners.
Still, avoiding the conventions of normative romance does not allow Margot to avoid
questions about how to manage love and dependency in her relationships. Again and again,
Margot describes a conflict between the desire to make a real connection with a partner or
client and the wish to avoid further intimacy and commitment. With her clients, Margot worries
that she gets too emotionally involved and becomes frustrated when they want more from her;
with partners, she often seems to become disappointed and disillusioned with what happens after
their initial connection has faded. Margot said in our third interview that she wants to work on
her difficulties with investing in relationships, and to stop using people; she wants to build
real, loving relationships that transcend the intense but superficial connections forged by kink.
Still, she struggles to handle her more conventional desires for love, intimacy, and

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commitment. Expressing these desires to Paulo makes Margot feel ashamed and stupid, like a
typical girl; she worries that she will scare him away, just like the boys in college who wouldnt
sleep with her because she might get too attached. Admitting dependence in this way seems to
make Margot feel dangerously vulnerable.

Envy, competition, and jealousy

Envy, competition, and jealousy are themes running through Margots narrative. Her first
references to these feelings are in her relationship with her younger sister. In her childhood
nightmares, Margot has to fight to protect herself and her sister, but inevitably only one makes it
out alive, suggesting a feeling that the two are in competition for vital resources. Her little sister
and her friend from school are both implicated as figures o f competition in Margots adolescent
eating disorder. Margots dieting and over-exercising begin as a way o f competing with this
friend, who Margot envies for always being just a little bit faster or smarter than she is. Soon,
Margot begins expressing her hateful envy o f her sisters slender body by force feeding her in
order to make her gain weight while Margot slims down. When M argots parents intervene and
she is forced to begin gaining back weight, she feels intensely envious and hateful towards the
skinny, popular girls at her high school. These dynamics suggest that Margots sense o f power
and accomplishment are very dependent on how she views herself relative to other women.
Envy and jealousy continue to play important roles in Margots adult relationships. In her
college relationship with the teacher, Margot has only one request: that he tell her if he sleeps
with another woman. Knowing her own sensitivities around jealousy, she worries that might not
be able to handle it. Margot is then dismayed to find that the teacher has had sex with someone
else over the summer and lied to her about it. Margot decides that in order to hold onto some

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power in her relationship with the teacher, she will begin collecting her own sexual experiences;
she transforms her passive feelings of jealousy and betrayal into an active competition. Having
sex with many partners becomes a major source o f validation for Margot: a lot o f my self-worth
became centered around being able to get sex.
Margot replicates some o f these dynamics in her open relationship with Paulo. For
example, she described a day when Paulo went on a date with a new woman, and Margot
assumed that the two would be having sex. That same night, Margot went to see a client and
decided to offer him a full service session, in part as a way to distract herself from her jealous
feelings. Later, Paulo tells Margot that he didnt have sex with his date, and she feels shocked
and guilty. She realizes that she was projecting her fears o f being betrayed onto Paulo, and
having sex with her client was a juvenile way of evening the score. Still, Margot sees jealousy
as an inevitable part o f being in a relationship. Margot laughs about the ridiculousness o f the idea
o f compersion that her hippie friends espouse - that is, taking pleasure when your partner has
sexual experiences with other people. When Margot and Paulo talk to each other about fooling
around with other people, they tease each other by saying stop! Youre going to make me feel
too much compersion! Rather than ignoring her jealousy o f Paulos sex with other women,
Margot pursues it obsessively by asking for details about his lovers and trying to recreate their
scenes. She takes pleasure in the taboo act of trespassing on someone elses intimate history.
She understands that, in part, these games serves as a way to make Paulo uncomfortable - to
induce in him some o f the pain that she is feeling when her jealousy becomes unbearable.
Margot also describes a pattern of transforming her feelings o f envy towards women into
friendship. This happens in high school, after Margot starts taking antidepressants and realizes
that the skinny, popular girls who she so envied before were actually women who she admired
and respected. Margot says about this shift in her feelings, when I see things that mirror whats

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inside o f me, a lot o f my natural instinct is to sort o f fight against it; it takes her a while to come
to appreciate people who are similar to her. Later, in college, Margot ends up becoming best
friends with the woman with whom the teacher cheated on her. Margot describes a third
instance o f this pattern in her relationship with Paulo. Before their arterial tapping scene, Paulo
goes on a date with a woman, and Margot feels extremely jealous; but after their scene while
Margot is feeling high, she is flooded with loving feelings and begs Paulo to go get this
woman so that the three o f them can be together. She thinks: I want you to be happy. I want you
to fuck her. I want to be her best friend.

Approaching fear and eroticizing trauma

A clear pattern in M argots life is her tendency to move towards those things that are the
most frightening and disturbing to her. Margot describes herself as a child who was severely
limited by her anxieties, who often relied on mutism and avoidance to feel safe. But Margot also
learned to move towards her fears quite early in her life, in her habit of soothing herself when
she awoke from nightmares by replaying scenes of torture in her mind. Very early in her life, she
learns that moving towards fear and suffering, rather than away, can actually provide comfort.
Margot experiences this again in high school when she undergoes acupuncture and finds that she
enjoys the process o f enduring the mild pain from the needles and calming herself down by
telling herself that its not going to hurt.
Margot continues to play out this pattern in her relationship with Paulo. Initially, she
finds that many o f the scenes he proposes - arterial tapping, piercing, suturing - are extremely
frightening to think about. However, Margot inevitably uses her mind to play these scenes over
and over in fantasy, masturbating to them and eroticizing them, until she becomes set on really

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acting them out. Margot speaks, paradoxically, o f the excitement of being able to calm yourself
down - the process o f transforming terror into desire is, in itself, pleasurable. By perpetually
approaching her fears through edgy kink play, she is able to experience herself as strong and
brave in a way that she never felt as a child: doing all these really insane things is my way o f
making up for time.
\

Margot also knows, however, that there can be danger in how quick she is to eroticize
trauma. Looking back on the experience of being raped by the teacher, she recognizes that she
must have been terrified to wake up and see blood everywhere. At the time, though, she just
felt excited - it was scary, but my natural thing is sort o f like, oh my gosh... its something
thats very easy in my head to eroticize. Margot often feels deeply conflicted over the extremely
frightening and painful things that she chooses to submit to in her scenes, wondering if she has
gone too far. Sometimes after doing a very intense scene with Paulo, Margot will feel fear for
days, thinking I dont even like this; what am I doing with my life? I hate it so much, I hate it....
I dont understand what I do any o f this. However, Margot also says several times throughout
our interviews that she does these things because she wants to feel conflicted in this way.

Limits and boundaries

Clearly, much o f M argots erotic life involves the shattering of limits and boundaries.
Margot seeks to break through her own internal boundaries by approaching that which she most
fears and plunging herself into overwhelming emotional states. She moves against the limits of
her body by pushing herself to endure extreme physical trials, and she literally breaks the
boundaries o f her body with needles that penetrate and blood, urine, tears, and vomit that move

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from the inside to the outside. Margot also breaks through interpersonal boundaries, as when she
trespasses on Paulos sexual history, or when she crosses the social boundaries of normative
sexual behavior. Margot self-consciously uses her sexuality to shock others, to explore the
comers o f erotic life that are the most disturbing and taboo.
At the same time, Margot seems to seek and appreciate certain protective boundaries and
limits. At several points in her narrative, Margot describes sexual relationships that exist within a
bubble, set apart from the rest o f her life. These bubble relationships include her secret
college affair with the teacher, her online play partner, and her sex work with clients. In each of
these situations, Margot seems to rely on the boundaries o f the bubble to be able to enjoy what
happens inside o f it. With the teacher, the edges o f their hot little bubble begin to give way as
Margot meets the women who hes been sleeping around with, and break altogether when he
asks to have a threesome with her friend. Likewise, with her online play partner and with her
clients, Margot feels uncomfortable and breaks off relationships when the other person asks for
contact and intimacy that extends beyond their previously-agreed-upon limits.
Margot also describes several instances in which important others in her life set limits on
her out-of-control behavior. This occurs when Margots parents discover her obsessive dieting
and enlist her teachers and coaches in monitoring Margots weight and eating. Although Margot
is frightened to think o f giving up these habits, she is also profoundly relieved that someone else
is taking responsibility for her well-being and telling her no. Later in her life, Margot finds that
being told no by Paulo when she asks to hit him gives her a pleasurable feeling of security.
Through her BDSM experiences, Margot learns that although she likes to be ripped apart, she
also needs to have a partner who offers control, observing what she is doing, setting limits, and
anchoring me back down.

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Femininity and female embodiment

Margots narrative speaks o f a complex and ambivalent relationship with femininity and
female embodiment. At times, Margot seems to associate femaleness with weakness and
vulnerability. In her early torture fantasies, for example, Margot always chose male heroes
because they would be strong enough to endure the trials she imagined. I wonder if for Margot,
this identification with strong, male heroes helps her to overcome a sense o f pathetic weakness
and dependency that is associated with femininity. As an adult, Margot often equates acting like
a girl with being stupid, dependent, and wanting more romance or commitment from her
male partners. Still, at other times, Margot describes a type o f female strength that she feels
alienated from and envies - the power o f being a fantasy object who commands the attention
o f men. Margot explores this particular feminine role through performance, for example in her
virginity project during college and in her work as a stripper.
M argots feelings about femininity are often expressed through her experience o f her
body. For example, when Margot was a child, her father teased her for being chubby and
suggested that she would have big boobs when she got older. When puberty begins for Margot,
she seems determined to intervene in her fate - and her restricting functions to halt her period
and masculinize her body. Although Margot did not make this connection herself, it seems clear
to me that her later identification with Saint Margaret is related to this adolescent protest. Both
Saint Margaret and Margot refuse to become sexual objects and take control by actively
choosing to suffer. M argots performance o f Saint Margarets fate - holding frozen breasts made
o f milk against her chest - darkly echo her fathers prediction while highlighting the inherent
pain o f living in a female body.

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These days, Margot is in no way free from the scrutiny to which women subject their
bodies: she envies the perfect bodies o f her friends and her sister - curvy with a small waist and wonders how much she distorted her own development to create her more straight body
shape. Still, Margot says that overall, she is pretty happy with her body these days - she likes
the size o f her butt and that her breasts are small enough to go without a bra. Margot also
realizes that given her history o f disordered eating, her perception of her own body may still not
be completely accurate.

Communicating suffering

One o f the persistent motivations that seems to run through M argots life is the desire to
communicate her experience o f suffering to others. This theme first appears in Margots
childhood game o f throwing herself into piles o f snow and thinking, I ll just lie here until
someone finds me! As Margot develops into an artist, her work often seems to serve the
function o f communicating about her private pain - sometimes to a general audience, and
sometimes to a very specific audience o f one. In college, M argots short story about the trip to
Disneyland and her performance as Saint Margaret convey profound feelings of pain and
betrayal. By showing these pieces to the teacher, Margot tries to make him understand how he
has hurt her, while also trying to induce painful feelings in him.
I believe that M argots many sadomasochistic performances in the BDSM scene serve a
similar function, symbolizing her experiences o f suffering and displaying them in front of a lover
or an audience. Indeed, one o f the reasons that Margot ends things with her online lover is her
feeling that you do these terrible things to me and youre not aware of how they make me feel.
From being in this relationship, Margot realized that she needs her partner to be aware o f her

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pain in order for her to continue eroticizing the experience. The intensity of M argots need for
her suffering to be seen and thought about is made clear in the intense gratitude that Margot feels
when it succeeds - as when a woman wants to buy the painting made with Margots blood.

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CH A PTER 7: DISCUSSION

We love, and we play, in order to learn how to survive letting go.

Lynda Hart, Between the Body and the Flesh:

Performing Sadomasochism, 1998

There is always a political danger in dissecting and analyzing a persons sexual

proclivities. Certainly, the material I have presented raises many questions about the
psychological motivations behind consensual sadomasochism and about its potentially harmful
effects. Indeed, these are questions that all three women raised themselves during our interviews.
However, these questions can be difficult to address without veering into the territory o f
oversimplifying and moralizing. As Robin puts it, I cant imagine not being kinky, but that also
doesnt necessarily mean its good for m e ... [but] I think a lot of people shy away from those
kinds o f questions because they dont want to [suggest that] if youre into these things you need
therapy. In the discussion that follows, 1 hope to avoid this sort o f if, then thinking in which
sexual interest in kink is viewed as evidence o f a pathological psychological structure. Instead, I
take a cue from Saketopoulou (2015) in focusing on the functions o f consensual sadomasochism
- what pleasures it generates and what psychic work it performs. I acknowledge the problems
that sexuality can pose for these women - the dilemmas around intimacy, dependency, shame,
desire, and danger - and I ask how BDSM intervenes into these situations.
The questions that I address in this discussion are driven by my own and my participants
struggles to understand the meaning and value o f BDSM in their lives. Rather than offering a
comprehensive evaluation o f the existing psychoanalytic literature on sadomasochism, 1 draw

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eclectically on existing theory where it feels useful in illuminating these questions. Winnicottian
theory is a particularly strong presence in this chapter, for a few different reasons. For one, a
number of psychoanalytic writers and queer theorists have already made use o f Winnicotts ideas
to think about sadomasochism in a number o f interesting ways (see Bader 1993; Benjamin 1998;
Brothers 1997; Frydman & Kaufman 2013; Khan 1974; Stoller 1991; Weille 2004). I also find
great value in Winnicotts work because it offers a model o f health that is focused less on
categorizing types o f pathology and more on qualities o f subjective experience such as aliveness
and creativity vs. deadness and falsity (Mitchell and Black 1995, p. 124). Winnicotts ideas are
also useful for my project in that they draw our attention to the creative and developmental
strivings that underlie what might appear to be destructive or antisocial actions.
In the three sections that follow, I ask how BDSM functions at the level o f the body, at
the level o f relationship, and at the level of community. The first section, Regulation and
Dysregulation, addresses my participants thoughts about the peculiar intertwining of pleasure
and suffering in BDSM sexuality. Why, they and I ask, are the things that scare them or hurt
them the most often also the sexiest? The next section, Getting Me into You and You into Me,
addresses BDSM as a tool for connecting with others. In the last section, Play, Repetition, and
Repair, I ask how BDSM might be considered a form o f play in the Winnicottian sense - a
creative, meaning-making activity. Here I consider how erotic life may pose particular problems
for contemporary women, and ask how consensual sadomasochism may offer both painful
repetitions and pleasure-filled reconfigurations o f these problems. I go on to ask how the BDSM
community may facilitate or fail to facilitate the types o f safety, connection, and pleasure that my
participants are seeking.

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Regulation and Dysregulation

A striking feature of BDSM is the tension between risk and transgression, on the one
hand, and control and boundaries on the other. Indeed, the erotic core o f a consensual
sadomasochistic encounter is often built on dramatizing this tension, creating a spiraling
movement between danger and safety as the scene builds. In their interviews, my participants
describe pursuing erotic experiences that can be profoundly disorganizing and overstimulating,
toeing up to the edge o f traumatic breakdown; at the same time, they each describe using this
kind o f sex to derive pleasure, to relieve anxiety, and to consolidate feelings of agency and
strength. BDSM seems to function in their lives paradoxically, to intensify the dangerous aspects
o f sex while simultaneously protecting against them.
To begin to untangle this paradox, I will draw on some recent discussions by writers who
highlight the tension between regulation and dysregulation in infantile and adult sexuality. These
discussions lead me to a series o f questions about the nature o f sexual enjoyment: like, does
sexual pleasure derive from the harmony of mutual attunement, or from the thrill o f transgressed
boundaries? Do we need to feel safe in order to have good sex, or does good sex involve a deep
dive into the possibility o f our own obliteration? How might pain and overstimulation function,
counter-intuitively, to regulate anxiety and hold the self together during sex? And how do
regulation and dysregulation work together to create the psychological rhythms o f erotic
experience?

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The pleasures of excess

Very often, my participants sadomasochistic scenes are designed to introduce elements

o f fear, pain, and humiliation into the erotic encounter. In their sexual lives, these women
approach or transgress the limits of what is normally tolerable on an affective and bodily level.
Each woman describes her hunger for escalating intensity, her experience that there is a thin line
between terror and excitement, and a delicious pattern o f pain that alternates with pleasure until
the two are indistinguishable.
Scarlett tries to explain to her shocked vanilla friends the pleasures of her sexual
preferences: [pushing the boundaries] of what your body can do and... the mental state you can
get in... [is] really exciting and interesting and cool... its hard to appreciate that unless youve
done it. She equates it to the adrenaline rush o f a rollercoaster or a hard work-out. Margot, too,
experiences her BDSM scenes as akin to athletic trials of physical endurance, producing a
feeling much like a runners high. In addition to pushing the limits o f what the body can
endure, sometimes these women pursue experiences that literally break through the boundaries
o f the body. In M argots play, for example, the skin and the orifices and the skin are forcibly
broken into, and things from the inside are forcibly ejected into the environment (urine, blood,
vomit).
All three participants also describe very plainly their enjoyment o f physical pain.
Recalling playing with the tens unit at her doctors office as a child, Robin says that it was
pretty obvious from a young age that she had a different relationship with pain than other
people might. For Scarlett, this knowledge dawned on her gradually. In her early sexual
experiences, she would often find herself telling her partners things like, you can play with my
nipples harder you can hold me down harder. She didnt think o f this as masochism - it just felt

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like needing extra sensation to push her over the edge into orgasm. It is only when Scarlett gets
involved in BDSM that she comes to see herself as someone who enjoys actively enjoys pain.
Both Robin and Scarlett describe the intense release that follows a scene of mounting pleasure
and pain: in Scarletts words, [you feel] a lump on the floor... because youre so blissed out...
Thats such a uniquely awesome feeling.
On an affective level, these three women often describe how what is most sexually
thrilling to them is exactly the same as what is most frightening or repellant. Scarlett, for
example, is very turned on by scenes that play on her fears o f being used, violated, or physically
harmed by her partner. As someone who places great value on consent and safety, Scarlett can
feel anxious about her contradictory desires: when I let my brain turn off and I dont overthink
it, its something I want. [But] then when I overthink it, I get upset about it. Robin similarly
describes feeling an intense cognitive dissonance between terror and arousal in her first play
scene with Luke. On the one hand, she was cowering in the comer, terrified that the beating
would never stop; on the other hand, she was very clearly aroused; even if in my head this
wasnt turning me on, my body was saying something totally different. Robin was left with a
sense o f confusion: part o f me is enjoying this, part o f me is terrified, and I dont know if that
feeling o f being terrified is part o f enjoying it. M argots scenes, too, often begin with an idea
that is terrifying to her - such as having her mouth sutured shut - which she then elaborates in
fantasy, gradually converting the fear into excitement. Margot understands crying and feeling
conflicted as signs o f a successful scene: some internal barrier has been broken through,
plunging her into emotional states that are usually beyond her reach.
To understand the pleasure that my participants take in states of bodily and affective
overwhelm, I want to turn to a set o f writers who suggest that masochistic enjoyment is an
element o f all sexuality (Bersani 1986; Laplanche 1997; Saketopoulou 2015; Stein 2008).

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Laplanche (1997) traces the origins o f sexuality to the unconscious seduction that takes place
between parent and infant in the earliest stages o f life. He describes the infant as subject to a
constant onslaught o f unconscious sexual messages from the parent, communicated in the daily
activities of holding, feeding, changing, speaking, and gazing (p. 659). The child is enthralled
and seduced by these enigmatic signifiers, yet overwhelmed by their intensity and their
incomprehensibility (p. 660). The parts o f these communications that cannot be eventually
deciphered - excess meanings and affects that go unsymbolized - form the childs
unconscious, his sexuality, and the basis of his fantasy life. Sexuality is thus installed as an alien,
unknowable otherness within all people (p. 653).
Fonagy (2008) adds a complement to this picture by discussing the infants states of
sexual arousal, which, he points out, most caregivers systematically ignore. He proposes that the
caregivers turning away marks the infants arousal as too much to be contained, leaving
sexuality as something unmirrored and therefore alien within the self (p. 23). While other
affects become more or less regulated intrapsychically, sexuality continues to exist as an urgent,
excessive, and dysregulating need (p. 23). For this reason, adult sexuality mimics a form o f
pathology - it is a sort o f ordinary borderline state or temporary madness (p. 19).
Through his subversive reading o f Freuds body o f work on pleasure and pain, cultural
theorist Leo Bersani (1986) reopens the question at the heart of Beyond the Pleasure Principle:
why are we driven to pursue and repeat painful experiences? In contradiction to the idea that
pleasure derives from a reduction in tension, Bersani (1986) picks up on moments in Freuds
early work that suggests that sexual excitement can occur whenever the bodys normal range
o f sensation is exceeded (p. 38). Desire, then, involves the pursuit o f ever-increasing tension, and
pleasure adheres in the moment when stimulation becomes too much to handle, plunging us
into a painful jouissance o f exploded limits (p. 24). Bersani (1986) goes on to suggest that our

enjoyment o f pain may be an evolutionary adaptation that allows us to survive infancy - a period
in which the fragile self is repeatedly shattered with stimuli for which [we] have not yet
developed defensive or integrative ego structures (p. 60).
Bringing together insights from each o f these theorists, Stein (2008) describes human
sexuality as inherently excessive: it involves an excess of physical sensations beyond regular
containment, an excess o f desire over sensible judgment, an excess of meaning beyond
symbolization, and the others ungraspable excess over me (p. 44). The theories of infantile
development proposed by Laplanche (1997) and Bersani (1986) suggest that we are hard-wired
to find pleasure in impingement, while Fonagys (2008) work suggests that affective
dysregulation is part and parcel o f erotic experience. Sexuality, in Steins (2008) view, always
involves a movement towards too-muchness in which the experiences o f longing and terror,
exhilaration and traumatization, and seduction and repulsion are closely linked (p. 48). Picking
up on this idea, Saketopoulou (2015) proposes redefining perversion in psychoanalytic
parlance as an unconsciously driven yet concerted sexual practice that involves the subjects
persistent pursuit o f the s e lf s unraveling (p. 264)

Sex in the service of regulation

In a recent paper, Benjamin and Atlas (2015) argue that Steins (2008) ideas about the
role o f excess in sexual life need to be balanced with a consideration o f the pragmatic
dimensions o f infantile and adult eroticism: the real, interactive dimension o f intersubjective
recognition and regulation (p. 42). They agree with Stein (2008) that sex involves the excessive
experiences o f overflowing excitement. However, they propose that the ability to tolerate and
enjoy this too-muchness is not a given; rather, it is a developmental capacity that derives from

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early dyadic experiences (p. 39). The role of the pragmatic mother (as opposed to Laplanches
enigmatic mother), they write, is to regulate the infants painfully urgent arousal through the
good-enough meeting o f needs and through mentalization of emotional states (p. 45). These
patterns o f relating form a template for the interactions between lovers in adult sexual life.
When all goes well, the infant grows into an adult who can enter into an attuned and playful
sexual dialogue with a partner, enjoying the cycles o f desire, anticipation, recognition, and
satisfaction (p. 44). However, if early containment was inadequate, the adult may be unable to
rise to the demands o f the sexual (p. 42). States o f desiring and being desired are felt to be too
much to bear, threatening to flood self and/or other with shame, hatred, or terror (p. 48). Stein
(2008) refers to this type o f too-muchness - the type that inhibits, rather than excites sexual
desire - as bad excess (p. 68).
Benjamin and Atlas (2015) suggest that when intersubjective containment fails in this
way, the infant may turn to auto-eroticism, translating fears o f impingement or abandonment into
physiological arousal that can be managed at the level o f the body (p. 46). What Benjamin and
Atlas (2015) describe certainly seems to capture Robins and M argots histories of using their
bodies to regulate anxiety. For example, when little Margot wakes up from her nightmares o f
being abandoned by her mother, she discovers that ramping up the intensity with fantasies o f
torture can provide relief. Fantasy comes to stand in for the outside other who is unavailable to
provide regulation, and excitement and anxiety become indistinguishable (p. 45). Margot
continues in this vein through her adolescent disordered eating, in which she produces intense
bodily states o f starvation and exhaustion that regulate her anxieties. Robin, too, turns to cutting
her own body in adolescence, converting an unresolvable intersubjective problem between her
father and herself into an internal, embodied problem over which she can have control.

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I believe that the physically painful aspects of BDSM may at times serve a similar
anxiety-regulating function for all three o f my participants. Scarlett, for example, describes pain
as a useful tool for interrupting her anxious scanning o f the environment and drawing her
attention inward. She distinguishes between types o f pain that are distracting - such as a single,
hard bite - and those that keep her erotically engaged by building gradually and alternating with
pleasurable sensations. She also describes the comforting embrace o f tight bondage, which seems
to wrap her up in a way that holds her body together while creating a boundary between inside
and outside. Relatedly, Margot describes finding great comfort in acupuncture - the mild pain of
the needles allows her to focus on the different parts o f the body, pulling them together into an
integrated whole. Robin comes to particularly love the process o f being tied up, feeling the
movement between being bound and free. This tension and release seems to create a somatic
rhythm, like the rocking o f an infant, that gives Robin an intensely relaxed feeling of turning to
goo.
These ways o f using the body to relieve anxiety are related to what Margot calls,
paradoxically, the excitement o f calming yourself down. All three women describe feeling
enlivened and strengthened by their ability to use BDSM to approach, tolerate, and survive
scenarios that would otherwise be overwhelmingly frightening. This aspect o f my participants
experience recalls a large body o f psychoanalytic literature on the use o f repetition in the service
o f mastery, starting with Freuds (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. A number o f writers
have examined consensual sadomasochism in particular as a way of creating self-directed,
controlled, and libidinized experiences o f suffering and humiliation (Khan 1971; Stoller 1991;
Stolorow 1975). When these elements are written into the script, they can be anticipated and
prepared for, which relieves some o f the anxiety that comes from not knowing when erotic
enjoyment might be interrupted by pain or danger (Stoller 1991, p. 18).

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The rhythm of breakdown and rebirth

Stein (2008) and Saketopoulou (2015) each suggest that the erotic pursuit of
dysregulation may offer opportunities for psychological growth. Drawing on Bersanis (1986)
idea o f masochism as an evolutionary adaptation, Stein (2008) describes how excess can [undo]
existing ego structures in anticipation o f more advanced, more integrated ones (p. 53). Indeed,
for all three women, the ability to endure the too muchness of their sadomasochistic
encounters is experienced as a triumph o f the emergent sexual self over the more cautious,
defended parts o f the personality. Saketopoulou (2015) develops this idea more fully by
describing how the temporary breakdown o f the ego during sadomasochistic sex can release
the enigmatic parental implants that formed the core of sexuality in infancy (p. 264). This does
not mean that participants literally recover infantile memories; instead, these early unconscious
communications, which were registered on the level of the body, become reconfigured on the
level of the body, thus allowing new life to be breathed into them (p. 265). Archaic experiences
can then become overlayed with new personal meanings, transforming what was once taken in
from the outside into a relationship to oneself (p. 265). In a related vein, Weille (2002)
describes sadomasochistic enactments as a way o f confronting toxic, dissociated, and split-off
content that sits poisonously, barely or primitively contained (p. 141). The highly dysregulating
experience o f making contact with these parts, she writes, is necessary in order to gradually
process and re-integrate them (p. 141).
To me, these authors writing on the generative potentials o f dysregulation recall Eigens
(2002) poignant writing on the lifelong rhythm of breakdown and rebirth. Through his readings
o f Winnicott and Bion, Eigen (2002) suggests that psychological growth necessarily involves

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moments o f moving toward madness and falling apart (p. 722). Eigen (2002) refers to
Winnicotts (1992) emphasis on the importance o f offering patients an opportunity to break
down in psychotherapy, or at least to dip into the psychotic pockets o f the personality - the
primitive terrors o f losing ones own psychic and bodily coherence (p. 726). Eigen (2002) goes
on to discuss a piece o f case material from Bion (1992), in which a psychotic patient describes
seeing his shirt soaking with blood at the moment when he begins to come alive to his own
affective experience (p. 733). Eigen (2002) suggests that development necessitates being
murdered into life and learning that we can survive this process (p. 734). From this perspective,
the pursuit o f dysregulation in BDSM sexualities can be understood in part as an attempt to be
present in the moment o f ones own undoing and to make a home in the place o f one own
madness (Eigen 2002, p. 728).
O f course, implicit in Winnicotts and Bions writing is the notion that breakdown
becomes developmentally useful when it takes place in the context o f a facilitating therapeutic
relationship. Eigen (2002) makes clear that what follows a period of shattering is an awakening
through love... a rebirth through a caring, merciful other (p. 732, my emphasis). Indeed, the
function o f intersubjectivity as a container for breakdown is implicit in every piece o f writing
cited in this chapter. Fonagy (2008) and Stein (2008), for example, each describe how, in the
height o f sexual excess, we rely on our partners excitement to regulate feelings of shame that
could otherwise inhibit our enjoyment. Benjamin and Atlas (2015) likewise suggest that full
erotic enjoyment depends on the ability to co-regulate states o f arousal within a dyad; it is only
when this process fails that sex needs to be used in the service o f self-regulation (a monadic
sexual economy) rather than driving us to make contact with another mind (Benjamin 1995, p.
150-152). In the following sections o f this discussion, I will examine how sadomasochistic
sexualities function for my participants at the level o f relationship. What does it mean for these

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women to enlist partners, as well as the broader BDSM community, to participate in and to
witness their cycles o f erotic regulation and dysregulation? How do their sexual experiences
function to establish, mediate, or break through boundaries between self and other?

Getting Me into You and You into Me

Benjamin (1995) writes that the psychological goal o f sex is to get me into you and you
into me (p. 153); beyond the physical entanglement of bodies, sex involves the interpenetration
o f two unconscious minds. However, it is not guaranteed that a person engaging in sex will be
able to register, tolerate, or enjoy this process. To do so depends on a series o f developmental
capacities: to feel that both the self and the other have their own real, independent existence; to
feel that there is a barrier between self and other that needs to be traversed; and to feel that this
boundary is, indeed, penetrable.
In his writings on early development, Winnicott (1971, 1992) explores the origins o f
these capacities, which he describes through his concepts o f object usage and transitional
experience. In Winnicotts (1971) view, one of the central tasks of early life is coming to
distinguish between the Me and the Not Me. At first, the infant exists in a state on non
differentiation, in which the environment is experienced as an extension of the self. Over time,
however, she becomes vaguely aware o f areas of experience that do not seem to be under her
subjective control. Her aggressive instincts towards motility - which at this point are not
intentionally destructive - drive her to push up against these areas, leading to the gradual
discovery o f the objective, external world (Winnicott 1971, p. 216). For the infant to negotiate
this precarious transition, she needs a caregiver who can allow herself to be created and
destroyed by the infant in fantasy, while also continuing to survive, thereby affirming her

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independent existence (Winnicott 1992, p. 88). The end-goal o f this process is not a clear and
permanent differentiation between the Me and the Not-Me; instead, it is the achievement o f a
transitional experience in which the object is experienced as halfway between subjective
fantasy and real, external other. Transitional experience allows for an integration between loving
drives, which are connected to states o f merger, and aggressive drives, which push towards
separation (Winnicott 1971, p. 215). In this transitional state, the infant can take in and make
creative use o f what the object has to offer according to its own properties, while also using the
object to hold and elaborate her projections (Winnicott 1971, p. 90).
In her pivotal work on the problem o f domination, Benjamin (1988) writes that
sadomasochistic relating results from a failure to develop these vital capacities. Reinterpreting
Winnicotts writing through an intersubjective lens, Benjamin (1988) views mutual recognition
as the developmental goal o f the infant-caregiver dyad: the child must be recognized by the
parent as the doer who does; the author o f [his] own acts, while simultaneously recognizing
her parent as a distinct center o f subjectivity (p. 21). In order achieve this state o f mutual
recognition, the parent must both show that he is affected by the childs aggressive attacks confirming the childs vitality - but also that he can survive - confirming his own vitality (p. 38).
In the third space that emerges between child and caregiver, independence and attunement
exist in dynamic tension. For Benjamin (1988), sadomasochism is a collapse of this tension. For
example, if the parent cannot tolerate the childs willfulness, he may become too permissive and
self-obliterate, leaving the child with a frightening feeling o f unlimited destructiveness and
aloneness in a world o f dead objects (p. 35). Alternately, the parent may respond to the childs
assertions by retaliating or by withdrawing affection. This parent communicates that the price of
freedom is aloneness; the child is forced to give up her agency in order to maintain contact with
the beloved other, who remains omnipotent in her mind (p. 36). In each scenario, parent and

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child are split into complementary roles: one member o f the dyad holds the assertion, aggression,
and power, while the other holds the need for connection and dependency.

Gender and sadomasochistic relating

Benjamin (1988) further expands her reinterpretation of Winnicotts work in order to

investigate the psychological roots of patriarchal domination. She suggests that our cultural
association o f masculinity with activity/sadism and femininity with passivity/masochism is
passed down from generation to generation through unconscious, gendered parenting
arrangements and styles. In our culture, mothers are usually the primary caregivers, representing
attachment, while fathers tend to be the exciting outside parent who represents the freedom to
come and go (p. 75). In order to achieve masculinity identity, then, boys must forcibly separate
from the mother, learning to deny his identification with and dependency on the beloved other.
This can promote a sadistic masculine attitude towards women, in which the repudiated
maternal body persists as the object to be done to and violated, to be separated from, to have
power over, to denigrate (p.77). For the girl, the process o f individuation may be inhibited by
her need to continue identifying with the mother: girls are more likely to fear separateness and
sustain the tie to the mother through compliance and self-denial (p. 79). The typicallygendered mother also tends towards self-abnegation and submission to men, offering no model
o f assertion for her daughter to identify with (p. 79). Likewise, when the girl turns towards her
father - the representative o f active desire - he is likely to reject her strivings for recognition,
treating her as merely sweet adorable thing, a nascent sex object (p. 109). Finding no mirror for
her subjectivity in either mother or father, this prototypical girl adopts a masochistic position,
hoping to gain a vicarious experience o f agency by winning the love of powerful others (p. 111).

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Benjamins (1988) work is highly ambitious in its attempt to link individual development
to broad systems o f power, and the model that she proposes is complex and compelling.
However, as with any general theory of development, it would risk a gross oversimplification to
apply this framework to an individual case. I do not believe that this theory accounts in any
holistic way for my participants ways o f being in relationship with their parents or with lovers in
adulthood. On the other hand, I do believe that each o f my participants struggles, in their own
particular ways, with the sorts o f relational dilemmas around dependency and assertion that
Benjamin (1988) captures in her writing; and often, these dilemmas become mixed up with the
gendered dynamics o f power, in both their intrapsychic lives and in their real attempts to find
intimate contact with men.
The dynamics o f gendered domination that Benjamin (1988) describes are most clearly
present in Robins narrative. Throughout her childhood, Robin observes a sadomasochistic
dynamic between her parents in which her father constantly criticizes and insults her mother,
who tends to passively accept this abuse while taking a caregiving role. Robin holds onto
memories o f brief moments in which her mother seems to come alive - stabbing a knife into the
kitchen counter or making plans to move out o f the house. However, her mother does not follow
through, demonstrating to Robin that the risks o f assertion are too great. Robin enters into a
parallel sadomasochistic dynamic with her father, trying desperately to please him, but finding
that she perpetually comes up short. Eventually, Robin seems to realize that the rules of this
game are rigged, and that her father will never bestow the recognition that she seeks. However,
in the wake o f her disillusionment, Robin is left feeling empty and numb; she is unsure o f what
to live for, if not for him. In her friendships and romances, Robin often seems to carefully
manage closeness, pulling away before things become too dangerous. I wonder, too, how

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Robins genderqueer identity might involve a need to put distance between herself and the
violent, gendered power dynamics that shaped her parents relationship.
Margot does not provide enough information to paint a picture of how dependence,
assertion, and gender roles were managed in her early family relationships. However, she does
make it clear that as a child she was profoundly anxious about speaking up to authority figures
and asking for the help that she needed. Quite early on, Margot seems to worry about being
overly dependent and vulnerable, and to link these traits to her female identity. For example,
male heroes star in the early fantasies that Margot uses to sooth herself: a woman, she says,
would not be strong enough to endure the torture she imagines. I believe that Margot
unconsciously links femininity with states o f weakness and wanting, awakened by her dreams of
being abandoned by her mother; identifying with masculinity gives her the strength needed to
tolerate separation. This pattern is repeated in M argots adolescent eating disorder. Her chubby
prepubescent body reflects her childhood habit o f taking comfort in food, which, I imagine, is
also linked to states o f shameful wanting in relation to her mother. At age 12, Margot begins to
starve away the signs o f weakness that her body carries over from childhood, while also
halting her puberty. Margots newly hard, masculinized body gives her a powerful feeling o f
omnipotent control. In her adult relationships, Margot finds acting like a girl - meaning
wanting more closeness and commitment from her male partners - terribly embarrassing. Feeling
strong and fearless means being without attachment, and having sex callously, like a man.
Scarlett describes her relationships with her parents, at least in adolescence, as marked by
both misrecognition and impingement. Often, her parents seemed to get her wrong,
misinterpreting her creative strivings and responding with anger and punishment. Although
gender is less clearly foregrounded in Scarletts narrative, she does note that her parents allowed
her twin brother considerably more leeway in his adolescent explorations. In her adult

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relationships, Scarlett asserts a strong need for mutuality: for her to feel comfortable, she and her
partner must be equal in their levels o f desire, dependence, vulnerability, and power. But this
mutuality can feel quite fragile and difficult to maintain. With friends and lovers, Scarlett often
finds herself falling into a familiar caregiving role, deprioritizing her own needs in order to meet
the needs o f the other. In her romantic relationships, she can become preoccupied with fears of
losing her partner, leading her to cling and demand constant contact. Sometimes, Scarlett tries to
manage these controlling impulses by holding back emotionally and not letting herself get too
attached.
To understand these womens struggles in finding intimacy with others, it is important to
understand that sadomasochistic splitting is not just an intrapsychic phenomenon derived from
early experience: it is also a part o f the cultural surround that frames all relationships between
men and women. Scarlett, Margot, and Robin each describe a range o f experiences in
relationships with men. In some, there is a sense of mutual respect, concern, and interest in one
anothers pleasure (though, I will note, they often describe these men as surprising deviations
from the norm). At the other end o f the spectrum are their encounters with men that leave them
feeling annihilated as subjects: come-ons from adult men when theyre 13 years old; lewd and
threatening phone calls in the middle o f the night; sex in which their bodies are used rather than
pleasured; sex that is done to them while they are unconscious; mornings-after where theyre
hurried away; relationships where their appearance and behavior is policed; encounters where
men keep asking even though they said no. In the wake o f these experiences, seeking recognition
from male partners is an upstream battle: opening themselves up to intimacy with a man means
making themselves vulnerable to further violations.

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Erotic sadomasochism and object usage

In what way do these womens struggles around dependency, autonomy, and

vulnerability enter into the sexual experience itself? (Benjamin 1988, 1995, Benjamin and Atlas
2015) suggests that the relational is continuous with the sexual; the anxieties that we experienced
in our interactions with early caregivers are confronted anew in sexual life. When arousal has not
been recognized and regulated, write Benjamin and Atlas (2015),

the other poses a threat with her own arousal. The experience can be that o f impingement,
engulfment, flooding, and invasion... the other cannot be relied upon to be attuned,
accommodating, reliably present in a way that manages excitement... This other cannot
therefore serve as a container for projections - as sexuality requires - but is rather, liable to
overpower the self (p. 43).

Benjamin (1988) describes sadomasochistic sexuality as an attempt to manage these anxieties

by splitting into controlled, predictable complementary roles. The sadistic partner denies his
dependence and derives enjoyment exclusively from the omnipotent exercise of control over the
other, who is treated as a dehumanized object. The masochist, for her part, denies her own
subjectivity, turns herself into an object for the others usage, and takes vicarious pleasure in the
sadists power (p. 56-60). While this arrangement may offer temporary reassurance to each
partner, it is also unsustainable as a mode o f engagement because neither partner can make real
use o f the other as a live object that recognizes and reflects ones own aliveness. The master,
writes Benjamin (1988), is actually alone, because the person he is with is no person at all. And
likewise, for her part, the slave fears that the master will abandon her to aloneness when he tires

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o f being with someone who is not a person (Benjamin 1988, p. 65). Inevitably, the
sadomasochistic relationship tends towards death, or, at any rate, toward deadness, numbness,
and the exhaustion o f sensation (p. 65).
In order to apply Benjamins (1988) theory to understanding my participants erotic lives,
I believe it is important to distinguish between sadomasochism as an unconscious relational
structure and sadomasochism as a self-consciously adopted erotic game - a distinction that
Benjamin (1988) often fails to make. In some moments, my participants do appear to enter,
unconsciously, into the modes o f masochistic relating that Benjamin describes, sacrificing their
independence in order to seek the approval o f an idealized male authority figure (e.g. Robin in
relation to Luke or Margot in relation to the teacher). However, I believe that this
sadomasochistic gridlock is a position these women move in to and out of, rather than a fixed
character structure. I also believe that their involvement in consensual submission and
masochism is not simply a repetition o f this dynamic; in fact, at times it may allow them to move
away from it. Through their performative, playful enactments o f these dynamics, these women
may begin to develop a symbolic relationship with their own sadomasochistic fantasies. These
fantasies can then be thought about, reconfigured, and playfully transformed.
Despite her view that sadomasochism is a sort of deadened relational gridlock,
Benjamin (1988) also highlights how sadomasochistic eroticism represents an attempt - albeit a
futile one - to repair the effects o f early relational failures (p. 68). In her view, the sadistic
partner may actually be attempting to overcome his loneliness, penetrating the other in order to
discover a real person there; the masochist, likewise, seeks be penetrated and discovered by an
other who is powerful enough to bestow this recognition (p. 56). Setting aside Benjamins
(1988) pessimism about the viability o f these attempts, I would like to examine in more detail

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how consensual sadomasochism might offer my participants an opportunity to work through

anxieties and inhibitions in order to make intimate contact.

Getting you into me

In partnered sexual experiences, we are inevitably confronted with the profound mystery
o f the others mind. Sex recapitulates our earliest experiences o f being flooded by the others
indecipherable messages, which are communicated through the shifting states o f the others body
as it acts upon and responds to our own (Saketopoulou 2015). In her reading o f The Story o f O,
Benjamin (1988) describes erotic domination as a defense against this kind o f spontaneous
unconscious communication: although the slave, O, must keep herself perpetually open and
receptive, she is also not allowed to take in anything about her masked torturers. The masters
actions are carefully controlled and distanced to prevent genuine contact from occurring, and
what the slave is filled with is not the real other, but a fantasy o f the master as an idealized figure
o f authority (p. 57-58).
While there are certainly moments in M argots, Scarletts, and Robins narratives in
which they seem to use their partners in this way - as fantasy figures o f perfect rationality and
control - 1 also see many moments in which they express a longing to know the real other. In
these moments, my participants are engaged in what Stein (2008) sees as one o f the goals o f
sexual life: to take in the excessive other in order to make sense o f his or her imposition and
thereby grow and integrate (p. 64). For me, this is exemplified in Scarlett and Margots pursuit
o f sub space. This term means different things to different people within the BDSM
community, but Scarlett and Margots descriptions o f it are quite similar. Each calls sub space an
altered state that is elusive to achieve but wonderful to experience when a partner can get them

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there. When Margot gets into a sub space, it feels like she is intoxicated: she feels close,
blissed out, warm and fuzzy, and less inhibited. Scarlett feels relaxed, floaty, in tune
with the situation and aware o f my body. Both women describe feeling profoundly trusting of
and receptive to their partners in this state. Margot feels completely devotional and will
eagerly agree to anything her partner suggests; Scarlett describes watching my partner and
trying to absorb them ... its so sexy and I want to take it all in.
I also see in Robin and Margot a process of trying to absorb the erotic fantasies o f their
partners in order to know their internal worlds. For Margot, Paulos fantasies are often initially
quite frightening; yet by working them over in her head, creatively elaborating them and
eroticizing them through masturbation, Margot infuses them with her own desire. Through this
concerted effort, Margot converts what was once disturbingly foreign into something digestible. I
am reminded also o f the night that Margot spends excitedly crafting an interview for Paulo,
planning out all o f the personal questions that shes been too shy to ask. Margot tells me about
Paulo, hes still really a mystery to me in certain ways. Someone who was just in this dom or
top role wouldnt be a m ystery.... Theyd be fulfilling this kink and thats all. The mystery of
Paulos internal world keeps M argots curiosity and desire alive. Still, Margot does often feel
that Paulos internal world is off-limits to her, and she ends up ripping up the interview in
embarrassment, thinking, why would anyone want to answer these questions? I see Margots
shameful longing to take in more about Paulo in her joke that Paulo might love in her the I want
to get you pregnant and abort your babies kind o f way. Margot longs to be filled up with Paulo,
to hold something o f him inside o f her; yet she imagines that he (or she, or both of them) will not
be able to tolerate this process and will have to abort it.
In Scarletts descriptions o f her kinky desires, I see her struggle to take in an other who
has become overwhelmingly threatening in the wake o f her sexual assault. Scarletts description

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o f her ideal top appears paradoxical. On the one hand, she longs for a top who is deliberate,
rational, and expert in both BDSM techniques and Scarletts particular preferences and
responses. This is the fantasy o f the idealized top that Benjamin (1988) describes: he has to
intuit his victims hidden desires, protect the illusion of oneness and mastery that stem from his
knowing what she wants (p. 64). But Scarlett also describes another version of her fantasy lover
- a man who deliberately ignores her desires, using her body for her own pleasure and forcing
her to shut up... and deal with it. She is thrilled by the idea that her partner could do anything
to [me]. To me, this second image suggests Scarletts desire to know the others desire in a
direct, unmediated form, even as she is terrified by the violence of male desire. This ambivalence
creates an ironic affective spiral: Scarletts fears about violation lead her to close up, which then
creates the wish to be violently cracked open so that she might let some otherness in.

Getting me into you

The complement to the erotic need to take in the excessive other is the need to deliver
ones own excesses into the desired object. Fonagy (2008) suggests that in sex we seek to
overcome the boundaries between self and other so that the most shameful, repudiated parts of
the self can be shared and redeemed by our partners excitement (p. 61). Again, Benjamin
(1988) suggests that sadomasochistic sexual relating forecloses this sort o f object usage. She
writes that the masochist avoids exposing anything real about herself especially her desire and
agency - because she fears that this will result in abandonment by the beloved object (Benjamin
1988, P. 79). The masochist may secretly wish that her master will someday discover and love
the true self, but this wish is buried beneath her constant efforts to erase herself.

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In order to critically evaluate Benjamins (1988) ideas about the nature o f masochism, I
want to look in detail at Margots complex metaphor o f herself as the hole. At its base, the hole
seems to represent the sort o f total self-obliteration that Benjamin (1988) describes. The hole is
associated with M argots sense o f internal emptiness - a vacuum at the center o f her being.
Margot sometimes feels that constantly taking in contents from the outside is the only way to
sustain her existence: Once I stop consuming things, I feel lost.... once you stop using the hole
it doesnt really exist. It was this whole fear of, when I m not being used anymore, what am I?
These fears are connected to Margots depression over failing as an artist. She depends on others
to feed her crazy experiences in the hopes o f turning these experiences into art; however, she
cannot find a way to hold onto and creatively elaborate them, leaving her with nothing to
show. The hole represents Margots hope that somehow, someday, she could take in something
from the other that would actually stick and sustain her. At the same time, it represents a bleak
resignation in the face o f these feelings o f abject emptiness: if she cant give anything to the
world, the least she can do is offer herself as a toy to be used and enjoyed by others.
This, however, is not the whole story o f the hole. Margot develops the idea of the hole in
her first BDSM relationship, and at first she loves the experience o f being constantly fed new,
painful experiences by this partner. But over time, she becomes deeply frustrated by her partners
inability to take in her experience: this person is not aware of...how much Im suffering
emotionally.... I do want to suffer is the problem!., [but] I cant be alone [with it]. Margots
wants to be the hole, but she also wants to be seen as a person with specific, knowable contents.
In her artwork and in her sadomasochistic performances - which are often used as
communications to her male lovers - we can see M argots profound desire for her suffering to be
seen and thought about, filled up with meaning rather than hollowed out into empty space.
Sometimes, this need takes on a violent urgency. Margot sometimes uses BDSM to try to shock

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and appall others; as she puts it, much o f what she does is designed to make someone else feel
more uncomfortable or more conflicted than I do. These moments capture the sadistic side o f
Margots masochism, in which she tries to forcibly deposit some o f her inner toxicity into the
other. Still, these gestures also express the hope that her partners, and the BDSM community as a
whole, will be a strong enough container to hold and de-toxify the poisonous parts o f herself.
In her present relationships, I also see Margot becoming aware of a more spontaneous,
creative part o f herself. Benjamin (1988) points out that in submission, even the fulfillment of
desire is made to appear as the expression o f the others will (p. 79). Margot, however, is
frustrated but also pleased that Paulo doesnt let her pretend everything they do together is his
idea - he makes her own her fantasies and desires and ask for what she wants. Margot feels
challenged by Paulo to be more than an unthinking thing - he wants me to be human. At the
end o f our last interview, Margot tells me that BDSM is a way of reaching a part of herself that
she wants to be seen. This part is not the strong, fearless false self, or the part that wants to shock
and disgust, or the part that feels weak and like a failure. Margot isnt sure she really knows
anything about it - at least not yet. I believe that Margot may use consensual sadomasochism to
safely deliver this nascent part o f herself to a home within the other, in the hopes that it might
someday find a home within herself (Fonagy 2008, p. 61).

Play and Rescripting

I have described how Benjamin (1988) views sadomasochistic relating as a result of the
failure to establish transitional space in the early infant-caregiver dyad. Interestingly, a number
o f writers have made use o f W innicotts theory in an opposite manner: to describe BDSM as a
type o f transitional experience (Bader 1993; Brothers 1997; Frydman & Kaufman 2013; Hart

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1998; Khan 1979; Stoller 1991; Weille 2002). Like the childhood experience o f play and adult
creative experiences like art and music, BDSM exists in a liminal space somewhere between
reality and fiction. Players adopt roles that are distinct from their real identities, yet meaningfully
related to their inner desires and fantasies. Winnicott (1971) writes that for the child, the
transitional object must be simultaneously real and not real: the parent must avoid asking the
child, did you conceive o f this or was it presented to you from without? (p. 17). BDSM
requires a similarly paradoxical dual consciousness, in which one is in and outside o f the
fantasy simultaneously. To maintain this paradox, the top must not ask the bottom, did you want
me to do this to you or am I doing it against your will?
A number o f writers have suggested that when BDSM experiences achieve this liminal or
transitional quality, they can serve creative psychological functions. Weille (2002) describes
BDSM as a playground in which bodily sensations and affects are used constructively towards
a reparative goal (p. 142). Bader (1993) agrees that consensual sadomasochistic enactments can
serve a liberating and affirmative function and that a temporary, playful split into
complementary roles can be healing for both partners (p. 280). Khan (1979) focuses on the
meaning-making functions o f perversion, writing that sadomasochistic enactments allow for
private symbolism and rituals to be tried out, learnt, and taught (p. 16) Each o f these writers
suggests that, paradoxically, the split into opposing roles in BDSM can actually move players
towards states o f integration between merger and differentiation, destruction and creation, and
love and hatred.
Several writers have suggested that because o f its transitional properties, BDSM may
allow participants to ritualistically stage and rescript painful past experiences (Stoller 1991;
Hart 1998; Brothers 1997). This idea has been elaborated by a number o f pro-S/M feminists and
queer theorists who draw on Foucaults (1997) notion that BDSM is a strategic game that

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transforms fixed power relations into mobile dynamics. In his observations o f gay leather
cultures, Foucault (1997) noted that many forms o f sadomasochistic play mimic the
institutionalized power relations, such as doctor/patient or police officer/criminal; yet in BDSM,
these roles are rendered fluid, temporary, and liable to reverse (p. 169). Pro-S/M feminist
theorists have similarly conceptualized womens participation in BDSM as a performative
resignification o f patriarchal power structures (Weiss 1998). BDSM can be thought o f as
denaturalizing the power structures that it imitates in much the same way as Butler (1990)
suggests that the performance o f drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure o f gender itself
(p. 187). Weiss (1998) argues that BDSM is an example of what Sherry Otner calls a serious
game: play, she writes, is a form of labor in which things that are deadly serious (social
inequalities, power differentials, structural forms o f suffering) are reworked in new ways (p.
288). Dimen (1993) concurs, writing that womens submission is not necessarily a reinscription
o f patriarchy or sexism ... insofar as they permit participants to (re)discover their own power,
these fantasies, scripts, and acts are (politically and personally) subversive (p. 304).
In the final section o f my discussion, I would like to consider how BDSM might offer my
participants a chance to rework experiences of invisibility, shame, disempowerment,
objectification, and violation that are related to being a woman or being perceived as a woman.
Margot, Scarlett, and Robin all identify as feminists and engage with questions surrounding
gender, power, and trauma in their activism and artwork. Each also raised questions during our
interviews about what it means to play in a way that eroticizes the domination o f women. I, too,
wonder what it means for these women to engage in their own auto-dehumanization (Frydman
in communication, 2015) - to self-consciously enact the cultural script o f female submission and
to transform it into an affirmation o f their own desire. Do their efforts at rewriting succeed in
making them feel freer, less shameful, and more assertive as sexual subjects? Or do they, as

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Linden (1982) suggests, use BDSM to practice dissociating from the trauma o f being female,
learning to numb themselves to violation? And on a practical level, does the BDSM community
offer these women an environment that supports their sexual self-determination?

Resscripting sexual development

Growing up female in contemporary America can be a psychological minefield. Despite

cultural shifts towards sexual liberalization and gender egalitarianism, womens development as
sexual subjects continues to be threatened on numerous fronts: by the ideological and political
control, objectification, and commodification o f womens bodies; by the ambient threat of sexual
violation; and by the recalcitrant pressures to be thin, pretty, meek, good, and sexually
receptive rather than assertive. I believe that for all three o f my participants, this cultural milieu
played a part in the formation o f their sexual identities during adolescence. Each described
experiences in which their developing sexuality was not received, nurtured, and protected by
parents or by early sex partners, leading to experiences of shame, anxiety, dissociation, and self
attack in relation to sex and the body.
Interestingly, Scarlett, Margot, and Robin each found the BDSM community at a similar
developmental moment in their lives, on their way out o f college and towards adult life. I believe
that part o f what appealed to these women about kink was the idea o f a community that could
hold their sexual selves as they made this transition. The BDSM community has its roots in
urban queer subcultures, and borrows from these cultures the language of alternative family.
Groups o f kinksters who play and socialize together sometimes refer to themselves as families
or clans, with mentors or experienced tops referred to as mothers/mommies or
fathers/daddies and new players affectionately dubbed scene babies. The community places

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a heavy emphasis on welcoming and educating new members, raising them up and walking them
through the steps o f becoming a self-actualized kinky person. I believe that for all three women,
these aspects o f the BDSM community offer a second chance at adolescence - this time within
the context o f a family that can recognize and nurture their emergent sexual selves.
Scarlett, for example, experienced great excitement around her early sexual feelings. She
loved feeling the powerful sensations her body could produce, giggling with her girlfriends over
sex advice columns in Cosmo, and imaging herself as a heroic warrior woman who rescued and
made love to handsome princes. Scarlett was perpetually let down, however, by her mothers
anxious, avoidant, and punitive attitude towards her nascent sexuality. A film o f shame accrued
over her early explorations. In college, Scarlett was liable to feel ashamed if she expressed too
much sexual curiosity or asserted her idiosyncratic desires with partners. The BDSM community
offered shy, socially-anxious Scarlett a venue in which to be the sexy, brave, and powerful
woman o f her early fantasies. She finds great pleasure in exhibiting this new self: in contrast to
her mothers turning away, all eyes are now on her. Says Scarlett, I didnt have a space to
express that for such a long time in my life.... I was so self-conscious. To be in a space where
I m choosing to be seen as sexual and choosing the way in which I m seen as sexual, and to
relish in that attention, I think for me is a very empowering thing. I believe that the public
nature o f this attention offers Scarlett a highly reparative, validating sense o f goodness that
sexual experiences with individual partners could not.
If failures o f recognition are one side o f what threatens girls early sexual development,
intrusions and impingements are the other. Robin, for example, describes receiving confusing,
inappropriate sexual attention from older men as she began to go through puberty. I believe that
Margot alludes to something similar when she describes her father teasing her for being

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chubby and telling her that she would have big boobs when she got older. When this fate
comes into sight for Margot after she gets her first period, she starts starving and exercising to
melt away her feminine curves. In my eyes, M argots identification with Saint Margaret is
related to her own refusal o f the womanhood. Both Saint Margaret and Margot take control in a
moment o f disempowerment by actively choosing to suffer; and by escaping their female bodies,
they escape the necessity o f taking up their pre-determined female role as a sexual object for
male enjoyment. Margot tells me that she is enraged by a later part o f Saint Margarets story in
which Saint Christopher restores the martyrs breasts: as much as she didnt consent to having
her breasts removed, she didnt consent to having them put back again - thats kind o f bullshit,
this male figure comes in and thinks hes saving her. Part o f M argots kink identity as a totally
fearless woman is refusing to ever be saved by a man. BDSM and sex work give Margot
control over her sexual image: she can experiment with being a sexual object for male
enjoyment while maintaining a professional or artistic distance, and she can use her body in
shocking or disgusting ways in order to re-assert her right to sexual self-determination.
For my participants, BDSM can also offer a venue to find and articulate desire where
before there was absence, shame, or confusion. While Scarlett, on the whole, seems able to
maintain contact with her sexual fantasies throughout adolescence, both Margot and Robin
describe a more desolate erotic landscape. Each can recall exciting fantasies from childhood, but
these seemed to go underground around puberty. In adolescence, Robin experimented sexually,
but tended to feel detached - she just did it because its what you do, or what her partners
wanted. Margot, on the other hand, starved away her sexual drive entirely until the end of high
school. In college, both seemed to pursue sex more for validation than for pleasure. When these
women found the BDSM community, they were immediately offered a smorgasbord of sexual

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activities, roles, and styles that they had never considered before. They also found a community
that places a heavy emphasis on individual desire, self-determination, and clear communication;
it is very common for players on Fetlife to write numerous public posts detailing their sexual
fantasies or naming bucket lists o f activities that theyd like to try in the next year. The BDSM
community gives all three women permission to try on a wide variety o f sexual activities and
to articulate clearly what they like and dislike.
Although these three women have gravitated mostly (though not entirely) towards
submissive, masochistic, or bottom roles, I do not see these roles as simple repetitions o f their
past experiences o f sexual passivity. While consensual submission appears to be about
complying with the wishes o f the top, this is in fact rarely the case: usually it is the fantasies,
desires, and limits o f the bottom that drive the scene. Scarlett describes her experiences of
bottoming in BDSM as a stark contrast to past sexual experiences: where she was used to being
in a service role to men, bottoming involves a man agreeing to act out her fantasies and
attending closely to her pleasure. In other instances, I believe that taking submissive roles may
help my participants to overcome feelings of guilt or shame that inhibit them. Bader (1992)
suggests that some women make use o f consensual masochism in order to overcome their own
guilt about being actively desiring; playing at passivity paradoxically allows them to experience
the lull extent o f their sexual voracity (p. 283). While Bader (1992) has in mind the womans
guilt in relation to oedipal competition with her mother, I believe that his idea can also apply to
womens culturally-induced shame about sexual assertiveness. Margot and Scarlett each describe
how maintaining the illusion that their partner is forcing them to do things allows them to
surrender deeply to the pleasures o f sex.

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Rescripting traumatic violation

To an outside observer, the most obvious aspect o f consensual sadomasochism is that it

places violence and domination at the center o f the sex. For some, this is a repellant and
frightening notion; but for the women in my study, I think that there is something refreshingly
honest about this arrangement. BDSM holds a mirror up to these womens internal states of
turmoil, in which longing is mixed up with fear and hatred; it also mirrors what they know all too
well about the real threat o f sexual violence between men and women. By centering their erotic
lives around consensual sadomasochism, I see my participants refusing to buy into the
heteronormative fantasy o f true love, which erases the real links between sex, gender, and
violence; instead, they confront these links head-on. In their sadomasochistic games, they recruit
male partners to manifest their deepest fears about being humiliated, ripped apart, and
annihilated by the other - fears that are derived, in large part, from experiences of traumatic
violation at the hands o f men. Importantly, for all three women the original trauma was marked
by dissociation: Scarlett and Margot were both black-out drunk when they were raped as young
adults, and Robin endured her fathers verbal abuse as a child for whom dissociation was one of
few available defenses. Re-staging these experiences with sober, conscious, relatively mature
minds may therefore allow them to re-integrate feelings o f betrayal, terror, and rage that could
not be experienced during the original trauma (Brothers 1997).
I also believe that BDSM offers my participants an alternative to the traditional frames
for sexual relating that have failed them. BDSM communities are unique in that they recognize
sex as an inherently risky affair, and therefore place explicit emphasis on assuring the physical
and emotional safety o f the players. Hart (1998) points out that what many practitioners find
most appealing about S/M is the boundaries it establishes, the rules it institutes, and the

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directness o f its negotiations (p. 80). BDSM communities also reject the automatic scripts o f
heterosexuality, forcing men and women to enter into self-conscious negotiations of power.
These negotiations cut through the anxiety-provoking ambiguities o f sexual relating; they also
create a clear delineation between the play domination o f the scene and the real respect and
equality between players when the scene has ended. Because o f these frameworks, playing with
domination and violence in the context o f BDSM may actually feel safer than having sex with
men in default world. As Scarlett puts it,

I think that [sex in the context o f the BDSM community] is safer in the ways that I need sex to
be safe. Its safer in the way that I know that... you care about me and you respect me and you
would never willingly harm me. That hasnt been true in so many vanilla interactions for me.
And Im willing to go so much farther, to push all these limits with people in ways that are sort
o f terrifying, just cause I believe that they are not jerk s... I dont really go out and have casual
sex very much, not because I dont enjoy it, but because I dont believe that most people I would
meet in a casual setting would treat me very well.

Several theorists who study BDSM communities have highlighted the high degree of
mutuality and collaboration between top and bottom. Khan (1979), for example, points out that
sadist and masochist in a consensual encounter enter into a co-created fantasy of domination,
while agreeing that true hostility and sadistic exploitation will be kept to a minimum; they agree
that each will grow larger and more whole as a person from the venture and that each will feel
gratitude for having shared a previously mute and unshareable experience (p. 14-15). Stoller
(1991) similarly expresses admiration for the trust and open-hearted communication
established between partners in a sadomasochist scene. He writes:

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When the actors know the rules and can trust their partners, there is less damage done than
in mans ordinary human relations, erotic or otherwise. The imitation o f humiliation is
carefully constructed to never produce true humiliation. The imitation o f traum a... is not
traumatic. Constant, high attention to ones partners experience is more caring and safer
than the blundering, ignorant, noncommunicating obtuseness that governs so many
normal peoples erotic motions (p. 21).

While the women in this study subject themselves to moments of intense violence at the hands o f
men, their scenes also include elements that were too often missing in the past: for example, the
experience o f a man asking them exactly what they want, respecting their limits, paying close
attention to their verbal and nonverbal signals, and offering to hold and care for them after the
scene has ended.
Bader (1993) writes that ruthlessness, or the capacity to collide erotically with the
object without self-consciousness... [is as important] as the capacity to empathize with the
sexual needs and experience o f the other (p. 287). However, experiencing traumatic violation as Scarlett, Margot, and Robin each have - can make a person unable to tolerate their own or
their partners ruthlessness. For these women, I believe that the movement in BDSM between the
play violation and the real care and equality between the top and bottom can be highly
reassuring. The players leam that the other survives and remains intact, good, and trustworthy
after the scene has ended, thereby disconfirming their fears about the threat o f destructiveness
(Brothers 1997; Bader 1993; Benjamin 1988). Staging scenes of violation with a trusted partner
may also allow the bottom to make use o f the top as a witness for unrecognized suffering,

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learning that others can accompany her into these terrifying places where she finds her greatest
pleasures in the very heart o f her guilt, shame, and rage (Hart 1998, p. 21).
In Scarletts discussion o f the emotional aftermath o f being sexually assaulted, I hear
references to an object who has been defensively split. In the months following the assault,
Scarlett is disappointed by her boyfriends sexual disinterest, and ends up feeling like there are
two types o f men: the caring, respectful men who dont want to fuck her, and the bad, out-of
control men who have used her as a sexual object. What this description leaves out is that
Scarletts boyfriend began to avoid sex because the first time the two made love, Scarlett felt
violated and broke down into tears. Where Scarlett was once able to enjoy playing with erotic
aggression, this capacity has collapsed in the wake o f her assault; in the moments in which her
partner is pleasure-driven rather than tender, he becomes equated with her rapist. I believe that
BDSM offers Scarlett an opportunity to work towards re-integration by dramatizing the normal
erotic oscillations between ruthlessness and empathy, while framing them as a ritual or
performance that is set apart from reality. Through repeated movements between being tortured
and kissed, used and cared for, bound and freed, Scarlett teaches herself that two split off
fantasies - the idealized, attuned mother-figure and the sadistic, abusive man - are in fact two
faces o f the same object.
I also see in Margots play with Paulo an attempt to re-stage the experience of losing her
virginity by force during college. Sometimes, Margot asks Paulo to have sex with her while she
is drugged - imitating her experience of being blacked-out when she was raped. In another
scene, Paulo draws blood from Margots body that she uses to paint on white canvasses,
mimicking the blood that soaked the sheets when she woke up in her rapists bed. Margot also
tells me about Paulo buying her the morning-after pill, just as she had to do after her rape. In the
original trauma, each o f these elements were things that Margot experienced alone and without

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choice; with Paulo they are consented to, planned for, and endured with the company o f a lover
whose job it is to stay sober and intact enough to facilitate these experiences and protect her
safety. Margot finds ways to have Paulo with her as she unconsciously relives the rape, encoding
the presence o f a witness into a profoundly lonely, terrifying memory. She finds it particularly
moving that Paulo buys her the Plan B, knowing that it will wreck her hormones and that he will
have to care for her emotionally in the following days. Here Paulo becomes both the rapist and
the one who takes care o f her in the aftermath o f rape. Margot tell me this is both fucked up
and sweet; the hurt and the care go together? I ask, and she repeats, yes, the hurt and the
care go together. For Margot, I believe that this experience might help her symbolize a painful
reality - that loving and being hurt have always gone together in her life - while also building
her faith that those who hurt her could be there afterwards to repair the damage.
Robin believes that BDSM has therapeutic value in her life, as a way o f working
through traumatic experiences in a form where I have more pow er... [to cope with] all the shitty
stuff that I didnt get to consent to. In Robins sadomasochistic relationship with Luke, I see an
attempt at integration that is parallel, in many ways, to Margots and Scarletts. Robin attempts
to stage scenes that imitate elements o f her fathers abuse - such as being scrutinized, controlled,
and subjected to an unstoppable onslaught of criticism and aggression - while introducing
elements o f control, safety, and interpersonal trust. Robin is originally seduced by Lukes
impressive intellect and non-threatening gentleness, and, as things go downhill between them,
she is pulled back in by moments when he seems to be caring and concerned. However, for
Robin, these attempts at repair ultimately fail; neither she nor Luke survives and remains good,
trustworthy, and human, and so the play collapses into traumatic repetition. Ghent (1991)
suggests that this sort o f collapse is an inevitability in sadomasochistic relating: although
masochism expresses the wish for surrender, it cannot succeed because it involves offering

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oneself up as a captive puppet to the will of an unreliable partner (p. 122). Even theorists who
point to the constructive aspects of BDSM highlight this risk o f betrayal by ill-selected partners
(Brothers 1997, Hart 1998, Stoller 1991). As Hart (1998) writes, there is nothing more painful
than to have ones testimony go unheard, to lose contact with ones witness, to take a journey
into the deepest recesses o f ones memories and re-member them believe that one is
accompanied, and find oneself alone (p. 21).
In contrast, Frydman and Kaufman (2013) critique the assumption that the effectiveness
o f sadomasochism as a transitional experience necessarily depends on the trustworthiness o f
ones partner. They argue that whether or not her partner is loving, the female masochist actively
[subjects] herself to experience and thereby transforms an intrapsychic problem into an
interpersonal interaction that allows creative movement to occur (p. 4). From this point of
view, we might note that although Robin is betrayed by Luke, she is still able to use their
relationship to re-experience traumatic scenarios from her childhood with a more mature mind.
By enlisting Luke as a sadistic partner, Robin externalizes her own sadism, and by rallying
against him she eventually learns to reject the self-hating aspects o f herself (Frydman &
Kaufman, p. 9). Although Robin passively submits herself to Lukes scenes, over time she begins
to find them boring or repellant, and by discovering these points o f consonance, she gives shape
to her own desire (Frydman & Kaufman p. 7). Coming to these realizations is a long and painful
process for Robin; however, this process is aided by her involvement in the BDSM community,
where she is able to find witnesses for her present trauma, and, symbolically, for her fathers
abuse (Hart 1998). The clear ethical standards o f the BDSM community introduce a sort of
sanity that was absent in Robins childhood, as the players with whom she speaks affirm her
right to be angry and her right to be protected.

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The limits of rescripting

Although the BDSM subculture has its own set o f ethical values, it is not, in fact, separate
from the ideologies and power structures o f the larger culture in which it is embedded. The real,
pre-existing power dynamics that exist between players will always frame and partially
determine the meaning o f what happens in a scene. For example, Robin points out that while
Luke adopted a play dominant role in relation to Robin during their scenes, he was also in
reality a wealthy white man with a lot of social capital, and much older than I am. And all of
those things contributed to the feeling that, well, he must know best, and... my voice was lesser.
In the context o f these pre-existing power differentials, Robin believes that consent becomes a
complicated and muddy notion.
I would add to Robins concerns my own questions about how to understand consent
from a psychoanalytic perspective. As Saketopoulou (2011) writes, juridico-legal notions o f
consent do not allow for a subject who has an unconscious life, whose desires disperse in
multiple directions, and whose wishes and limits may be both conflicted and conflictually
communicated in ways that exceed her conscious awareness (p. 248). In the midst of their erotic
negotiations, these women make decisions under the pressure o f a host o f conflicting forces
conscious and unconscious, intrapsychic and relational - while shifting in and out of a wide
range o f psychic states, from clear-minded presence, to drug- or trauma-induced dissociation, to
the elated high o f sub space. Furthermore, the objective criteria of clear, affirmative verbal
consent does not seem to map perfectly onto the subjective experience o f safety vs. unsafety in
sexual experiences. All three women describe bottoming to scenes in which there was no prior
negotiation, yet in which they felt quite safe and cared for by their partners; conversely, each can
name instances o f feeling violated by a partner even though they gave prior consent for the
activity taking place. While obtaining consent may protect dominant partners from being socially

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stigmatized or legally prosecuted, it does not appear to be a sufficient condition for protecting the
emotional safety o f the bottom.
In the vulnerable state o f sexual excitement, feelings of pleasure and safety can quickly
give way to pain and terror. Robin acknowledges that sex is always dangerous: any [time]
youre opening yourself up to having a really intimate connection with someone is ... something
that invites the increased possibility o f being victimized in a really personal way. However,
playing on the edge o f trauma exaggerates these risks, even within a community that forefronts
safety and negotiation. In Robins view, all o f the same dangers that women face in their day-today lives - violence and degradation, humiliation, dehumanization - are not only present in the
world o f kink but amplified and normalized, which makes it hard to see the line between
whats consensual and whats just abuse. Margot likewise notes that emotional manipulation
is the insidious dark side o f BDSM, and that it is not uncommon in the scene for people to
use each other without empathy or concern. Robin feels that the BDSM community facilitates
exploitation in a number o f ways. For one, so many parties... make it so easy for people to be
assaulted, with policies like open invitations, inadequate monitoring, and being dismissive
towards those who complain o f consent violations. She also believes that the community shelters
abusers; as she learned from her experiences with Luke, some o f the most famous tops are
known to push or violate their subs limits, and yet no one is willing to say anything. She has
also observed a common phenomenon in which experienced male players using TNG groups and
munches to fish for younger, inexperienced female partners who do not yet know how to
negotiate and set limits. Given these problems, Robin feels conflicted about efforts within the
BDSM world to clean up the subcultures image, such as the National Coalition for Sexual
Freedoms BDSM is Not Abuse campaign. On the one hand, she agrees that it is problematic
to view kink as pathological; on the other hand, she worries that we spend so much time
focusing on how to portray kink as something that is not inherently abusive that we dismiss and
silence cases in which BDSM is abuse.

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Conclusion: Repetition or Repair?

I would like to conclude my discussion by returning to the question o f repetition vs.

repair, which has been central in both feminist and psychoanalytic discussions of
sadomasochistic sexual practices. Anti-S/M feminists and certain psychoanalytic writers share
the view that those who engage in sadomasochistic sexuality are unconsciously repeating past
experiences o f personal or cultural trauma. From this perspective, BDSM sexuality is harmful
because it perpetuates the linking o f pleasure with violence, preventing participants from gaining
insight and liberating themselves from oppressive relationships. In stark contrast, those writing
from within BDSM communities and in the genre o f queer theory often argue that what may
appear to be a repetition from the outside may actually be a way o f playing with power dynamics
that is personally and/or politically liberating. My participants, for their part, often seem caught
between these two opposing viewpoints. They acknowledge that their desires to submit to men
are shaped by growing up in a patriarchal culture and by their personal histories o f being in
relation to male authority and violence, and, given this, they wonder what it means to act on
these desires. By replicating these problematic dynamics in their erotic games, are they further
entrenching them in their own psyches, or are they somehow mastering and moving beyond
them?
I do not believe that there is a simple answer to this question. The data that I have
gathered in this study have solidified my belief that the question o f repetition vs. repair presents
a false dichotomy. In her own study of consensual sadomasochism, Weille (2002) proposes a
view o f repetition and repair as two poles o f an ongoing, dialectical interaction that is necessary
to psychological development (p. 142). I believe all repetitions - even those that may be highly
self-destructive - are partially life-oriented, in that they create opportunities to bring new life and

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new understanding to the pains and mysteries dealt to us by our pasts. Indeed, I do not believe
that there is such a thing as repetition without a difference: as we wash again and again over the
same psychic landscapes, in some imperceptibly small way, the terrain is always altered. And as
we know from our work in psychotherapy, psychological change usually occurs at an
excruciatingly slow pace and in a non-linear fashion, with moments of repair always alternating
with apparent regression. For my participants, engaging with BDSM always involves a dynamic
interplay between repetition and repair, with effects that may be variously harmful or growthful
from one moment to the next.
In this chapter, I have tried to illustrate how consensual sadomasochism may help my
participants to overcome barriers to sexual enjoyment, including shame, feelings o f invisibility
and powerlessness, and anxieties about being violated, flooded, abandoned, or obliterated. I have
discussed the paradox by which erotic experiences involving bondage, power exchange, roleplaying, and pain may function simultaneously to both regulate and dysregulate affect, enhancing
subjective experiences o f both safety and danger. The BDSM games that my participants
describe often involve certain embodied rhythms that are designed to soothe their anxiety, while
also employing intense stimulation in order to break through dissociation and to generate a sense
o f immediacy and aliveness. I have also noted how BDSM may provide a relatively safe
environment in which to come undone - approaching total breakdown o f the self - and to return
from this experience intact. By approaching the traumatic edge o f experience in their erotic lives,
my participants may release previously unsymbolized fragments o f unconscious experience
that are then available to become symbolized and integrated. Living through what is most feared
may also help these women to gain a sense o f mastery over previously intolerable experiences. In
my discussion o f the relational dynamics o f BDSM, I have suggested that a temporary split into
the complementary roles o f top and bottom, along with the pre-negotiated rules o f BDSM play,

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may offer reassurance when the ambiguities o f normative sexual relating are too much to bear.
Paradoxically, spontaneity, play, and genuine emotional contact may only be able to emerge with
these firm retaining walls in place. Finally, I have explored how BDSM may offer my
participants an opportunity to rescript painful scenarios from the past, transforming passive
suffering into an active engagement with their histories and introducing elements o f recognition
and witnessing that were previously absent.
While I have described a variety o f ways that BDSM may offer my participants solutions
to certain dilemmas in their erotic lives, I do not believe that these solutions always succeed. On
the whole, I view my participants sexualities as adaptive: as their best attempts to find pleasure
and intimacy - or at the very least, psychic survival - given the psychological, relational, and
cultural hands they have been dealt. I believe that in some moments, all three are able to use
BDSM to move forward, towards a less anxious and more vital engagement with their erotic
lives. For each, experimenting with BDSM has led to a broader sexual repertoire, greater
knowledge about their sexualities and psychologies, and an increased ability to communicate
about their desires with partners; and when their erotic games go well, they can generate a deep
sense o f surrender, presence, connection, and pleasure. I believe that each participant has also
been able to make use o f BDSM in order to meet some particular developmental needs. Scarlett,
for example, began to engage with BDSM slowly and cautiously, in the wake o f her assault and
subsequent avoidance o f sexuality. For Scarlett, I believe that BDSM served as a transitional
experience in which she was able to symbolically work on her conflicts and fears around power
and violation, and that this work contributed to her eventual ability to re-engage in a sexual and
romantic relationship with a man. For Robin, the ethical standards o f the BDSM community
helped her to gradually realize and articulate the difference between sadomasochistic play and
real abuse. Psychologically, she became more able to think about her own masochism, and she

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has begun to put more distance between herself and her fathers sadistic voice in her head.
Margot, too, is sometimes able to use her BDSM experiences to develop the metaphor o f the
hole, a symbolic representation o f her powerful, lifelong feeling o f internal emptiness.
Ironically, by elaborating this metaphor, Margot actually fills herself up with meaning that can
be creatively re-configured and used to communicate with her partners.
However, like all creative efforts, the BDSM practitioners attempt to harness the
transformative magic o f erotic play can fail. In both conscious and unconscious ways, processes
o f growth can become stuck, and the experiences that we hope will change us can end up feeling
like frustrating repetitions. A major question for all three women is whether it is really possible
to keep their fantasies o f domination and submission contained within their play, or whether they
will bleed out into their interpersonal relationships. It can require a dizzying double
consciousness to move between the intense, visceral enjoyment o f submission in ones erotic life
and ones desires for equality and recognition once the scene has ended. The difference between
play and reality can easily collapse - particularly when cannot rely on ones partner to maintain it
- and the frightening experiences that were previously held in a transitional space can flood out
into the traumatic real. I also believe that what appears to be playful may sometimes actually
involve a sort o f manic denial. Sometimes, my participants engagement in BDSM takes on
driven quality that appears designed to ward off imminent psychic collapse, rather than moving
them towards pleasure. Margot, for example, worries that BDSM has become a form o f
escapism for her rather than a way of fueling her creativity. In M argots weekends spent
speeding from one party, one drug, one intensely transgressive scene to the next, I see a familiar
pattern o f frantic consumption without psychic digestion or equilibrium. I believe that both
Margot and Robin can use BDSM to practice, rather than overcome dissociation, forcing
themselves to overcome their reluctance to engage in highly violating or humiliating scenes and

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then getting through them by going numb. For both women there can be an intense need to prove
ones own invulnerability, which covers over a profound terror of helplessness. These
dissociative and omnipotent defenses are fragile and cannot hold for long: both Robin and
Margot eventually reach a point o f collapse, where hyper-stimulation gives way to underlying
feelings o f emptiness, depression, or persecutory anxiety.
As psychotherapists, we are most likely to meet BDSM practitioners in moments when
consensual sadomasochism is failing them and the lines between play and fantasy are collapsing.
Perhaps a once-trusted lover has begun to feel like a cruel abuser; or perhaps erotic experiences
that once felt enlivening and pleasure-filled have come to feel deadening and hollow. When
sadomasochistic sexual enactments mobilize highly traumatized parts o f the self, BDSM may not
offer sufficient containment to do good psychic work and to prevent further damage. In these
cases, psychotherapy can offer the safety and careful attention necessary to re-experience splitoff terrors and to facilitate memory and mourning. In order to do so, however, we as
psychotherapists must avoid condemning our patients most potent sources o f pleasure. We must
carefully track our own anxious reactions to perverse material, and we must refrain from
assuming that successful analysis will necessarily lead our patients to become more normative in
their sexual interests. I f we can keep our minds open to material that may be initially shocking,
BDSM practitioners may have something to teach us about the value o f welcoming breakdown,
madness, and enigma without rushing to contain or explain.

Research Limitations and Future Directions

I am pleased to say that doing this research has raised more questions for me than it has
answered. Any research project involves a compromise between breadth and depth, and in this

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project I made a series o f decisions that narrowed the scope of inquiry. In this section I would
like to note some o f the limitations of this study and suggest just a few of many potential areas
for further research.
To begin with, as a qualitative study with a very small sample size, this work should not
be used to make any generalizations about the psychological meanings of BDSM sexualities. By
examining several case studies in depth, I hope that my work can complement that of other
researchers who have performed large-scale statistical studies of mental health among BDSM
practitioners (see Wismeijer & van Assen 2013) and mid-sized analyses o f common
psychological themes in BDSM play (see Moser and Kleinplatz 2007; Newmahr 2011; Stoller
1991). There is certainly more room for research in these areas, particularly among
psychodynamically-oriented researchers. In the opposite direction, this study is limited by the
relative brevity and non-therapeutic nature of my relationships with the participants. As
contemporary psychoanalytic theorists develop new frameworks for understanding nonnormative sexualities, it will be very important to ground these ideas in clinical material. I
believe that providing examples of how BDSM practitioners develop over time in psychotherapy
would clarify the growth-oriented vs. self-destructive elements o f BDSM play and would help to
disentangle sexual preference from pathology. I would also hope that future clinicians writing in
this area would make use o f clinical examples not only to illustrate the nature of their patients
psycho-sexual worlds, but also to investigate their own reactions to perverse material and how
these reactions contribute to the transference-countertransference matrix.
Another limitation o f this study is the homogeneity of my participants: all were young,
educated, white women who were engaged with the New York City BDSM scene. This means
that the themes shared in common among my participants may have much to do with their shared
backgrounds. In the future, I hope that the framework o f analysis I have developed can be

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expanded and applied to BDSM participants of very different backgrounds. For example, it
would be fascinating to combine critical race theory with a psychoanalytic perspective in order to
understand the psychological meanings of playing with power for racial and ethnic minority
kinksters. I also choose to focus on young women at a particular developmental moment, when
their adult sexual identities are still being formed. It would be very interesting to apply a similar
lens to understanding the BDSM practices o f older women whose engagement in kink is an
enduring component o f their adult lives. The three participants who I decided to write about in
this study also shared traits in common that I was not entirely aware o f when I made this
decision. Looking back, I see that my decision was guided by my own interests in the
intersection o f gender, desire, and trauma. Margot, Scarlett, and Robin each have histories of
being abused or assaulted by men, and all are self-identified feminists who engage in artwork
and activism around issues o f womens sexual autonomy. I am very grateful to have been able to
make use o f their stories and their ideas to develop my own thinking about these issues. At the
same time, I worry that presenting these three cases, and not others, implicitly supports the
notion that kinky sexual interests are always a response to trauma. There is no empirical
evidence to support this idea, and my other two participants had no history of assault or abuse. I
hope that my study has offered some ideas about a wide range of reasons why BDSM might
appeal to women; further research could expand these ideas by studying women who have no
trauma history.
Within the three case studies that I choose to present, I also made decisions about which
areas o f their experience to focus on and interpret. Some very important areas were excluded.
For example, all three o f the women I interviewed identify as bisexual or pansexual and play
with both men and women, but I choose, in my study, to focus on the dynamics o f their
relationships with men. All three women also identify as switches, but in my study I focus more

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on their experiences o f bottoming or submitting. Finally, all three women have more complex
gender identities than simply female Robin identifies as genderqueer, Scarlett sometimes
goes to parties presenting as a boi and sometimes as the ultra-femme Scarlett, and Margot
sometimes takes a daddy role in her play. Again, my decisions to narrow my focus were
guided by my interest in feminist debates surrounding female masochism in relation to men. I am
glad to have put my energy into investigating these questions, but there is also much more to be
written about the variety o f gendered positions and power roles that these women take up in their
erotic lives. It would be fascinating, for example, to write about the psychological meanings of
switching and the relationship between the dominant self and the submissive self.
One concern that I am left with as I complete this study is to what degree my own pre
conceived notions about the meanings o f BDSM shaped how I framed the interviews and the
written cases. The interview structure that I presented to my participants has a strong
developmental bias, linking adult sexuality to early family relationships. My case studies,
thematic analyses, and discussion all present a basically teleological model, in which BDSM is
used to repeat or work through psychological puzzles from the past. I believe that there is plenty
o f real evidence from my participants lives to support this perspective, but I also believe it is not
the whole story. I am wary o f reducing the sexual to the psychological and thereby excluding the
enigmatic, excessive, existential, and ineffable aspects of sex - the ways that sex aspires towards
the unknown, rather than simply repeating the past (Stein 2008; Saketopoulou 2015; Atlas 2016).
I set out in this project to capture some of the sensory, nonverbal elements of sadomasochistic
sex, but I am not sure to what extent I succeeded. In part, this is simply a problem o f the
inadequacy o f language: I can only know about the parts of my participants experiences that
they can put into words. In the future, I would very much like to expand this work by observing
women as they actually engage in BDSM and then interviewing them immediately afterwards, in

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the hopes o f capturing more o f the spontaneously-emergent, experience-near, and embodied

aspects o f BDSM play.
Finally, for the sake o f brevity and focus I have only explored my participants
experiences through a few particular theoretical lenses, mostly based on a Winnicottian way of
thinking. This is but a small com er o f a vast, relevant psychoanalytic literature on perversion,
masochism, power, gender, and sexuality. Freud himself dedicated numerous essays over the
course o f his career to working and reworking the question of how people come to repeat and
enjoy suffering. There is endless potential to make creative use o f and to critically evaluate
existing theories by applying them to the case material that I have gathered.

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