BDSM [Edit]

BDSM, a term first recorded in a Usenet post from 1991, is a combination of the abbreviations B/D (Bondage and Discipline), D/s (Dominance and submission), and S/M (Sadism and Masochism, sometimes also abbreviated SM or called sadomasochism). To practice BDSM means to engage in consensual bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and/or masochism.

The leather culture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities that involve leather garments, such as leather jackets, vests, boots, chaps, harnesses, or other items; in recent decades the leather community has often been considered a subset of BDSM culture rather than a descendant of gay culture, but some do not associate their leather lifestyle with BDSM, and simply enjoy the sensory experience of leather.

Consent

The fundamental principles for the practice of BDSM require that it be performed with the informed consent of all parties. Common principles guiding BDSM relationships and activities are “safe, sane and consensual”, commonly abbreviated SSC, which means that BDSM activities should be safe (attempts should be made to identify and prevent risks to health), sane (activities should be undertaken in a sane and sensible frame of mind), and consensual (all activities should involve the full consent of all parties involved). Note, though, that legal consent may not create a defense to criminal liability for any injuries caused; furthermore, this is not necessarily limited to physical injury. Instead of “safe, sane and consensual”, some BDSM practitioners prefer “risk-aware consensual kink” (RACK). RACK is an acronym used by some of the BDSM community to describe a view that risky sexual behaviors should generally be allowed, as long as the participants are fully aware of the risks. The ideas of RACK are best described by explaining the acronym:

  • Risk-aware: Both or all partners are well-informed of the risks involved in the proposed activity.
  • Consensual: In light of those risks, both or all partners have, of sound mind, offered preliminary consent to engage in said activity.
  • Kink: Said activity can be classified as alternative sex.

While “safe, sane and consensual” (SSC) attempts to describe and differentiate BDSM from abuse in ways that are easy for the non-BDSM public to comprehend, RACK differs from it in that it acknowledges that nothing is ever 100% inherently safe.

During BDSM it is possible for the consenting partner to withdraw their consent at any point during the activity; for example, by using a safeword  – a word that when said by someone stops the BDSM activity – that was agreed on in advance. In that case use of the agreed safeword (or occasionally a “safe symbol” such as dropping a ball or ringing a bell, for example when speech is restricted or a person is mute) is seen as an explicit withdrawal of consent. Failure to honor such a safeword is considered serious misconduct and could even change the sexual consent situation into a crime, depending on the relevant law, since the person has explicitly revoked their consent to any actions that follow the use of the safeword. However, sometimes, particularly in established relationships, a safeword may be agreed to signify a warning (“this is getting too intense”) rather than explicit withdrawal of consent. When choosing a safeword, words such as nostop, and don’t are often inappropriate if the BDSM activity for which the safeword is to be used includes the illusion of non-consent. The most commonly used safewords are red and yellow, with red meaning that the action(s) must stop immediately, and yellow meaning that the activity needs to slow down. Green is sometimes used to indicate that the activity is desired and should continue. At most BDSM clubs and group-organized BDSM parties and events, people called dungeon monitors (DMs) provide an additional safety net for the people doing BDSM there, ensuring that house rules are followed and safewords respected.

Safety

BDSM participants are expected to understand practical safety aspects. For example, when using riding crops, whips, or floggers, the top‘s fine motor skills and anatomical knowledge can make the difference between a satisfying session for the bottom and a highly unpleasant experience that may even entail severe physical harm. Despite these risks, BDSM activities usually result in far less severe injuries than sports like boxing and football, and BDSM practitioners do not visit emergency rooms any more often than the general population.

It is also necessary to identify each person’s psychological “squicks” or triggers in advance to avoid them. Such losses of emotional balance due to sensory or emotional overload are a fairly commonly discussed issue. It is important to follow participants’ reactions and continue or stop accordingly. For some players, causing “freakouts” and/or deliberately involving triggers may be desired. Safewords as discussed above are one way for BDSM practices to protect all parties. However, partners should be aware of each other’s psychological states and behaviors to prevent instances where the “freakouts” prevent the use of safewords.

After any BDSM activities, it is important that the participants go through sexual aftercare, to process and calm down from the activity. After the sessions, participants can need aftercare because their bodies have experienced trauma and they need to mentally come out of the role play.

BDSM-Related Terminology

Common terms used in BDSM are bottomdominant, submissive, switch, and top, which you can see the definitions of by clicking on their links. Also note that in BDSM, a “scene” is the stage or setting where BDSM activity takes place, as well as the activity itself, and the physical place where a BDSM activity takes place is usually called a “dungeon”, though some prefer less dramatic terms, including “playspace” or “club”. At most BDSM clubs and group-organized BDSM parties and events, people called “dungeon monitors” (DMs) provide an additional safety net for the people doing BDSM there, ensuring that house rules are followed and safewords respected. Practicing BDSM is often known as “playing”.

BDSM Play Parties, Munches, and Fairs

BDSM play parties are events in which BDSM practitioners meet in order to communicate, share experiences and knowledge, and to practice BDSM (known as “playing”) in an erotic atmosphere. BDSM parties often have a more or less strictly enforced dress code involving clothing made of latex, leather or vinyl/PVC, or lycra. At these parties, BDSM can be publicly performed on a stage, or more privately in separate “dungeons”. One reason for the relatively fast spread of this kind of event is the opportunity to use a wide range of “playing equipment”, which in most apartments or houses is unavailable. Slings, St. Andrew’s crosses (or similar restraining constructs), spanking benches, and punishing supports or cages are often made available. The problem of noise disturbance is also lessened at these events, while in the home setting many BDSM activities can be limited by this factor. In addition, such parties offer both BDSM exhibitionists and voyeurs a forum to indulge their inclinations without social criticism. However, sexual intercourse is not permitted within most public BDSM play spaces and not often seen in others, because it is not the emphasis of this kind of play. Today BDSM play parties take place in most of the larger cities in the Western world.

BDSM play parties can be found by using FetLife, or attending fetish clubs.

Munches are casual social gatherings for people involved in or interested in BDSM, and can be found by using FetLife, or by asking local BDSM groups.

There are also BDSM-related fairs, such as the annual Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, which is the world’s largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture, and during which sadomasochistic activities are encouraged and performed in public.

Legal Status of BDSM

Austria

Consensual giving or receiving of pain is mainly legal in Austria. Section 90 of the criminal code declares bodily injury (§§ 83-84) or the endangerment of physical security (§ 89) to not be subject to penalty in cases in which the victim has consented and the injury or endangerment does not offend moral sensibilities. Case law from the Austrian Supreme Court has consistently shown that only serious bodily injury is offensive to moral sensibilities, thus it is only punishable when a “serious injury” (damage to health or an employment disability lasting more than 24 days) or the death of the “victim” results. A light injury is generally considered permissible when the “victim” has consented to it. In cases of threats to bodily well-being the standard depends on the probability that an injury will actually occur. If serious injury or even death would be a likely result of a threat being carried out, then even the threat itself is considered punishable.

Canada

The University of Waterloo in 1994 ceased carrying alt.sex-bondage, alt.sex.bestiality, alt.sex-stories, and alt.sex-stories.d upon the recommendation of its ethics committee, which had expressed concerns that the content of those newsgroups may have violated the Canadian Criminal Code.

In 2004, a judge in Canada ruled that videos seized by the police featuring BDSM activities were not obscene and did not constitute violence, but a “normal and acceptable” sexual activity between two consenting adults.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R. v. J.A. that a person must have an active mind during the specific sexual activity in order to legally consent. The Court ruled that it is a criminal offence to perform a sexual act on an unconscious person—whether or not that person consented in advance.

Germany

According to Section 194 of the German criminal code, the charge of insult (slander) can only be prosecuted if the defamed person chooses to press charges. False imprisonment can be charged if the victim—when applying an objective view—can be considered to be impaired in his or her rights of free movement. According to Section 228, a person inflicting a bodily injury on another person with that person’s permission violates the law only in cases where the act can be considered to have violated good morals in spite of permission having been given. On 26 May 2004 the Criminal Panel No. 2 of the Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court) ruled that sado-masochistically motivated physical injuries are not per se indecent and thus not inherently subject to Section 228.

Following cases in which sado-masochistic practices had been repeatedly used as pressure tactics against former partners in custody cases, the Appeals Court of Hamm ruled in February 2006 that sexual inclinations toward sado-masochism are no indication of a lack of capabilities for successful child-raising.

Italy

In Italian law, BDSM is right on the border between crime and legality, and everything lies in the interpretation of the legal code by the judge. This concept is that anyone willingly causing “injury” to another person is to be punished. In this context, though, “injury” is legally defined as “anything causing a condition of illness”, and “illness” is ill-defined itself in two different legal ways. The first is “any anatomical or functional alteration of the organism” (thus technically including little scratches and bruises too); the second is “a significant worsening of a previous condition relevant to organic and relational processes, requiring any kind of therapy”. This could make it somewhat risky to play with someone, as later the “victim” may call foul play citing even an insignificant mark as evidence against the partner. Also, any injury requiring over 20 days of medical care must be denounced by the professional medic who discovers it, leading to automatic indictment of the person who caused it.

Nordic countries

In September 2010, a Swedish court acquitted a 32-year-old man of assault for engaging in consensual BDSM play with a 16-year-old woman (the age of consent in Sweden is 15). Norway’s legal system has likewise taken a similar position, that safe and consensual BDSM play should not be subject to criminal prosecution. This parallels the stance of the mental health professions in the Nordic countries which have removed sadomasochism from their respective lists of psychiatric illnesses.

Switzerland

The age of consent in Switzerland is 16 years, which also applies to BDSM play. Minors (i.e., those under 16) are not subject to punishment for BDSM play as long as the age difference between them is less than three years. Certain practices, however, require granting consent for light injuries, with only those over 18 permitted to give consent. On 1 April 2002, Articles 135 and 197 of the Swiss Criminal Code were tightened to make ownership of “objects or demonstrations […] which depict sexual acts with violent content” a punishable offense. This law amounts to a general criminalization of sado-masochism since nearly every sado-masochist will have some kind of media that fulfills this criterion. Critics also object to the wording of the law which puts sado-masochists in the same category as pedophiles and pederasts.

United Kingdom

In British law, consent is an absolute defense to common assault, but not necessarily to actual bodily harm, where courts may decide that consent is not valid, as occurred in the British case of R v Brown (1994), related to Operation Spanner. Accordingly, consensual activities in the U.K. may constitute illegal “assault occasioning actual or grievous bodily harm” according to the law. The pro-BDSM group called the Spanner Trust states that this is defined as activities which have caused injury “of a lasting nature” but that only a slight duration or injury might still be considered “lasting” in law. However, the R v Brown decision contrasts with the later British case of R v Wilson (1996) in which conviction for non-sexual consensual branding within a marriage was overturned, the appeal court ruling that R v Brown was not an authority in all cases of consensual injury and criticizing the decision to prosecute. Another contrasting case in the United Kingdom was that of Stephen Lock in 2013, who was cleared of actual bodily harm on the grounds that the woman consented.

After Operation Spanner, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in January 1999 in Laskey, Jaggard and Brown v. United Kingdom that no violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights occurred in the Spanner case because the amount of physical or psychological harm that the law allows between any two people, even consenting adults, is to be determined by the jurisdiction the individuals live in, as it is the State’s responsibility to balance the concerns of public health and well-being with the amount of control a State should be allowed to exercise over its citizens. In the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007, the British Government cited the Spanner case as justification for criminalizing images of consensual acts, as part of its proposed criminalization of possession of “extreme pornography”, which criminalization eventually occurred in 2009. That 2009 law (as the Spanner Trust’s website notes), “makes it illegal to possess pornographic images which show an act which threatens a person’s life, an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals, an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive).” There was an unsuccessful prosecution in the United Kingdom in 2012 where it was argued by the prosecution that images of anal fisting constitute extreme pornography and thus are illegal to possess because the act is “likely to result in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals”. Specifically, in August 2012, Simon Walsh, a former aide to then London mayor Boris Johnson, was charged with possessing five images of “extreme pornography”, which were not found by police on his computers, but as email attachments on a Hotmail server account. He was found not guilty on all counts. Three images were of urethral sounding, and two of anal fisting. The images were all of consensual adult sexual activity. The Crown Prosecution Service maintained that the acts depicted were “extreme” even if the jury disagreed in this case.

United States

Sex, nudity, and acts of painful torture performed at public BDSM events, like the Folsom Street Fair in the United States, have been labeled as being against the law, even though the events are accepted by the local administration and police, and all acts are done with consent.

The United States federal law does not list a specific criminal determination for consensual BDSM acts. Many BDSM practitioners cite the legal decision of People v. Jovanovic, 95 N.Y.2d 846 (2000), which was the first U.S. appellate decision to hold (in effect) that one does not commit assault if the victim consents. However, many individual states do criminalize specific BDSM actions within their state borders. Some states specifically address the idea of consent to BDSM acts within their assault laws, such as the state of New Jersey, which defines “simple assault” to be “a disorderly persons offense unless committed in a fight or scuffle entered into by mutual consent, in which case it is a petty disorderly persons offense”.

Oregon Ballot Measure 9 was a ballot measure in the U.S. state of Oregon in 1992, concerning sadism, masochism, gay rights, pedophilia, and public education, that drew widespread national attention. It would have added the following text to the Oregon Constitution:

All governments in Oregon may not use their monies or properties to promote, encourage or facilitate homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism. All levels of government, including public education systems, must assist in setting a standard for Oregon’s youth which recognizes that these behaviors are abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse and they are to be discouraged and avoided.

It was defeated in the 3 November 1992 general election with 638,527 votes in favor, 828,290 votes against.

On April 8, 2008, Evil Angel pornography company and its owner John Stagliano were indicted on federal obscenity charges by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.; the scenes selected by the government to support the prosecution involved, among other things, bondage. On July 16, 2010, a federal trial began in Washington, D.C. with Stagliano as defendant and after three days all charges were dismissed. Judge Richard J. Leon stated, “I hope the government will learn a lesson from its experience,” and called the evidence linking Stagliano to the production and distribution of the DVD videos “woefully insufficient”. Although he dismissed the charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence, the judge cited the “difficult, challenging and novel questions” raised in the case against Stagliano, questions concerning extant federal obscenity-statutes, the internet, free speech, and the rights of criminal defendants. He stated that he hoped “[higher] courts and Congress will give greater guidance to judges in whose courtrooms these cases will be tried.”

The (American) National Coalition for Sexual Freedom collects reports about punishment for sexual activities engaged in by consenting adults, including BDSM, and about times where the fact that someone practices BDSM is used against them in child custody cases.

Major BDSM-Related Organizations

The Eulenspiegel Society (later also known as The TES Association) is the first BDSM organization founded in the United States. It was founded in 1971 by Fran Nowve, also known as Terry Kolb, and by Pat Bond, born Walter Allen Campbell. The Society of Janus is the second BDSM organization founded in the United States (after The Eulenspiegel Society), and was founded in 1974 by Cynthia Slater and Larry Olsen. The National Leather Association – International (NLA-I), formerly called the National Leather Association (NLA), is a BDSM/leather-rights organization that was founded in 1986 by Steve MaidhofJan Lyon, Vik Stump, Billy Jefferson, Cookie Andrews-Hunt, Doug Connell, George Nelson and Wayne Gloege. It is based in America but has members not living in America.

The Federal Association for Sadomasochism (German: Bundesvereinigung Sadomasochismus, BVSM), founded in 2003, is an association of various groups and persons of the German BDSM subculture. In the long term, it believes that similarly emancipated living conditions should be created for BDSMers in Germany and in the entire Central European area, as they already exist in part for gay people today.

SM Gays is a British group formed in London in July of 1981 to encourage gay men who practice SM to do so safely. The Spanner Trust is a United Kingdom organization set up in 1995 to provide assistance to the Operation Spanner defendants, lobby for a change in British law to legalize sadomasochism, and provide assistance to any person subjected to discrimination because of their consensual sexual behavior.

BDSM University Clubs

Increasingly, American universities are encouraging BDSM education by providing related student clubs, such as Columbia University’s Conversio Virium and Iowa State University’s Cuffs. Outside the United States, at least one university BDSM club is in these countries: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

Handkerchief Code

A table in Larry Townsend’The Leatherman’s Handbook II (the 1983 second edition; the 1972 first edition did not include this list) which is generally considered authoritative states that a grey handkerchief is a symbol for bondage in the handkerchief code, and that a black handkerchief is a symbol for S&M (meaning sadism and masochism) in that same code. As well, placing a hanky in the left pocket indicates the wearer’s alignment with a top/dominant role, while a hanky in the right pocket indicates the wearer’s alignment with a bottom/submissive role. Townsend noted that discussion with a prospective partner is still important because people may wear a given color “only because the idea of the hankie turns them on” or “may not even know what it means”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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