BDSM in American Science Fiction and Fantasy

L. Call

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781349345250, 9780230348042
• eBook ISBN: 9781137283474
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

A history of the love affair between BDSM (Bondage/Discipline, Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism) and science fiction and fantasy. Lewis Call explores representations of BDSM in the 1940s Wonder Woman comics, the pioneering prose of Samuel Delany and James Tiptree, and the television shows Battlestar Galactica, Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse.

1

Introduction: BDSM + SF&F = Love

This book is about an alternative sexuality known as BDSM and an alternative narrative genre called science fiction and fantasy (SF&F). It is also about the decades-long love affair between that sexuality and that genre. This love affair had certainly begun by the 1940s; William Moulton Marston’s “Golden Age” Wonder Woman comics prove that much. However, this love remained largely secret and closeted during the culturally conservative 1940s and 1950s. The love between BDSM and SF&F began to blossom in the 1960s and 1970s, initially in the work of brave pioneers such as Samuel R. Delany and James Tiptree, Jr. By the mid-1980s, the broader American culture was beginning to embrace (or at least tolerate) BDSM, which meant that SF&F could celebrate its love for BDSM more openly. It has done so ever since. For the past 70 years, BDSM and SF&F have been expressing their love for one another. Since they “came out” in the mid-1980s, they have been doing so more openly and directly. By now, their love is mature and secure, as are the expressions of that love.

A brief history of modern American BDSM

Terms

BDSM is a compact acronym which points to three intimately related, yet quite distinct, practices. Each of these practices is designated by a pair of linked terms, and each pair of terms appears in the larger acronym: bondage and discipline (BD), dominance and submission (DS), sadism and masochism (SM). Each of these practices is unique. They are not interchangeable. Yet many people pursue these practices in various combinations. Indeed, these three practices are so frequently, intimately and creatively combined that they may stand together as a coherent sexuality. Of course, the complex relationships between BD, DS and SM can lead to confusion regarding the proper vocabulary for speaking about such practices. As effective history requires specific terminology, I have tried to be as precise as possible. Since effective criticism requires creativity, I have also tried to temper that precision with flexibility. Throughout this book, I use bondage and discipline (BD) to refer to an erotic interest in physical restraint and/or the psychological effects of discipline. I understand dominance as the erotic desire to take power from, or have power over, another. Submission is the complementary desire: to give one’s power away, to be powerless. Together these two desires, along with the practices which fulfill them, make DS. Finally, I understand sadism as an erotic desire to cause pain and/or psychological distress (e.g. fear, humiliation). Masochism is the complementary desire: to receive pain, to be hurt, to be placed in distress. Together these two desires, plus the practices they inspire, comprise SM.

As Margot Weiss has pointed out, BDSM is a “coalitional” acronym (2006b: 231). It was designed to be as inclusive as possible. Indeed, the recent move from the language of DS or SM to that of BDSM reflects a desire to embrace the greatest possible “plurality of practices” (Langdridge and Butt 2005: 69). Yet BDSM also retains its coherence as an analytic term. Weiss has rightly argued that those who practice BDSM share “a collective sense of belonging to a ‘kinky’ community of practitioners” (2006b: 232). While earlier generations spoke only of DS or SM, BDSM is clearly the right general term to use when speaking about these practices today. BDSM reflects the values of most kinky communities and subcultures in the early twenty-first century: openness, tolerance, and above all, inclusivity. While BDSM has often been defined against a mainstream “vanilla” sexuality (itself quite ill defined, Weiss 2006b: 233), there has even been a recent move in some kinky communities to extend inclusiveness to vanilla. For many in the BDSM communities today, kink can be incorporated into vanilla, or viewed as an extension of vanilla, not a rejection of it (Langdridge and Butt 2004: 43).

Throughout this study, I will use the specific terms bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism to refer to the distinct desires and precise practices those words name. In exploring the dynamics of complementary desires, I will use the linked pairs of terms bondage and discipline (BD), dominance and submission (DS), sadism and masochism (SM). When speaking about all of these practices and desires collectively, I will use the term BDSM. While speaking of desires that fall outside the scope of BDSM I may use the term “vanilla,” but never in a derogatory or pejorative way. While I believe that BDSM is an ethical set of practices, I do not mean to reify it¹, nor is my purpose to condemn vanilla sexualities. As is common in BDSM communities, I sometimes use “kink” as an approximate synonym for BDSM. Kink has the added advantage of giving us an adjective to describe that which partakes of, or shows signs of, BDSM: “kinky.” It also gives us a term to designate BDSM practitioners: “kinksters.” Since “practitioners” makes them all sound like lawyers (when in fact only some are), I will use “kinksters.” I will also use “perverts,” a term the kinksters themselves have proudly reclaimed, transforming a word which once named them objects of scientific and medical study into “a positive and powerful signifier of consensual ‘SM’-identity” (Beckmann 2009: 85). When quoting, of course, I retain the language of my sources, which often reflects the cultural values that obtained when the sources were written. Many of my sources are scholarly and many of those are scientific. However, the scientific, medical and psychological communities have a longstanding tradition of pathologizing BDSM. Indeed they have not yet overcome this sad history, despite the emergence of a large and growing rebellion within their ranks, which insists that BDSM is a sexuality and not a sickness.² Recent studies (e.g. Taylor and Ussher 2001) have tried to address this bias by letting the perverts themselves speak, in their own words. In that spirit, I will also draw heavily upon the work of kink activists, advocates and educators, who speak from within the BDSM communities themselves.

Origins

In the United States, BDSM emerged as a coherent, organized sexuality in the early twentieth century. The heterosexual kink community seems to have formed first. Early American straight kink focused largely on bondage and discipline. By the 1930s, there was a network of kinksters around Charles Guyette, a New York City businessman who produced and sold bondage paraphernalia (Bienvenu 1998: 72). In 1946, John Coutts (a.k.a. “John Willie”) began publishing Bizarre, “the first explicitly kink and fetish oriented magazine in the United States” (Ibid.: 116). Coutts was soon followed by Irving Klaw, who became the most successful mid-twentieth century producer of BDSM erotica. This was largely due to his association with Betty Page, a fetish model who became one of America’s first mainstream kinky icons (Ibid.: 102). Klaw produced much of his BDSM erotica in extensive collaboration with members of his audience, who were themselves active kinksters (Ibid.: 106). By the middle of the twentieth century, extensive kinky social networks had formed around Klaw and others like him; as Bienvenu has rightly observed, these networks were “the direct antecedent of today’s organized heterosexual SM/fetish subcultures” (Ibid.: 120).

Guyette, Coutts and Klaw produced kinky erotica for a mainly straight, male audience: the models they bound were almost always women. Bizarre’s letter columns reveal, however, that female dominance was popular among readers, both men (Kroll 1995: Bizarre no. 3, p. 41) and women (Ibid.: Bizarre no. 4, p. 42–44). Early producers of kinky culture emphasized elaborate forms of restraint, along with related fetishes, such as corsets and extremely high heels. This was not just fashion. Early kinksters practiced “fetishistic tight-lacing, which sometimes overlaps with sadomasochism,” rather than “ordinary fashionable corsetry” (Steele 1996: 58). Similarly, extremely high heels that inhibit movement can reasonably be read as a form of erotic bondage (Ibid.: 98). The precise relationship between BDSM and fetishism is difficult to determine. Gebhard (1969) noted that BDSM often “incorporates fetishistic elements,” and many items of kinky paraphernalia can be seen as fetish objects (71). Yet there is also another type of fetishism unrelated to BDSM (Ibid.). Since this book is mainly concerned with the three practices designated by the BDSM acronym, I will examine only those fetishes which clearly relate to at least one of those practices. For example, I see the extreme heel and corseting fetishes of the early American kinksters as a form of bondage and discipline, possibly motivated by sadomasochistic desires. Foot fetishism tends to give women power over men (Steele 1996: 110), and so may represent a form of female dominant DS. Transvestism would be beyond the scope of this study—unless there were a deliberate element of humiliation, in which case the desires of sadism and masochism might be in play.

The gay “leather” culture was the next major BDSM subculture to emerge in the U.S. The leather culture began to develop in the late 1940s, in and around the gay motorcycle clubs that formed after the Second World War. The “Old Guard” of the post-war leather biker scene made major contributions to the culture and aesthetics of American kink. The Old Guard promoted the idea that BDSM was a “serious business”; Thom Magister says “what S/M men now call play we called work” (1991/2004: 98). These leathermen favored fixed roles in the structure of erotic power: top or bottom, Master or slave.³ The Old Guard gave American BDSM its now-iconic look, largely by embracing a fetishistic fascination for leather clothing and toys. Gay leather brought American BDSM its first public clubs, especially San Francisco’s Tool Box (1962– 1971) and (from 1966 on) the clubs that would make that city’s Folsom Street into the “Main Street” of American leather (Rubin 1998: 255–258). Gay leathermen also shared their practices with other groups, thus bringing kink to a wider audience. In the early 1970s, Cynthia Slater founded the Society of Janus, which quickly became (and remains) one of America’s largest, most active BDSM education organizations. Janus united gay, straight and bisexual kinksters (Rubin 1990: 31). Slater persuaded the management of the Catacombs, a gay men’s club, to open the club to other groups (Ibid.). As Gayle Rubin has observed, “in a very real sense, SM lesbians learned how to party from the Catacombs” (Ibid.: 32).

The lesbian BDSM culture was the last major kinky subculture to emerge in the U.S. Lesbian kink came out in 1979, when Pat Califia published “A Secret Side of Lesbian Sexuality” in The Advocate. Shortly thereafter, Califia and a number of her fellow kinksters founded Samois, a lesbian SM collective based in San Francisco. In 1981, Samois published a sophisticated, passionate defense of SM, Coming to Power. Samois presented kink as a feminist option. Coming to Power emphasized the egalitarian aspects of BDSM, pointing out that everyone who is playing in a kinky scene controls the scene (Samois 1981/1982: 62), and contrasting consensual kink with the non-consensual power relations which characterize patriarchal society (Ibid.: 181). Straight kink quickly took up these themes. Ehrenreich et al. (1986) noted that by offering control to both participants, SM provided a way to play with the power inherent in traditional heterosexual relations (125–126). But it was on the pages of Coming to Power that kink first began to take on a unique political identity of its own. Gayle Rubin emphasized the vulnerability of small, stigmatized “erotic communities” (e.g. lesbian perverts) (Samois 1981/1982: 194–195). Califia developed Rubin’s logic further, critiquing the fragmentation of the BDSM communities and calling for the creation of a “common identity as sadomasochists” (Ibid.: 271). Rubin and Califia provided their calls for unity just in time, for radical cultural feminists were quick to attack lesbian SM. The 1982 collection Against Sadomasochism challenged the “apparent consensuality” of SM (Linden et al. 1982: 7) and associated lesbian SM with “patriarchal sexual ideology” (Ibid.: 4). The “sex wars” were on: along with pornography, BDSM became the major issue that divided the feminist community throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s.⁴

Politics/positions

The “sex wars” were a kind of Stonewall for kinksters. They were a call to action, a demand for increased political consciousness. “It is time to recognize the political dimensions of erotic life,” declared radical libertarian feminist Gayle Rubin in her landmark essay “Thinking Sex” (1984: 310). Rubin proposed a highly inclusive “pluralistic sexual ethics” (Ibid.: 283). In her model, sex acts would be judged by “the presence or absence of coercion, and the quantity and quality of the pleasures they provide” (Ibid.). In short, Rubin proposed an ethical standard based upon the principles of consent and desire: precisely the principles that the American BDSM communities had been using successfully for years.

This was also the historic moment when the straight, gay and lesbian BDSM communities began to come together. The sex wars, together with the New Right’s general assault on alternative sexualities (Hart 1998: 38), inspired or even forced threatened erotic minorities to form alliances. The AIDS crisis also encouraged “leather solidarity and community” (Rubin 1997: 131). San Francisco’s “discrete leather populations” even maintained formal diplomatic relations during the late 1980s (Ibid.: 133). As the Old Guard leatherman Guy Baldwin observed, straight kinksters had discovered that they could learn a lot from their lesbian and gay counterparts, and these groups were “teaching each other in a number of cautiously experimental settings” (1991/2004: 178). By the end of the twentieth century, gays, lesbians, straights, bisexuals, queers and transgendered individuals were all practicing BDSM. Communities of perverts were forming around each of these orientations, and these communities were reaching out to one another. It had become clear that the dynamics of kink operate within all of these communities: none has privileged access to these dynamics, and none need be excluded. The twentieth century ended on a tolerant, inclusive, pluralist note. There is no single monolithic BDSM subculture; rather, there is a pluralistic unity of diverse kinky communities.

However, this unity cannot be based upon the traditional kind of identity politics which dominated gay and lesbian communities until about the mid-1980s. As Califia (2002) has recently pointed out, identity politics is “activism under the gun” (78). The call for the creation of a sadomasochistic identity had been a defensive response to attacks by radical feminists and the right wing. The question for Califia now is “whether the heir of identity politics can form a chain of alliances strong enough to withstand … selective and divisive hostility” (Ibid.). The answer seems to be yes.

The mid-1980s saw the dawn of the queer. In the late 1980s and 1990s, queer theory provided a sustained assault on heteronormativity, “heterosexual culture’s exclusive ability to interpret itself as society” (Warner 1993: xxi). The queer model rejects the notion of a natural, default heterosexuality. Instead, queer theory proposes that there is no normal sexuality. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1993) observed that “queer” can refer to any sexuality which can’t be made to signify monolithically (8). This implies that all alternative sexualities which challenge the idea of a single monolithic “normal” are potential allies. And this solves one of the major problems of identity politics: the assumption that political allies have to be people who share one’s identity (Califia 2002: 180). Rubin recognized as early as 1981 that “heterosexual S/M is not standard heterosexuality” (1981/1982: 219). These days, nonnormative straights, including straight kinksters, can lay claim to the queer (Thomas 2000). The politics of fixed erotic identities has given way to a flexible, postmodern queer politics. For example, Margot Weiss (2011) has documented the rise of a “new guard pansexual BDSM community” in the San Francisco Bay Area (35). Weiss finds this pansexual community to be mainly heterosexual and bisexual (Ibid.: 37), but I believe that this community, with its “practitioners of various genders and sexual orientations” (Ibid.: 5) and its flexible power relations, may reasonably be called queer.

Kinksters have developed an extensive vocabulary for speaking about the various positions within the structure of erotic power. A man who takes on a dominant role can be called a Dom; a dominant woman is often referred to as a Domme. A submissive of either gender can be designated a sub. The most dramatic form of the Dom(me)/sub dynamic is erotic play-slavery, a type of power exchange which mimics the form of chattel slavery, while providing radically different subjective meaning for the participants. The dominant partner in a play-slavery relationship is the Master (male) or Mistress (female); the submissive partner is called a slave. The terms “top” and “bottom” usually refer to the more physical kinds of play. A top is someone who gives physical sensation (e.g. pain); while a bottom receives such sensation. Someone who enjoys being a top may well be a sadist (though some subs enjoy topping as a form of service). Someone who enjoys being a bottom is probably a masochist, but is not necessarily submissive: thus we have the figure of the quasi-dominant “smart-assed masochist” (SAM), and the phenomenon of “topping from the bottom.”

Attitudes towards these positions changed dramatically over the course of the twentieth century. The Old Guard typically regarded roles as fixed: a person either “was” dominant or submissive, a top or a bottom. But Weinberg et al. (1984) found that most kinksters either had tried, or were interested in trying, both dominant and submissive roles (383). Similarly, Breslow et al. (1985) found that small majorities of both male and female kinksters “either habitually or occasionally switch[ed] roles” (313). Rubin (1981/1982) observed that kinksters switch “with different partners, at different times, or according to situation or whim” (222). The verb “switch” has become a noun which names those who frequently change roles: the switches. Moser and Levitt (1987/1995) found that switches were more than twice as common as strict dominants or submissives: kinksters clearly found the “polarities” less attractive than “variation between the two poles” (107). Yet even in the early 1990s, Pat Califia still found it necessary to call upon the BDSM community to acknowledge the switches, whom she saw as “some of the most interesting and challenging” members of that community (1991/2004: 231).

This “switch’s rights” movement has been largely successful. The Old Guard now recognizes the prevalence of switches, and for the most part accepts them. “Hardly anyone today thinks less of someone who switches roles,” wrote leatherman David Stein, in the same volume that included Califia’s pro-switch manifesto (1991/2004: 152). Longtime kink educators Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy have observed that switching became increasingly common near the end of the twentieth century, so that by the year 2001, “switching roles is considered quite normal and acceptable in many if not most circles” (2001: 7). This new millennium...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• 1. Introduction: BDSM + SF&F = Love
• 2. Submitting to a Loving Mistress: BDSM in William Moulton Marston’s Wonder Woman Comics
• 3. Structures of Desire: BDSM in the Science Fiction and Fantasy of Samuel R. Delany
• 4. “This Wondrous Death”: Power, Sex and Death in the Science Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr.
• 5. Death, Sex and the Cylon: Battlestar Galactica’s Existential Kink
• 6. “Sounds Like Kinky Business to Me”: BDSM on Buffy and Angel
• 7. “It’s About Trust”: Slavery and Ethics in the Dollhouse
• Notes
• References
• Index