Full Description
This volume examines crucial questions about human sexuality through the lens of BDSM: What is sexuality? What makes an experience sexual or not? What role do communities play in shaping sexual identities? How are BDSM communities similar to and different from other kinds of sexuality and identity-based communities?
This book presents a thoughtful study of BDSM experiences in diverse communities across geographic boundaries to examine crucial questions about human sexuality. Featuring cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research, methodologies, and theoretic approaches, the chapters also address questions of broader interest around how identities are created and regulated, the ethics of research on stigmatized populations, how popular culture representations shape lived experiences, and the complex relationships among structural and personal power. Throughout, the volume foregrounds questions of meaning, taking as an empirical question rather than an a priori assumption the range of meanings that BDSM experiences have for participants.
The Power of BDSM is an evidence-based, provocative inquiry into the ethics, culture, and intersectional identities that is revealed through the BDSM practices across geographic locations for academics, scholars, and students interested in sexualities, identities, communities, inequalities, and related topics.
Contents
Series Foreword
Phillip L. Hammack
Foreword
Charles Moser and Peggy J. Kleinplatz
Preface
Brandy L. Simula, Robin Bauer, and Liam Wignall
Part I Introducing BDSM
Introduction: Understanding BDSM
Brandy L. Simula
Chapter 1: Research in BDSM: 40 Years Along
Thomas S. Weinberg
Chapter 2: The Role of the Internet in Research on BDSM
Liam Wignall
Part II Play and Practices
Chapter 3: The World of Rope Bondage: Belonging, Resistance, and the "Infinite Possibilities" of Community
Zoey Jones
Chapter 4: Play, Performativity, and the Production of a Pup Identity in the United States
Robert M. Matchett and Dana Berkowitz
Chapter 5: Perverting Innocence in Age Play? Using Little Space to Explore Vulnerability, Innocence, and Discipline in Adultist Society
Robin Bauer
Part III Relationships and Communities
Chapter 6: Navigating Dissonant Desires: Kink (In)Compatibility in Romantic Relationships
Daniel Cardoso Patrícia M. Pascoal, and Rita Quaresma
Chapter 7: Dispelling the Negative Perception of the BDSM Community in Johannesburg, South Africa
Tracey L. McCormick
Chapter 8: Kinky, Swinky, and PolyKink: Reflections on BDSM Influences on Other Sexual Communities
Marla Renee Stewart
Part IV Representations and Personal Reflections
Chapter 9: Examining Representations of BDSM in Undergraduate Human Sexuality Textbooks: Academic and Community Perspectives
Benjamin C. Graham, Tsolak M. Kirakosyan, Jessica A. Fox, and Miles Ruvabalca
Chapter 10: A Record of Violence: The Continuing Criminalization of BDSM Activities
Theodore Bennett
Chapter 11: Dominance, Submission, and Intersectionality: The Liberatory Potential of Authority Exchange
Sinclair Sexsmith
Part V Ethics and Consent in the Scene and in BDSM Studies
Chapter 12: The Politics of BDSM Play: Racial Dynamics and Critical Consent
Amber R. Norman
Chapter 13: Survivors of Sexual Victimization and the Negotiation of BDSM Play
Karen Holt
Chapter 14: From Pain to Healing: Kink and Communication in Sexual Assault Recovery
Valerie Rubinsky, Angela Cooke-Jackson, and Alejandre Rodriguez
Chapter 15: Emotions, Power, and BDSM: The Stance of the Ethnographer
Charlotta Carlström
Afterword
Thomas S Weinberg
