There were many things I thought I’d learn when I spent a year as a journalism scholar at San Francsico university UC Berkeley. One of these was not BDSM.
But, when I trailed a local sexologist as part of a course assignment, I ended up following her into the city’s dungeons; there, each week she and a range of other experts held talks designed to hone and augment a variety of erotic skills. Afterwards, there might well be some demonstration.
Prior to this experience, I hardly knew what BDSM meant: the term vaguely conjured sleazy Torpy MPs, Pulp Fiction style gimp masks, and an armoury of ways to inflict pain. Certainly, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d find myself at the whim of a six foot woman in pony skin Manolos who was showing me how it felt to be tied in Shabari rope bondage.
But, what I discovered in the dungeons drew me with irresistIble charge. Here was a universe of skilled sexual experimentation. A place bound by the watchwords ‘consensual, sane and safe’. Where people met to finesse a range of erotic techniques with which to lift their partner, body and mind, to dazzling new levels of climax; where strong physical stimulation might be used. But only if you ask for it.
Despite, or even because of the success of kinkbuster Fifty Shades of Grey, it’s easy for many of us to discard outright the thought of BDSM. Literally Bondage, Dominance / Submission, Sadism & Masochism, to the uninitiated BDSM is often synonymous with ball gags or barely disguised assault.
In fact the term encompasses a huge spectrum of activity; at one end, dungeons; at the other the gentlest play: maybe you running your nails across the soft of his belly, letting your hair just graze his torso, holding your lips behind his ears so he can just feel the warm breath - but refusing to touch him more strongly until he properly begs.. Because the essence of BDSM is not pain. It is power.
To read the rest of this article click on MarieClarie_BDSM.pdf
Original article published in Marie Claire, in April, 2014
