January 19, 2004 Health

	photo essay
	Animal Attraction There's more than one way to make hay, as birds, bees and bonobos know
	graphic
	Where Our Sex Drive Comes From Mapping the origins of sex drive on the human body
	remedies
	Love Potions A guide to some of the medical treatments available for what ails our libidos
	self-test
	The Passionate Love Scale Determine just how you feel about that special (or ex-special) someone

A common misperception is that most DS relationships involve dominant women—dominatrices, in the parlance—ordering around submissive men. (As a result, some feminists have come to see BDSM lifestyles as not only transgressive but progressive.) And, indeed, among the many prostitutes who offer BDSM services, more are dominant than submissive, says Dr. Paul Federoff, a University of Ottawa psychiatrist who has studied sadomasochists. "You also might see a lot of dominant women at a BDSM nightclub," he says, but "although it's not the politically correct answer, more women in the scene are choosing the submissive role." In a study Federoff co-authored last year, he found that among 1,320 self-identified BDSM practitioners who anonymously completed a Web survey, 79% of women reported being "always or usually submissive"; only 35% of men did.

In one sense, then, "Doc" and "Surri" aren't so unusual. Married in July, they live in Clayton, N.C., in a just renovated home that—when I visited in November—had been overtaken by Christmas decorations. ("I'm a Christmas freak," says Surri.) She is Doc's wife, but she also thinks of herself as his "slave," and although she sometimes says the word just like that—using her fingers to create quotation marks in the air—their master/slave arrangement directs almost every aspect of their lives. Doc tells Surri what she can and can't wear every day, and when the three of us arrived at a steak house for dinner, Doc ordered: "She'll have a white Zinfandel and a glass of water." (Surri did choose the Robert Mondavi over the Sutter Home on her own.)

If Surri fails to accomplish something Doc asks—say, cleaning out the car or working in the garden—he might spank her or stand her in the corner as though she were a wayward child. When she succeeds, he might call her a "good girl" or give her a small gift. ("I filled out one of those online profiles that ask for your favorite quote, and mine was 'Good girl,'" says Surri. "Hearing [Doc] say that makes me happier than anything else in the world.") Surri, who turns 38 this month, particularly enjoys such "age play" when she's ill; at those times, Doc, 39, might bring her a Winnie-the-Pooh bear. In the bedroom, Surri likes Doc to flog her, but softly, in a light figure-eight pattern. She's not one of those slaves who enjoy the sting of a whip. Says Doc: "A lot of people in the life aren't into pain, despite everything you hear in the media."

Doc and Surri take BDSM much further than most practitioners, but they say they merely verbalize and theatricalize the unspoken power exchanges that exist in every relationship. "About 80% of how we live our lives is the way Mom and Dad did in the '50s," says Doc. "And the way most Baptists live their lives down here," says Surri, referring to the Southern Baptist Convention's resolution that wives should "submit" to their husbands.

But when does this theater go too far? Why would a grown woman let anyone tell her what to eat and wear? "Sometimes people do get lost in this behavior," says Coleman of the University of Minnesota. "It can become very, very powerfully erotic and mood altering." Because of this concern, "sexual sadism" and "sexual masochism" are listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the psychiatry compendium. The latter diagnosis, for instance, might apply to someone who starts out wanting a playful smack but ends up begging to be beaten bloody.

BDSM activists—yes, there are BDSM activists—counter that any sexual activity can become overpowering. And few sexologists would argue that whips and stilettos, in and of themselves, cause sexual compulsion. That's why some mental-health professionals contend that the American Psychiatric Association should remove sadism and masochism from the DSM. "There are no data to support their inclusion," says Charles Moser of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. "There is no study that shows that having BDSM interests causes distress or dysfunction."

In addition, the chains, the hot wax, the boot-licking humiliation—they're all secondary for most BDSM practitioners. "Pain is a means to an end, but not the goal itself," says Federoff of the University of Ottawa. "People into this scene, all of them, will tell you that they want anesthetic when they go to the dentist as well as you do. What's different is what they use pain for." BDSM-ers like to use athletic analogies: marathoners endure the agony of the last miles so they can savor the accomplishment of finishing. SM, they say, is no different.

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