January 19, 2004 Health

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But that doesn't explain why people do it—a question that sexologists can't yet answer. "Tell me the etiology of heterosexuality or homosexuality," says Moser, "and I will tell you the etiology of SM." Federoff has compiled new online surveys from 2,000 women and 2,000 men who identified themselves as part of the BDSM scene. "We have only started to analyze the data," he says, "but the first impression is that the people we have looked at tend to look very much like regular people from all walks of life—that is, they tend to look like people who might fill out Web questionnaires on any topic. Second, by the measures of psychological health we were able to get, they tend not to look particularly psychologically impaired"—at least no more so than the general population.

At this point, we should make clear that the BDSM these researchers study is consensual. No one in the fledgling BDSM movement argues in favor of actual slavery or rape (though eroticized simulations of such crimes are common). Among the BDSM clubs and support groups, all the reputable ones preach the BDSM mantra: safe, sane and consensual. "Like every other subculture, we have a fringe, an element that doesn't follow the rules," says Susan Wright of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, a BDSM advocacy group formed in 1997 that claims 34 member organizations representing 10,000 people. "But every mainstream BDSM group has a mission statement that includes those words over and over: safe, sane, consensual."

More specific guidelines—always check bound limbs to ensure circulation, for instance—have developed over the decades, she says. BDSM has a rich history. In the 19th century, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing famously applied a French literary term—le sadisme, which described the sexually violent writing style of the Marquis de Sade—to mental patients who exhibited an "association of lust and cruelty." Less famously, Krafft-Ebing named masochism after the bawdy novels of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose most famous work, Venus in Furs (1870), describes the willing enslavement of a dreamy man by a beautiful widow.

More recently, the Internet has helped connect curiosity seekers with BDSM organizations. Doc and Surri, for instance, help lead a North Carolina group that started less than a year ago but already has nearly 700 people on its e-mail list. The calendar of BDSM social events now includes gatherings for every imaginable subgroup—everything from the International Deaf Leather Contest (scheduled in Dallas in August) to the Black Rose convention in the Washington area, a yearly weekend of workshops and parties that draws 1,000.

Host communities aren't always thrilled to learn that hundreds of kinky convention-goers will be dropping in. In 2002, after Baptist leaders heard that the Howard Johnson hotel in Bridgeton, Mo., had served as the site for Beat Me in St. Louis, the Southern Baptist Convention canceled reservations at the hotel. Last year the Kenner, La., police chief mailed letters to local hotels urging them not to provide accommodations for Fetish in the Fall, a four-day series of parties and educational demonstrations—Dances with Whips, for instance—set for November. Chief Nick Congemi was worried that the gathering's activities would be "borderline illegal"; organizers canceled the event to spare attendees embarrassing public scrutiny.

Congemi has a point about the law. It is a bedrock principle of common law that consent is no defense against assault charges, and many prosecutors see BDSM activities like flogging as assault. In the past half-century, many SM participants have been successfully prosecuted. But while most appellate judges have upheld those convictions, a 1999 New York State ruling is altering the landscape. In that case, an appeals court overturned the conviction of Oliver Jovanovic, a Columbia University grad student who had been sentenced to 15 years for kidnapping and sexually abusing an undergrad. Before the alleged assault, the woman had e-mailed her SM fantasies to Jovanovic. The trial judge had refused to admit the e-mail messages into evidence, but the appeals court held that while no one has a constitutional right to engage in SM, the e-mails would have shed light on whether Jovanovic reasonably believed that the woman had consented.

Of all the knotty issues swirling around BDSM, consent was the most difficult for me to understand. No means no, but does yes always mean yes? If you ask someone to pass a flame across your genitals or tie you up for hours or tell you what to eat, are you in your right mind? I pressed Surri repeatedly on these issues. Finally, after a robust drag on her cigarette (which she had asked Doc's permission to smoke), she answered, "What we worry about when we look at our own community and try to make sure abuse isn't happening is whether submissives are restricted in their speech. And I can always say what I want ... Yes, Doc makes the final decision about things. But if he said to me, 'Shave off your hair,' well, we would have some issues because there's not a chance in hell I would do that." Surri and Doc do take the master/slave relationship to elaborate lengths, but she can always end it. "Ultimately," she says, "I have more control in this relationship than he does."

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