Peter Tupper - A Lover’s Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism

A Lovers Pinch

A Lovers Pinch

A Cultural History of Sadomasochism

Peter Tupper

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2018 by Peter Tupper

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tupper, Peter, author.

Title: A lovers pinch : a cultural history of sadomasochism / Peter Tupper.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017055887 (print) | LCCN 2017058499 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538111185 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781538111178 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: SadomasochismHistory. | SexHistory.

Classification: LCC HQ79 (ebook) | LCC HQ79 .T87 2018 (print) | DDC 306.77/509dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055887

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The stroke of death is as a lovers pinch,

Which hurts and is desird.

Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra , Act V, Scene 2, Ln. 29293

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

William Blake, Proverbs of Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Contents

Introduction

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Its a Saturday night in any major urban center in the Western world, in a darkened hall, in the early years of the twenty-first century. The people here are unmistakable in their hyper-skins of leather, rubber, and lace, their collars and cuffs, their boots, and of course, lots and lots of black.

As the music pulses, people hang suspended in webs of hemp rope from wood and metal frames. Leather straps smack against bare buttocks, evoking moans of pleasure. A man accepts dozens upon dozens of fine needles pierced through his skin. Cool blue alcohol flames ripple across a womans naked body, only to be extinguished by the man standing over her. A woman carefully slips her entire, well-lubricated fist into the vagina of another, and they never break eye contact. A man leans against a wall, shuddering in pleasure each time another man snaps a single-tailed whip at his bare back, with a sound like a rifle shot. A French maid in black-and-white rubber minces across the room on six-inch heels. A man rains his fists down on the soft, meaty parts of his lovers body, and stops the instant she says Yellow.

Their actions are paradoxical. They speak of punishment and torture, and their bodies are beaten, cut, pierced, burned, and bound, but the mutual goal is pleasure. They precisely measure sensation, exploring to find the outer limits. There is endless variation, innovation, experimentation, transformation. The weak become strong, the old become young, men become women, women become men, pain becomes pleasure, confinement becomes freedom. This is a laboratory for developing new pleasures and intimacies that cannot be had any other way. Yet there is an order to this, a precise etiquette that regulates but does not confine.

Beyond these night rituals, sadomasochism has spread into the greater culture. Surf through channels, page through magazines, click through the web. Heroes and villains wear black leather and rubber. Whip-wielding dominatrices sell everything from cars to breath mints. Pop singers rhapsodize over pain mixed with pleasure, captivity, submission, and dominance. Every fashion designer has their momentary dalliance with high-heeled boots; dark, shiny coats; wasp-waisted corsets. The aesthetic is so ubiquitous that it is scarcely noticeable, almost clich.

The question I have to ask is: Where did all this come from? Where did the idea that pain and pleasure are intertwined begin? How did black leather acquire its potent erotic charge?

Today, there are many instructive works on BDSM, ranging from techniques to relationships. But to understand the history is difficult. In my readings and conversations, I usually found only myths and generalizations. Some people tell tall tales of slave-owning houses that date back to pre-Revolutionary France or even the Roman Empire. Others allude to physical ordeal rituals in indigenous cultures but are vague about any connection to modern practices. Some recite a list of the usual suspectsSade, Sacher-Masoch, motorcycle gang culture, medieval flagellants, Story of O but there is no coherent history, no genealogy linking these people, groups, texts, and artifacts together and showing how they grew together into the modern BDSM culture. The name itself is a slightly awkward portmanteau of Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism, and Slave and Master. It is apt for a subculture and a style that conglomerated together haphazardly instead of being designed.

Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and practicing sadomasochist, wrote,

Sadism [and masochism] is not a name finally given to a practice as old as Eros; it is a massive cultural fact which appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth century, and which constitutes one of the greatest conversions of Western imagination: unreason transformed into delirium of the heart, madness of desire, the insane dialogue of love and death in the limitless presumption of appetite. Sadism appears at the very moment that unreason, confined for over a century and reduced to silence, reappears, no longer as an image of the world, no longer as a figura , but as language and desire.1

However, nothing is created spontaneously. There are always antecedents and contributing circumstances. Before the end of the eighteenth century there must have been, and were, people and things who contributed. This book will examine customs and relationships that may resemble BDSM, and may be the source material for the fantasy that drives BDSM, but are not. This is a story of transformation.

Somewhere, hidden beneath secrecy and mythology and ignorance, is the network that connects all those different things together and leads to other, unexplored worlds. These are not the main thoroughfares of history, but the cunning passages, [and] contrived corridors.2

The hidden history of consensual sadomasochism needs to be told.

Criminality

Modern advocates of the BDSM community are quick to state that consensual sadomasochism is not rape or abuse, and that terms like master and slave or punishment should not be taken literally. However, to explore this particular branch of history requires confronting humanitys legacy of violence and oppression. The grotesque crimes of the Marquis de Sade, the tyranny of American slavery, the corporal punishment of Victorian children, and the atrocities of fascism are just a few of the disturbing subjects that must be examined to discover the links between them and consensual sadomasochism.

Acknowledging the relationships between modern BDSM and this history is not to condone or excuse these events. The link between the horrors of slavery and the consensual, pleasurable Master-slave relationships of the early twenty-first century is long and winding. It is comparable to the connection between the athleticism and discipline of modern Olympic fencing and the brutal business of thrusting a piece of sharpened steel through the vital organs of a fellow human being on the battlefield. They are related, but one is violence and the other is an art or game, an indirect reflection of reality, bounded by rules.