BDSM (meaning Bondage and discipline (B&D), Dominance and submission (D&s), and Sadomasochism (or S&M)) is a frequent theme in culture and media, including in books, films, video games, television, music, magazines, public performances and online media.
Newspapers and magazines During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a variety of periodicals were published on the subject of BDSM. Small independent publishing companies and organized groups were both active in this field, though many have since ceased publication or transferred to online publishing. The German-language Schlagzeilen magazine started in 1988 as the group's internal newspaper and is an important BDSM publication in German-speaking countries today.
Events and figures related to BDSM have also appeared in the media. For example, in 2002, an article in the Washington Post publicly highlighted the leadership in the Washington, DC BDSM and leather community of Jack McGeorge, a munitions analyst for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. Following this, several commentators compared his BDSM activities with the torture techniques used by Saddam Hussein's administration in Iraq. Others compared today's discrimination of BDSM practitioners with the situation of homosexuals in the past.
In Germany EMMA, a well-known feminist magazine, published by Alice Schwarzer, pursued its PorNO campaign against hatred towards women and violent pornography aiming to ban pornography in Germany. In it, Schwarzer states, among other things, that sadomasochistic practices are generally to be equated with violence against women. Her judgment on female sadomasochism ("Female masochism is collaboration!") has often been criticized for implying a state of war between genders."Weiblicher Masochismus ist Kollaboration!" from EMMA Heft 2, 1991 EMMA magazine criticized Helmut Newton, accusing him of "pornografization of fashion photography", and criticized his "therein unrestrainedly realized sadomasochistic obsessions".An extensive analysis of the magazine and Schwarzer campaigns is available at Papiertiger#Emma (German)
BDSM support groups and publications have repeatedly criticized biased media coverage of BDSM.Manuela Münchow, Bundesvereinigung Sadomasochismus: Stellungnahme zum Grünbuch "Gleichstellung sowie Bekämpfung von Diskriminierungen in einer erweiterten Europäischen Union" der Kommission der Europäischen Gemeinschaften (Brüssel, den 28.05.2004 KOM(2004) 379), 31.08.2004 (German), and the detailed chronology Der Papiertiger: Presse ("media coverage") in the Encyclopedia of Sadomasochism Datenschlag.de (German/English)
Literature
Sadomasochism is a perennial theme in literature and has inspired several classics like The Story of O by Anne Desclos (under the pseudonym Pauline Réage), Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the comics created by Eric Stanton. A literary curiosity concerning sadomasochism is Martha's letter to Leopold Bloom in Ulysses by James Joyce.
The novel Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair published in 1978 by Ingeborg Day (under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill) was the basis of the Hollywood movie 9½ Weeks. Justine Ettler's The River Ophelia (1995) details the empty, sometimes violent sex lives of university students and yuppies with surreal overtones.
Author Anne Rice published under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure three installments of her Sleeping Beauty Trilogy (The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, 1983), Beauty's Punishment (1984) and Beauty's Release (1985) with explicit BDSM themes.
A nine-volume book series published in July 2006 under the title Bild-Erotik-Bibliothek by Bild-Zeitung, Germany's leading Tabloid and the best-selling newspaper in Europe, in cooperation with Random House gives a clear indication of the commercial potential of the topic. Out of nine installments, three books had a well-defined emphasis on sadomasochism, specifically BDSM. Besides Exit to Eden, also written by Anne Rice under the pseudonym Anne Rampling, it also further featured the sadomasochist classic Story of O. and the explicit novel Topping from Below by Laura Reese.
The Fifty Shades trilogy is a series of popular erotic romance novels by E. L. James which involve BDSM. The series has had a notably mixed reception from the community itself; while it has been praised for bringing BDSM into the mainstream, they have also received heavy criticism for inaccurate portrayals of the subculture. In response to this, BDSM works published after the trilogy have often had a greater focus on consent and agency, such as Penny Aimes' For the Love of April French.
Alfred Kinsey stated in his 1953 nonfiction book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female that 12% of females and 22% of males reported having an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story.Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, pp. 677-678 In that book erotic responses to being bitten were given as: Erotic responses By females By males Definite and/or frequent 26% 26% Some response 29% 24% Never 45% 50%+ Number of cases 2,200 567
Publishers In the last decades, publishing houses and imprints specializing in BDSM fiction and nonfiction have been founded in many Western countries, including Circlet Press, Daedalus Publishing, Greenery Press and Nexus Books, an imprint of Virgin Books.
Specialist books In November 1981, Samois published Coming to Power: Writing and graphics on Lesbian S/M, which reached a worldwide audience the following year when it was reprinted by Alyson Publications. The book combined short stories with basic explanations and safety tips about BDSM practices. It is considered the first introductory books on the subject worldwide. Its concept was internationally adopted by many publications in the following decades.
Other than specialized books with strong emphasis on the practice, there is a growing number of scientific publications and books that discuss BDSM philosophy and culture:
Jay Wiseman: SM 101: A Realistic Introduction. Greenery Press (California) 1998, (comprehensive reference book including topics like "BDSM as a lifestyle" and "BDSM during pregnancy") Philip Miller, Molly Devon: Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism. Mystic Rose Books, 1995. (showing plenty of graphics, the comprehensive reference book gives advice on practices and safety advice) Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy: The New Topping Book. Greenery Press (California) 2002, (practical and theoretical introduction for Tops with emphasis on psychological, practical and technological aspects and detailed advice on partner search) Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy: The New Bottoming Book. Greenery Press (California) 1998, (practical and theoretical introduction for Bottoms with emphasis on psychological, practical and technological aspects and detailed advice on partner search) Patrick Califia (ed.), Robin Sweeney (ed.):The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader. Alyson Publications 1996, (sequel to the lesbian-feminist BDSM-classic Coming to Power) Mark Thompson (ed.): Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice. Alyson Publications 1991, , (28 essays of well-known sadomasochistic authors and activists) Lady Green (ed.), Jaymes Easton (ed.): Kinky Crafts: 101 Do-It-Yourself S/M Toys. Greenery Press (California) 1998, (comprehensive Guide to do-it-yourself BDSM-toys) Gloria Brame, William Brame & John Jacobs: Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission. Villard, 1996, Peggy J. Kleinplatz, Charles Allen Moser: Sadomasochism - Powerful Pleasures. Haworth Press, 2006, Staci Newmahr: Playing On The Edge. Indiana University Press, 2011, (sociological examination of BDSM community in an unnamed city) Margot Weiss: Techniques of Pleasure. Duke University Press, 2011, (anthropological examination of San Francisco BDSM community) Clarisse Thorn: The S & M Feminist. Clarisse Thorn, 2012, (essays on BDSM, gender and culture) Lee Harrington, Mollena Williams: Playing Well With Others. Greenery Press, 2012, (guide to the BDSM community) Anne O. Nomis The History & Arts of the Dominatrix. Mary Egan Publishing & Anna Nomis Ltd, UK, 2013, (academic account of dominatrix imagery) Rajan Dominari: Welcome to the Darkside: A BDSM Primer. AKO Publishing Company, 2019, (introduction to the BDSM community and culture)
Marketing
Since the beginning of the 1990s, BDSM imagery has been regularly used within the framework of large marketing campaigns in continental Europe. Widely known examples in Germany are billboards of the cigarette brands Camel and West, showing a camel dressed in "typical" leather outfit, respectively a dominatrix with a whip. While West had to withdraw the ad due to "offense against morality", BDSM motifs were utilized in the following years on a regular basis.vgl. Roland Seim, Josef Spiegel (Hrsg.): "Ab 18" - zensiert, diskutiert, unterschlagen. Beispiele aus der Kulturgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Telos Verlag, Münster 2002, , S.109 (German). In March 2007 the Swedish clothing company H&M promoted the sale of a collection compiled by Madonna with television commercials in Germany.compare Stern.de: H&M: Mode made by Madonna, available under stern.de, 15.02.2007 (German) and Vogue.com: Die gezähmte Madonna, available under Vogue.com (German) The commercials showed the artist, who has been repeatedly criticized for the use of sadomasochistic subjects in the past, as a dominant lifestyle-icon teaching a lesson to an "inappropriately" dressed female pupil under the cracking of a crop, redesigning her outfit while making fashion statements like "Don't think it – you need to know it".
In Canada, Mini presented the winter package 2005/2005 of the Mini-Cooper in the form of an interactive BDSM-session in which the user, supported by a dominatrix, can test different kinds of spanking tools on the automobile in order to get the optional equipment explained.see mini.ca Their slogan was "Dominate winter".
In the U.S., Anheuser-Busch has repeatedly sponsored the fetish-lifestyle Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco.Heather Cassell: LGBT advocates offer mixed reaction to Miller, Coors merger, online under EDGE Boston Diesel jeans ran several sadomasochistic-themed advertisements in various fashion magazines.
Music
The Velvet Underground song "Venus in Furs" (from The Velvet Underground & Nico) is based on a book by Masoch of the same title; the name of the band itself comes from a book about paraphilias (including BDSM) in the United States.
Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" may be the most well-known popular song with BDSM connotations, primarily due to the music video.
Adam Lambert's "For Your Entertainment", Puddle of Mudd's "Control", and Madonna's "Erotica" are explicitly from the dominant's point of view - as is "Baby Let's Play Rough" by the country-western vampire singer Unknown Hinson, whereas Nedra Johnson's "Alligator Food" and Lady Gaga's "Teeth" are written from the perspective of the submissive.
Jace Everett's "Bad Things" (the theme song of the TV series True Blood) alludes to BDSM.
The German punk band Die Ärzte recorded the song "Sweet, Sweet Gwendoline" that introduced the BDSM-related character Sweet Gwendoline to a large part of the population that otherwise had no contact to the BDSM subculture. German gothic rock band Umbra et Imago, famous amongst the fetish goth scene, also recorded a song entitled "Sweet Gwendoline".
Industrial music in general likely has the most BDSM themes, as well as being one of the biggest influences on Rivethead fashion. Rammstein is one of those industrial bands, as their song "Ich Tu Dir Weh (I hurt you)" is about BDSM. Depeche Mode are known for their BDSM undertones, "Master and Servant" being a well-known example.
Other famous songs with BDSM themes include:
2 Live Crew "S and M" Adam and the Ants "Whip in My Valise" Ali Project "Hizamazuite Ashi o Oname"