A dozen or so years back, I decided that I would try to find a definitive answer to the question, and I set about researching what past generations of academics, doctors, artists, writers, and gay BDSM players had come up with. Instead of finding one coherent definition, I found dozens of conflicting ones. What I hope to do with this blog is to combine the abstract theories of the social and medical sciences, the insights of artists and writers, and the lived experiences of gay BDSM players, to produce both a definition of gay BDSM, and the kind of guide to its practice that I would have liked to have read when I was a novice.
Each edition of the blog will deal with a specific aspect of gay BDSM. And this introduction signposts many of the topics that I’ll be covering. To illustrate each topic, I’ll open future editions with a description of real-life gay BDSM scene. The scene in this edition, “The sub at the door,” is what I jokingly refer to as my “Gay BDSM 101” introductory session for a novice player.
The Sub at the Door
A young man in his mid-twenties is standing nervously in front of an apartment block. He raises his hand to ring the door buzzer but hesitates. A stream of conflicting thoughts chase one another, jostling for attention:
What if he doesn’t like me; what if I don’t like him; what if he’s an axe-murderer; maybe I should ring and cancel; No! I’ve been waiting for this for years; I really want to do this
. He takes a deep breath and presses the buzzer. “Hello. It’s Josh… Sir,” he says the word, feeling both self-conscious and excited. There is no spoken reply accompanying the discreet click that unlocks the door.
Josh crosses the lobby to the elevator and checks the floor he should go to. He is dressed casually: jeans, t-shirt, trainers, and, as instructed, he is wearing a pair of new white briefs that he’s bought specially because the dom told him to. The elevator doors open. He hesitates again.
What am I doing? What if I hate it? What if I love it? Is he going to film me in secret and post me all over the Internet? Why am I so scared? And at the same time, I’m so excited!
He checks himself in the elevator mirror: neatly cut short brown hair, clean-shaven, boyish, some would say handsome face, but he isn’t sure about his nose; he checks his teeth, pats a stray lock of hair, and adjusts the hang of his T-shirt. I’d find me attractive . He realizes that he’s got a hardon that would be noticeable, were there anyone around to notice it, but the building is empty at this time of day.
The elevator doors open. He overcomes one final moment of hesitation and steps out into the hallway. He’s been told what to expect: The dom was, if anything, too kind and patient with him. He’d been able to talk to him, hesitantly at first, telling him about his fantasies about being a sub that he’d kept secret for years, and the stuff he’d seen online and wanted to try. It was such a relief to be able to talk to someone about it and feel no shame, because he was into exactly the same stuff. They’d agreed what they’d do in the session and set his “limits”. Now he is seconds away from his first experience as a sub with a total stranger he’d met online, who’d told him that the first thing that would happen to him was to get hooded, collared, gagged, and restrained”. That had scared and thrilled him at the same time.
Are you crazy? Letting a total stranger tie you up
… had been quickly replaced by images from his favorite videos where the young slave was often brought into a dungeon chained and hooded.
And after… the dom had listed the activities he’d try out on him and combine with role play and sex. It was all stuff he’d seen online and jerked off to, but he’d never experienced any of them for real. TT, CP, flogging, CBT––even typing out or saying those BDSM terms got him hard.
But what if I don’t like them or can’t take the pain? Or take enough pain to please him? What if I need to get away?
But the dom had given him a safe word to use if he needed to stop the session and wanted to leave. He’s in front of the apartment door. There’s no buzzer. He knocks lightly.
Was it loud enough? Did he hear? Should I knock again or will that make him think I’m too pushy.
The door opens wide enough to let him in. He gees in and the dom pushes the door shut. The dom and sub stare at one another. He’s pretty much like his pictures. Does he like me? Shit, I’m scared… and so turned on.
“Ready, slave?” the dom asks. “Yes, Sir,” he replies, the word already feeling more natural. It is taking on a new meaning, not just indicating politeness and respect but submission. With carefully controlled force, the dom grabs Josh and turns him to face the wall, arms raised, legs spread, like a cop would position a suspect for a frisk search. The leather hood goes on first.
Blind. The collar next and wrist restraints. Bound. And a ball gag. Mute. His physical freedom and identity are stripped from him, as his clothes will be soon.I am a slave The dom leads him through an unseen hallway into what? Is it a dungeon like in the videos? Or an ordinary bedroom or living room?
Hooded, it could be either, or any one of the places he’s fantasized about being a slave. His fear and anxiety are replaced by a strong sense of relief and release. It’s what he’s dreamed of ever since he’d come across his first BDSM porn video online, and now it’s finally going to happen to him. The dom stops and quickly unties and reties his hands, this time overhead. Josh experiences what his happening in two ways: the physical sensations as his body is moved and tied, and the mental image of himself as he were one of the boys in the videos. The dom fastens his ankles with another set of restraints. Spreadeagle. Josh tests the strength of whatever he is tied to. He’s restrained for real and wouldn’t be able to get free even if he wanted to. It’s real now. Anything could happen.The session begins….
Defining Gay BDSM
“SM is the eroticization of power” Michel FoucaultWhen I first tried to define gay BDSM, I ended up compiling two very long lists of things to include and exclude, and at the end, I was no closer to finding a satisfactory definition. French philosopher Michel Foucault came up with the pithy, “SM is the eroticization of power,” which captures one important element of BDSM––many would say the most important element––but to answer the question fully, his one-liner would have to be supplemented and explained by a lengthy discussion that Foucault failed to write before his death in 1984.
I should start with a quick explanation of my use of terminology. As some of my readers will question my use of the adjective “gay” in the title of this blog, I need to justify using it instead of MSM (men who have sex with men), queer, or just dropping it altogether. This blog concerns itself with the BDSM that is practiced by men who identify themselves as having a gay identity. MSM includes all men who have sex with men, many of whom do not identify as gay; queer also exceeds the boundaries that I have set myself. And though much of what I applies to straight and bi BDSM, I shall not address the central issue of gender.
There is no standard rendering of “BDSM,” and when asked, I translate it as “Bondage, Discipline, Slave and Master,” though “Sadism and Masochism” is the standard for the last two letters. Some favor “Dominance and Submission” for the middle two letters, leaving the outer two dangling. Each version indicates a different interpretation or emphasis. BDSM also competes with alternative terms, including the plain “SM” and augmented “S&M,” “Kink,” “Fetish,” and “Leather.” A future edition of this blog will examine the origins of these terms and the difference implied by their use.
To the practitioner, a gay BDSM scene is an interaction between two or more participants, which makes use of different techniques, activities, clothing, and equipment, singly or in combination, that aims to transform the power imbalance between sub and dom into an erotic or sexual experience. Even if the ultimate aim of the participants is sexual excitement, the way sex is used in a scene forces us to redefine it: The usual practices of vanilla sex––kissing, sucking, fucking––might be absent, and the participants might not achieve orgasm during the scene. So, in a way, it’s sex but without the sex. When I started in BDSM, I thought of it as an extension of vanilla sex. And oral and anal sex would always feature in my sessions. But later, I found that BDSM without the sexual elements still retained its huge erotic potential.
To non-practitioners, gay BDSM has been and is still defined in very diverse ways. In order to understand the evolution of the social, legal, and medical attitudes toward gay BDSM requires an understanding of when gay BDSM was invented. While there have always been men who have had sex with men, and men who have used the exchange of power for sexual gratificatiom, it is only in the past 150 years that men have been identified or have identified themselves as being into gay BDSM––although, of course, the terms used in the past were different. The history of gay BDSM will be the subject of my next blog.
Gay BDSM is not a sin
To the devoutly religious, all non-procreative sex is sinful, so we can take it as read that they consider gay BDSM to be sinful. There is no line of argument that will change their views, but what if you are both a practitioner of gay BDSM and a believer? It is not a dilemma I have had to face. But if I were asked by someone who was troubled by such a conflict, in all seriousness and without irony, I would ask that person to consider that the Church recognizes suffering as an intrinsic part of the faith: Jesus on the Cross, the martyrdom of countless saints, and the mortifications and self-flagellation still practiced by many Christians. I am not equating Christian doctrines of suffering with what happens in a gay BDSM scene, but merely pointing out that the writings of the early saints who mortified their bodies exhibit a strong undercurrent of eroticism, and that gay BDSM scenes can have a profoundly spiritual dimension.
Gay BDSM is not a mental illness
Some doctors and psychologists might still regard gay BDSM as a form of mental illness needing treatment. Manuals of psychiatry retain diagnoses of pathological “sexual sadism” and “sexual masochism” that can cause an individual to become dysfunctional enough to require treatment. This implies that BDSM activities that don’t cause dysfunctionality are a healthy form of sexual exploration and fantasy. When I began to live out my gay BDSM fantasies, I asked myself whether I had a “problem” that needed to be “cured,” but as my experiences were overwhelmingly positive, and actually led to the resolution of internal conflicts rather than creating them or making them worse, I concluded that gay BDSM, far from being a cause for concern, contributed to my mental wellbeing.
Gay BDSM may be deemed to be a crime in your jurisdiction
In the eyes of the law, certain gay BDSM activities have in the past been equated with the offences of assault and GBH, in spite of the consent of the participants. The legal position of gay BDSM remains ambiguous in many jurisdictions, but prosecutions are rare and are usually thrown out of court.
Fifty Shades of Gay BDSM
Having considered religious, medical, and legal views of gay BDSM, how is it portrayed in culture, media, the arts, literature, and cinema? One doesn’t have to go very far back in history to find very negative portrayals of gay BDSM, that has been equated with non-consensual forms of sexual violence and abuse. The publication of Fifty Shades of Gray and its adaptation for the screen did not cause the shift in attitudes to BDSM, gay and straight, it merely took advantage of a change that had started in the 1990s. Gay BDSM is depicted in more positive and less threatening ways in the cultural mainstream, making it less scary and socially more acceptable. Practices once considered extreme have been quietly integrated into vanilla sex as a bit of “kinky fun.”
The Internet of all things gay BDSM
Since the late 90s, it is the Internet that has had the greatest impact on gay BDSM. The online offering may be distorted by the twin lenses of pornography and consumerization, but it has turned gay BDSM from a mysterious alternative sexuality into something more akin to an extension of vanilla sex. Earlier generations had to set out on a journey of discovery to experience as yet unknown gay BDSM practices, but the current players saw what was on offer long before they ever experienced it. In addition to making gay BDSM more familiar and available, it is also led to its diversification. Pre-Internet, gay BDSM was characterized by a few well-defined sub-cultures, the main ones being leather and rubber. Post-Internet there has been a proliferation of sub-cultures that have disrupted and atomized what had been a relatively compact gay BDSM community with its own clearly demarcated spaces. Though this can only be seen as a positive, it does make the job of defining what gay BDSM is all the more difficult.
Josh, do you play soccer or football?
When a boy like Josh asks me what gay BDSM is all about, I know that if he’s made his way to me, at the very least, he’s identified the brand of gay BDSM he’s into. We may have an interest in similar practices, but that’s no guarantee that we’re compatible. Josh may think that learning gay BDSM is like learning how to play a sport: You learn how to use the equipment and the rules, you practice your technique, and you graduate from learner to player. But that’s not how it works in gay BDSM. There is no standardized kit and no universal rules. And even if dom and sub are superficially similar in the style of gay BDSM they prefer, to continue with the sporting analogy, they could be two players on a sports pitch with a ball between them, but one of them could be intending to play soccer, and the other, American football.
There is no gay BDSM
The right answer it to say that there is no gay BDSM. “There is my version of gay BDSM, the version you come up with, and the versions of each and every person who associate themselves with the term.” The problem for boys like Josh is that they haven’t had a chance to come up with their version, so how do they know what to look for when they start? It’s like being put on a tennis court, given a racket and ball, and told not only to learn how to play but to invent the game of tennis as you go, with your only guide being matches between Murray and Federer that you watched online.I stopped my description of the scene with Josh when it got started because, though he was excited and turned on when he got there, that doesn’t mean that the scene would have worked. The variables involved in a scene’s success or failure are so numerous and varied that you have to fall back on generalizations: “There was no chemistry”; “I didn’t fancy him”; “he was too rough”; “he wasn’t rough enough”; “he wasn’t dom or sub enough”. Sometimes the real reason is that the two players had different expectations of the scene, or in the case of a novice, he can’t formulate his expectations until he works them out by playing.
From fantasy to real-life play
To conclude, I shall touch on what I consider to be the key transition that all gay BDSM players have to make at the beginning of their career. As many players fantasized about gay BDSM long before they started to experiment with it, they start with a fantasy version that has no anchor in the real world. You might fantasize for years about being whipped, but that is no preparation for the physical experience of being whipped. In your fantasies, there is no mess to clear up, no injury that cannot be instantly healed, no practice or technique that doesn’t work every time. Contrast this with all the things that can and do go wrong in a real-life scene. But even if you set aside any practical difficulties. There remains another hurdle: you. In a fantasy, you’re in charge. You move your characters like toys soldiers on the battlefield of your sexual imagination. In your first lived scene, you encounter another person’s fantasies for the first time. A first-time dom realizes that he has to prove his dominance to a sub who may be hard to convince, and the sub realizes that a live dom won’t behave like a fantasy dom who fulfills the sub’s every desire.After reading about these potential pitfalls, problems and hurdles, the reader might conclude that it’s nigh on impossible for a novice to enjoy his first scenes, but from my experience that far from the truth. The gay BDSM learning curve may have a slope as steep as a ski jump, but it’s amazing how many novice take the slope in their stride, take off the ramp, soar through the air, and land safely with only the smallest of bumps.
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