The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born Antonio Gramsci – Selections from the Prison Notebooks i’ve been clicking around recently looking for a sense of subcultural belonging. One of my favourite podcasts is nosafeword, and i stumbled across an episode called “Clique Schisms”. Sparky…
Fassinger’s Model: Mapping Our Journeys in Kink
This is a companion piece to our previous article The Cass Identity Model: Mapping Our Journeys in Kink In the same way that we looked at the Cass Sexual Identity Model, I’m going to attempt to re-situate Fassinger’s Model of Gay and Lesbian Identity Development in the context of BDSM subcultural identity formation. Fassinger’s Model…
The Cass Identity Model: Mapping Our Journeys in Kink
i grew up with the boom in technological advancement we call the Internet Era, so i am one of the so-called “lucky ones”. In my time, laptops and phones have become thin and the speed of the internet has grown fat, in something of an exponential graph. By the time i was 15 i had…
Quiz – What Kind of Submissive Are You?
We know our followers love personality tests and BDSM quizzes. It’s always fun to find out more about who we are. Of course, online tests and quizzes are not definitive of our personality, but they can be fun for self-discovery. Perhaps you’ll just be reassured, or perhaps you’ll discover something about yourself that you never…
Are You a Pervert? Challenging the Boundaries of Sex
By Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino Are you a pervert? I believe you are. This statement might offend you. Perhaps you wonder what would compel me to say something like that about you, especially since we’ve never met. However, a voice deep down inside of you might wonder if I am right. Maybe that voice is…
Living Vicariously: Porn Provides a Tasting Plate for Our Unspoken Fetishes
by Lauren Rosewarne Pornography is hardly an under-theorised medium. For decades, radical feminists have decried its imagery as an instruction manual for rape. As women being objectified, humiliated, tortured. As men receiving positive reinforcement for perpetuating degradation. For decades liberals – be they of the academic, activist or artistic ilk – have raged against slippery…
Ask a Neuroscientist: The Physiology of BDSM (Part 2/2) – How The Brain Reduces Pain
by Hermes Solenzol Everything I described in Ask a Neuroscientist: The physiology of BDSM (Part 1) – How Pain Moves to the Brain forms the so-called ascending pain pathway, which goes from the skin to the cerebral cortex. There, in the cortex, is where the pain becomes conscious, it is felt with its particular emotional…
When the “D” in Your D/s Dynamic Stands for Depression
Being a caregiver to someone with depression isn’t an easy thing to do. It is even harder in a D/s or Master/slave relationship. When mental health issues surface, they can often do so seemingly out-of-the-blue. In a D/s dynamic, this can destabilise or cause fluctuation in the power flows between the Dominant and the submissive….
Ask a Neuroscientist: The Physiology of BDSM (Part 1/2) – How Pain Moves to the Brain
by Hermes Solenzol We need to rescue the word “sadist”. In the vanilla world it is often taken as a synonym of “cruel”, but in the BDSM culture we know this is not true. We are not cruel, we don’t like to cause suffering, just as masochists do not like to suffer. It is only…
From the Dungeon to the Multiplex – How Bondage Has Gripped the Nation
by Kevin O’Gorman & Andrew MacLaren The surge of popular interest in BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism and masochism) that has resulted from the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy of novels has been something of a revelation. Beginning as texts whose relative marginality initially seemed ensured by both theme (BDSM) and format (online fan fiction), today…