Queer BDSM

The use of the term BDSM has come to replace the terms sadomasochism and SM within the BDSM communities and research as well, because it is better suited to represent the heterogeneity of the practices and because it distinguishes these consensual practices from the everyday and pathologizing usages of the older terms.

To find a general definition of BDSM is tricky. In his BDSM manual, Jay Wiseman defines BDSM as “the use of psychological dominance and submission, and/or physical bondage, and/or pain, and/or related practices in a safe, legal, consensual manner in order for the participants to experience erotic arousal and/or personal growth.“

The acronym BDSM stands for: bondage, discipline, dominance & submission (DS) and sadism & masochism (SM). Sadomasochism in the narrow sense is about the administration or receiving of pain, while a self-chosen power hierarchy is at the heart of DS practices, which differentiates participants into top and bottom. The bottom hands over control to the top for the duration of an encounter or a relationship. The roles of top and bottom can be chosen independently of gender or other social markers. Changing roles, or switching, is also common. This shows that a person is not necessarily fixed on a certain position.

The concept of consent is crucial for an activity to count as BDSM (rather than violence or sexual abuse), which finds its expression in community guidelines such as safe, sane & consensual or RACK (risk aware consensual kink). This framework enables practitioners to realize sexual fantasies they cannot or do not wish to engage in in everyday life contexts.

You can find further information on BDSM in my publications and in various manuals that are available.

When speaking of queer BDSM, queer can relate to the sexual (queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, …) or gender (trans, genderqueer, cross-dressing, …) identity of the participants, or to their practices, insofar they are non-heteronormative, for instance playing with gender.

For my PhD project, I have conducted the first broad empirical study on queer BDSM practices. I interviewed 50 queer BDSM practitioners from the US and Western Europe, among them lesbians, bi/pansexual women, femmes, butches, genderqueers, transwomen and transmen, who move in lesbian or queer BDSM contexts. I have addressed them as experts on their own identities, practices and relationships. The analysis was following a version of grounded theory, seeking to develop theory from the data. The study was situated in sociology, gender studies, queer studies, and transgender studies.

Results of this study can be found in various articles, my PhD thesis as well as the book based on it, Queer BDSM Intimacies – Critical Consent and Pushing Boundaries, to be published by Palgrave in October 2014.