There came a point where I was confronted with the idea that my view of BDSM as a part of sexuality was critiqued harshly by a colleague. Specifically, they came with the declaration that kink is not inherently sexual in nature. Upon hearing this, I initially felt offended as they spoke toward it with the dismissiveness of an awkward political pundit trying to make a joke by fumbling a half finished statement and then changing the subject. But as with anything about sexuality and misconceptions of humanness, I went hunting instead. I looked for research on the topic and poured over the history of BDSM and kink as far as my little fingertips could type into a scholarly search of academic databases until EUREKA! I found some articles, modern ones at that, that explored the multiplicity of experiences and use of kink and BDSM as well as a few non-academic musings on the possible precursors to kink.
As I skimmed over the articles and the studies, something jumped out at me that seemed to support this idea that BDSM and kink were not inherently sexual; a connection to spiritual experience. I stopped skimming and started taking concerted effort to note and synthesize what I was reading; the data was all there! I was vindicated but… so was my colleague. You see, BDSM and kink are both sexual and non-sexual. In the data, a good majority of people in the studies viewed these activities as part of their sexuality, a whopping 70% of 363 participants, in a study of FetLife users, reported always or usually engaging in BDSM during sex whereas only 7% reported never mixing sex with kink (De Neef Et al., 2019). So turns out I am not alone in my experiences but to be fair to my colleague’s ideas, they weren’t either.
In the history of BDSM, there were years upon years of academics looking at the sub-culture community as a perversion to what sexuality should be. In other words, BDSM has been lumped into sexuality as a bad thing so it makes sense that it would pull away and start to define itself as not sexual in nature; no one wants to have their joys in life labeled a disorder in the DSM 5- which some forms of BDSM and kink continue to be viewed as. I know, eww, but opinions in scholarly work have been changing lately even as the community continues to detach itself from its sexual connections. With this knowledge in hand, it is a whole lot easier to understand why my colleague responded the way they did. It seems a modern view of BDSM and kink includes this distancing from sexuality, redefining the ways that it sits within human experience and psyche… or is it actually a revival?
In a few explorative ideas on the possible history of BDSM, some thoughts came up around the ways that kink may have developed through various human institutions like the prisons of Japan and the religious mortification practices in Christianity. I cannot speak to either of these fantastical ideas myself based in any research kind of way but I can imagine how these forms of evolution could be seen as possible births of BDSM and oh what a story that would be.
The big picture in all of this is that while BDSM and kink may not have ties to sexuality implicitly, either in the past or today, a vast majority of people do practice them simultaneously and as a whole, the community is moving away from identifying as sexuality. Does that mean that sex isn’t an important part of BDSM or kink practice? Hell no, but it also doesn’t mean that sex is THE most important part either. As with all things sexy, spicy, fun-time goodness, question and discover yourself with awareness and compassion.
Author: Lealla C.L.M.
Content Researcher and Project Manager for The Harem LLC
References:
De Neef N, Coppens V, Huys W, et al. (2019) Bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, and sadomasochism (BDSM) from an integrative biopsychosocial perspective: A systematic review. Sexual Medicine 7(2): 129–144. Crossref. PubMed. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2050116119300285