On June 6, 2006, the infamous "6/6/06" of supposedly satanic significance, I ran a somewhat drunken gamut of the purportedly demonic celebrations around Los Angeles. Toward the climax of something called Satan’s Rockin’ 666 Eve, an exhibitionist couple staged a BDSM demonstration. A skinny boy in a tall Mohawk used white rope and some fancy knots to bind his submissive partner elaborately and then flogged her with a mean-looking, single-tail whip. The young, pierced, and pale-skinned, zombie-look-alike of a woman willingly followed every instruction, and the marks that appeared on her body made it clear the show definitely was no painless farce.
Slack-jawed, Goth-metal kids stared mesmerized, and the inevitable photographers jostled for angles. Midway through the display, the woman seemed to experience some kind of emotional crisis. Mohawk boy comforted her, and then the beating continued and morale improved. This sadomasochistic tableau might not have been remarkable at some members-only, private dungeon, but this show was being staged at a regular rock ’n’ roll club in the trendy Silver Lake neighborhood, sharing a bill with rock bands, burlesque girls, and a guy called Joey Strange, who entertained the crowd by driving nails through his scrotum.
The fetish-dressed audience seemed more suited for a costume party than hardcore kink, as if 2006 were having an extra Halloween. I would later see the girl, still partially roped, with her welts proudly displayed as she drank a beer on the club’s smoking patio—appearing as though nothing too terrible had happened. Her apparent lack of concern was just one more in the unconscious list of indications that BDSM—the widely accepted umbrella acronym for a gamut of pain-related recreational sex encompassing bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masochism—not only is emerging from the shadows, but has generated quite an astonishing level of interconnected multilateral synergy. It’s apparently unplanned, basically organic, and probably impossible without the communication tools provided by the Internet, which has allowed both BDSM culture and BDSM commerce to grow into both a tight and definable community of like-minded enthusiasts, and also a complex, interlocking, and highly profitable industry within an industry.
History repeating itself
BDSM is hardly new. Sadomasochistic images can be found among the frescos of ancient Rome. The problem always was that the general public has a major problem accepting pain, humiliation, discomfort, and degradation as someone else’s idea of fun. BDSM traditionally has been viewed by the vanilla majority as one of the least acceptable sexual preferences. It was fetish that dared not speak its name—perhaps only a step above bestiality—confined to its own closed and clandestine velvet underground. Until as recently as 1994, sadism and masochism actually were classified in the U.S. as mental disorders, and only under former President Bill Clinton’s administration did The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders finally redefine the two inclinations as pathological only when involving non-consenting participants.
Pornography may have moved closer to the mainstream and gained, if not respectability, at least a degree of tolerance, but much of the industry still seems to see BDSM—except in its mildest manifestations—as, at best, representing little more than an indictment waiting to happen. Yet—although accurate figures are hard to obtain—it has been estimated that as many as 5 to 10 percent of American adults engage directly in BDSM; consume related videos, art, or literature on a regular basis, or have taken out subscriptions to one of the BDSM/kink cyber-dating/contact services like Alt.com and FetBot. One may wonder exactly how many subscribers to these services ever make actual physical contact with one another, and how many never progress beyond the level of email and Internet fantasy; but, to all appearances, the kink-contact business is booming, and the numbers can only be treated as significant.
The figures may be impressive, but on their own, they can’t wholly roll back entire centuries of deep-rooted prejudice and distaste—and even among the allegedly sophisticated and sexually enlightened, BDSM still continues to be viewed with ambiguity. For a long time, the only good bondage was vintage bondage. Betty Page merchandise might have done a roaring trade, but contemporary hardcore bondage or S&M material remained culturally ghettoized, and the harder the core, the more isolated it was. One problem was that many feminists could not advance beyond the fundamental belief that BDSM play, especially with a female sub, was nothing more than the violent and gratuitous torture of helpless women. And, if the designated "victims" claimed to enjoy the experience, they were dismissed as having been brainwashed by their male oppressors. Even when the female took the whip in hand, the response hardly changed. Pro or amateur, the dominatrix, in her vinyl and 6-inch heels, was accused of merely colluding with an unhealthy male fantasy.
The only good news was that this kind of blank and unrelenting prejudice may be exactly what fostered the powerful sense of community that causes many in the BDSM community to feel they not only need to do what they are doing, but they also need to explain and defend why they’re doing it. Fortunately, the Internet has provided these enthusiasts with an easy and obvious forum—and a chance for them to run their own version of the 1980s "Queer Nation" chant: "We’re here! We’re weird! Get used to it!"
Fit to be tying
Mistress Matisse is a professional dominatrix in the Seattle area who not only plies her highly profitable commercial trade in erotic cruelty, but also blogs extensively about it, writes a column in The Stranger—a local alternative weekly—and has amassed a large and loyal readership. She is a vocal and articulate defender of all that is kink, as she chronicles her on- and off-duty adventures: "I’ve spent most of this week doing things no decent person should do. Yay! I haven’t used that super-evil paddle yet, but I did use my new electric toy, the Cobra Stinger, extensively. I have flogged, restrained, pierced, spanked, penetrated, zapped, pinched, and teased until the cows came home. It’s good to be me." So good, in fact, that she seems to have become an underground BDSM celebrity in the Pacific Northwest.
Matisse also provides links to the websites of a number of like-minded individuals in both the local and national kink communities. She directs her readers to craftsmen whip-makers or bondage experts who have taken the Japanese rope techniques of shibari and kinbaku-bi to the level of performance art. One of her links is to a less-orthodox professional player called Miss Candy, who describes herself as "a bisexual poly switch with a sweet temperament" and runs a BDSM-motivated personal training and physical fitness program—a unique concept in which the cardiovascular workout is conducted as per the wicked crack of her whip or flogger.
Matisse and Candy are only two blogging doms among dozens—maybe even hundreds. Some post for free and seem to be on a mission to legitimize their lifestyle, while their more mercenary sisters require paid subscriptions for access to galleries of stills and videos of them meting out punishment to their slaves. The doms, in turn, provide links or even accept paid advertising from the online vendors of the elaborate range of paraphernalia, toys, devices, equipment, and costumes that appear to have become de rigueur for domination frolic and fetish fun.
This opens up a large and highly customer-specific Internet market for companies like Dungeonware, whose paddles start at a mere $25, or the more deluxe Snake Pit Leather Works, which offers "a 100% kangaroo 3-tailed cat with soft and sensuous genuine mink fur at the tips" for a "paltry" $245. At the high end of the business, we find Extreme Restraints, whose fucking machine known as The Plow retails for $550. And, for the extremely affluent, there’s JT’s Stockroom.com, where, for around $3,000, one can custom order the Folsom Bed: "easily accessible and allows for simple installation of chains, for use with a sling. Your bed can go from stylish to dungeon in a matter of minutes!!"
What price cruelty?
With all these BDSM hardware outlets alive and prospering on the Web, the well-heeled bondage aficionado would appear to be spending as much on his or her equipment as the wealthy golf fanatic spends on a 9-iron. Nevertheless, much of this wouldn’t be possible were it not for the ready-made audience supplied by the blogging doms and the rest of the BDSM online community, as well as the synergy generated by that combination.
Even the homepage of Kink.com offers a link to an online store. Kink.com arguably is at the high end of niche-video content providers, with sites like Hogtied, FuckingMachines, SexAndSubmission, WhippedAss, WaterBondage, and MenInPain, and the success story of Peter Acworth—the ingenious driving force behind Kink—is a classic example of, through his acknowledging his own freely admitted kinks, recognizing a market others ignored, or even shunned. From a nickel-and-dime startup, Acworth created a production empire that employs 51 people and boasts between 50,000 and 60,000 subscribers worldwide who pay $20 to $35 a month to watch the weekly updates to Kink’s nine online sites.
In a 25,000-square-foot building in San Francisco’s Mission District (frequently referred to as The Porn Palace), Kink shoots footage on no less than 11 purpose-built sets, at least one with elaborate tanks and plumbing for "water bondage" movies. Acworth’s sites are run by five webmasters, creative directors who devise and oversee all the content, and participate in the generated income. Acworth is so justly proud of what he has achieved, he has introduced a special feature, BehindKink, a new and regularly updated documentary site that takes the consumer backstage and—between lighter trivia like the formidable Kink star Dom Claire Adams recalling how, as a sinister child, she practiced bondage on her Barbie dolls—makes it very clear that Kink is well organized, totally consensual, and definitely no weird house of horrors.
BehindKink sets out to prove, through interviews with Kink’s articulate and highly professional performers (referred to as models) that its product is—far from being a manifestation of the unspeakable—a carefully choreographed exploration of a wholly legitimate sexual subculture. Acworth also uses the site as a forum to echo Matisse and all the others who stress the free choice and sense of community within the BDSM scene. "BDSM is about respect and trust," the site reads. "When you watch a Kink.com movie, you are watching real BDSM-loving people play in this context. We at Kink.com pride ourselves in the authentic reproduction of fetish activities enjoyed by those in the BDSM lifestyle."
One of Acworth’s most recent sites—WiredPussy—caters to a current BDSM vogue for "electric play" with electro-stimulation units, either adaptations of existing machines used by doctors and chiropractors, or newer, design-specific models whose only function is as an adjunct to pain-related sex-play. Although the idea of low-voltage electrical shocks may come as something of a jolt to the uninitiated, WiredPussy is a perfect example of how the general synergy of the BDSM community can be made to work. This electroshock fetish is a comparatively new innovation, but it already has spread across the BDSM social network—online and offline—like a brilliant under-the-radar promotion, effortlessly entering and being accepted into the community’s consciousness.
The inner, inner circle
The process behind the dissemination of electroshock and other new BDSM trends through blogging seems largely organic. Matisse writes how she used "my new electric toy, the Cobra Stinger extensively." Another blogging dom, Miss Octavia, mentions the very same toy. Meanwhile, at JT’s Stockroom, an entire section is devoted to a range of what already has been dubbed E-stim equipment, which includes electric wands, butt-plugs, clamps, and generators. And that, in turn, brings us back to Kink’s WiredPussy, which spreads the word that such things are possible and may even be enjoyed by the so-inclined. An entire new sub-niche within the increasingly powerful BDSM market has been established with an ease and lack of effort that would make any major marketing corporation green with envy.
Any community that has remained underground as long as BDSM and been viewed with intense suspicion needs, by both definition and necessity, to establish lines of communication that, while maybe unorthodox, are super-fast and unbelievably efficient. In this, the market for all practical purposes is turned upside down. Kink.com, JT’s Stockroom, and Mistress Matisse do not need to create consumers. They already are inside a solid and deep-rooted community, and they only have to cater to demanding devotees. To emulate them may not be possible for the outsider; but, if it is possible, a whole mess of ingrained prejudices and reservations have to be set aside before the phenomena can begin to be recognized for what it is.
