Intro: Kink in NYC

Text By Alexandra Huddleston
Originally posted on newmedia.jrn.columbia.edu/ 2004 issue 1 story 3

A man takes off his black leather pants, kneels, and bends over a wood and leather apparatus that resembles something out of a medieval torture chamber. A woman cuffs his hands behind his back and then rubs his bottom, to warm it up. She begins to spank him with a wooden paddle.

On a stage, a couple of meters away, a woman covered in black leather whips another woman who has her hands cuffed in chains suspended from the ceiling. She is naked. A group of onlookers, mainly white men and women between 30 to 50 years old, chat quietly and drink non-alcoholic drinks. A man crawls past on all fours, following his “mistress”.

I don't beat anyone unless they want to be beaten, and they have just as much fun as I do . - Firefly

This is a regular Saturday night at Paddles, a club that has been serving New York's BDSM community since 1984. It just looks a bit like a cross between a gymnasium and a gothic novel.

“I don't beat anyone unless they want to be beaten, and they have just as much fun as I do,” says Firefly, a 38 year-old pediatrician and a dominatrix. Firefly, a petite woman with dark hair, uses a pseudonym in the world of BDSM for fear of censure by the outside world, but she says she feels safe and comfortable at Paddles, an underground venue many might hesitate to enter.

BDSM, short for bondage and disciple, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism, is one of the most widely censured forms of sensual activity. It's often associated with fear and danger, even perversion and psychosis. A look into New York's BDSM community, however, reveals a world that is surprisingly organized and governed by a doctrine of safety.

BDSM includes a wide rage of alternative – some say deviant – forms of sensual interaction, everything from spanking, whipping, bondage, cutting, foot worship, and piercing, to role play. The public face of New York City's BDSM community is made up of a handful of non-profit organizations and clubs like LSM, the Lesbian Sex Mafia, and TES, the Eulenspiegel Society, the oldest BDSM non-profit in the country, founded in 1971.

Organizations like LSM set the standard of behavior in the BDSM word. They say their mantra is safe, sane, and consensual BDSM.

Organizations like LSM and Paddles hold regular meetings and seminars on physical and psychological safety issues. Their Websites include pages of rules on behavior and safety guidelines.

“I go to a place like TES or LSM and I learn how to do things safely, and I teach people how to do things safely, because in the end it's about pleasure,” says Lolita Wolf, a long time player in New York's BDSM community and a member of the LSM. “How else are people going to learn this stuff, and how else are people going to feel comfortable psychologically, as well as comfortable that they've made it safe physically?”

Part of the reason the BDSM community is so dedicated to its mantra of safe, sane and consensual play is that there are legitimate physical and psychological safety concerns. After all, BDSM includes activities where violence is done to the human body. In the chat room for health issues on www.Maxfisch.com, a website for professional dominatrix and their clients, members bring up issues like how to heal itchy skin caused by a caning, how long a whipping should take to heal, and how to keep sex toys clean.

“In all sexual intimacies, there are risks when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable,” says Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz. “Erotic adventures are replete with dangers, but we are often not aware of the risks involved in emotional, interpersonal, and erotic stagnation.”

Kleinplatz is a clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist at the University of Ottawa. A teacher and researcher on issues of human sexual behavior, Kleinplatz has argued for the removal of sexual sadism from the American Psychiatric Association's manual of mental disorders. During a phone interview she said that sexual boredom and stagnation bring clients into her office more than any other issue.

Kleinplatz emphasizes the importance of consent and clear communication between partners before erotic play. “Certainly for psychological safety, one would need it to be consensual,” she said. “The people involved need to be capable of giving informed consent. Therefore, we'd be talking about adult behavior.” Children cannot give informed consent.

“It takes a tremendous amount of trust to let someone tie you up,” says Wolf. “A lot of that trust is through communicating and integrity.”

Wolf explains that each of her partners have different boundaries, and they are always communicated ahead of time. With one partner, she's allowed to have one beer before BDSM begins, with another, none. Many BDSM venues, like Paddles, don't serve any alcohol. Mixing drugs and BDSM is even more heavily discouraged. Organizations like the Lesbian Sex Mafia do not considered it sane BDSM.

One of the main ways groups like LSM try to ensure consensual BDSM is by mandating the use of a safeword. Many people enjoy saying “stop” or “no” in BDSM activities, even when they don't want their partner to stop. So, a safeword, such as “red,” is negotiated between partners ahead of time. If the party submitting really wants things to stop, they can use the safeword.

As the flogging continued on stage at Paddles, a man whose name in the SM community is Daddy Lincoln, 48, points out that the handcuffs are lined with foam rubber. The dominant partner will never hit on the joints or on the face. She always flogs across the shoulders, not on the spin, he explains.

For most BDSM players, safe BDSM means experience and communication. Wolf enjoys working with needles. She says she learned her techniques from trained piercers to ensure that she is as safe and as health conscious as possible.

“There's not a lot of danger in playing with needles unless you don't know what you're doing,” she says. “So, part of the risk assessment is about knowing how experienced or educated your partner is.”

“When you're doing anything, it's the buddy system, as it would be finding the outhouse at Girl Scout camp in the middle of the night,” says Abby Ehmann, 44, an events organizer in the BDSM community. “You keep checking with your partner, and say, are your hands falling asleep? Do you feel any tingling? Does this hurt too much?”

People are scared of getting fired. People are also scared of losing their children.

In general, people have difficulty being honest about what they seek sexually, says Dr. Kleinplatz, which is why she emphasizes the importance of honesty and transparency when communicating about sexual desire and activity. “In the world of most conventional, traditional sexuality people are not encouraged to be straightforward and honest about their wishes,” she says. As a result, the BDSM community has an advantage because communication and negotiation is the norm, she says.

One of the most common fears for members of the BDSM community is censure from the outside world, which they call the vanilla world. “People are scared of getting fired,” says Wolf. “People are also scared of losing their children.”

There is also the danger of getting arrested if a situation is misunderstood by the police. “They see someone being beaten and think: You're being beaten. You're getting bruised. How could you possibly like that? You, the beater, have to be arrested because this is assault,” says Ehmann.

As she watches the “safe, sane and consensual” BDSM unfold around her at Paddles, Firefly acknowledges that the outside world might not approve of a dominatrix pediatrician. “People might be uncomfortable with me if they knew I was in this kind of situation, but it's all adults, all consensual,” she said.

While the danger of exposure remains, Ehmann says that BDSM has become much more mainstream in the last 10 years. There is even a university recognized BDSM discussion organization at Columbia University that was founded 10 years ago. Like any student group, they use the university buildings and financial and computing resources.

Despite the efforts in the BDSM world to create a safe and structured community, for some, the taboo and the sense of danger are integral to the BDSM experience. Ehmann says she thinks all the rules make clubs like TES as serious and dry as a bridge club.

“I don't enjoy being mainstream,” says Ehmann. “So the fact this has become more mainstream, is not a plus for me.”

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