SM 101: A Realistic Introduction (3 page)

Please
seek the advice and opinions of knowledgeable others. Choosing whether or not to participate in SM - and, if so, to what extent - is a terribly important decision. You want to make as informed a choice as possible, and your ability to do that is hampered if your information sources are limited. By all means, get as many “second opinions” as you feel necessary.

Also, I want my fellow community members to regard this book as an explicit invitation to contribute their own thoughts, feelings, and expertise. Please don’t conclude that this book tells all that needs to be told. We could have used a dozen or more books on this topic a dozen or more years ago. If you are working on a book, article, video, or other project that portrays SM realistically, please feel free to contact me regarding whatever advice or assistance I can offer.

For too long, the only widely available material on SM concentrated on its extreme, pathological aspects such as sex murders (which I don’t consider SM at all), or unrealistic fantasy material that perhaps made interesting reading, but was of little practical value. We in the SM community need to remedy that situation.

I worry somewhat about writing this book, because I know some people, despite how carefully and reasonably I present its contents, will be outraged by its mere existence. They will argue I am advocating, rationalizing, or assisting cruelty, violence against women, immoral behavior, sin, and so forth. They will assert the information I present could be used to nonconsensually torture somebody, even if I never intended that. They will insist this knowledge is dangerous and should be suppressed.

My response is as follows:

1. I am absolutely not advocating cruelty, violence against women, or anything similar. SM is distinctly different, and I believe an informed person will readily grasp those differences. I hope that, after reading this book, my reader will be such an informed person.

2. It’s true someone could misuse this information. However, it takes no intelligence to be brutal, and information on techniques is everywhere. Your local library contains abundant information. Indeed, anyone who wanted to learn how to torture somebody could learn all they needed to know by reading the Bible.

I think
much
more harm is caused by misinformed orimproperly educated people than by intentional abuse. One of my goals is to educate people so that, if you will pardon the term, “unintentional” injuries do not occur. Another of my goals is to clarify what behavior the SM community considers pathological.

I’ve occasionally heard of creeps trying to persuade their lovers to accept abuse because it was “part of SM.” I hope the exposure provided by this book greatly reduces such incidents. The Bible says, “He who doeth evil hateth the light.” I want this book to be a floodlight, exposing evil and cruelty.

SM relationships are ultimately relationships between equals.

As to suppression, that is impossible. The recent emergence of films and books with an SM slant, the popularity of handcuffs and chain-style necklaces as jewelry, and the groundswell of interest in the subject (almost 100 SM clubs now exist in the U.S., with several new ones appearing yearly, and they are swamped with inquiries) make suppression completely unrealistic. What is realistic is disseminating accurate information.

Why Am I Writing This?

Hello there, Humankind. My full, legal name is Jay Joseph Wiseman. I’m a heterosexual, Caucasian male and I was born in New Albany, Indiana, on June 16, 1949.

For more than 25 years, I have studied, practiced, and taught the erotic activity most of you know as sadomasochism (SM for short). Before we go on, let me add that you may have a very different understanding of that term than I have. Indeed, a large part of the reason I’m writing this book is to make sure we are talking about the same subject before we discuss it at any length.

Since 1975, I have been a “known member” of a loosely organized, highly diverse group of individuals informally known as the Bay Area SM community. (Please understand that this is a term of collective recognition; no organization with that particular name exists.)

Like all communities, we are a varied lot. We have several (self-appointed) “in crowds” and we have “outcasts.” We have our stars and our peasants. We have our leaders and our followers. Within this community, people make friends and enemies. Within this community, people start romantic relationships and end them. Within this community, people gossip, flirt, bitch, hug, conspire, invent, backstab, celebrate, and sometimes mourn. For reasons I will explain later, I consider the people of this community, when considered as a whole, to be the finest group of human beings it has ever been my proud privilege to know.

(from a student in a beginners’ SM class)
Are all sadomasochists as friendly and nurturing as you guys?

One of the most noticeable characteristics about the Bay Area SM community is its rate of growth. We are
much
larger now than when I first arrived in 1975, and we’re getting bigger all the time. In 1975, only about four organizations existed. All were relatively small and somewhat underground. More than a dozen clubs exist in the area today, along with as many stores, support groups, and similar resources. While exact figures don’t exist, the number of Bay Area people who have willingly participated in at least one explicitly SM-oriented event easily runs into the thousands or even tens of thousands. Furthermore, this phenomenon is not by any means confined to this area. SM organizations also exist in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and many, many other cities.

And there’s more. A recent article in the
San Francisco Chronicle
mentioned that 25% of all adults in this country have at least experimented with bondage.

SM is the riskiest form of sex (and bondage is one of the riskier aspects of SM). In addition to having all risks of regular sex, SM involves, to put it plainly, such things as one person tying another person up, striking them with various blunt instruments, and otherwise “torturing” them. Under such circumstances, the results of either intentional abuse (rare) or accidental injury (much more common) can be serious, even fatal. Unfortunately, “basic instruction manuals” for this form of sex are nowhere near as widely available as they should be.

So the situation is that literally tens of millions of people are experimenting on their own with the riskiest form of sex with little or no basic instruction in its techniques and safety measures. This is, to put it very mildly, unacceptable.

Therefore, I’ve taken it upon myself to write such a basic instructional manual. I have more than 25 years of experience in SM. I’ve given presentations on this topic, either by myself or as part of a panel, dozens of times. Furthermore, I’d like to think that I’m good at presenting information in a useful, written form. I’m not an expert in all aspects of SM (nobody is), but I have the knowledge and experience required to write a solid introduction.

Consider this book a starting point. It won’t cover everything. It won’t deal with advanced philosophies or practices. It won’t go into in-depth discussion of SM’s fine points. It won’t cover any particular subject in exhaustive detail. Those are matters for my knowledgeable fellow practitioners to write about, and some of them have done so.

This book’s purpose is to turn a basically uninformed reader into a basically informed reader, and to turn an unknowledgeable, and therefore unsafe, “player” into a knowledgeable, safe “player.”

I’ve included numerous resources for additional learning and growth. Please take advantage of these resources. While my perspective is a valuable one, there are many other valuable perspectives (and, candidly, a few that are not so valuable). Please seek them out. The more of them you become familiar with, the better your understanding will be.

My main priority in writing this book is to help you become a safe player, not turn you into some sort of kinky sex demon. Because the primary goal of this book is to reduce the number of accidental injuries that occur during SM erotic play, I am going to emphasize the safety aspects. If you look through this book for “hot parts,” you’re going to be disappointed.

Sexual Extremes

“That’s too much.” “That’s going too far.”

In my life, I have seen many sexual activities labeled “going too far.” When I was a child in an average American neighborhood, sex within marriage was permitted, but pre-marital sex was “going too far.” I remember when vaginal intercourse was all right but oral sex was “going too far.” Then oral sex became acceptable but anal sex was “going too far.” Then came group sex, then bisexuality, then... Where will this end?

I believe almost all of the SM community would agree that the following activities would be “going too far.”

1. Doing anything without informed, freely given consent. (I use the consent definition formulated by therapist and SM author Dossie Easton: “An active collaboration for the benefit, well-being, and pleasure of all persons concerned.”)

2. Doing anything that causes great damage or death, even with consent.

3. Doing anything with someone incapable of consent — for example, someone too young, too intoxicated, or too mentally unbalanced to give consent.

Society agrees with these limits. Laws exist regarding all three conditions, and I want to encourage my readers to obey all applicable laws.

I’m serious about that. Obey the laws. Some, like laws regarding age of consent, are highly arbitrary, but I want you to obey them. If you think they’re unfair, then work to change them or move to an area where what you want to do isn’t against the law, but don’t break the law.

I can tell instantly if a man is dominant or submissive: I just tell him to sit on the couch. If he’s submissive, he’ll obey at once. If he looks at me for a moment, deciding for himself, he’s dominant.

As I write this, SM activists around the world are working hard to change unfair laws. SM clubs, publications, and Internet newsgroups can keep you informed about the status of these changes and about how you can help.

Who Is This Book For?

If you are already a member of the SM community, this book is not aimed primarily at you. While you may find it useful, and while I won’t feel at all insulted if you buy it, as a community member you are probably already familiar with at least the basics of such subjects as negotiation, safewords, consent, limits, and so forth. Furthermore, you already have access to that most wonderful of resources: a supportive peer group.

This book is primarily for the person who has not yet contacted our community. This book is for the single person or couple in a small town, hundreds of miles from the nearest SM club. This book is for the person who knows of no other reliable source of basic, realistic information, and who is exploring (and learning the hard way) on their own. This book is for the person whose life circumstances force them to remain deeply“in the closet.” This book is for the person experiencing terrible pain and loneliness because they feel certain they are the only person in the world with such “sick, perverted” desires.

The scope of this book. An old writing truism goes: it’s possible to write about any subject at any length. Another is: it’s always possible to improve the grammar, clarity, and power of something you’ve already written. Given those facts, I had to decide what should, and should not, be covered in this book. I could boil it down to one page or I could expand it to over 1000 pages.

One rational criterion available to a writer is to decide what the work is intended to accomplish, and to evaluate it from that perspective. Will the form it’s in accomplish the “mission” of the book? How do I want my readers to be different after they’ve read it? Will what I’ve written create the change I desire? If it will, then the book is arguably “done.”

Gender neutrality. I have made a diligent effort to write this book in as “gender neutral” a style as possible. (It may not be possible to write a completely pansexual SM book, at least partly because too many people judge a book based much more on its author’s sexual orientation than on the book’s actual content. However, I’ve done my best.) An interest in SM spans all sexual orientations. SM is popular with gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and heterosexuals. I therefore tried to write this book in a way that favors no particular gender or sexual orientation.

Just because you’re a slave to your lover in the bedroom doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to him in the rest of your life.

Basic SM vs. advanced SM.
There is no such thing as risk-free SM. Furthermore, opinions regarding which practices are acceptably safe vary between expert practitioners. This book is an introductory text that describes the most basic, safest practices. Please understand that experienced practitioners may play with “advanced” procedures that you, as a beginner, may have been told “never” to do. This does not necessarily make such people unsafe or irresponsible players; it also does not make them “better” than you. Nor should you think it inevitable that you will one day do such things.

Please understand that, as is true in many other fields, highly experienced practitioners may choose to do things that beginners are told to avoid. If you see what appears to be an experienced player doing something that you were told never to do, consider asking them about it afterwards. They may (or may not) know something useful - most of them are skilled, careful practitioners, but some of them are reckless nutcases. As always, listen carefully and come to your own conclusions.

An invitation to knowledgeable others.
Many people understand SM more deeply than I understand it. Many people understand some technical aspects of it much better than I do. I want such people to see the publication of this book as an explicit invitation to contribute works of their own. This is an introductory manual, not the last word.