Sexual Outsiders: Understanding BDSM Sexualities and Communities

Sexual Outsiders: Understanding BDSM Sexualities and Communities
Author: David M. Ortmann
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2012-11-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1442217375

Sexual Outsiders: Understanding BDSM Sexualities and Communities delves into the unique experiences of individuals in BDSM communities. While misunderstandings surrounding these communities prevail, BDSM sexuality cuts across race, gender, nationality, and sexual orientation. BDSM describes forms of sexuality that incorporate restraint, pressure, sensation, training, and elements of both erotic and non-erotic power exchange between the engaged parties. Some BDSM “scenes” include role-playing, spanking, blindfolds, ropes, and erotic costuming. Sexual Outsiders is designed as a guide for BDSM community members who must wade through the quagmire of unique problems they face: coming out to family, friends and partners; distinguishing abusive relationships from healthy consensual ones; finding and developing community; overcoming shame and denial; exploring whether BDSM sexuality can be a healing tool; gaining access to quality, culturally competent psychotherapy; and finding strategies to develop a healthy sexual self-esteem in the face of current medical and social standards that view them as sick or pathological. The book also serves as an educational primer for those whose partners, friends, and family members are involved in BDSM. In terms of challenges faced by BDSM communities, the most significant is living with a stigmatized sexuality shame, prejudice, discrimination, isolation, depression, and a lack of adequate, competent mental health care. Issues such as coming out as a sexual minority, finding community and partners, and dealing with scenes and relationships that go wrong are some the common experiences shared by members of BDSM communities. Sexual Outsiders employs common sense, good humor, and vivid anecdotes while incorporating basic ideas about human behavior, psychology, philosophy, interviews, history, and clinical case studies to illustrate the real lives and experiences of men and women in BDSM communities. Anyone wanting to learn more about this unique, and more-common-than-you-think expression of sexuality, will find in these pages insight into the various challenges BDSM practitioners face, and the many strengths that people in the BDSM communities have developed in the face of social stigma and prejudice.

Sexual Outsiders

Sexual Outsiders
Author: David M. Ortmann
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2013
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1442217359

This study draws on common sense, humor, anecdotes, interviews, history, clinical case studies, analyses of human behavior, and basic ideas from psychology and philosophy to ilustrate the real lives and experiences of men and women in BDSM communities.

A Lover's Pinch

A Lover's Pinch
Author: Peter Tupper
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2018-08-10
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1538111187

A worldwide subculture that influences everything from fashion to advertising, sadomasochism has a long and lively history. A Lover’s Pinch tells the story of consensual sadomasochism, from a controversial religious practice to a secretive sexuality branded a perversion. The origins of kink and fetish culture have been shrouded in secrecy and myths, until now. Here, Peter Tupper reveals the true story of sadism and masochism, dominance and submission. From the ancient Christian flagellants to the Fifty Shades trilogy, the history of consensual sadomasochism is a story of fascinating individuals, unlikely connections and strange twists and turns. Meet Arthur Munby, the Victorian gentleman who secretly married Hannah Cullwick, his maid of all work, and called her his slave; and Jack McGeorge, the UN weapons inspector who was outed as a BDSM club leader just before the Iraq war. Explore the links between Robinson Crusoe,Uncle Tom's Cabin and modern BDSM pornography, and between fetish fashion and anti-Catholic propaganda. Learn how the 19th century middle-class household nurtured dominant-submissive sexuality. Discover the secret history of a hidden world. Winner, 2019 Geoff Mains Non-Fiction Book Award, NLA-International

MEANING OF BDSM EXPERIENCES

MEANING OF BDSM EXPERIENCES
Author: Kandice Van Beerschoten
Publisher: Teneo Press
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2017-03-10
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9781934844540

The Meaning of BDSM Experiences: A Psychodynamic Perspective is important reading for researchers of perversions, sexual behaviors, and BDSM because it provide a framework and insights based on careful analysis of case studies.

Playing on the Edge

Playing on the Edge
Author: Staci Newmahr
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2011-02-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0253005124

Representations of consensual sadomasochism range from the dark, seedy undergrounds of crime thrillers to the fetishized pornographic images of sitcoms and erotica. In this pathbreaking book, ethnographer Staci Newmahr delves into the social space of a public, pansexual SM community to understand sadomasochism from the inside out. Based on four years of in-depth and immersive participant observation, she juxtaposes her experiences in the field with the life stories of community members, providing a richly detailed portrait of SM as a social space in which experiences of "violence" intersect with experiences of the erotic. She shows that SM is a recreational and deeply gendered risk-taking endeavor, through which participants negotiate boundaries between chaos and order. Playing on the Edge challenges our assumptions about sadomasochism, sexuality, eroticism, and emotional experience, exploring what we mean by intimacy, and how, exactly, we achieve it.

Sadomasochism and the BDSM Community in the United States

Sadomasochism and the BDSM Community in the United States
Author: Stephen K. Stein
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2021-02-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000346072

Sadomasochism and the BDSM Community in the United States: Kinky People Unite chronicles the development of sadomasochistic sexuality and its communities in the United States from the post-war period to the present day. Having evolved from scattered networks of sadomasochists to a coherent body bound by shared principles of "safe, sane, consensual," activists worked to transform popular perceptions of their community, end its routine harassment by law enforcement and win inclusion in American society. Often paralleling the work of LGBTQ activists, people who engaged in BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism) transformed both their own sexual practices and how outsiders perceived them, successfully changing popular perceptions of them from fascists, murderers, and outlaws to people living an alternative lifestyle. The development of this community highlights the interactions of people of different sexual orientations within a sexual community, the influence of various campaigns for sexual freedom, and the BDSM community's influence on popular perceptions of sexuality and sexual freedom. The text’s historical perspective gives depth and texture to a specific dimension of American history of sexuality. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the history of sexuality. Its clear and direct approach offers an important and useful chronology of a movement that has long been neglected.

The Heart of Dominance

The Heart of Dominance
Author: Anton Fulmen
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2016-07-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781534810174

The Heart of Dominance is a how-to guide to the concepts and skills at the heart of consensual dominance. If you are new to dominance, still figuring out just what it's all about or what you want it to mean to you, then this book will provide you with a solid foundation from which to start. If you already practice dominance and are interested in improving your ability to create deep and lasting power dynamics then you'll find many advanced concepts and concrete techniques to integrate into your own personal style. If you have an interest in the bedrock principles of inspiring, deepening, maintaining and enjoying control over a person who dearly, desperately wants you to control them, then this book is for you.

Modern Sexuality

Modern Sexuality
Author: Michael Aaron
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2016-10-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1442253223

Human sexuality today stands at the crossroads between biological diversity and social conformity, and a battle between the two rages in the media, in social institutions, and in our daily lives. As a sex therapist, Michael Aaron witnesses this struggle each and every day as it plays out on his therapy couch. Modern Sexuality: The Truth about Sex and Relationships examines how biology and society collide head-on in the realm of human sexuality. Here, Aaron carefully and convincingly debunks some of the most commonly held beliefs about sexuality – that it is learned and can be changed; that “abnormal” sexual behavior is pathological; that healthy sexuality involves intimacy; that intimacy is the same to everyone; and that sexuality must have a clearly defined purpose. Using groundbreaking brain-imaging studies and cutting- edge psychological insights,Modern Sexuality presents the overwhelming case for sexual diversity including orientation, non-traditional relationships, and even specific fantasies and kinks. In a world where sexual “outsiders” battle for acceptance, this work helps to explore the variety of sexual expressions from a normative standpoint, helping readers to understand that their own desires and those of others can happily exist on the same continuum.

The Routledge International Handbook of Social Work and Sexualities

The Routledge International Handbook of Social Work and Sexualities
Author: SJ Dodd
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2021-07-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000408655

- Includes contributions from a wide range of international authors. - The first book to address the dynamic issues related to sexuality from a social work perspective. - Provides a holistic overview of the topic by including both diverse and inclusive perspectives.

Understanding Asexuality

Understanding Asexuality
Author: Anthony F. Bogaert
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1442201002

Asexuality can be defined as an enduring lack of sexual attraction. Thus, asexual individuals do not find (and perhaps never have) others sexually appealing. Some consider "asexuality" as a fourth category of sexual orientation, distinct from heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality. However, there is also recent evidence that the label "asexual" may be used in a broader way than merely as "a lack of sexual attraction." People who say they have sexual attraction to others, but indicate little or no desire for sexual activity are also self-identifying as asexual. Distinct from celibacy, which refers to sexual abstinence by choice where sexual attraction and desire may still be present, asexuality is experienced by those having a lack or sexual attraction or a lack of sexual desire. More and more, those who identify as asexual are "coming out," joining up, and forging a common identity. The time is right for a better understanding of this sexual orientation, written by an expert in the field who has conducted studies on asexuality and who has provided important contributions to understanding asexuality. This timely resource will be one of the first books written on the topic for general readers, and the first to look at the historical, biological, and social aspects of asexuality. It includes firsthand accounts throughout from people who identify as asexual. The study of asexuality, as it contrasts so clearly with sexuality, also holds up a lens and reveals clues to the mystery of sexuality.