ABSTRACT
Although it is often presumed there are more masochists than sadists, nothing is known about their relative numbers. Another assumption is that at least half of them will change roles regularly. The presence of substantial groups of men and women, both gay and straight, who have acted upon such sexual preferences and organized subcultures and networks, has not seduced sociologists to do research among them. The flagrant legal discrimination against sadomasochists, as in the English Spanner case in the early 1990s (the prosecution and conviction of a group of gay men involved in consensual s/m sex, see Thompson), and the elimination of works of art representing sexual humiliation, like the novels of Sade or pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe, have rarely incited political scientists to discuss sadomasochism.
