ABSTRACT
Common stereotypes of consensual sadomasochism (SM) tend to associate these practices with violence, often generating a sense of otherness and danger around such acts. Such inaccurate constructs generate a sense of consensual sadomasochism as ‘deviance’, ‘perversion’ or ‘crime’ (selectively criminalised and enforced) and reflect attempts to instil and delimit the scope of ‘natural sexuality’ (often represented as heterosexuality), which is thus cast as normality. Concepts of truth in the sexual realm constitute the limits of legitimate human sexual expression and discredit certain forms of experience, thereby establishing conditions that dominate our everyday existence. These broader socio-political and cultural conditions and relations of non-consensual power are appropriated in the context of consensual ‘SM’ practice for the generation of mutual pleasures. Consensual SM is a conscious and closely negotiated bodily practice that is based upon agreed limits by those involved (Beckmann, 2009).
