ABSTRACT
Can waterboarding your partner ever be an act of intimacy? Why is the 18th-century British naval discipline a possible source of inspiration for what people do in bed today? This chapter investigates the deeply troubling, heavily contested, and sometimes disturbingly erotic similarity between contemporary BDSM practices and certain forms of torture. In particular it poses the question of whether there is any sort of hard and fast rule that allows us to pick the two apart, and what the consequences are if such a metric cannot readily be found. Is there any other way to position BDSM than asking whether it is or isn’t reminiscent of torture and violence?
