ABSTRACT
Encouraged by Tony DeBlase and led by the NLA, BDSM organizations in the 1990s created a unitary ethic of BDSM behavior epitomized by “safe, sane, consensual,” which they taught at conferences and dramatized in BDSM literature. They pooled their resources and drew on this rhetoric as they worked to root out domestic violence within the BDSM community and lobbied to change the pejorative characterization of BDSM activities in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). They campaigned against Senator Jesse Helms and raised funds for people in Britain, Canada and the U.S. facing criminal prosecution for consensual BDSM activities. They fought local ballot initiatives threatening to roll-back recent victories for gay and lesbian civil rights, and lobbied for full inclusion in the movement for LGBTQ rights. These efforts slowly changed public perceptions, reflected in film, magazines, newspapers and other media in which sadomasochists were no longer presented as dangerous sociopaths, but “just another alternative lifestyle,” as Rosie O’Donald’s character explained in the 1994 movie Exit to Eden.
