When I was still a young and naïve budding BDSM researcher, I did not know where to start reading. Over the decades, countless researchers from a variety of disciplines have written so much on the topic! And as there is not yet a “field” to speak of, there is no canon that you can fall back on. Luckily, I had a friend with more experience. He sent me a two page document filled with books and articles I could check out. Now, five years later, I do consider myself an expert. Enough to know my fair share about the history of BDSM research. And I decided it was high time someone wrote the book that I wished existed when I just started. So, I figured, if the book you want to read doesn’t exist, you have to write it yourself!
This is why, in November, I set down for Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) and drafted the first two chapters in as many weeks. The idea had been simmering in the back of my mind ever since I wrote the first outline six months earlier. I had kept up on my reading. I had been thinking. But I hadn’t put a word down on paper yet. (If you’re in the Humanities or Social Sciences, this should sound familiar.) So, armed with my notes and collection of about 1500 articles, I sat down. And I wrote.
About the history of BDSM research project
I wrote about 20.000 words on feminist theories on BDSM. I discussed the edited volume Against Sadomasochism, with an essay by Judith Butler. Then, I talked about the volumes that emerged from the Barnard Conference, which became a personal obsession of mine. (Maybe I’ll tell you more about that conference later, it’s a great story!) And I started linking the arguments and issues in these texts to contemporary scholarship. Because, get this, there’s no “standing on the shoulders of giants,” if no giants are identified! Which means that the same arguments get repeated over and over. Even though sometimes you find them in the strangest emanations. I must confess that every time I found a pro-BDSM scholar who thought they came to a very original conclusion that turned out to coincide with an anti-SM argument in Against Sadomasochism, I snickered. And I ended up snickering a lot.
Well, all funniness aside, it makes sense, doesn’t it? The existence of BDSM-desires brings up a lot of interesting issues and questions. And many of these questions have never been resolved. Now, it is my firm belief that as long as we don’t unite and work together to start something that resembles a field, we will never be able to. We need to talk to each other, across disciplinary lines. And we need to find a way to extract those pressing issues, without having to dedicate five years of our life just to find out what texts we should read. So, there we go. “Thinking BDSM” was born. Now, of course I couldn’t keep up the tempo of those two AcWriMo weeks. Life interfered, and as you can see on this site, I have more projects to worry about.
In Conclusion
But even now that I haven’t looked at my files for two months, I am still convinced that I will write this book. I need to write this book. Soon. This project excites me in a lot of ways. I like what it could mean to an emerging field. But I also like tracing the arguments throughout the decades. To find out that now, after fifty years of moving in the other direction, our views of BDSM are starting to allign more with Krafft-Ebing’s original interpretation is pretty awe-inspiring. And to see that in recent scholarship on asexual BDSM practitioners we are urged to redefine BDSM practices altogether, is incredibly stimulating.
Many exciting things are happening in the “field” of BDSM research. And maybe when we have a History of BDSM Research to speak (or read) of, we can leap forward some more. One can only hope.
With this project, as well as any other project I’m working on, I can always use your feedback. So if you’d like to read it and give me some pointers, just send me a message. As a thank you, I will acknowledge you personally on my website, with a link to your personal website attached. And if you want more updates on my projects, just look in the sidebar and subscribe to the newsletter!