Once considered a mental disorder, today kink is having a moment. Recent movies like Babygirl tell tales of a high-powered woman exploring the world of dominance and submission. In the FX/Hulu series Dying for Sex, based on a true story, a woman who has terminal cancer is introduced to kink with different men. And then, of course, we have 2011’s hugely popular romance trilogy and movie franchise Fifty Shades of Grey. As a result, the once-fringe practice is slowly becoming normalized.
Enter the well-timed new book Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life, by sociologists Alicia M. Walker and Arielle Kuperberg.
Walker is an assistant professor of sociology at Missouri State University and the author of The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife: Power, Pragmatism, and Pleasure in Women’s Infidelity and Chasing Masculinity: Men, Validation, and Infidelity. Kuperberg is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. They both specialize in sex research, but they aren’t out to turn everyone into practitioners of bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism (BDSM).
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They do hope their book offers insight into what their research discovered—that those who identify as BDSM practitioners are overwhelmingly happy in their life and have a supportive, inclusive community. They also explore how people incorporate some of the principles of the kink community—such as trust, communication, community, and creating spaces for self-expression—into the rest of their lives, to good effect.
BDSM is an umbrella term for a variety of sexual practices that involve such things as physical bondage and restraint, giving or receiving pain, dominant and submissive roleplay, and other similar activities. While the term may make people think of sex dungeons, whips, chains, and—perhaps foremost—pain, that is just a small part of the BDSM lifestyle, the authors say.
Their book includes the experiences of more than 2,400 practitioners—male, female, genderfluid, heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual—between the ages of 18 to 62 who took their survey, as well as 96 interviews.
About five million people in Canada and the United States engage in BDSM, the authors note, although recent studies indicate that numerous American couples incorporate elements of BDSM, such as dominant and submissive roleplay, spanking, being tied up or tying up a partner, blindfolding, and playful whipping, into their sexual lives. Still, research reveals that interest in and fantasies about BDSM are much more prevalent than the actual practice.
In an interview with Kuperberg and Walker about their new book, we explored all these themes—and more.
Vicki Larson: Why did you want to delve in the world of BDSM?
Alicia M. Walker, Ph.D.
Alicia M. Walker: I’m always the most interested in the things I don’t personally participate in, what people perceive about their own behavior.
Arielle Kuperberg: I thought it would be an interesting topic and a way to learn more about this secretive community that people seem really, really into. People are like, “Oh, you’re a sex researcher. Let me tell you about this unusual or stigmatized sexual activity I’m participating in because I know you won’t be judgmental of me.”
VL: Your book mentions Fifty Shades of Gray, which brought BDSM into the cultural discourse, for better or worse, but you bring up how it misrepresents BDSM, more as abuse masquerading as BDSM. Are there movies that offer more accurate portrayals?
AMW: By and large, I think portrayals are inaccurate and really play on stereotypes. Most of that has to do with the stigma around it, the fact that people don’t really understand it. If it’s not something that appeals to you, it’s easy to project all kinds of meanings and practices and motivations to what people are doing. The only depiction I’ve seen that’s closer to what people describe to me is Dying for Sex. It was very poignant, very well done, and it was interesting to me that the character ended up pursuing it because she’d never had an orgasm. That actually came up in some of the interviews, as well.
VL: The practitioners mention that BDSM allows them to live more authentically, which you observe is “a courageous act in a society that often marginalizes those who defy conventional norms.” This feels like scary times for people who defy conventional norms. How can people do that in a way that feels safe?
Arielle Kuperberg, Ph.D.
AK: People are very selective about who they come out to. Most people told somebody, but it was mostly people they knew through the BDSM community or close friends. Some people lost friends when they told people they thought they could trust. It’s not about shouting to everyone that you’re into BDSM but finding people you can build that trust with. Given everything that’s happening in the world, you need your community. There are these munches—gatherings of people who are into kink, but there’s no sex involved. It’s purely social. One thing we found was that people who went to munches had huge social networks.
VL: It seems that with all the talk about a loneliness epidemic, there’s a takeaway here.
AK: We looked into the sociology of how you make friends, and BDSM has all these aspects of going to the place where you run into the same people over and over again, and you don’t have to make specific arrangements with that person, but if you keep seeing them, they eventually become your friend. There are a lot of different communities like that. It’s part what your interests are and what’s locally available.
VL: One thing that struck me is that BDSM doesn’t always involve penetrative sex, which many of us believe is the “gold standard.” Yet as we age, penetrative sex isn’t always that easy or comfortable, which often leads some people to abandon sex altogether. In researching for my books, I found that disabled people often have a much more expansive definition of sex; it seems that BDSM practitioners do, too. That appears to be an important message in this rapidly aging world.
AMW: I wouldn’t say they have a different definition of sex, but they have a different definition of pleasure. The folks for whom BDSM doesn’t involve penetrative sex were very clear—hey, it’s not sex. So, their definition was the same as the mainstream definition. But they were also very clear that what they were doing was immensely pleasurable. As a society, we’re so invested in and fascinated by and place high value on intercourse, but that’s not necessarily something everyone is interested in and it’s not necessarily something everyone can do. And so, investigating other avenues of pleasure is really important and a really important takeaway from this group.
VL: I’m curious how BDSM can benefit women, particularly menopausal and post-menopausal women—you know, the time when they are seen as asexual, irrelevant, invisible, and undesirable.
AK: I think it may be very liberating for women of a certain age, especially women who grew up under more sexually repressive norms. I don’t think ideas about women having orgasms and getting a lot of pleasure out of sex were promoted or out there until the ’90s. For some people past their first major relationship, it can be very empowering, even if they don’t persist in them in the long run, to try out sexual experiments.
AMW: The big takeaway for women is the power of being clear about what you want, asking for what you want, and refusing to not get what you want. That’s the most powerful message for women out of this book. And that’s really at the core of BDSM—me saying to you, “This is what really gets it done for me. Are you into that or not into that? And if our needs match up, we’re going to negotiate this scene with each other and give each other what we both need and if I haven’t got what I need, I’m going to say I haven’t got what I need.” We live in a world where people often don’t speak up, especially women.
VL: Many said BDSM allows them to be who they truly are and get what they want within a relationship—something that seems hard to attain for many people. Is that because they learn to be vocal about their desires and needs or is it something else?
AMW: Communication is so necessary in order to safely practice BDSM that it forces people to communicate their needs and to be really clear in their communication. People said over and over in the interviews that they had improved their communication skills because of their participation in BDSM. If women take that from this data, they’re going to take that into their relationships and that’s going to change the dynamics of their relationships.
VL: Many practitioners told you that their kink gave them confidence, which in turn supercharged their pleasure. Tell me more about the role of confidence in sex, as well as the importance of knowing what you want and how to express that.
AMW: When folks talked about their increased confidence, more often they were telling me that “I’m finally voicing my secret desires, I’m finally in a space with other people who fully accept me as I am, and I’m fully accepting myself, and so that is giving me confidence in who I am and that’s translating into spaces outside of BDSM.”
“The big takeaway for women is the power of being clear about what you want, asking for what you want, and refusing to not get what you want.”
VL: Another aspect of BDSM you highlight is the importance of play. Why does play matter so much?
AK: Play allows us to express things we’re afraid of saying. It allows people to experiment with things. I’m thinking back to a class I took on the sociology of games 25 years ago, how it can allow you to practice fear, it can allow you to practice losing, and dealing with loss in a game. Games and play serve a larger function in society, allowing you to take a chance and say things but then be like, oh, it’s just part of the game, doing things in a less risky kind of way. Humans just like play because it’s fun.
VL: You also bring up pain; as you note, research has much to say about its role in heightening pleasure and intensity of orgasms. I think many people only think of BDSM as pain, which may turn off many and maybe cause some to fear being abused. How can people get past the fear of pain?
AK: Not all BDSM is pain. The “B” stands for bondage, not pain. There’s a lot of BDSM in tying people up and handcuffs or blindfolds. People tend to focus on the “S” and “M,” the sadomasochist part. I don’t think it’s about everybody should try this—it’s more like if this is something interesting to you. But BDSM emphasizes consent and making sure you’re OK in the moment, much more so than vanilla sex. There is more risk of feeling something you don’t want to feel if you’re engaging in these practices. The whole thing that makes it BDSM is consent. If you don’t have consent, it is just abuse.
VL: What did you discover in your research that surprised you?
AW: I was just really shocked overall about how happy everybody was, which became the crux of the book. There’s never been another group of people that I’ve interviewed, for every single person that I talked to, who was just wildly happy. And this is a huge sample—96 completed interviews, but I talked to far, far more people who didn’t end up completing interviews. That is just extremely unusual.
VL: What do you hope people take away from the book?
AW: The importance of speaking up and being clear about what you want, the importance of building community where and when you can, finding ways to be more authentic and build a happier life for yourself.
AMW: I would agree with that. Communication, consent, asking for what you want, finding ways to bring more creativity to your life. Exercising your creativity is also an important part of what makes humans happy. There’re many ways you can exercise your creativity.
