Sadomasochism and Ardent Love: An Historical Perspective
()
About this ebook
This short book by award-winning historian Edward Shorter explores the popular appeal of erotica and the allure of fetish sadomasochism. Shorter, a professor at the University of Toronto, is the author of 'Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire' which was short-listed for Canada’s major literary prize, the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction. Here, he focuses solely on fetish and sadomasochism, a side-bar in the history of desire. It was unknown in the ancient world and for some has been part of tool kit for sexual pleasure for only 100 to 200 years.
Edward Shorter
A social historian of medicine, Professor Shorter has published widely in the field of psychiatry and psychopharmacology. His recent publications include Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire (2005) nominated for the prestigious literary prize The Governor-General’s Award for Non-Fiction; A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry (2005); Shock Therapy: A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness (co-author David Healy, 2007); Before Prozac: The Troubled History of Mood Disorders. In 1995 Professor Shorter won the Jason A. Hannah Medal of the Royal Society of Canada for From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (1992), and in 2000 he was again honored with the Hannah Medal for A History of Psychiatry from the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (1997). He earned his Ph.D at Harvard and he has been the Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine at University of Toronto since 1991.
Related to Sadomasochism and Ardent Love
Related ebooks
Forms of Desire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sadistic Love: My Twenty-Two Year Marriage to a Sexual Sadist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSex Tips from a Dominatrix Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Whore's Manifesto: An Anthology of Writing and Artwork by Sex Workers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Introduction to Kink Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Sadism and Masochism - The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty - Vol. I. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Psychopathia Sexualis: The Classic Study of Deviant Sex Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the Century France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSchizophrenia: the Bearded Lady Disease Volume One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTortured Subjects: Pain, Truth, and the Body in Early Modern France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Dossie Easton & Janet W. Hardy's The New Topping Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBroken Toys: Submissives With Mental Illness and Neurological Dysfunction Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImperial Masochism: British Fiction, Fantasy, and Social Class Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Psychopathia Sexualis: A Medico-Forensic Study Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sadism and Masochism - The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty - Vol. II. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSADISM AND MASOCHISM: The 64 Case Histories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPsychopathia Sexualis: With Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct; A Medico-Forensic Study Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sexual Paraphilias : Therapy by Hick-Farmer Sigmund Freud Wannabes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5SM 101: A Realistic Introduction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5BDSM: Why Am I Kinky? Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVictorian Sexual Dissidence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Consensual Violence: Sex, Sports, and the Politics of Injury Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuerying Consent: Beyond Permission and Refusal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMastering Mind: Dominants With Mental Illness and Neurological Dysfunction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Human Agenda: Conversations about Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeviant Opera: Sex, Power, and Perversion on Stage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Social History For You
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slaves in the Family Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untold History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World's Oldest Profession Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5made in america: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States: Teaching Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stories of Rootworkers & Hoodoo in the Mid-South Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America’s Original Ruling Class Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Sadomasochism and Ardent Love
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Sadomasochism and Ardent Love - Edward Shorter
Sadomasochism and Ardent Love:
An Historical Perspective
By Edward Shorter
Published by Bev Editions at Smashwords
ISBN: 978-0-9878146-4-7
Copyright © 2012 Edward Shorter
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
****
Contents
Introduction
A framework
The story begins
The sm-fetish package
Men and women in traditional sm
Turn-of-the-century sm
Fetish
SM and Fetish join the mainstream
Fetish fashion
About the Author
Notes
****
The remarkable success of Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James has taken the literary world by surprise. Its quick and astounding ascent to the top of the New York Times bestseller list invites us to step back a pace and ask what is going on here? Why has this book, ostensibly about the theme of sadomasochism, one even more deeply tabooed than homosexuality, struck such a chord? How does the raising of sadomasochistic themes in 2012 fit into the larger evolution of sexuality and manners?
In James’s novel, we meet Anastasia Steele, a young virgin working in a hardware store, and Christian, a fabulously wealthy young financier, an experienced player who has already had 15 sm relationships. Ana becomes totally captivated by him and is willing to go the whole nine yards for him even though her subconscious
keeps screaming No!
Sadomasochism tends to fill us with unease precisely because it seems such a repudiation of liberal western values. At its very core lies not the infliction of pain but the submission, complete and total, of one individual to another. The submissive, or bottom in the trade, surrenders all autonomy to the dominant figure, or top. The top becomes all-controlling in a way reminiscent of totalitarian dictatorship. How can we possibly reconcile this with western values? How can we explain the striking uptake of Fifty Shades among what is often described as the mommy set
without assuming that the mommy set has somehow sold out to the North Korean Politburo?
We have to re-jig a couple of assumptions here. One assumption that we as a society have conventionally made for the last thirty years — certainly since 1970s style feminism — is that sex is about power. The early feminist days were full of injunctions about the patriarchy and how male chauvinists used their power to control you in bed in order to control you in every other way as well.
All of a sudden we find an entire generation of fast-track, autonomous young women celebrating not the acquisition of sexual power but its surrender. This is such a striking paradox.
The problem here is that in the 1970s we were switched onto the wrong railway siding. There is such a thing as power relations in sexuality, and we see this played out in rape or in some form of the Stockholm Syndrome, in which the captives come to identify with their oppressors.
But the sexual mainline does not run through power relations, a non-erotic subject. It runs through sensuality. Sex for most people is not about power but about luxuriating in the pleasures of the flesh, about a glass of champagne at ten a.m. Sunday morning and the exquisiteness of calf muscles tightened by high heels or the reach of a muscular male back. Only if we concentrate on sensuality and forget, just for a moment, about power, will we be able to come to terms with Fifty Shades of Grey.
But Fifty Shades of Grey is about a very specific form of sensuality: sadomasochism, which means tying people up and, sometimes, whipping them, or at least administering a few symbolic strokes with a riding crop that redden the skin but do not cause tissue damage. Still, it can be painful. How can this be erotic?
What is erotic here is not the infliction of pain but the exchange of control. This is not everybody’s cup of tea, but for many people the concept of surrendering total control, for a well defined period of time and in the particular context of the bedroom, can be exquisitely sensual. Similarly, assuming control over another person’s erotic experience — it’s you who determines exactly when and how and wearing what outfit she is penetrated — can be a delirious sensual experience. Or determining when and how he is penetrated, ditto. To the glass of champagne on Sunday morning we add a scarf that ties her hands, a pair of handcuffs that fasten his arms behind his back. Does William really accept you as the Mistress with absolute control over him? Let’s test by giving him ten of the best. Does Sally truly acknowledge that you are her Master? Let’s use this new dildo to find out.
So it’s not that William and Sally set