The Leatherman’s Handbook

Larry Townsend, Le Salon, 1972

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that in 2022 there are no sexual taboos, but it is fair to say a wide variety of sexual subcultures and kinks (a term that has ceased to be strictly synonymous with the clearly pejorative “perversion”) has emerged from the shadows in this second decade of the 21st century. Among them: BDSM, shorthand for bondage, discipline and sadomasochism, a form of consenting-adult sex play at the shadowy borders where pain and pleasure meet. I blame and credit popular media like the 2011-2012 Shades of Grey novels (the bizarre offshoots of author E.L. James / Erika Leonard’s fan fiction inspired by the teen-friendly Twilight vampire movies ... and that’s as far down that rabbit hole as we’re going) for watering it down and making it palatable to the general public.

How mainstream has at least discussing BDSM become? We’re talking Marie Claire magazine publishing “BDSM Novels to Curl Up With for a Steamy Night In,” and name-checking Rihanna’s bouncy 2010 hit “S&M” in the third sentence. There are precedents, of course, though the less said about the Garry Marshall comedy Exit to Eden (1994), based on Anne Rice’s 1985 non-vampire BDSM novel, the better. But even that film depicted BDSM as the exotic subculture that it was within both gay and straight communities, and a lifestyle / orientation widely perceived as marginal and scary. Look no further than Gerald Walker’s 1970 novel Cruising, the basis for William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 film that made leather bars look like some circle of Dantean Hell.