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Running Head: BDSM THEORY Dominant, Submissive, Or Both? Why Different Individuals Identify with and Benefit from the Different

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Running Head: BDSM THEORY Dominant, Submissive, Or Both? Why Different Individuals Identify with and Benefit from the Different Running Head: BDSM THEORY Dominant, Submissive, or Both? Why Different Individuals Identify With and Benefit from the Different BDSM Roles Kylie Lipa Johns Hopkins University BDSM Theory 2 Introduction BDSM is an acronym that stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. While the amount of research done on the practice of BDSM is minimal relative to the amount of research done on other topics of human sexuality, some research has been done, and theories as to why couples engage in the practice and how it affects those who engage in it have been proposed. The theory behind why people practice BDSM (though the focus is mainly on the practice of masochism) that I would like to explore is Roy Baumeister’s theory that masochism (submission)* is used as an escape from the self. He proposes that submission is an intense means of losing higher-level self-awareness, and this is desirable because it takes the submissive away from all the stress and pressure he or she may be under and allows the submissive to relinquish control. This explains why people who have a lot of stress in their lives and/or jobs or have leadership positions in their jobs may tend to identify with submissive roles such as “bottom,” “sub,” or “slave.” However, Baumeister’s theory fails to discuss why some people prefer the opposite: why some people take a more dominant role such as “top,” “dom,” or “master/mistress.” I would like to propose the hypothesis that people who take a dominant role in BDSM tend to be the opposite of those who identify with a more submissive role: they tend to be people who are more out of control and who do not deal with a great deal of stress and pressure in their jobs and lives. To test this hypothesis, fifteen active members of the Maryland/Virginia/Washington D.C. area BDSM * In this paper, I will replace Baumeister’s terms “masochist” and “masochism” with the terms “submissive” and “submission,” respectively, because people who identify with any of the numerous submissive roles are being discussed here (while “masochist” technically only refers mainly to those who enjoy receiving pain). BDSM Theory 3 community were interviewed about their BDSM roles, their BDSM practices, and their personal and professional lives. What BDSM Is As stated before, BDSM stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. It is a very complex concept to define, but it is usually recognized as having several components: “the appearance of dominance and submission, role playing, mutual (voluntary) consent to participate, mutual definition (a shared understanding of activities), [and] a sexual (or erotic) context” (Williams, 2012). It includes a very wide range of activities, including—but not limited to—spanking, whipping/flogging, rope bondage, use of cuffs, verbal humiliation, hair pulling, hot candle wax, biting, scratching, breath play, fisting, needle play, electrotorture, CBT (cock and ball torture), using ball gags, pinching, slapping (breasts, face, etc.), and much, much more. Essentially, in sadomasochism there is a “psychological imbalance of power between partners, in which one is submissive and the other dominant” (Gross, 2006). Masochist (along with slave, sub, and bottom) is a submissive role, while sadist (along with master/mistress, dom, and top) is a dominant role. There is also a third role: the switch. People who identify as switches literally switch roles at times; sometimes they play the dominant one and sometimes they act as the submissive one during BDSM play. Sadomasochism can be played out in a “scene.” This is some type of fantasy scenario that incorporates certain BDSM practices that can be played out by the dominant partner and the submissive partner. These scenes are devised and agreed upon by both partners ahead of time (before they begin), and limits are set as well. BDSM Theory 4 Submission as an Escape from Self Psychologist Roy Baumeister presents a theory in an effort to explain why people choose to practice BDSM in a submissive role: people actually practice the masochistic (submissive) aspect of BDSM as “an attempt to escape from self, in the sense of achieving a loss of high-level self-awareness.” (Baumeister, 1988). He theorizes that submission is like physical exercise, meditation, and drunkenness, because these things all help a person to “escape from normal self-awareness.” The difference is that masochism is a much more intense means of escape. Why would anyone want to get away from the self? Because of any number of stresses and pressures that people are under. Making important and difficult decisions, dealing with disappointments, pressure from a job, having to overcome tough situations, having to take responsibility for one’s actions, maintaining one’s image, or any number of stressors could cause a person to want to escape from high-level self-awareness. Baumeister looks at each of the three main forms of submission—pain, bondage, and humiliation—and explains how each contributes to escape from the self. Pain (spanking, whipping, paddling, caning, electrocution, nipple clamps, face-slapping, and dripping hot wax on the body, among many other things), “blots out broader self-awareness, focusing the person narrowly on the here and now,” meaning that pain focuses the person completely on only what is happening to him or her in that very moment. Bondage (being restrained with rope, handcuffs, gags, blindfolds, scarves, etc.), takes away a person’s freedom to take initiative or exert any control, and the person is left helpless and takes a completely passive role. Humiliation (this can include a massive number of things, from name-calling to being ordered BDSM Theory 5 around to being “forced” to perform sex acts in front of an audience) “makes it impossible to sustain one’s dignity and self-esteem and even one’s social identity.” This is because the activities engaged in are usually incompatible with one’s identity outside of BDSM play. Let’s use a successful business owner as an example. Being led around on a leash, spanked, referred to as “slave,” and ordered to lick a dominant partner’s boots is not compatible with one’s identity as a professional and successful business owner, and participating in these activities “temporarily removes that identity.” Baumeister also considers how all of this might contribute to sexual arousal. He theorizes that “self-awareness can be detrimental to sexual excitement and pleasure.” He discusses Masters and Johnson’s work. They proposed that fear of sexual inadequacy has the strongest negative impact on effective sexual functioning. Baumeister interprets this to mean that “evaluative self-attention impairs sexual functioning.” Therefore, he reasons that removing self-awareness through the practice of submission can enhance sexual arousal. Baumiester’s theory explains why people who experience a great deal of stress and pressure in their lives or who have power or leadership in their careers, (and this doesn’t just include people in exceptionally high positions of power, like politicians and business executives) would want to practice submission. It is a chance to get away from the pressure of being in control and not have to take responsibility and deal with the stress one faces. It is a temporary escape from one’s own identity and responsibilities. Hypothesis BDSM Theory 6 While Baumeister proposes an excellent theory to explain why people engage in submission, he does not offer an explanation as to why some people engage in dominance. His theory suggests that people who have a lot of stress and responsibility and who are under a lot of pressure tend to engage in submission in order to lose control and escape from the pressure. It is my hypothesis that people who engage in sadism are just the opposite: people without a lot of control and with less stress and pressure in their jobs and lives. Method Participants Research participants were fifteen active members of the MD/VA/DC area BDSM community (seven males and eight females) between the ages of twenty and seventy. Most participants (twelve out of fifteen) identified their sexual orientation as being something other than heterosexual (such as queer, bisexual, pansexual, etc). All participants had been active in the BDSM community for at least six months. Apparatus All interviews were recorded on an Olympus WS-802 digital voice recorder (with a voice distorting feature), and all recordings were transcribed to Microsoft Word documents. Procedure Participants were randomly approached at semi-public BDSM community events in the MD/VA/DC area and asked if they would be willing to participate in a research project on the local BDSM community. Once oral consent was obtained, participants were moved to a quiet area of the event venue and interviewed. All interviews were recorded on a digital voice BDSM Theory 7 recorder. Participants’ names were not collected; instead, participants were catalogued by age, gender, and sexual orientation. During the interviews, participants were asked: (a) what BDSM role they identify with, (b) whether they enjoyed (depending on their role) giving and/or receiving humiliation, bondage, and pain, and, if so, why they thought they enjoyed each one, (c) how stressful their work environment and home environment is using a scale of 1 to 10 (they were also asked to elaborate on their assessments), (d) whether they would describe their position at work as one of leadership, and (e) how much pressure they work under at their job using the same scale of 1-10 (they were also asked to elaborate on this assessment). Completed interviews were then transcribed and saved as Microsoft Word documents. Here, stress and pressure mean whatever participants interpreted them to mean.
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