Notes 1 Introduction: BDSM + SF&F = Love 1. Jeffrey Weeks (1985) showed that there is a “latent imperialism” at work when SM claims to offer special insight into the truth of sexuality (239). I make no such claims. Indeed, I do not believe, after queer theory, that it is possible to speak of a true sexuality. 2. See, for example, Taylor and Ussher (2001); Langdridge and Butt (2004, 2005); Moser and Kleinplatz (2005); Kleinplatz and Moser (2007); Reiersøl and Skeid (2006). 3. The equivalent “old scene” in London also featured rather rigid roles (Beckmann 2009: 119). 4. The conflict over lesbian BDSM continued well into the 1990s, when crit- ics published Unleashing Sadomasochism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties (Reti 1993). The heirs of Samois defended the “diversity of perversity” and renewed their call for unity among threatened erotic minorities in The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader (Califia and Sweeney 1996). 5. This type of kinky fantasy role-playing began to appear online in the 1990s, in IRC channels such as #snuffsex, #gallows and #dolcett. Dolcett is a popu- lar BDSM artist specializing in representations of extreme torture, snuff and cannibalism. 6. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor presents as a straight male masochist (Siegel 2007: 342) who finds pleasure in letting go of control (Ibid.: 352). While I certainly agree that Nine Inch Nails songs like “Discipline,” “Hap- piness in Slavery” and “Meet Your Master” contribute to a kinky discourse, a close reading of “Head Like A Hole” reveals that it is about bowing down before the god money, and is therefore more a critique of capitalism than a manifesto for erotic submission (contra Weiss 2006a: 109). 7. Delany’s paraliteratures include SF, comic books and pornography. In one sense, paraliterature is the ghetto against which the ivory tower and its canon are defined. But because the relationship between literature and par- aliterature is above all a power relationship, it can be reversed at any time. Thus Delany argues that SF “has used its marginal status as a posi- tion from which to criticize the world” (1999: 150). Similarly, kinky fiction can criticize the concept of a monolithic normative sexuality. Kinky SF could, ironically, benefit from a doubly marginal (hence doubly critical) position. 8. Indeed, Buffy sometimes places the fantastic struggle between good and evil in the deep background, in order to foreground the naturalistic emotional struggles of individual human characters like Xander (“The Zeppo,” B3.13) or Andrew (“Storyteller,” B7.16). 194 Notes 195 2 Submitting to a Loving Mistress: BDSM in William Moulton Marston’s Wonder Woman Comics 1. Freud saw male sexual dominance as a normal feature of mature “genital” sex- uality. Thus he argued, for example, that at the stage of genital primacy, male sadism “takes on, for the purposes of reproduction, the function of overpow- ering the sexual object to the extent necessary for carrying out the sexual act” (1920/1989: 65). 2. However, a significant minority of kinksters prefer Risk Aware Consensual Kink or RACK (see Chapter 1). 3. Gini Scott (1980/1997) found that long-term DS partners “are often espe- cially close. Their experimentation with power, roles, and fantasy contributes to an intimacy that produces closeness in both sexual and nonsexual areas” (77). 4. The idea that male political dominance was bad for women and men was a well-established part of Marston’s philosophy. In an earlier story, Hippolyte had already made the argument that “all men are much happier when their strong aggressive natures are controlled by a wise and loving woman!” (Marston and Peter 1943/2002: 221). 3 Structures of Desire: BDSM in the Science Fiction and Fantasy of Samuel R. Delany 1. Delany’s stories and novels almost always conclude with a date/place sub- scription, indicating when and where the work was composed. In the interest of describing historical context as accurately as possible, I have used these writing dates throughout the main text. Citations, however, refer to date of publication, rather than writing date. 2. Sadly, Marxism is no help here. As Rubin points out, “the issue of consent has been clouded by an overly hasty application of Marxian critiques of bourgeois contract theory to sex law and practice” (1981/1982: 222). So lib- eralism and Marxism share the suspicion that kink can’t be consensual. But the anarchist concept of consent, which is broader, deeper and more open than those of most other political philosophies, may have room for kink (Call 2011). 3. See White (1985) for a good account of the enormous dilemmas which female slaves faced, especially with respect to issues of sexuality and reproduction. 4. From Krafft-Ebing’s vast nineteenth-century inventory of perversions (Krafft- Ebing 1886/1969) through today’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), BDSM has remained one of psychology’s great obsessions. Moser and Kleinplatz (2005) have argued eloquently that the American Psy- chiatric Association should remove sexual sadism and sexual masochism from its DSM. Although the paraphilias will likely remain in the DSM, the proposed revisions to DSM-5 would distinguish paraphilias from paraphilic disorders. This is meant to reflect a consensus among clinicians that paraphilias such as sexual sadism or sexual masochism “are not ipso facto psychiatric disorders” (American Psychiatric Association 2010). 196 Notes 5. In BDSM communities, “consent” typically refers to fully informed, con- scious, deliberate choice. Henkin and Holiday (1996) note that “for an activity to be consensual all participants must have agreed to it; consensuality implies not only that they are conscious of what they are going to do, but also that they are competent to give their consent” (38). Given what we know of Korga, it seems highly unlikely that he is competent to consent. 6. Cannibalism emerged as a popular fantasy role-playing fetish in the late twentieth century. Fetishistic cannibalism was the topic of Usenet’s alt.sex.snuff.cannibalism newsgroup during the 1980s and 1990s. This fetish was represented in the artwork of the popular BDSM artist Dolcett, and in the Japanese guro (“grotesque erotic”) tradition. 7. Delany’s numbering scheme seems to designate, very roughly, the distinctions between what we would call a career or profession (job1), a job (job2), and housework or domestic chores (job3). 8. The emphasis which Delany places on negotiation is not surprising. Real- world BDSM communities often regard negotiation as one of the most important skills. Jay Wiseman calls it the most important (1998: 57). Pat Califia points out that these communities use negotiation for everything from individual scenes to entire relationships (2001: 25). 9. Interestingly, Lacan said of the analytic method that “its operations are those of history” (1968: 19). 4 “This Wondrous Death”: Power, Sex and Death in the Science Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. 1. My hypothesis is that each one of Alice Sheldon’s authorial identities consti- tutes a distinct persona. In the very postmodern epistemological space which Dr. Sheldon clearly inhabited, each one of these personas would, of course, have its own gender identity. I therefore use masculine pronouns when refer- ring to Dr. Sheldon’s male persona (James Tiptree, Jr.). I employ feminine pronouns when referring to Alice Sheldon, or to Dr. Sheldon’s female literary persona, Raccoona Sheldon. 2. Tiptree was so fascinated with this concept that he explored it twice, first in short story form in “We Who Stole the Dream” (Tiptree 1978/1981), then in Brightness Falls From the Air (Tiptree 1985). 3. Baramji’s decision is probably informed by the circumstances surrounding the end of Alice Sheldon’s life. She had contemplated suicide for many years. In 1977, as her husband Ting was slowly going blind, Alice proposed that they enter into a suicide pact. Ting agreed to consider suicide in four or five years (Phillips 2006: 366). Alice wrote a suicide note dated September 1979 (Ibid.: 390), but did not act on her plans until 1987. In May of that year, as her health and Ting’s continued to decline, Alice Sheldon shot and killed Ting, then herself. This move had been foreshadowed in a Tiptree tale called “The Only Neat Thing to Do” (Tiptree 1986c). In this late novella, an intrepid young explorer named Coati Cass finds her body inhabited by a sympathetic alien life form called Syllobene. Cass and Syl form an erotic friendship. But when they learn (in a classic Tiptree move) that Syl’s reproductive process will prove deadly to Cass and to any human who finds her ship, they set the ship’s Notes 197 controls for the heart of the local sun. This story suggests that Tiptree admired lovers who chose double suicide when faced with an ugly death. For Tiptree as for Alice Sheldon, such chosen deaths could be loving and beautiful. 5 Death, Sex and the Cylon: Battlestar Galactica’s Existential Kink 1. The Cylon are a diverse race. In addition to the humanoid models, the Cylon also includes “lower” forms such as the robotic Centurions and the semi-sentient living spacecraft known as Raiders. The Hybrids represent a “higher” form: these hyperintelligent beings are the brains of the Cylon basestars, and at least one humanoid Cylon model (the Twos) consider the inscrutable, non-linear chaos of Hybrid speech to be the literal word of God. 2. Most dialogue quotations are drawn from Sadgeezer transcripts, available at http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/battlestar/. I have made a few minor correc- tions. Dialogue quotations from the second half of Season 4 are my own. 3. Sartre (1943/1956) identified love and hate, along with sadism and masochism, as basic modes of being-for-others (Part Three, Chapter Three).