BDSM Modern History
Between 1751 and 1766, Sir Francis Dashwood ran a club that met twice a month in the caves beneath Medmenham Abbey in Buckinghamshire, England. Ostensibly a religious order, the club members in fact reveled in subversive activities, worshipping pagan deities from Greece and Rome, and reviving a number of practices they ascribed to those times, including consensual flagellation as a sexual act.
In the wake of the Second World War, where motorbikes were used extensively in the army, motorcycle clubs in the USA developed a strong independent social identity, leading to the creation of the biker subculture. Several of these became a focus for gay men, notably in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and from the clubhouses used by those bikers started the first leather bars.
In 1956 a gay Finnish soldier, Touko Laaksonen, started publishing erotic drawings based on the black leather uniform and boots that had been a formative influence upon him during the Second World War. This set the aesthetic for gay leather culture which was formalized in 1972 by Larry Townsend in his book "Leatherman's Handbook".
Meanwhile, on the heterosexual side, the ideas publicized by the 18th-century subversives were kept alive by artists and writers; notably John Willie, Eric Stanton and Irving Klaw whose pinup pictures of Bettie Page brought into the mainstream images that previously had been restricted to illustrations of erotic books such as Fanny Hill and the Histoire d'O (Story of O).
The practical knowledge of how to carry out BDSM activities safely slowly percolated from the gay leather clubs via the fisting scene which was accepting of women (who had smaller fists). In 1971 The Eulenspiegel Soceity was set up in New York - the first modern public group dedicated to BDSM open to heterosexuals.
In Europe, things were also starting to stir. In the 1970s fetish magazines such as Atomage, based around spanking, bondage, and rubber clothing used personal advert columns which put devotees in touch with each other (for example, the Macintosh Club). Play parties that previously had been strictly private or connected with the establishments of professional dominatrices such as Miss Whiplash started to be run on a commercial basis. In 1983, a club called Der Putsch was started in London, leading to magazines such as Skin Two, and more clubs being started, such as Submission, Torture Garden and Whiplash. Earlier public clubs in the UK include one running in Edinburgh in 1957, also called the Hellfire Club.
And so things progressed, until the creation of Internet Relay Chat, where BDSMers soon started to congregate on an invitation-only channel named #bondage. When in 1989 the USENET newsgroup alt.sex.bondage was created, the IRC regulars immediately took it over and turned a joke into a serious discussion forum, later to be followed by uk.people.bdsm and soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm. In Silicon Valley, to the south of San Francisco, Greenery Press published serious BDSM 'how to' books by Janet Hardy, Jay Wiseman, John Warren, Midori, Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt (aka: Janet Hardy). The burgeoning BDSM scene in that area contained many computer literate people, and they started using the internet to arrange real-life meetings. In the early 1990s the first regular publically announced 'munch' was started there by STella, and soon followed by others across America, and then Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany. In 1993 the first web page describing BDSM and giving information about clubs and munches was written by Pallando.
In 1992 a march through the streets of London was organized by a group, Countdown on Spanner, to support the legal fight of 12 gay men who in 1987 were arrested and imprisoned for participating in consensual sadomasochistic acts. This SM Pride March became an annual event and was supported strongly by participants in the new internet online BDSM culture, leading to open days full of workshops and eventually the creation of an SM Pride organization. More informational websites sprung up, both in the UK and the USA.
Legally the USA had an easier time than the UK. The Folsom Street Fair has been running since 1984, as part of San Francisco's Leather Pride Week, and the International Mister Leather competition has been running since 1979. Large annual fundraising, play, and educational events (called conferences, weekends, or festivals) get held in many parts of the country, such as Thunder in the Mountains, Leather Leadership Conference, Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, New York Leather Weekend, Living in Leather, Shibari Con and Tribal Fire. Around this has grown an infrastructure of support organizations, such as Kink-Aware Professionals and the Dungeon Monitors Association. And of course, many many smaller clubs and events.
For a more detailed history, see the Time Line
See also [ BackDrop Club ]
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root