How Sadism and Masochism Got Their Names
Two surnames became clinical diagnoses, then subcultural identities, then letters in an acronym. The route from Sade and Sacher-Masoch to BDSM, and what was lost on the way.
The archive
A subculture with a paper trail
Most of what gets said about the history of BDSM is repeated rather than checked. This site works the other way round: dated events first, sources named by kind, and a plain note wherever the record runs out.
The chronology in seven periods
Where each era begins, what it changed, and where the essays sit.
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to 1800
Before the word
Flagellation, courtly submission, and the libertine writers, long before anyone said BDSM.
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1800 to 1899
The names become words
Sade and Sacher-Masoch give the practices their labels; Krafft-Ebing files them as pathology.
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1900 to 1945
Clinics and coteries
Psychoanalysis, early sexology, fetish photography, and private circles between the wars.
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1946 to 1969
Leather and the postwar scene
Motorcycle clubs, leather bars, Bizarre magazine, and the culture that became the Old Guard.
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1970 to 1989
Organising
Formal groups, the leather contest circuit, the feminist sex wars, and community under the AIDS crisis.
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1990 to 2009
The community goes online
Usenet, mailing lists, munches, SSC and RACK, and the first mass-scale kink websites.
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2010 to now
Depathologised and mainstream
DSM-5 splits paraphilia from disorder, kink hits bestseller lists, and consent culture is rewritten.
Histories that cut across eras
Law, language, organisations and objects, followed from one century to the next.
The DSM and Depathologisation: How BDSM Stopped Being an Illness
The BDSM DSM-5 question: how sadism and masochism went from Krafft-Ebing's categories, through DSM-II and III, to the 2013 paraphilia and disorder split.
Operation Spanner: The Case That Made Consent No Defence
The 1987 police investigation, the 1990 convictions, the 1993 House of Lords ruling in R v Brown, and the 1997 Strasbourg judgment. What the case decided and what it left behind in UK law.
The History of Safewords: A Convention With No Documented Origin
The history of safewords: the traffic-light system, the absence of any documented origin, and how the convention spread through clubs and then the internet.
SSC and RACK: Two Formulas and the Argument Between Them
Safe sane consensual RACK explained: where each formula came from, what David Stein was doing in 1983, and what the argument between them is really about.
The Leather Pride Flag: A Symbol Its Designer Refused to Explain
The leather pride flag was designed by Tony DeBlase and unveiled at International Mr Leather in 1989. He declined to say what it meant, which is why it works.
Figures
The people whose books, cases and organising left something behind that can be checked.
Marquis de Sade
Libertine novelist whose surname was turned into the word sadism
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Coined sadism and masochism in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886)
John Willie (John Alexander Scott Coutts)
Published Bizarre magazine from 1946 and drew the Sweet Gwendoline strips
Irving Klaw
Ran the largest mail-order fetish photography business in postwar America
Gayle Rubin
Wrote Thinking Sex in 1984; co-founded Samois; historian of the San Francisco leather scene
Patrick Califia
Co-founded Samois and edited Coming to Power in 1981; writer on sexual politics
The history has a present tense
Everything on this site was built by people who went looking for each other, first in print, then in clubs, then online. That part of the story did not stop in 2010.
See where it happens now