Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (3 page)

This chapter opens the candid discussion of D&S. In addition to in-depth interviews, in this chapter and throughout the book, we will also quote interviewees whose profiles appear in other chapters. Our first interviewees are:

Very generally speaking, two groups of people engage in D&S. First are those who fantasize about D&S and may periodically and casually experiment with it. These individuals add spice to a sexually conventional relationship by engaging in some form of D&S eroticism, such as spanking or roleplaying. The second group comprises those who are primarily and unequivocally aroused by D&S and who actively seek out sympathetic partners and, usually, support as well as education. The anecdotal information in this book is largely derived from this second group. We located most of our interviewees through D&S support groups, publications, and word of mouth. Our research, however, suggests that the majority of people who engage in D&S belong to the first group.

According to estimates by the Kinsey Institute and others, 5 percent to 10 percent of the adult American population regularly engages in some form of D&S. Numerous sexuality studies report that conquest and captivity scenarios are the most popular fantasies among all adults.

The husband and wife who privately roleplay as conqueror and captured maiden are expressing the basic impulse of D&S, just as those who hold a partner’s wrists down or bite their lovers during lovemaking understand that rough stimuli may enhance sexual response. Many couples who enjoy extended D&S roleplaying do not know that there is a term for this aspect of their sexuality, nor that their erotic lives might be perceived by others as outside of the mainstream.

The two important distinctions between those who playfully incorporate aspects of D&S into sexual intimacy and those who define themselves as D&Sers are consciousness and degree of erotic need.

D&S-like fantasies are apparently common to all children and are dramatized in such games as cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers. While most people may outgrow a predilection for captivity games, the control aspects of such scenarios are the foundation of the D&Ser’s erotic hierarchy.

A typical pattern for a D&Ser is to be keenly interested in a particular fetish or activity in early childhood; to experiment with this vaguely, at least during masturbation in puberty or teen years; and to repress the desire once dating begins. Knowledge of being erotically different becomes increasingly clear over time, sometimes painfully so.

By adulthood most D&Sers discover that the need can no longer be repressed. Although some of our interviewees found sympathetic partners while young or discovered that their mates were willing to experiment with
D&S, D&Sers often marry unsympathetic (and unsuspecting) partners and later develop significant marital problems. Many D&Sers maintain a lonely and secret sexual identity.

D&S support groups are proliferating as more Americans become aware that the companionship and sympathy of people like themselves are available.

For the majority of adults who enjoy periodic D&S fantasies, roleplaying is one color on the sexual palette, in line with Alex Comfort’s supposition in
The Joy of Sex
that D&S can be an embellishment of erotic play. Though D&Sers typically enjoy orgasmic sex as an integral part of their encounters, they generally agree that sexual submission or dominance is
the
essential component of a satisfying erotic encounter.

Although D&S is most often used as foreplay to conventional sex, some D&Sers would sooner forego intercourse than D&S activity, and some individuals, particularly fetishists, may not be aroused by conventional sex.

While no accurate single profile can be drawn of the average D&Ser, a majority of our interviewees—whom we believe to be a reliably representative sampling of self-acknowledged D&Sers—are in long-term or permanent relationships. Many of them are parents, and most described themselves as monogamous. But D&S monogamy is iconoclastic. It often means that the person will have conventional sex only with a life-partner but that he or she may engage in D&S activities with others.

Our interviewees tended to be fairly religious. In addition to Christians (Catholic and a spectrum of Protestant sects, from Episcopalian and Methodist to Mormon and Christian fundamentalist) and Jews, many were New Agers, pagans, Buddhists, and members of other minority religions. Many perceive a direct connection between spirituality and sexuality.

We interviewed people in 23 states, from every region of the country. We also interviewed a few Canadians and one European. The vast majority of our interviewees are college educated, with a preponderance of whitecollar
workers, small-business owners, and postgraduate-educated professionals. The most likely explanations for this demographic quirk are, first, that social involvement in D&S and fetishism generally requires leisure time and disposable income. Second, while sexual dominance or submission indubitably occurs in all economic classes, the organized D&S Scene’s emphasis on education and networking probably appeals most to the middle class.

Sexuality theorists traditionally have held that men are more likely than women to have sadistic sexual fantasies, that fetishism is a uniquely masculine phenomenon, and that women are more likely than men to have masochistic fantasies. No evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, supports these conjectures. Indeed, submissive men are the single largest component of the D&S communities, and widespread male interest in sexual submission is an observable phenomenon.

As a group men are certainly more visible than women in the D&S subcultures. This, however, is in keeping with the overall social phenomenon that men more readily, confidently, and aggressively pursue sexual encounters than do women. Among our interviewees the numbers of men and women who prefer the dominant role is roughly equal. The majority of all interviewees enjoy both dominant and submissive roles.

Finally, while many interviewees pleaded for greater acceptance of all sexual minorities, D&Sers are not necessarily more tolerant than are most Americans of those D&S interests they do not share. Some spanking fetishists openly deplore “whips and chains,” many foot fetishists are appalled by pain scenarios, enema enthusiasts may express distaste for infantilists, and so on. D&Sers are as likely as anyone else to condone what they do in bed with the person they love and to criticize what somebody else does in bed with his or her partner.

Also, despite the current “pansexual” trend, which stresses unity among gay, lesbian, and heterosexual D&Sers (pansexuality is particularly popular in the burgeoning radical sexual communities of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest), there is as yet only an uneasy alliance between some heterosexual and homosexual segments of the D&S community.

We limit discussion in this book to those activities that may involve a power exchange and that meet the D&S communities’ standards of “Safe, Sane, and Consensual.” We therefore refrain from investigating such activities as pedophilia, zoophilia, and necrophilia. Since children, animals, and corpses cannot give informed or legal consent to sexual activity, such encounters cannot be consensual. Our choice was facilitated by the fact that we did not encounter any D&Sers who expressed interest in these activities. Many other unusual sexual practices (such as voyeurism or swinging) are omitted because they are not typically associated with power exchange, the essential, defining element of all D&S activity. But we recognize that we may have also bypassed people who could provide a different perspective on certain activities or who may have described D&S activities with which we remain unfamiliar.

This book is not an apologia for sadomasochism. Our approach is humanistic journalism, and our goal is to explain what people do, why they do it, and what they get out of it, and to do so candidly and sympathetically. We are not scientists, psychologists, or sociologists. We do not take a quantitative approach, nor do we claim scientific accuracy. We do, however, take issue with some of the theorists who have presented theories as fact.