You have probably seen the word bdsm. And you probably know that it refers to a sexual practise having to do with domination.
What is the Meaning of bdsm
But what is the exact meaning of the acronym bdsm?
What are its origins and how did it come into existence?
The abbreviation BDSM stands for bondage, discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism. It’s used in many different contexts, but most commonly as an umbrella term for any kind of consensual kinky sex play involving any of these four elements. That way the letters B-D-S-M can be read as ‘bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism’, and the acronym has largely replaced the earlier term ‘sadomasochism’.
That way the D doubles as refering to discipline and dominance and the S refers to submission and sadism.
The term BDSM includes
* S&M, S/M, or SM: Sadism and masochism
* B&D, B/D, or BD: Bondage and discipline
* D&s, D/s, or Ds: Dominance and submission
There are lots of variations within the practice including spanking, flogging and whipping. Other activities include tying people down, blindfolds, gags, nipple clamps, whips, handcuffs, ropes, cages, paddles, vibrators, anal toys, dildos, cocksucking, fisting, roleplaying, humiliation, tickling, biting, choking, slapping, hair pulling, fingering, light piercing, heavy piercings, water sports, rough sex, soft sex, oral sex, anal sex, vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, group sex, threesomes, gang bangs, double penetration, triple penetration, quadruple penetration, etc…
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
So the term bdsm refers to mainly two things: the desire to feel or give power over a person, and the desire to give or receive pain.
People who are not into bdsm, normally imagine practices that imply physical pain, but even if that happens ( in a smaller or bigger scale depending on the relationships) it is normally not so important as power.
If sadics and masochists care about pain, dominant and submissive people may use pain but care much more about power. The feeling to be powerful ( for the dominant person) or to be powerless ( for the submissive one) are the ones who
Origins of the word bondage
Bondage is a word that goes back to Middle English . The meaning of the word bond deteriorated after the norman conquest and the rise of the feudal system, from “free farmer” to “serf, slave” (c. 1300)
The sense “the state or practice of being physically restrained for sexual gratification” is first recorded by 1963 (in a New York law against publications portraying it).
Origins of the words sadism and masochism
The terms sadism and masochism are derived from the names of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, based on the content of the authors’ works, even if the scenes described in de Sade’s works do not meet modern BDSM standards of informed consent.
The terms sadism and masochism were introduced by the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft Ebing in his work Neue Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Psychopathia sexualis (New research in the area of Psychopathy of Sex) in 1890.
Modern critics
BDSM activists criticized these conceptual frameworks in the late twentieth century, claiming that they were based on the works of Freud and Krafft-Ebing whowere psychiatrists, so their observations on sadism and masochism were dependent on psychiatric patients, and their models were built on the assumption of psychopathology.
When was the word bdsm first used?
The term BDSM is first recorded in a Usenet post from 1991. Probably the success of the word comes from the fact that bdsm is a big umbrella that includes a lot of practices. Practicioners felt better using a new term not derived from psychiatry and not implying sadism or masochism which are not always present or that important in most bdsm relationships.
