Bound to be Free: The SM Experience.

By Charles Moser & JJ Madeson. New York: Continuum, 1996, 209 pages. Cloth, $24.95.

Reviewed by Robert Bienvenu, M.A., Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall 744, Bloomington, IN 47403. E-mail: [e-mail].

Once addressed almost exclusively through academic and moral discourse, in recent years sexual subcultures have developed their own voice in a variety of media. The two works reviewed here make distinct contributions to the literature on "alternate" sexualities. Alternate Sources gathers in one user-friendly database more than 10,000 current and historical references that are related to "kinky" sexualities. Bound to be Free: The SM Experience is a recent addition to an emerging body of published works about SM written from a practitioner perspective. The book provides a first-person introduction to SM as it is experienced (literally) by practitioners in 4' the subculture today. Although neither is a conventional scholarly work, in different ways Alternate Sources and Bound to be Free can be of use to educators, academic researchers, and other professionals who address alternate sexualities in their work.

Alternate Sources is designed to be "a single, global resource directory for all the alternate sexes and sexualities" (p. i). This ambitious project was conceived several years ago by editor Trevor Jacques. Jacques is a systems analyst trained as a physicist, educator in the SM community, and the primary author of one of the best of the recent "safe, sane, consensual" guides to SM practices (Jacques, Dale, Hamilton, & Sniffer, 1993). Jacques' technical and subculture background is evident in this nicely designed product, and there is little doubt that Alternate Sources provides very good coverage of its vast and polymorphous domain. Alternate Sources is published in two forms: a CD-ROM database, which includes all software required to run the package with either a Windows or Macintosh operating system, and softcover book. I focus on the CD-ROM, as readers of JSR are likely to find more uses for the searchable electronic database.

The database's two search screens allow users to retrieve, sort, print, and annotate records. The first profiles a particular record, e.g., an organization such as a publisher (1,072 listed) or BDSM accommodation (e.g., a bed and breakfast with dungeon; 19 listed). The second provides a column list of found records. For each record Alternate Sources provides contact information such as address, telephone, fax, e-mail, internet address (including, for Macintosh users, URL live links to Netscape), and a narrative description. Fields can be searched and sorted. The screens are navigated with clearly labeled buttons that guide the user through various operations and include on-line help. Most users will master the mechanics of the program within minutes.

One of the most interesting features of Alternate Sources is its system of type categories, which are to some degree inductively derived from practitioner usage. Each entry is classified according to 1 of 12 gender and sexual orientation categories and also according to a hierarchical system of type categories. The most broad categories include organizations, publishers, manufacturers, mail order, store, health services, helpline, and internet. These are further specified in subcategories that allow grouping of related categories, as well as pinpoint searches. The categories can be used as search criteria; for example, a search for gay foot fetish organizations produced five entries, three in the U.S., one in England, and one in Switzerland.

The database also includes historical information from the catalog of the Leather Archives and Museum (LA&M) in Chicago, a BDSM/fetish community archive. Approximately 250 entries include holdings information at the Leather Archives, which are listed on the primary search screen. Although generally brief, the LA&M holdings description provides additional information about these organizations.

To illustrate how the system works: of 10,400 total entries, Alternate Sources lists 4,075 organizations worldwide, with 2,217 in the United States. The first-level category organizations has 43 subcategories, such as AIDS, fetish, and BDSM. A search for Organizations: Fetish produced 74 such organizations, with 40 in the U.S. A more focused search in the subcategory Organizations: Fetish: Mess, which was new to me, produced three such organizations in the United States, all gay male in orientation: Mud Buddies (CA), Sludgemaster (TX), and Club Mud (CA). The Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago has documents on file from Club Mud, including a copy of their Mud Mania magazine and other documents that indicate that the club slogan is "mudsex=safesex." Any information can be printed.

Beyond travel and other personal uses, one can imagine many possible applications for Alternate Sources. The previous information would be a very good starting point for, say, a student doing a paper on mess fetishism, a reference librarian answering a query, or a researcher exploring taxonomies currently used in sexual subcultures. In my historical research on SM subcultures, I have used Alternate Sources to discover and locate various organizations. The Professional version, a custom implementation designed to fit the needs of a particular user, has been used by businesses to generate focused mailings and track correspondence. Survey researchers and sexuality libraries soliciting donations could use Alternate Sources in the same way. Educators who use electronic media such as the internet in their classes could use Alternate Sources to introduce students to the diversity of human sexuality. Instructors may find the text-based Alternate Sources to be a less problematic teaching aid than the visually explicit internet.

Browsing Alternate Sources produces a sense of amazement that all of this activity exists. Since the late '60s, the world of "alternate" sexualities has experienced a proliferation of new organizations, publications, events (e.g. contests, conventions, leadership conferences), and information sources. Outsiders with a professional interest in such activities are at a disadvantage when they attempt to follow current developments. Fortunately, today there are members of these communities with the interest, resources, and skills to track this broad field. Alternate Sources is probably the best general information source for the world of alternate sexualities today.

Bound to be Free: The SM Experience is co-authored by a sexologist, Charles Moser, and an SM practitioner, JJ Madeson, although the priority is misleading. Madeson is the principal author of the text. The mission of Bound to be Free is to "explain and demystify the world of sadomasochism (SM)" (p. 11). The target audience is implicit in the style of the book: lay readers who know little about SM as it is practiced in today's organized SM subcultures. For this audience the book presents a compelling view of SM practitioners as otherwise normal people who happen to prefer "safe, sane, and consensual" domination and submission in their sexual play. For the specialist, the book provides no new information and is clearly a popular and not a scholarly work.

The book is divided into two sections. Part One, comprising the first three chapters, introduces the book and provides a popularized account of the scholarly literature on SM. Part Two, Chapters 4 through 12, provides a very readable introduction to the SM subculture today. The text incorporates a number of first-person accounts and focuses on the subjective and emotional dimension of "the SM experience." This approach privileges and humanizes SM practitioners and succeeds in situating SM practices in a subcultural context that emphasizes responsible partners, consent, safety, and pleasure.

To summarize briefly the second part of Bound to be Free, the authors in Chapter 4 address the issue of "coming out" and highlight differences between men and women, heterosexuals, lesbians, and gays in the SM "coming out" process. Chapter 5 describes trust and consent, which in a very simplified discussion are posited as absolutes in the world of SM. Chapter 6 presents various practitioners' explanations for why they participate in SM. These amount to "we find it pleasurable and erotic" (p. 74). Chapter 7 provides an interesting discussion of the dynamics of SM role play. SM sexual practices and safety are the focus of Chapter 8; in Chapter 9 the authors discuss the meaning of pain in SM play. The social organization of SM is addressed in Chapter 10, political and legal dimensions in Chapter 11. Chapter 12 concludes the book with a discussion of the "dark side" of SM, which addresses potential physical, emotional, and social dangers (p. 194). Although Bound to be Free presents a view of SM that is not universally shared within the so-called SM "community," which is a quite heterogeneous collection of groups, these chapters successfully capture the sense of enjoyment experienced by many practitioners, as well as their difficulties as members of a stigmatized sexual minority. Readers who need a quick tutorial on the SM subculture, including journalists and public officials, will find this book useful. Educators may find that the book is appropriate for an undergraduate sexuality course. This is one of the first books that researchers who are beginning to study SM should read.

Bound to be Free is not so successful when evaluated as a scholarly text. The specialist will note that the book is marred by sloppy writing and argumentation. For example, extracts from an article co-authored by Moser (Weinberg, Williams, & Moser, 1984) are woven into the text without indications of direct quotation (on pp. 30-31, 36, 155, 157). The presentation of the scholarly literature tends to be loose and poorly documented. For example, the authors gloss the literature with inaccurate statements such as "no study has demonstrated that SMers possess any special psychological characteristics that set them apart in any way from the general population" (p. 40). No differences whatsoever? In fact, although the limited literature on non-clinical SM practitioners supports the book's claim that SMers are not dysfunctional or mentally ill, this literature does note a number of differences between SM and control groups (e.g., Grosselin & Wilson, 1980; Miale, 1986). Such problems are not likely to be noted by the lay reader, but they serve to highlight the point that this is a popular and not a scholarly work.

Collaborative work between sexologists and practitioners is a very good idea, particularly when addressing subcultures populated with articulate spokespersons like Madeson. In this case, however, the strengths of the two approaches never quite meshed. The book would have benefited from a more careful and better documented presentation of the literature. The first-person accounts presented as evidence would have tremendously benefited from the scholarly convention of citing sources. There are a handful of such citations in the book, but most first-person quotations are voices from the ether. Perhaps 10 sources provide 90% of the evidence presented--the reader has no way to know. A popular work that resembles Bound to be Free is Different Loving (Brame, Brame, & Jacobs, 1993). Like Bound to be Free, this work extensively presents first-person accounts. Unlike Bound to be Free, Different Loving cites pseudonyms or abridged names and in many cases provides background information on sources. Different Loving protects the confidentiality of sources but gives its readers much more information with which to evaluate the evidence.

Despite these complaints, I generally like the book and think that it fills its intended niche nicely. Evaluated in terms of what it is, a popular work designed to dispel misinformation and provide a positive account of SM from a practitioner perspective, Bound to be Free is a good book. Given the amount of misinformation circulating about SM, which has been targeted for many years by both the left and right, there is a need for popular works that situate SM practices in their subcultural context. This book does not fulfill the promise of a full-fledged academic-practitioner collaboration. It does succeed in humanizing SM, in a style that is likely to be accessible and persuasive for the general reader.

References

Brame, G. G., Brame, W. D., & Jacobs, J. (1993). Different loving: An exploration of the world of sexual dominance and submission. New York: Villard Books.

Grosselin, C., & Wilson, G. (1980). Sexual variations: Fetishism, sadomasochism and transvestism. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Jacques, T., Dr. Dale, Hamilton, M., & Sniffer. (1993). On the safe edge: A manual for SM play. Toronto: Whole SM.

Miale, J. R. (1986). An initial study of nonclinical practitioners of sexual sadomasochism. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. San Diego, CA: The Professional School of Psychological Studies.

Weinberg, M. S., Williams, C. J., & Moser, C. (1984). The social constituents of sadomasochism. Social Problems, 31(4), 379-389.