BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged in by people who do not consider themselves to be practising BDSM, inclusion in the BDSM community or subculture often is said to depend on self-identification and shared experience.
Leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities that involve leather garments, such as leather jackets, vests, boots, chaps, harnesses, or other items. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures. Many participants associate leather culture with BDSM practices and its many subcultures. For some, black leather clothing is an erotic fashion that expresses heightened masculinity or the appropriation of sexual power; love of motorcycles, motorcycle clubs and independence; and/or engagement in sexual kink or leather fetishism.
The Eulenspiegel Society, also known as TES, is the first BDSM organization founded in the United States. It was founded in 1971 and based in New York City.
Samois was a lesbian feminist BDSM organization based in San Francisco that existed from 1978 to 1983. It was the first lesbian BDSM group in the United States. It took its name from Samois-sur-Seine, the location of the fictional estate of Anne-Marie, a lesbian dominatrix character in Pauline Réage's erotic novel Story of O, who pierces and brands O. The co-founders were writer Pat Califia, who identified as a lesbian at the time, Gayle Rubin, and sixteen others.
Patrick Califia, formerly also known as Pat Califia and by the last name Califia-Rice, is an American writer of non-fiction essays about sexuality and of erotic fiction and poetry. Califia is a bisexual trans man. Prior to transitioning, Califia identified as a lesbian and wrote for many years a sex advice column for the gay men's leather magazine Drummer. His writings explore sexuality and gender identity, and have included lesbian erotica and works about BDSM subculture. Califia is a member of the third-wave feminism movement.
Dorothy "Dossie" Easton, who has also written under the name Scarlet Woman, is an American author and family therapist based in San Francisco, California.
Janet W. Hardy is an American writer and sex educator, and founder of Greenery Press. She has also been published as Catherine A. Liszt and Lady Green. She is the author or co-author of eleven books, and frequently collaborates with Dossie Easton.
Gloria Brame is an American sexologist, writer and sex therapist based in Athens, Georgia. She is a member of the American College of Sexologists, and clinical sexologist. Her sex therapy practice specializes in consensual BDSM, sexual fetishism and sexual dysfunction.
Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist, theorist and activist, best known for her pioneering work in feminist theory and queer studies.
Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM) was a feminist anti-pornography activist group based in San Francisco and an influential force in the larger feminist anti-pornography movement of the late 1970s and 1980s.
National Leather Association International (NLA-I) is a BDSM organization, based in the United States with chapters in various cities in the United States and Canada. It was founded in 1986 as the "National Leather Association" (NLA), as a national integrated organization including gay leathermen, kinky heterosexuals and bisexuals, SM lesbians and transgender sadomasochists, and representing their interests in the face of prosecutions. Adding "International" to its name in 1991, the organization staged "Living in Leather" gatherings until 2002. After a period of decline around the turn of the millennium, NLA-I has become more active again and runs a series of awards for fiction and non-fiction writing. NLA-I's records can be found at the Leather Archives and Museum.
Guy Baldwin is an American psychotherapist, author, activist, and educator specializing in issues of particular relevance to the BDSM and leather communities. Based in Los Angeles, he maintains that inclusion of non-injurious elements of sadomasochism in a consenting sexuality does not itself indicate or confirm mental illness or psycho-sexual dysfunction.
The Van Dykes were an itinerant band of lesbian separatist vegans, founded in 1977 in the United States by Heather Elizabeth and Ange Spalding. Members of the group identified as dykes and lived in vans, traveling throughout Canada, the United States, and Mexico, stopping only on womyn's land.
Feminist views on BDSM vary widely from acceptance to rejection. BDSM refers to bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and Sado-Masochism. In order to evaluate its perception, two polarizing frameworks are compared. Some feminists, such as Gayle Rubin and Patrick Califia, perceive BDSM as a valid form of expression of female sexuality, while other feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Griffin, have stated that they regard BDSM as a form of woman-hating violence. Some lesbian feminists practice BDSM and regard it as part of their sexual identity.
The Catacombs was a gay and lesbian S/M leather fisting club in the South of Market area of San Francisco, which operated from 1975 to 1981, and reopened at another location from 1982 to 1984. It was the most famous fisting club in the world. The founder and owner was Steve McEachern. The location was semi-secret and admission was by referral only. It was originally a gay men's club, but Cynthia Slater persuaded the management to open up to lesbians. Among the patrons was Patrick Califia, known then as Pat Califia. The Catacombs has been exhaustively described by sexual anthropologist Gayle Rubin, who calls it "exemplary" in its attempts to deal with the AIDS crisis which would eventually lead to its closure. Patrick Moore devotes a chapter to it in his Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality. Sex educator Carol Queen called it "the place to be seen and to play at during the 1980s."
Mollena Lee Williams-Haas, formerly Mollena Williams, is an American writer, BDSM educator, actress, and former International Ms. Leather (2010).
The Outcasts was a social and educational organization for women interested in BDSM with other women that was founded in San Francisco in 1984. It grew partly from earlier groups, the Society of Janus and Samois. Gayle Rubin was a co-founder of the organization. Other members included Dorothy Allison, Pat Califia, and Dossie Easton.
Cynthia Slater was an American sex educator, HIV/AIDS activist, and dominatrix. She was the co-founder of the second BDSM organization founded in the United States, a San Francisco, California based BDSM education and support group known as the Society of Janus, which she founded with Larry Olsen in August 1974.
Kitty Tsui is an American author, poet, actor, and bodybuilder. She was the first known Asian American lesbian to publish a book.
