Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

Always ready to cash in on the latest craze, even those that lead to the moral degeneration of society, HarperCollins has published a new guide book for those interested in participating in the sadomasochistic sex play popularized in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

The Daily Mail is reporting that the book, entitled Fifty Ways to Play: A Beginner’s Guide To Unleashing Your Erotic Desires was written by Debra and Don MacLeod. It claims to offer 50 “edgy and erotic” adventures which the publisher claims are “perfect” for all those mommy-porn lovers who were “inspired” by the E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. 

“Fifty Shades has broken down the taboos about BDSM (bondage/domination/sadomasochism) and more women than ever are wanting to spice up their sex lives,” HarperCollins said. “But there is very little out there that shows you how to turn every night into an erotic fantasy.”

Their new book promises to help women turn their bedrooms into “Red Rooms of Desire” (in the Fifty Shades book, it was known as the Red Room of Pain) as well as exploring things like the “fine art of Japanese rope bondage.”

“These 50 edgy and erotic adventures make incredible sex incredibly easy,” the publisher says.

With the help of boxofgrey.com, a website that caters to the growing BDSM market, the book is also being offered in the company’s erotic gift sets such as the Sex and Mischief box which comes complete with a jeweled flogger and a bed-bondage restraint kit. 

According to Cassandra Garrison, writing for the New York Metro, the E.L. James trilogy is launching BDSM into the mainstream and has opened the door behind which the underground fettish world has long existed. In fact, the city plays hosts to dozens of these sex clubs, both public and private, which host thousands of people looking to “quench their sexual desires.”

“People fail to realize that BDSM is just a microcosm of the population as a whole,” Guy Sanders, spokesperson for The Eulenspiegel Society, a BDSM education and support group, told the Metro. “It’s kind of like how being gay was years ago. Because people have formulated their own opinions about you and what you are, it’s not prudent to allow your sexual history to come out.”

The number of adherents is more than we might guess. According to the Janus Report on Sexual Behavior, 14 percent of men and 11 percent of women confessed having some sexual experience with sadomasochism; but that was back in 1993, well before Fifty Shades of Grey made BDSM fashionable.

While advocates say there is a “safe version” of the practice that comes complete with all kinds of safety tips, it’s inherent darkness has caused serious injury and even death to participants.

 ABC News reports that in 2006, a 56 year-0ld dominatrix named Barbara Asher was acquitted of manslaughter in the death of a man who allegedly suffered a fatal heart attack while strapped to a replica of a medieval torture device.

Also in 2006,  a man named  Adrian Exley suffocated to death in the closet of a Rhode Island man he met online. Exley was found wrapped up in heavy plastic, bound with duct tape, with a leather hood over his head. Gary LeBlanc, the man who tied him up in a sex act he claims was consensual, later committed suicide.

In 2008, a 67 year-old Canadian college professor spent three days in a coma after losing consciousness in a New York sex club where he was left alone with a dog collar around his neck and a leather hood over his face.

Why do people participate in such dangerous perversions?

“Some people cannot experience pleasure,” said Judy Kuriansky, a sexologist and psychology professor at Columbia University, to ABC. “They can only experience deep feelings when they are truly painful. Everyone is looking for some sort of sensation. For true masochists that experience becomes distorted and they can only feel something when it hurts.”

She went on to explain that masochism is more about power than sex and that sometimes events in a person’s childhood (perhaps the sex abuse experienced by Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades series) can make a person associate pain with sexual gratification.

Thanks to the purveyors of this latest perversion, such as E. L. James and HarperCollins, people with these deep-seated injuries will have a much harder time finding help in a world where more and more people are telling them it’s okay to substitute pain and perversion for the kind of genuine healing love that can only be found in authentic human sexuality.

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