Kink In Literature

Literature is probably the oldest form of documenting the practices of kink and BDSM, long before these terms were given the names they have today.

Getting Freaky: The Kama Sutra

Although the Kama Sutra may be the earliest record of sexual practice, dating back to anywhere from 400-200 BCE, an English translation wasn't published until 1883, thus bringing it into the mainstream. Of course, it was the scandal that created its infamy, when historian Sir Richard Francis Burton chose to publish a primitive translation amidst the colonial elitism of Victorian Britain.

Subverting the obscenity laws of the period, Burton replaced words like 'vulva' and 'penis' in an effort to normalise the text in the delicate minds of the sensible readers of the era. 

The problem this caused is one still prevalent in modern versions of these ancient texts today: the true meaning of the writing was lost in translation. 

Some Indologists argue that using Burton’s mistranslation for future print continues to take away the voice of women, and the cultural significance of the original text (Doniger & Kakar 2003). Doniger suggests that Burton’s focus on sexual positions made the print more accessible on the grounds of sex being a universal concept to understand. 

Doniger goes on to argue that the book is most widely-known from Burton’s edition, continuing to erode how women's rights were important, in addition to the acceptance of gender neutrality, in the original Sanskrit script. Doniger is no stranger to controversy herself, with her book The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009) having been withdrawn from circulation in India for a little under two years in 2014. 

Whilst the Kama Sutra covered all manner of topics, from emotional connection, to betrayal, to social interaction, the book continues to be mistakenly regarded in popular culture as one of the earliest forms of written pornography, As a result, it has been subject to countless satire and spoofs from gingerbread men to asexual marriages. Since its original release, right up to modern e-book publication, the Kama Sutra is the most pirated book of all time, and remains a popular resource for couples looking to ‘spice up’ their sex life. 

Marquis de Sade - The Origin Of The Sadist

The etymology of modern BDSM was born more than 300 years ago.

In the late 18th Century, imprisoned French Nobleman Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, wrote a number of books during his internment. Themes of rape, sodomy, and necrophilia were commonplace in his novels, and in 1768, De Sade became the centre of his first public scandal: The Rose Keller affair.

It was alleged that Keller was invited to his property, where De Sade forced her to strip on threat of death, then proceeded to assault her in numerous documented - and disputed - ways. De Sade was imprisoned in various institutions for a little over six months.

Still, his growing notoriety as a man in pursuit of deviant pleasures ensured his longevity, with the terms sadism and sadist being inspired by his title. Cultural references to the De Sade name continue infantasy and supernatural genres, with characters like Daemon Sadi in Anne Bishop's The Black Jewels (1998) being directly inspired, alongside underlying themes of pedophilia, abuse, and cruelty.

De Sade’s work 120 Days of Sodom (1785), written during his imprisonment in the Bastille, tells the story of libertine males imprisoning a harem and subjecting them to torture and a range of taboo topics. Made widely available in print from 1904 (although banned in Britain until the 1950s), De Sade invites the reader not to judge the tastes represented, in what is likely one of the earliest forms of YKINMK, and iterates that what is contained is not an easy read.

Another notable De Sade work, Justine (1787) spans a 14-year journey of a young girl of twelve into womanhood, as she makes her way across France in a beleaguered quest for virtue. Throughout, the titular character is subjected to rape, orgies, and other such violent tortures. 

Alarmingly, although De Sade was imprisoned and committed more than once over the course of his life, many kinksters will reference his work on social media as some homage to the ‘original’ sadist. 

However, the birth of the term ‘sadism’ represented non-consensual acts of cruelty, and De Sade has both enraged theologists and fascinated psychiatrists for hundreds of years with his unabashed documentation of depravity.

The theme of sadistic assault on virtue has been told time and again in literature outside of kink and BDSM, for example in Dave Pelzer’s heart-wrenching A Child Called It (1995), which leads one to question why society would accept novelistic tales of child abuse as a work of ‘national treasure’, as 120 Days of Sodom was declared by France in 2017.

The Other Side of The Slash: Masochism & Sascher-Masoch

Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing first penned the word masochism within his Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), documenting the term alongside sadism as a psychopathic propensity for sexual deviance in reference to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch - much to Sacher-Masoch’s displeasure. 

Sacher-Masoch’s most notable work Venus In Furs (1870) tells of a contracted male slave, subjected to increasingly degrading experiences at the hands of the woman he’s infatuated with.

Masochism, however, has most often been lent to the female sex in literature, much like in cinema, and no less sensationalised for consumption. 

Anne Rice’s The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983), penned under the nom de plume A. N. Roquelaure, is an eroticised continuation of the fairy tale, wherein the eponymous beauty finds herself the love slave of the prince who rescued her, branching into a further three novels; Beauty’s Punishment (1984), Beauty’s Release (1985), and Beauty’s Kingdom (2015). 

The series contains sexual slavery, humiliation, impact play, male submission, sadomasochism, and female genital mutilation.

The quartet has been considered an introduction to BDSM-themes by kinksters over the decades, but whilst the characters find pleasure in what they’re doing, their imprisonment raises the question of whether their exploits were consensual, or some form of Stockholm Syndrome.

Sexual Slavery in Kinky Fiction

Sexual slavery of women is not uncommon in literature - nor is it monopolised by the male eye.

Sexual slavery of women, and indeed of men, is at least not told only through the male lens, which is refreshing. 

The novel Story of O (1954) by Anne Desclos proves just as well-known as the Gor series by John Norman (1966-), although the latter spawned its own subculture within BDSM. 

One of the earliest documentations of sexual slavery actually dates back to the 1st Century AD, with the fantastical Latin work Satyricon, attributed to Titus Petronius. The story tells of a homosexual slave-romance in Ancient Rome, and whilst it’s regarded as more a romance novel than directly BDSM-related, the text is considered reflective of the relationships held at the time, and includes women with leather dildos, flogging, and group sex scenes.

Modern Literature and Kink & BDSM

BDSM literature reached a new height of popularity in 2011 with Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James. The series is denounced widely by the BDSM community, but in spite of its reputation as a poor representation of kink and BDSM, it follows the same non-consensual powerplay that much previous literature held in its grasp.

Earlier modern depictions that tie into BDSM culture include D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), which was made especially famous during the 1960 trial of Penguin Books in Britain for breaching the Obscene Publications Act 1959 with its unfiltered sex scenes and liberal use of the word ‘fuck’. Not only a reflection of British prudishness, the book was also banned in Canada until 1962, the US until 1964, and Australia until 1965, amongst others. 

Of course, bad publicity is still publicity, and controversy is nothing if not a best-seller. Sex has always been revered by the courts, but reality-based kink and BDSM books have managed to find their way into the world without being subjected to this puritanical judgement; perhaps a sign of the changing times. 

The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl (2005) by Belle de Jour documents the blog of a London-based sex worker, which was adapted into print form, and eventually into a BBC TV series. The themes of the book cover all manner of sexual activity, including de Jour’s foray into being a dominatrix. Long after the 1980s surge of leather and PVC-clad female sexual powerhouses, the dominatrix figure is still something audiences hunger for. 

Not everybody shares this insatiable desire for romanticised depictions of kink and BDSM themes in literature, or the wider media. In 2004, both the Commission of the European Communities’ green paper Equality and Combating Discrimination in an Enlarged European Union and Der Papiertiger: Presse in the Encyclopedia of Sadomasochism criticized media coverage of BDSM.

Despite being considered an underground movement, specialist BDSM books have been available in print since well before the 1990s. Well-known and reputable works continue to sell, like Jay Wiseman’s SM 101: A Realistic Introduction (1998), Dossie Easton and Janet W Hardy’s The New Bottoming Book (1998) and The New Topping Book (2002), as well as Easton’s co-authoring with Catherine A. Liszt of The Ethical Slut (1997) and When Someone You Love Is Kinky (2000) are widely considered to be good resources for BDSM non-fiction. Similarly, reader reviews of Lee Harrington and Mollena Williams Haas’ Playing Well With Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities (2012) and Rajan Dominari’s Welcome to the Dark Side - A BDSM Primer (2019) rarely dip below 4 out of 5 stars, suggesting they’re resources worth investing in.

It would appear that a reader interested in the fictional world of kink and BDSM has a veritable smorgasbord of sexual and sensational novels through the decades and centuries, tailored to different tastes - but it’s the reader interested in learning the factual reality of the lifestyle that may be best served by literature.

Perhaps print is the truest representation of kink, if one can wade through the fictional and fantastical pages.