“I ache for the touch of your lips, dear / But much more for the touch of your whips, dear / You can raise welts like nobody else /As we dance to the Masochism Tango." Tom Lehrer's excellent parody exemplifies the baffled amusement with which many respond to masochism: the other baffled response – disgust – was in evidence at the time of the infamous "Spanner" case, as details of more extreme sadomasochistic activities filled the newspapers. Fascinated and repulsed, the public lap up the details and iconography of S&M with the typical, hypocritical, Puritan prurience with which we treat most sexual matters.
Masochism was first identified by Krafft-Ebing in his Psychopathia Sexualis, an encyclopaedic account of sexual deviances, some of which had never been named before, and some of which have probably rarely been practised since. As Anita Phillips points out in her elegant defence of masochism, the speed with which this ostensibly medical book sold out testifies to the sexual curiosity of a titillated public.
Krafft-Ebing regarded masochism as a purely male perversion (to be submissive was, de facto, a feminine trait). Later Freud would find himself baffled (as people still are it seems) by the paradox in which pain might be pleasurable. In the latter part of the 20th century, sadomasochism has become a more visible and confident practice; but in Britain, with the Spanner case, it also became illegal.
Phillips's essay flicks neatly from a historical account to more per- sonal reflections and polemics, also analysing artistic and cultural representations, to explain why she believes sexual masochism to be "an intelligent perversion". Had it not been for her wilder apologias (that "vanilla" sex can lead to boredom and infidelity, and that a pushing of sexual barriers is a monogamous couple's only hope), she might even have sanitised the activity. Phillips gives consideration to the argument that transgression relies on disapproval for its thrill, and that a mainstream acceptance of S&M might take away much of the pleasure, but does not ultimately concur.
Having rescued "masochism" from Krafft-Ebing's pathologisation, from a lay perception that masochism is a complicitous weakness, and from a feminist attack that female masochism is constructed by patriarchal oppression, Phillips does not similarly recuperate the term "sadist". She argues that "no sadist is any good for a masochist – the perfect choice may well be another masochist". Yet just as the masochist, while apparently submissive, is actually in control of a fantasy of powerlessness, so the "top" (or "dominant" or "sadist") is performing a skilled role in which they can indulge a fantasy of control. Perhaps the word "sadomasochist" is the best one; many people "switch" and explore both roles at some point.
S&M takes its iconography from extreme representations of power and hierarchy – uniforms, restraints, instruments of punishment. From punk to Madonna to mainstream fashion, such trappings are commonplace now. What the practice of masochism allows
for, Phillips argues, is a safe and contained exploration of our strange fascination with such iconography. It allows people who have little choice in the real world as to how power is exercised by or on them to erotically transform such images and feelings. It is imaginative, highly sensual: a thorough beating is a whole-body experience, not monotonally genital in its focus, and is merely an extension of more "normal" sexual practices – holding, biting, scratching, being underneath – and releases endorphins in much the same way painful but rewarding strenuous exercise does. It is nobody's business but the participants.
It's a shame that this even needs saying, of course, but if any further proof of the need for Phillips's defence was required, or further evidence that the taboo still has pulling power, Mark Edmundson's Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and the Culture of Gothic will suffice. The use of "sadomasochism" in the title is deliberately alluring; the thesis within disappointing.
Disturbed by his liking for horror movies, he has exorcised his difficulty with a naff piece of easy- reader critical studies. When he finally gets to grips with "real" sadomasochism (rather than the version so beloved of Freud-fixated film theorists) he does try to understand the drives, contracts, precautions and pleasures lovingly detailed by Phillips. But he then states, on no obvious evidence, that "I suspect that often what begins in sophisticated farce ends in an intensity and maybe too a passion that is closer to the tragic".
Sometimes the highly educated are the most unreachably ignorant. Still, if Phillips's uneven but intelligent essay thrashes out a few prejudices somewhere, it will have been worthwhile.