Science and the Media
The majority of scientific publications in the media on the subject originate from the psychological/psychiatric field. None of these publications deals with the power exchange between healthy, well-adjusted people, capable to make safe, sane, consensual, well-informed and conscious decisions. Instead, all these publications deal with people seeking help (usually from the author) and have been written primarily to advocate either one specific opinion or one specific treatment by one specific therapist. Unfortunately, there is no broad, large scale research available on the phenomena of EPE. It is estimated that as much as 30 percent of the adult population has erotic power exchange fantasies and is (potentially) active in this area. The largest group that has ever been the subject of research is a group from approximately two hundred people from one country. This can hardly be called representative for the world-wide group, hence all conclusions should not be projected on the entire population. Unfortunately, this happens all too frequently.
Furthermore, much of the available scientific research available and quoted is extremely outdated. This is especially true for politicians, legislators and lawyers in many countries, who will go back and cite research that is at least thirty or forty years old. Whereas no court or scientific body in the world would accept other (semi)medical data that old as a basis for judgment, when it comes to erotic power exchange this is still generally accepted.
Pornography and pseudo-experts These two groups are mentioned in one header deliberately because pseudo-experts predominantly style themselves on the pictures painted by pornography, sometimes cleverly validating themselves and their views by misquoting scientists. Both pornography and pseudo-experts have only one objective: to sell as many books, articles, magazines or videos and CD’s as they possibly can. Erotic power exchange-related pornography is mainly sold to people who are NOT active in erotic power exchange. Much of what is sold is – unfortunately – quite often mistaken for information, especially by people who are new to the subject. The picture painted is not meant to give information, but instead, is meant to indulge fantasy. In these situations fantasy does not have to become reality, and when it comes to erotic power exchange, hardly ever does fully.
Media
Without making any judgments here, the media plays an important role in the image-building. Next to the difficulties sketched above – the fact that it is indeed extremely difficult to depict a clear image of EPE and the unintentional effect of dominatrixes – it is obvious that excess-oriented journalism does not help and, again, does not have the objective of communicating factual and independent information, but has the objective of selling copy as well as entertaining.
The “community” itself
Even though the various support groups put a lot of effort in trying to inform and educate, their efforts reflect the average lack of experience in mass communication as well as the variety of opinions that even the EPE community itself holds. None of the support groups, not even larger national groups like the USA National Leather Association, have any critical sway in the EPE community, compared to the number of people interested in the subject. This is again the result of both the variety of opinions held as well as the different cultures. Individual subgroups are only just finding out they have a different identity from other like-minded people. This is new and somewhat disturbing to many and it is difficult for groups as well as individuals to find and identify with a “new” identity.
These support groups are small. They do not have one-tenth of the budget, that scientists and especially pornography producers can use. There for it is a very uneven battle, trying to fight the misinformation with little more than a personal computer and a xerox-machine, when resources in the pornography industry are huge.
Finally, there are the well meant efforts of individuals, especially on the Internet, to try and build personal home pages that provide “information”. Such information is usually highly individual (and as such useful for identification purposes) and of little or no relevance for a more general informational approach.The bottom line is that the information/misinformation ratio is about 10:90. It is no wonder the image the outside world has is the wrong image; an image that has very little to do with the day-to-day practice of erotic power exchange.
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