Venus In Furs: A Little History In Two Parts, pt. 1
Most people have a vague idea that sado-masochism (or as it is sometimes written, sadomasochism or sado/masochism) is named for two people; one of them into inflicting pain (sadism) and one of them into having pain inflicted (masochism). These two men are The Marquis de Sade, born in 1740 and author of many erotic writings including, most famously, Justine, about a man who enjoys inflicting pain upon his mistress. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, born in 1880, also wrote erotic stories, the most famous of which was called Venus in Furs in which he describes being whipped by a woman while grovelling at her feet dressed in furs like a dog.
The pleasure/pain dyad was certainly not unknown before this however; as far back as the Middle Ages, many Christian people flogged themselves as punishment during the plague. These “flagellants” took the Black Death to be a sign from God that the end of the world was near. They would process through the streets of towns, beating themselves with chains, rods and sticks, and scourging their flesh. They thought they could atone for their sins through pain, and be spared death by plague, or at the very least, gain God’s forgiveness before death in this way. Regardless of whether these flagellants felt sexual pleasure in this pain (and no doubt some of them did), they did take pleasure in the way their self-inflicted pain brought them closer to God.
It was many years later when psychologists first associated these names with these practices. Dr. Krafft-Ebing, a Victorian era psychiatrist, used Sacher-Masoch’s name to create the word “masochist,” to define a new form of sexual psychopathology in which someone derives sexual pleasure from the infliction of pain. He considered this an abnormal, anti-social urge. Fellow Victorian, Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud, first combined the word sadism (after the Marquis De Sade) and masochism into sadomasochism to define people who got sexual pleasure from giving and or receiving pain; for Freud these urges and practices were similar enough that they could be grouped together, even though it should be fairly obvious that these urges and what motivates them are very different!
For the Victorians, sex was not about pleasure; it was something women had to endure, and men must indulge in it only for procreation. It was considered unhealthy and masturbation was actually seen as life-shortening. Various devices were invented to prevent the discharge of semen, like locked penis cages or spiked rings that made erections very painful. But the repressiveness of the Victorians found other outlets. Queen Victoria had a long reign and the premature death of her husband caused her to This was the era in which discipline in public schools became very widespread. Boys at the height of sexual development were beaten or flogged for misbehaving, or when caught masturbating or experimenting sexually with each other, and as a result many men grew up to have a taste for sado-masochism, associating it with sexual pleasure. One famous brothel in England was run by a woman named Theresa Barkley. Her “house” contained all kinds of S/ M instruments, some of which were very elaborately constructed. The Barkley “horse” was built for a man to stand or sit on and could put his penis through a small hole and the madam would cane him or beat him as he desired. Clearly this combined elements of bondage and domination as well as S/M.
The Victorian era effectively ended with World War I. But Europe’s fascination with the secret expression of sadomasochistic urges appeared in other places, notable Germany. The Berlin of the 1920’s embraced every expression of the imagination, and this open minded society, comprised of poets, nude dancers, vegetarians and sexologists, embezzlers, magicians and prophets, often found expression in the cabaret: a vibrant club where performance, drinking and drug use, and public sex were all the norm. The cabaret culture was amused by the seriousness of the Hitler regime and before the second world war began, took advantage of their public forum to ridicule the government and what they perceived as the arrogance and repressiveness of Germany’s rulers.
The war changed everything. But sadomasochistic imagery began to slowly reappear in German cinema after the war, as well as in other art and performance forms. Ideas having to with liberating the subconscious mind (ideas that were finding their way to the United States, too, and arrived with the Beatniks in the 1950s) encouraged free sexual expression, too. In the 1940s, psycholanalyist Erich Fromm fled Germany for New York City, and published “Escape from Freedom”. Among other controversial ideas explored in this book, Fromm stated that we cannot bear freedom and so we wish to give up our freedom by submitting ourselves to new forms of authority.
