Member-only story
In collaboration with the Carter Johnson Library & Collection
Histories of Kink: BDSM history that will make you a better person
Does sex imitate life, or does life imitate sex?
This question brought me to the Carter Johnson Library, the biggest sex library in the world, to study the history of kink.
I was searching for clues linking kinky fantasies to our society’s obsession with power. Like the chicken and the egg, I was curious about which came first: power or the eroticization of it.
To try BDSM is to play with power dynamics. Whether it’s adding a blindfold to sex or creating an elaborate scene, power is the secret ingredient that makes kink flow. And yet, outside the world of consensual BDSM, power is elusive and gatekept.
In everyday life, most of us surrender our power to a boss, a government, a legal system (etc.) in exchange for money, stability, and order. Our choices are navigated through a matrix of compromises, leaving us with less control than we care to admit.
Making me wonder if power started to be sexualized when it became something people did not have.
Despite what our world today looks like, human societies were not always built around money, land, borders, and hierarchies. For over…