Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality

by Margot Weiss

Techniques of Pleasure is an ethnography of the San Francisco Bay Area’s pansexual BDSM scene, a community of practitioners of bondage, domination/submission, role-playing, fetishes, and other forms of eroticism.

Margot Weiss’s research entailed attending dungeon play parties, workshops on SM techniques, and business meetings of the Society of Janus, one of America’s oldest BDSM organizations. She interviewed more than sixty SM practitioners, including dungeon owners, well-known prodommes (professional dominants), and community experts. Weiss vividly evokes the feel of the BDSM scene in San Francisco area in the early 2000s.

At the same time, she challenges notions of SM as inherently transgressive, revealing a technique-oriented community, largely organized around classes, rules, and the acquisition of expensive sex toys. Most members of the Bay Area’s BDSM community were white, heterosexual, middle-aged, well-off, and involved in long-term relationships.

Weiss analyzed SM “scenes”—sexual encounters involving roles, costumes, and props—including dramatizations of slave markets and the creation of the Abu Ghraib photographs. She contends that such performances eroticize social inequality, reproducing hierarchies based on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, rather than offering a safe space, separate from real-world inequities.

Genres: BDSM, Nonfiction, Sexuality, Anthropology, Queer Studies, Sociology, Gender and Sexuality

336 pages, Hardcover

First published November 21, 2011

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality
by Margot Danielle Weiss

from the library

If only the book really were what the title says.

What should I do? some parts of this book are splendid descriptions and some parts of it are silly at best or otherwise just terrible.

The trouble is that the author didn't know transgressive sex when it bit her. And she clearly doesn't know much about sex. You are supposed to ask people if you actually understood what is going on; otherwise you go off the rails and never know it. The author has imagined her own reaction to the experiences she witnessed and projected it onto the people she was supposed to be observing

For instance: Most members of the Bay Area’s BDSM community were white, heterosexual, middle-aged, well-off, and involved in long-term relationships.

This comment may be right. I am nearly exactly one of those people, and intensely feminist besides. Imagine my cognitive dissonance when I wanted to explore the erotics of bottoming and even worse the erotics of submission. Fortunately I was also getting a degree in sexuality. So I had lots of time to think, talk and ask questions. I ask you what is the point of being an independent, educated feminist if I let other people dictate my sexual choices? I have to choose for myself. If I choose to negotiate to be submissive to a sex partner does that invalidate some part of my independence, education, or feminism? I think not. I am in charge of my choices. Nothing else makes sense. So I ask you " should I give up my orgasms from these sessions and only keep the orgasms from the behaviors you approve of?" I hope you honor all my choices and cultivate the courage to honor all of yours (within the limits of safe, sane and consensual).

[Mirjam Kok]

ik ga geen sterren geven aan een academisch boek, maar ik heb dit dus mooi wel van de eerste tot de laatste pagina gelezen en daar zou ìk nou sterren voor moeten krijgen

het was een kruisdraging om doorheen te komen, maar we zijn weer aan het denken gezet!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drawing from fieldwork in the BDSM scene in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 2000s, Weiss provides a novel analysis of BDSM as a social community. She critiques anti-SM/feminist arguments, as well as the "pro-SM" position, which argues that this lifestyle is essentially transgressive. WIth ethnographic insight and laser sharp theory, she demonstrates how BDSM interacts with consumerism, capitalism, and neoliberalism and produces and reproduces social and racial inequality. She reveals that for practitioners, SM is demonstratively multivalent and essentially productive as it is “an orientation or identity, a craft, a practice, and a community or social scene” (10), as well as a technique, a skill, and a worldview (11).

[GONZA · Rating 3 out of 5]

A review of the year 2000 in San Francisco area over the BDSM scene. Information over gadgets, rules and all the stuff that lies beneath kinky sex. This is a book that I should have studied in University during my sexuology course becouse it is interesting and well written.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW

[The Sapphic Nerd · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complex anthropological analysis of the BDSM scene in the San Francisco area. It's fascinating but there's a lot of jargon and theoretical debate around which the best interpretations are for the attitudes of the community. It would have been more effective had it been more concise, but overall, it's an informative and insightful read.

[Juliana Philippa]

I only recently started reading romance books with BDSM and I don't read any of the (remotely) hardcore ones, but this sounds unbelievably interesting ... or is that just me? Lol.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

An unobjective hit piece on the BDSM community with numerous methodological issues.

[Wenjing Fan · Rating 4 out of 5]

关于美国湾区BDSM社区的研究，探讨在白人异性恋主导的“越轨”活动中，性别、种族、性向的压迫如何被复现与改写，以及新自由主义话语如何影响实践者们对这些活动的态度。这些场景和活动是私人的，更是政治的。读到与激进女权主义观念对照的时候还挺惊讶的，感觉学术作品似乎就是要接纳各种完全不同的观念，并寻找其中能互相汲取的地方。能看出作者在这样一个社群中努力采访、引用更多女性、非白人、非异性恋群体了，显然也是女性、非白人群体更懂得反思。

[Mike Mena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply fantastic ethnography. Foucauldians will LOVE. (Other keywords: neoliberalism, feminism, queer theory)

[Althea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Prof apologized for making us read this.

“If I remembered how dense it was I wouldn’t have made you read this”
“How is it possible she made such a fun topic so dull”

[Io Perl-Strahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for thesis, grateful that Weiss advised my project for a semester. Super well-done ethnography, sensitive and self-aware, grounded in the effects of performance rather than "meanings" etc, the right way to think about murky questions of power. Learned a lot

[Wies Ballekens · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better philosophical contemporary ethnographies I’ve read. Purr. If you want to read it, make sure to read some Foucault and Butler first, it’ll make the reading a lot easier.