When you visit your Substack home page, you can see images of Ukrainian men with bloodied faces and bloodied, bandaged hands smoking cigarettes. You can't, however, see images of a woman in jeans, or just about any other image used as the featured image, for an article by an erotica writer even if the image is not obscene.
There's just so much pure sadism in the news and in the daily life of working people that we are desensitized to it, while the consensual sadism intended to produce pleasure in the willing subject is considered taboo. I am intentionally playing with the word "sadism" here. I am working on a novel whose premise questions who exactly is sadistic in the world.
When we talk about sadism in the erotic sense, the acts that cause pain or sensation are typically done on an intimate scale, such as one or a few sadist(s) taking advantage of one or a few masochist(s). The sadist takes pleasure in personally causing some kind of pain and closely observing the reaction of the victim. This distinction would set sexual sadism apart from the institutional sadism of an abusive boss or a thuggish dictator.
Scholars have indeed used the term "sadism" to refer to evil political and military leaders who caused untold death and suffering to victims numbering in the millions. Nick Braune of South Texas College, writing in a 2020 paper in the Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Difference, cited Erich Fromm in defining the Nazis as being specifically sadistic and the Roman and American empires as having engaged in sadistic acts at points throughout history:
Fromm distinguishes between two kinds of aggression: malignant and benign. Having witnessed the rise of Nazism and completed case studies on the narcissism and sadism of Hitler and Himmler, he knew well that humans can have malignant aggression, sometimes even showing a “genius” for evil: “The history of civilization, from the destruction of Carthage and Jerusalem to the destruction [by the United States] of Dresden, Hiroshima, and the people, soil, and trees of Vietnam, is a tragic record of sadism and destructiveness.”
You can see the definition of "sadism" based on its usage is quite slippery if it can be applied both to a dominatrix who whips a willing man and then provides aftercare and to a dictator who engaged in a war of aggression and a systematic policy of genocide. The inclusion of the World War II-era United States (Dresden and Hiroshima) as a sadistic superpower broadens the definition further. The aggressive power need not take pleasure in the pain and suffering it is causing in order for it to be called "sadistic." In some way, this definition is problematic because it applies a normative judgment to the word "sadistic," treating it almost as a synonym for "cruel."
But sexual sadism is not a synonym for cruel. Some people take pleasure in having power over another or in pushing boundaries. I am glad those people exist because I have some masochistic tendencies that some lovely sadists have helped me explore, providing me pleasure and thrill.
The perception of sadism and masochism is further complicated by the fact that much of the content focused on BDSM is created by people who do not understand it and that which is created by members of the community is sometimes embellished to play to fantasies. Playfulness and mind games are a big part of kink.
Bangkok-based Mistress Cat described what makes her sadistic in a video for Coconuts TV:
"If I didn't know about BDSM, I think I could have been a murderer!"
How much of her comment is intentional exaggeration or talk for the camera, I don't know. But it sounds titillating and funny to a masochistic male. Could it be misinterpreted by a prudish vanilla?
She goes on:
"I wanted to see people's faces when they took their last breath. BDSM is how I can torture someone within our agreed boundaries."
Properly understood, a consensual sadist's attitude falls under what Erich Fromm would define as "benign aggression." Specifically, it is a form of playful aggression. According to Prof. Braune's summary:
It is also easy to perceive a child’s idle playful aggression of pulling wings off fireflies to see them jump as maliciousness, yet maybe no cruelty is found here, but simply fascination with the jumping.
A dominatrix who likes to hear a man yelp when he feels a leather whip smack against his back or see him flinch when she strikes the whip against the floor just to tease him is engaging in play.
Fromm also defined three other forms of aggression as benign: accidental aggression, self-assertive aggression (defined as "[seen] in males, showing a tendency of what Fromm calls 'pushing forward'"), and defensive aggression.
It is likely that some sadistic dominant women are also motivated by the self-assertive aggression typically associated with males. This kind of aggression is associated with one advocating for oneself and standing up for one's rights. It is also associated with the performance of professional athletes who must show aggression and assertiveness in order to outcompete their opponents (and their teammates, for that matter, in order to win a job as a starter). Women in a patriarchal society must advocate for themselves all the more to get what they want. Many dommes have described how engaging in play as a dominant makes them feel more confident in the world.
According to Braune, self-assertive aggression is defined by Fromm as benign.
Selfassertiveness is benign, “characterologically” lifeaffirming, and lack of that aggressiveness, timidity, can impede healthy living.
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Yet it is easy to think of some examples, particularly in the kind of "pushing forward" associated with males, where a man picks a fight just because he feels disrespected. Men in seats of power have pushed countries to war because they didn't want to look weak or because they wanted to avenge their father. I suppose the other forms of benign aggression could be yield results that are just as destructive. At least, it can be said that self-assertive aggression is not inherently evil.
If we apply Fromm's definitions of aggression to dominatrixes and sadistic women, we see that sadists do not engage in malignant aggression. Now, Fromm used the term "sadism" with reference to malignant aggression. Josef Stalin was called "an extreme example of sadism." We are left with the contradiction that sadists (sexual sadists) are not sadistic.
The problem is simply that "sadism" is one of those words that has different definitions within different communities. It has different definitions in different contexts. In particular, it has a different definition within some niche community than it does in the colloquial speech of the masses and, perhaps, in the philosophical sphere when discussing aggression.
It also might be that in the course of defining the term "sadism," a normative definition was attached by the academics. Words whose definitions contain a normative component are troublesome and, in many cases, non-descriptive.
Look at the definition of the word "terrorism." For all intents and purposes, every nation-state and most commentators have defined terrorism as unjustified acts of violence in the pursuit of political goals. Any country's military is defending itself, and any insurgent attacking said military is a terrorist.
If "sadism" is defined as being malignantly aggressive, as being cruel, as evil, then a dominant woman who whips consenting men is no more sadistic than anyone else. On the other hand, if "sadism" is the "S" in BDSM, then we have no reason to call the murderous dictators throughout history "sadists."
I might be being pedantic. I arrived at this topic by trying to define "sadism" for the purpose of yet another essay I am working on. I ended up having to confront the fact that "sadism" has no single simple definition. But I am satisfied, at least in my mind, that I have a better understanding of my idea about sadism as I approach my upcoming article on sadism in horror films. If that sounds like a topic that you would be interested in reading about, subscribe now, and it should be coming next week.
It doesn't help that De Sade described *fantasies* of non-consensual torture!
I prefer to use Sadism to describe the basic human urge. It can be expressed benignly as we do in BDSM, and less so... as in all the horrible stuff in the world.