SPIRITUAL BDSM/KINK TIMELINE
1984: Urban Aboriginals by Geoff Mains was published. This anthropological study presented the gay leather community as a modern tribe practicing transformative rituals.
1990s: The growth of USENET and other internet forums enabled kinky networking in new ways, sowing the seeds for the contemporary Kink Scene to grow.
1991: LeatherFolk – Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice edited by Mark Thompson was published. This collection of writings from people within the Kink Scene includes a section of eight essays on The Spirit and the Flesh.
1994: Public Sex by Pat Califia was published. This collection of essays on different radical sex practices included one on Modern Primitives, Latex Shamans and Ritual S/M.
1994: Radical Ecstasy by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy was published. This book explores the creation of experiences of transcendence through BDSM practices.
1997: Bitch Goddess – the Spiritual Path of the Dominant Woman edited by Pat Califia and Drew Campbell was published. This collection included informative essays, fiction and poetry.
2001: The New Topping Book by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy was published. This was essentially a BDSM “how to” guide, but included a section titled S/M Spirituality: From the Top.
2001: The New Bottoming Book by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy was published. This was essentially a BDSM “how to” guide, but included a section titled S/M Spirituality.
2003: Its Not About the Whip: Love, Sex and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene by Sensuous Sadie was published. This was a collection of personal reflections on kink/kink experience and spirituality.
2006: Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path by Raven Kaldera was published; it offered guidance and reflections on BDSM as a personal spiritual path.
2006: Philosophy in the Dungeon – The Magic of Sex and Spirit by Jack Rinella was published; it offered guidance and reflections on BDSM as a personal spiritual path.
2008: Fetlife.com, a social networking site for kinksters, founded by John Kopanas (aka John Baku), was launched; as of May 2020 it had 884 established groups with interests in spiritual kink.
2009: Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond by Lee Harrington was published; it offered guidance and reflections on BDSM as a personal spiritual path.
2010: Spirit of Desire: Personal Explorations of Sacred Kink edited by Lee Harrington was published; it contained a collection of personal accounts from practitioners of Sacred Kink.
2011: “Leather and Grace,” a kink identified Unitarian Universalist group was founded; the website was shut down in 2019 but Unitarian Universalist kink remains represented on Fetlife.com.
2011: Sacred Power, Holy Surrender – Living a Spiritual Power Dynamic, edited by Raven Kaldera was published; it offered guidance and reflections on consensual Master/slave relationships as a personal spiritual path.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
A precise founding moment for the idea of spiritual BDSM (Bondage, Domination, submission/sadism and masochism) is hard to identify as this is not a consciously created system but rather an emergent movement, arising from personal experienced and community discussion as to the meaning of those experiences. (The Timeline presented above therefore provides dates of the recent surge in visibility of Spiritual Kink, primarily through publication of seminal books.) BDSM type practices such as flagellation, skin piercing, sensory restrictions and restrained movement can be found across human history and through religious and spiritual traditions; whether or how these are directly related to the development of contemporary BDSM practices is contested, however practitioners of spiritual kink may well consciously draw upon rituals from such sources when crafting their own.
The potential of BDSM to create transformative and profound experiences of connection and altered consciousness has been well known to practitioners, in all probability for as long as there have been practitioners. However, anything describable as a group or a movement remained either unknown or non-existent until the sudden expansion of the Kink Scene enabled by the internet and the opportunities it created for community spaces without physical proximity. The emergence of spiritual BDSM practice therefore needs to be understood within the context of the broader Kink Scene.
The history of this Scene too is hard to trace, since the practice with which it is concerned have often been considered unusual, perverse or criminal. Tupper (2018) locates the origin of contemporary cultural understandings of kink in religious asceticism (primarily Christian) and the cultural narratives about pain, power and submission to power that arise from those 
practices. But the idea of kink as a discreet subculture is most commonly connected to the gay Leatherman culture of 1950s America, which overlapped but was not synonymous with a less homogenous, less organised culture of gay SM (Sadomasochism). Geoff Mains book Urban Aboriginals, [Image at right] first published in 1984, is probably the first exploration of kink in relation to religion or spirituality and it focuses on this hybrid Leatherman culture as tribal, united by the joys of exploring the human condition through forbidden or transgressive behaviours in what Mains calls “the pilgrimage and transformation through leatherspace” (Mains 2004:42). Mains writes about a gay subculture and its specific codes of conduct and practices but all of those practices can be found under the umbrella of the Kink Scene today and his characterisation of “Leathersex” as “a Dionysian thrust in the midst of Apollonian parry” has been borrowed and expanded upon by kinksters writing from within other kinky communities. His conclusion that straight kinky people have not felt the need to establish such specialised communities was probably justifiable at the time of writing as heterosexuals were able to appear to conform to societal norms of relationship far better, rendering the need for an open kink community arguably less acute.
Nonetheless the immense flowering of kink communities, across and beyond all sexual orientations and identities, which the advent of the internet enabled suggests that many people were interested in kink and had struggled, previously, to act upon such an interest. And, as the Kink Scene expanded, discussion about the ritual nature of practices such as Mains described, their potential to contribute to human actualisation and to create transcendence became discussed more widely. In 1993 Pat Califia wrote that “the once tiny family of pagans who do S/M has grown beyond the point where we all know eachother” (2004:259) and that “family” has both continued to grow and has expanded beyond named paganisms. Kink educators like Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy connected the “radical ecstasy” available through BDSM to a broad, New Age kind of sacred sexuality, in which sex (including kinky sex) is “a truly holy communion – open to everything” (Easton and Hardy 2004:210). By contrast writers like Raven Kaldera and Lee Harrington draw on contemporary paganisms in their own practice, which informs their writing about BDSM and kink as offering unique spiritual paths independent of any necessary identification with existing traditions.
As a contemporary subculture then, both the Kink Scene and spirituality within it can be understood as active and ongoing process of social networking (Haenfler 2014) carried out by people who identify with the foundational idea of being kinky. These discursive processes have murky but diverse roots but have developed their current expressions over the past few decades, in communication with and response to changes in the mainstream culture the Kink Scene exists within. While the boundaries of networks like this are diffuse, members do have some sense of shared identity and actively create and contest meanings around practice, objects, ideas and values which are, to some degree, deviations from the perceived norm.
The Scene is thus both a single entity, with many people using “kinky” as a primary identity label, and a collection of diverse and overlapping sub-groups focussed around particular kinks, or interests. Many of which overlap and intersect, with most kinksters claiming multiple kinks as component parts of their overall kink. BDSM (most commonly Bondage, Domination, Submission and Masochism) and the many practices that can be included under this heading form a substantial part of the broader Kink Scene and are also the forms of practice most commonly associated with spiritual experiences. Spiritual or sacred kink is likewise its own category of kink practice and an element people include in their broader kink identity. It is not a distinct institution or organisation separate from other kink communities but rather a quality of practice and experience. It can take explicit form, with individuals engaging in kink activity as a named and considered ritual, and in this form there appears to be a substantial connection with neo-paganism in all its complex diversity. But it can also take more implied forms as lived religion or religioning (Nye 2000) wherein practitioners who do not choose to identify more formally as religious nonetheless regard their kink and the experiences they have through it as a source of personal spiritual meaning and fulfillment.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
Kink itself includes so many diverse practices that it is hard to define. Even the sub-category of BDSM is not as easily summarised as the acronym might apply. There is, for example, a feeling among many afficionados of CP (Corporal Punishment in the form of spanking and similar activities) that what they do is not BDSM (Plante 2006), even though it would likely to be considered to be sado-masochistic in nature by most people. This diversity, and the idea that such diversity is welcoming to all is highly valued by most people who identify with the Kink Scene. As a result, in all likelihood most kinksters would object to the idea of shared ideology or doctrines on the basis that such things tend to limit the very accessibility and intersectionality on which the Scene prides itself. It is however equally likely that one of the things which holds any subculture together, indeed which begins the process of identifying and separating such a group from the mainstream, is a core of shared values. it is ironic but far from incomprehensible that a rejection of doctrine or ideology would be one such. The shared values of the Kink Scene are broadly ethical in nature, most of them are explicit within in community discussions about ‘what it is that we do’ (a phrase commonly used to indicate the complex and inclusive nature of kink), and most individuals would claim to share them. Nevertheless, their existence should not be taken as indicating that they are uncontested or unproblematic or that the Kink Scene is any less prone than any other diverse group to paying lip service to a value which is not necessarily evident in all interactions.
Shared values are important if a subcultural identity is to be lived out, especially if that identity is to be carried beyond the spaces set aside for such performance the community considers true or authentic, rather than being something which is claimed or narrated (Wilkins 2008). A distinction between “being” kinky as a part of identity and merely “doing” kinky things on occasion for pleasure seems to resonate for many kinksters and functions as a means of distinguishing an authentic kinkster from a tourist (Newmahr 2011; Robertson, In Press). However, used this way being kinky means practicing ones kink as “an end unto itself,” and authenticity is thus found in and through “experience, rather than … [in] presentation to others” (Newmahr 2011:68, 72). Identity construction as an ongoing process through practice can be considered an important part of personal meaning-making, and therefore an important contributor to spiritual kink (Robertson 2018; Robertson In Press). This somatic connection is complicated by the existence of virtual kink and communities which never engage in real world practice, but connections between this form of kink and spiritual practice remain unstudied.
“Your kink is not my kink,” often abbreviated to YKINMK and sometimes followed with “and your kink is OK,” is a phrase in common usage to support the view that no-one should be shamed for their kink interests. It is generally used in discussion between people who do not share kink interests as a means of saying that one person has no wish to do what the other person does, but that they do not negatively judge them for that interest nor do they wish to stop them doing it. It is intended to communicate recognition of difference and diversity while respecting each individual’s personal boundaries.
There is broad agreement that the principle of YKINMK should not be used as a means of flouting or offending the specific rules of a given community. So if, for example, a particular play venue forbids breath or blood play it would not be considered acceptable to ignore or challenge that on the basis that your own kink is being negatively judged by the prohibition. Similarly, activity which is truly non-consensual cannot be defended in this way. For many kinksters these two things are connected; play in the semi-public spaces of a club or party necessarily means attendees will witness whatever is going on and limitations on what is and is not acceptable can be connected to the absence of consent by the attendees to witness particular forms of kink. For many kinksters play in a wholly public place is on the borders of acceptability for the same reason, it may force people to witness something they have not consented to.
Consent is the single most important value within the kink community and the least likely to be contested. Kaldera writes unequivocally that consent is sacred “a holy thing. To run over a stated boundary is sacrilege,” to ignore a safeword (a signal of distress that should stop a scene immediately) is “evil,” and, arising from these values is an obligation to give a potential playmate “an accurate description of your ability to give and withdraw consent” (Kaldera,2015:124). Without consent most kink activity would constitute abuse. At a simple level, distinctions can be drawn between hurt and harm – being caned with consent hurts but does no harm as it is desired, being caned without consent harms as it is an abuse of power. However, the existence of D/s permanent power exchange relationships, where the submissive partner considers themselves always under the control of the Dominant in all aspects of their relationship complicates this and establishing such relationships usually entails complex negotiations and safety valves such as designated times where the rules do not apply, or an explicit duty on the part of the submissive to report any doubts or concerns with the corresponding obligation on the Dominant to give these appropriate consideration. These kinds of relationship also highlight the importance the kink community places on honest communication between partners. Consensual non-consent may seem to further complicates the issue; this is where it is agreed there will be no safeword for the duration of the session. No kinkster would be likely to discuss doing this without considerable and careful negotiation ahead of time as to what the session will entail. Therefore, crucially, consent is still considered present.
Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) is a well-known phrase within the Scene, widely used to distinguish kink from abuse. An activity that fits all three criteria would be acceptable as kink, with an activity that doesn’t being regarded as abusive. As with any attempt to identify an essence of something complex, fluid and diverse this phrase has been highly criticised by the kink community and is rejected by many. The importance of consent is rarely challenged, although its precise meaning may be contested in certain contexts, but safety and sanity are not only subjective terms they also are strongly weighted with normative judgements. It is also true that many kinksters believe they have the right to do something that is not safe, provided all parties consent and do so with as much skill and knowledge as they can bring to the situation. As a result of these such criticisms alternatives to SSC have been proposed and, in turn, challenged. Risk Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) is probably the best know alternative; it is criticised for over-emphasising edgy forms of kink where low or no risk activities are far more widespread.
Other, less widely known, attempts at such a framework include Personal Responsibility Informed Consensual Kink (PRICK) and the 4 C’s (Caring, Communication, Consent and Caution). It is worth noting that consent features in all these acronyms, speaking to its fundamental place in kink ethics. What they all also attempt to do is recognise the need for all players to be as fully aware as possible of what it is they are going to do. There is also an implication, more clearly in the latter two, of a value being placed on developing skill and understanding.
A last value which should be recognised, although it is rarely overtly identified by kinksters, is the idea of ownership of the body and who does or does not have the right to restrict what is done with it, regardless of consent. Many forms of kink are ambiguous in terms of legality, and some are likely to be criminal, or at least capable of being framed as criminal. Specifics of this will of course vary according to country. However the UK is well known for an infamous criminal case (R v Brown 1993) in which a group of men who had engaged in consensual kink activity, which created no lasting damage or need for medical intervention and about which none of them complained, were convicted of “unlawful and malicious wounding” and “assault occasioning actual bodily harm” contrary to sections 20 and 47 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. Convictions were upheld on appeal to the House of Lords (now the Supreme Court) and to the European Court of Human Rights. The criminal judgement is based on the principle that it is not possible to give consent to an assault, and it remains good law in the UK. For most kinky people however, the opposite principle is true; it is entirely possible to consent to be hurt or denied rights and freedoms.
RITUALS/PRACTICES
The most commonly used term for kink activity is play and there is a vast and diverse range of activities which constitute such play. Kink is a broadly accepted general umbrella term that encapsulates the entire array of behaviours and relationship which may be associated with fetish, BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Submission/Sadism/Slave and Masochism/Master), SM (Sadomasochism), D/s (Dominance and submission), M/s (Master and slave), DD (Domestic Discipline), CP (Corporal Punishment) and other alternative bodily practices, including body modification and sacred sexuality. Kink can also be used more specifically to locate an individual within that larger milieu, so that individuals can speak of ‘their kinks’ specifically as a reference to an individual portfolio of interests and associations, drawn from the larger pool of all kinks and woven into self-understanding and identity. Terms such as BDSM, CP and other specific kinks can function as synonyms for play, offering a general descriptor for the performative elements of their kink.
The range of kinks is sufficiently vast that the phrase “what it is that we do” (WIITWD) is popularly used by kinksters asked to explain the concept of kink. While this does reflect the actual diversity of practice and honours the contested nature of all possible labels, it is not entirely helpful in clarifying (for someone wholly outside of the Scene) what kind of activities might be involved. In very general terms then kink can be understood as a collective term for activities and relationships that involve the consensual and conscious use of pain, perceptions about pain, sensation, emotion, restraint, power, perceptions about power or any combination thereof, for psychological, emotional and/or sensory pleasure. Its most common expression is in scenes of sessions involving two or more people with someone taking the top role in using the tools and creating the sensations and someone else being the bottom or recipient of those attentions. The terms Dominant and submissive, while commonly used in popular culture, carry specific connotations of power-exchange which may not be present at all and/or which may exist in ways distinct from the appearance presented in a scene; this means these terms are not best used when a generalised description is required. A representative selection of kink activities includes:
anal play; asphyxiaphilia (breath-play); bastinado (foot-beating); birching; blindfolds; blood play; bondage; branding; breast torture; candlewax; caning; chains; chastity; cling film (mummification/immersive bondage); cock-and-ball torture (CBT); caging; caning; clamps; coprophilia/scat (faecal play); cupping; cutting; dacryphilia (tears); degradation; depilation; dildos; electro-play; exhibitionism; fear; figging (insertion of ginger in the anus); fire-play; fisting; flogging; forced feminisation; forced orgasm; forniphilia (objectification); hair pulling; handcuffs; humiliation; ice; incest fantasy; infantilism; klismaphilia (enemas); knife play; medical play; orgasm control; orgasm denial; pain; pegs; piercings; pinching; piggy/pony/puppy play; punching; rope; scarification; self-bondage; sensory deprivation; shibari/kinbaku (rope bondage); spanking; suspension; tickling; trampling; urolagnia (water-sports); vacuum bed; violet wand; voyeurism; waterboarding; whips.
Most kink spirituality derives from the experiences resulting from play. Many kinksters don’t think of their kink in spiritual terms until they have an experience they struggle to conceptualise in other ways. Lee Harrington’s (2009) book “Sacred Kink” [Image at right] locates “the eightfold paths of Sacred Kink” in the different ways altered consciousness can be achieved through kink activity and offers guidance on each path as “a different way to the top of the mountain or the bottom of the well” (2009:12). But there is no necessity to have planned or intended to create an altered state for it to occur through kink. Robertson (in press) found that successfully created play-space is commonly described with terms like a bubble, or a magic circle, denoting a space distinct from the everyday, an alternative as-if reality within which different qualities of experience, relationship, self and other can be explored. While peak states, known in the scene as sub-space and top- or Dom-space, can occur (and are more likely to be described by the players as states of altered consciousness), this is only one way in which perceptions of reality are altered by play. If various forms and levels of altered consciousness are part of what distinguishes a play-space from ordinary space, and not all play is considered spiritual in nature (even by practitioners of spiritual kink), it therefore seems likely that there is more to be considered in understanding kink spirituality.
The peak experiences of sub-space have formed the bulk of academic work in this area to date, although they are not necessarily called by that name. This is probably because of the qualitative similarity of these experiences to Christian forms of mystical experience. Top-space goes largely unmentioned, probably because its characteristics of heightened self-knowledge and hyper-awareness of location and environment are less amenable to fitting Christianised definitions of transcendence. This has led to the assertion that spiritual kink experiences are only accessible to players taking the bottom role (Beckmann 2009). However, Robertson’s (In Press) work suggests that complementary and co-constructed nature of these experiences is an important aspect of their contribution to personal spirituality. The intimacy and opportunity to explore relationship that is created through play contributes to the personal meaning and story-making processes often associated with spirituality. In other words, kink experience of all kinds contributes to “in some way making them more astute, more enlightened or more alive” (Taylor and Ussher 2001:305) or as “a path towards self-transformation and connection” (Baker 2016:5).
Kink can be considered as ritual, whether or not that term is explicitly associated with religion or spirituality. Tupper (2018) casts kink as “liminoid rituals” (2018:253), after Turner’s (1982) explanation of experiences which offer a break from normal time and space without the change in social status that is the result of liminal rites of passage. He also notes that kink provides may “functions of religion: initiation, community, identity, the transformation of self” (Tupper 2018:255). Robertson (In Press) collected accounts of kink ritual specifically named as such as being conducted in pursuit of self-knowledge and acceptance, claiming of identity, reclaiming/reshaping of trauma, creation and sharing of energy, work with deities and shamanic sacrifice of pain on behalf of the tribe; she noted also that all bar the final two formed part of kink narratives which was not self-described as ritual.
There is also scope to consider some forms of kink at least as “spiritual edgework” (Bromley 2007), since it allows situations of danger and mythic weight to be built and confronted through ritual sequences. Kink can push edgeworkers to challenge their own limits and potential in the way Bromley describes firewalkers doing. The stepping outside of safe space (as he describes it) is an expression of trust in a transcendent Other, while for kinksters that trust is invested in one another. But the results can be similar moments of empowerment, connection and 
realisation (Robertson, In Press) and the experiences so created a “conduit for spiritual states” (Greenberg 2019:232). It is this kind of edgework practice which characterises the BDSM Ordeal path outlined by Kaldera (2006). [Image at right]
In sum kink practice is process-oriented, challenging and subversive (Kraemer 2014); it enables the exploration of emotional and physical limits within settings which can heighten awareness of vulnerability or create a sense of great power, with the concomitant awareness that this is power wielded with consent, and the knowledge that one is both safe and greatly valued. The process of play which creates these experiences has many facets, which combine to enable the creation of an “’as if’ or ‘could be’ universe” (Seligman et al. 2008:7): an other-where, experienced as fully real and authentic, within which different potentialities of bodies and relationships can be shaped and explored (Robertson In Press). It is this potential which has led to the widespread in-Scene interest in kink as spiritual in nature, and this interest is growing. Greenberg (2019) reports that a search for “spiritual” on kink networking site Fetlife in 2018 yielded 672 groups or forums, the same search conducted in 2020 gives 884 groups; individual group memberships cited by Greenberg have risen in similar proportions.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
The Kink Scene has no single central organisation. There are educational groups, mostly localised to varying degrees, and educators may well be looked at as leaders with the principles they espouse adopted by new people as kind of “canon.” Much spiritual kink is entirely personal and self-guided through experience. Looking for information on the subject is likely to lead people to the work of Raven Kaldera, Lee Harrington and Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy as the authors of works on kink and spirituality published in the mainstream. All these writers offer guidance and potential paths to follow but also emphasise the idiosyncratic nature of all kink and the need for the individual to find what works for them.
Venues and events set up for public play also assume a leadership role within the context of that event. Rules of conduct and appearance for those spaces are set and generally enforced by the expectations and norms of that kink community itself. The rules of such events are also likely to be influenced by local laws about gatherings of an adult nature.
The connection between spiritual kink and paganism complicates questions of leadership; some forms of paganism are hierarchical, while others are not, and this is likely to be carried over to kinky pagan practices carried out in the context of a coven or community.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
The largest challenge faced by kink overall is that in many places its activities are at best legally ambiguous and some will certainly be illegal. Even where they are not, social stigma and discrimination may result from being “out” as kinky, regardless of a claimed spiritual connection. This is fed by stereotyped use of kink imagery and practices in popular media; such portrayals, even where they do not overtly connect kink with criminality and psychopathy, still generally lack the subtleties of real-life kink, feeding the view that it is deviant and wrong (Scott 2015).
There is an historical connection between key terms associated with kink and mental illness. Sadism and masochism originated in nineteenth century psychological discourse and sadism has had a place in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of psychiatric disorders since its first publication in 1952 (Greenberg 2019). It remains there now, as does masochism, as paraphilic disorders, albeit qualified by the diagnostic criteria that it must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social functioning (Boskey 2013; Greenberg 2019).This is generally considered a step towards destigmatising consensual SM practices, at least in a medical context (Greenberg 2019). However, the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Disease includes sadomasochism within its Disorders of Adult Personality and Behaviour and states that these “extreme or significant deviations” from the way in which the average person thinks, feels and perceives are not always associated with either distress or impaired social performance (World Health Organization 2016).
This is in contrast to the DSM diagnostic criteria and the contradiction between two major sources suggests that the DSM alteration alone may be insufficient to destigmatise consensual BDSM practised for mutual pleasure. It is also true that the diagnostic criteria retain a certain ambiguity with regard to what constitutes harm or risk of harm, and this ambiguity is generally shared by legal references to BDSM (Khan 2014).
IMAGES
Image #1: Book cover of Urban Aporiginals by Geoff Mains.
Image #2: Book cover of Sacred Kink by Lee Harrington.
Image #3: Book cover of Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path by Raven Kaldera.
REFERENCES**
** Unless otherwise noted, the material in this profile is based on Alison Robertson, Play, Pain and Religion: Creating Gestalt Through Kink Encounter, Equinox, in Press.
Baker, Alexzandria C. 2016. “Sacred Kink: Finding Psychological Meaning at the Intersection of BDSM and Spiritual Experience.” Sexual and Relationship Therapy. Accessed from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2016.1205185 on19 May 2020.
Beckmann Andrea. 2009. The Social Construction of Sexuality and Perversion – Deconstructing Sadomasochism. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Boskey, Elizabeth. 2013. “Sexuality in the DSM 5.” Contemporary Sexuality 47:1-5.
Bromley, David. 2007. “On Spiritual Edgework: The Logic of Extreme Ritual Performances.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46:287-303.
Califia, Pat. 2004. Modern Primitives, Latex Shamans and Ritual S/M (1993). Radical Sex. Second Edition. Jersey City, NJ: Cleis Press.
Easton, Dossie and Janet Hardy. 2004. Radical Ecstacy : SM Journeys to Transcendence. Emeryville, CA: Greenery Press.
Greenberg, Sam E. 2019. “Divine Kink: A Consideration of the Evidence for BDSM as Spiritual Ritual.” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies. 38. Accessed from http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2019.38.1.220 on 20 May 2020.
Haenfler, Ross. 2014. Subcultures. London and New York, Routledge.
Harrington, Lee. 2009. Sacred Kink. Mystic Productions.
Kaldera, Raven. 2015. “Walking the Underworld paths: BDSM, Power Exchange and Consent in a Sacred Context.” Pp. 117-42 in Pagan Consent Culture – Building Communities of Empathy and Autonomy, edited by Christine Kraemer and Yvonne Arburrow. Hubbardston, MA: Asphodel Press.
Kaldera, Raven. 2006. Dark Moon Rising : Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path. Hubbardson, MA: Asphodel Press.
Khan Ummni. 2014. Vicarious Kinks- S/M in the Socio-Legal Imaginary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kraemer, Christina Hoff. 2014. Eros and Touch from a Pagan Perspective. New York: Routledge.
Mains, Geoff. 2004. Urban Aboriginals. Los Angeles: Daedalus.
Newmahr, Staci. 2011. Playing on the Edge – Sadomaoschism, Risk and Intimacy, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Nye, Malory. 2000. “Religion, Post-Religionism and Religioning: Religious Studies and Contemporary Cultural Debates.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion\ 12::447-76.
Plante, Rebecca. 2006. “Sexual Spanking, the Self, and the Construction of Deviance.” Journal of Homosexuality 50:59-79.
Robertson, Alison. 2018. “Claiming Identity, Delineating Category: Understanding Narratives of Religion and Kink.” Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions 20:100-17.
Robertson, Alison. In Press. Play, Pain and Religion: Creating Gestalt Through Kink Encounter. Sheffiield, UK: Equinox.
Scott, Catherine. 2015. Thinking Kink – The Collision of BDSM, Feminism and Popular Culture. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc.
Seligman, Adam B., Weller, Robert, P., Puett, Michael J., & Simon, Bennett. 2008. Ritual and its Consequences, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, Gary W. and Jane M. Ussher. 2001. “Making Sense of S&M: A Discourse Analytic Account. Sexualities” 4:293.
Tupper, Peter. 2018. A Lover’s Pinch – A Cultural History of Sadomasochism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre. New York: PAJ Publications.
Wilkins, Amy, C. 2008. Wannabes, Goths and Christians – the Boundaries of Sex, Style and Status. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
World Health Organization. 2016. “Mental and behavioural disorders.” Accessed from https://icd.who.int/browse10/2016/en#/F60-F69 on 3 June 2020.
Publication Date:
7 June 2020
