{"id":36890,"date":"2017-01-10T20:55:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T01:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36890"},"modified":"2018-05-17T21:58:31","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T01:58:31","slug":"gentrification-hit-the-bdsm-community-years-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/01\/10\/gentrification-hit-the-bdsm-community-years-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Gentrification hit the BDSM community years back"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Salon<\/em>, Annalee Newitz<\/a> wrote about a quaint little San Francisco B&B that offered specialized services to the BDSM community before George W. Bush was inaugurated:<\/p>\n

In a quiet San Francisco neighborhood, surrounded by views of tree-covered hills, a quaint little B&B welcomes visitors from across the country. Guests can choose from four well-appointed rooms in this refurbished turn-of-the-century house, all personally decorated by Elizabeth, the proprietor. While they\u2019re staying at Elizabeth\u2019s B&B \u2014 called Differences \u2014 guests are also welcome to use all the amenities of the house: an extensive dungeon in the basement, metal hooks tucked into lacy corners and the genuine antique bondage devices adorning the rooms. Of course, guests will also need to make their own pancakes \u2014 B&B stands for bed and bondage here. Elizabeth doesn\u2019t do breakfast.<\/p>\n

Like other renegade subcultures, S\/M is gradually becoming gentrified. This is partly economic \u2014 getting flogged on a Friday night isn\u2019t as cheap as it used to be. Dozens of exclusive sex stores have popped up, peddling high-end toys, devices and leatherware. A typical private \u201cplay party\u201d runs each guest as much as $30 (this is a site cost \u2014 you pay for the space, not the sex). Certain clubs even enforce a pricey dress code: If you aren\u2019t all gussied up in latex or leather, you don\u2019t get in the door.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the kind of gentrification one sees in urban landscapes where yuppies suck up all the warehouse spaces and formerly low-income housing. Nor can one locate some previous version of the S\/M community that was less wealthy. Indeed, tracing S\/M\u2019s origins back to its Founding Daddies \u2014 the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch \u2014 one finds that S\/M\u2019s earliest class connections are purely aristocratic.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Odder still to an outsider would be the experience of attending an S\/M seminar at QSM\u2019s San Francisco warehouse, where a room full of well-dressed people in orderly rows of folding chairs watch politely as a well-known \u201cdominant\u201d demonstrates how to torture nipples correctly and why it\u2019s important to employ bondage devices that won\u2019t cause nerve damage. To avoid appearing \u201cunsafe,\u201d players plan their taboo violations and transgressions to a \u2018T.\u2019 It can be too much \u2014 Joe, a member of the coordinating committee for the Third Annual Leather Leadership Conference, notes ruefully that \u201cthe S\/M community is, at times, overwhelmingly geeky. Players will spend hours and days debating finer points of flogging safety instead of just getting together and having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the lack of law-breaking and general air of wholesomeness in the S\/M scene, it\u2019s no wonder that Jack and Jill Suburb have come to join the fun. The question is, what gets lost in the translation when S\/M values begin to percolate into the white-picket-fence world of middle America?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to “SG” for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Salon, Annalee Newitz wrote about a quaint little San Francisco B&B that offered specialized services to the BDSM community before George W. Bush was inaugurated: In a quiet San Francisco neighborhood, surrounded by views of tree-covered hills, a quaint little B&B welcomes visitors from across the country. Guests can choose from four well-appointed rooms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,13],"tags":[909,196,503,255,1207,202],"class_list":["post-36890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-usa","tag-bdsm","tag-lgbt","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sexuality","tag-suburbs","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9B0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36891,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36890\/revisions\/36891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}