Torture is hate. Torture is fucked up. Torture is self-loathing projected. Torture is neither normal nor justifiable. If you are into torture, you are not fucked, you are fucked up. Stop trying to make it sound sexy in this column while battling it in your political columns, Joan Walsh. If you are into torture, get therapy, don't join a fucking fetish club, you sick bastard.

SALON IS SELLING ITSELF WITH SLEAZE AND IT'S A MISTAKE.

Should have anticipated the sex-negative people who'd post to this article. Ooh, it's torture, you're sick, you're fucked up, you need therapy. If he's anything like me, S/M is his therapy. And he's clearly well enough to make a living as an artist, contributing to the very online magazine you read every day.

Why would you condemn someone for their sexual choices while at the same time slamming conservatives? Your uninformed judgment of the author is worthy of Savage or Limbaugh - and you're being just as close-minded and insecure as any neo-con you'd care to name.

S & M is not sick, and bravo to you for reviewing Elliott's book seriously and sympathetically'

I read Salon for its rich diversity and progressive slant which is difficult to find all in one place. Thanks for once again reaffirming why I subscribe to Salon. And fuck those old prigs who don't get it!

There was a time in the 80s (and perhaps the 90s) when reading this type of literature provided me with a certain kind of thrill. Sexual subcultures were so mysterious and impenetrable. Voyeurism was impossible; you had to be a part of it to know anything about it.

But the internet pretty much changed all that. There’s nothing mysterious about any of it anymore. Now when someone crawls out from our culture’s dark underbelly to write a book or make a movie on the subject (i.e. go mainstream) it just feels like they’re trying to shock. And it’s not shocking. Just pathetic and a little tragic.

Reading this tripe is like being accosted by a flasher. You just want to roll your eyes and say “Oh per-lease, just put it away. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Leather folk or not, we all have some perilous or disturbing desires, and we all have, at least once, acted on them.

According to a poll I read a few years back, the mean number of sexual partners per lifetime for Americans is six. Yep, six. I have had many friends who have done that many in one gathering, though I personally drew the line at five. I am not a multitasker.

So, I'm willing to bet that the line quoted, above, is less true than its author might like to admit. Those of us who have had really adventurous, even somewhat dangerous, sexual experiences can often fail to notice how utterly plain the world around us really is. Perhaps it's appropriate to assess what is "perilous or disturbing" relative to the person experiencing the desire, but that might reduce the meaning of those terms to some fairly ridiculously low thresholds. A hand-job in an open convertible would probably send a lot of folks into near cardiac arrest.

I'm gay, so reading explicit straight sex scenes has about as much effect on me as watching a mime troupe perform Shakespeare. The mental gymnastics of merging myself with the narrator and his passions are exhausting. Nevertheless, I found Ms. Minkowitz's enthusiasm for Elliott's writing very infectious, and I wish him well with his book, his advocacy, and his perilous journey.

I guess Salon is okay on love expressed through pain and torture and the occasional cigarette burn - but call that shit sick - and they pull your post down!

I'm gay, so reading explicit straight sex scenes has about as much effect on me as watching a mime troupe perform Shakespeare.

As I said before the SaloNazis threw my post into the oven, anyone who could write the above loses all claim to an adult critique of almost anything resembling art. I intoned that (IMHO), the gay and S/M sex scene is a sick one - devoid of love, based around the culture and worship of the erection and its spew, but I take that back: sweaty gay (and particularly) S/M orgies are the pinnacle of love - the absolute highest of human expression save for the love that hurts and maims - now that's adult communication.

imprinted by our early sexual experiences.

As author Gottfried Vanderplatt's short story illustrates:

http://electricstorytime.blogspot.com/2006/11/kinky-sumbitch.html

When you're in a therapist's office, your mind and emotions are tortured as you recall painful past experiences. This is applauded but when you add the torture of your physical body into the equation, isn't it interesting how people see a completely different picture?

A lot of people who practice SM do it because they've had some sort of trauma that's blocked up deep emotions of grief, hurt, shame and feeling unloved. The intensity of SM play can allow them to get to these feelings and purge them in a way that no kind of therapy or anything else can. Re-enacting moments of abuse and powerlessness can actually be empowering for the victim because this time around they are the ones in control and can stop the s/m play at any time with a single word.

S/M is a consensual practice--you're not the one being tortured so relax. It's always more difficult to understand something that you can't relate to but why don't you give it a try and keep your viciousness and judgment in check.

I can't speak to the merits of the book, but to the reader who likened BDSM to torture--you really have no idea what you're talking about.

Charity is not the same as robbery, even though money is exchanged. In the first instance, money is given freely and an emotional pleasure of having given is the prize. Willingness and pleasure, change the experience entirely.

So too with BDSM, and for much the same reasons.