I feel genuinely hurt by people's negative reactions to this article. Every time I hear about how much people think S&M is sick and wrong, it drives me deeper and deeper into the closet. This is a lot worse than being gay, I can assure you.

My first ever sexual feelings came when I was under 6 years old and they were in reaction to the image of a woman being tied up on tv. I don't know why I have the desire to be hurt. I really wish I didn't. It would be a lot easier to be normal.

I've never been abused or mistreated in my life. S&M is not a way for me to work out my childhood issues. Stephen Elliott probably would have been into S&M even if he had never suffered childhood abuse. It's just the way some people are born. It's just the way I was born. And it really feels terrible to read about how sick and twisted I am from readers who are acting as bigoted as homophobes.

....is it really a dominant motive in the S&M scene to heal participants of their trauma?

Doesn't seem like it from the outside. Seems like just another porny, commercialized, ramped-up and now (thanks a bunch from all your adolescent readers, Salon) nearly mainstream practice. I'd so much rather see abuse victims helped by intensively trained therapists than unleashed on each other, or further tormented by sadists.

Soon we'll have 12 year olds cuffing and torturing each other, thinking they're just on the cutting edge of sexuality.

Of course, some will be. We'll just roll our jaded eyes away while they bleed.

behind this type of SM (although bondage without SM is different) is this: When we go through tremendously painful experiences, whether physical or emotional, an ancient (as yet mostly unacknowledged) defense mechanism kicks in and locks up the entirety of who we were and what we were feeling at the time we suffered the pain (unless we receive sufficient love and support in response to our pain). Consequently, for those such as Elliott, for whom an early experience of sexual involvement included being painfully raped by someone he found unattractive, in an environment where love and support were unavailalbe, this defense mechanism has locked up all the aspects of his personality that are able to be sexually responsive and expressive.

But these locked up pieces want out. Gradually they pressure us from within until we arrange for them to escape. When that happens, we temporarily shift from who we are now, to who we were then (in totality). Many people do so through various chemicals, alcohol foremost, which release the locks (hence the peronsality changes in some drinkers), but it sounds as if, for Mr. Elliot, his psyche's chosen method of releasing his locked-up pieces is to arrange to set himself up for experiences which resemble his early rape(s) - painful sexual experiences at the hands of people he finds unattractive.

Since the drive for sexual expression is such a vital and powerful aspect of our personalities, it's quite impossible to keep it under wraps, no matter what caused it to be locked away (as Rev. Haggard so recently revealed to the world, if not himself). These people have not created the cycles which have them ensnared, but ensnared they are until they find help to heal the original trauma, get their missing pieces integrated back into their natural personalities and discover who they were born to be before they were knocked off the track their lives might have taken under other circumstances.

A complex and thoughtful review of a thoughtful and honest account of why masochistic sex is meaningful to the author in a way that conveys the thoughtfulness, complexity, and honesty of the account is, in itself, an achievement. Thank you, Salon, for running this.

I do disagree with the suggestion in the account that it is an abusive childhood that makes one want to be a top or a bottom... I was molested as a child, tied to a hospital bed, sent to a dentist who -- on occasion -- deliberately hurt me... and I am not attracted to S/M or repulsed by my friends who find a place for it in their lives. In fact, of the five friends I've talked with about it, only one has a history of abuse.

So Salon knocks Pynchon's new novel but lauds crap hacks like Stephen Elliott. At least now I know which online magazine NOT to pay attention to when looking for intelligent fiction reviews....

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.

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.