IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v8y2018i2p2158244018771730.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Language of Pain: A Philosophical Study of BDSM

Author

Listed:
  • Timo Airaksinen

Abstract

This philosophical article attempts to promote the recognition of the social world of BDSM in philosophical and tropological perspective. BDSM, and especially sadomasochism, is difficult to understand in its own, characteristic motivational perspective because such negative experiences as, say, pain and humiliation, indicate aversion rather than attraction. To cause pain to others is typically condemned. To cosset pain and suffering is said to be perverse. My main point is we that can better understand BDSM via its typical language and rhetoric, especially by paying attention to the key role of linguistic metonymy when we discuss the riddles of pain and pleasure. Also, this article discusses the various ways of talking about and potentially condemning BDSM by calling it a perversion or a paraphilic disorder. I conclude that, within some reasonable limits, BDSM is not vulnerable to the standard forms of criticism.

Suggested Citation

  • Timo Airaksinen, 2018. "The Language of Pain: A Philosophical Study of BDSM," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(2), pages 21582440187, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:8:y:2018:i:2:p:2158244018771730
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244018771730
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244018771730
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2158244018771730?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Le, Tri Tam, 2021. "Business sadomasochism: Implications of BDSM for economics," OSF Preprints h29zv, Center for Open Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:8:y:2018:i:2:p:2158244018771730. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.