S&M have long been terms that I have known. I can’t really pinpoint when or even how I first came to hear of them, but I’m sure it must have been around the first time that I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Hollywood, it would seem, provided me with all the food for my young definitions and fantasies.

It wasn’t until university that I really began reading about sadism and masochism, and works by the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Today, I come across sites like Wikipedia and am bothered to no end by oversimplified definitions and assertions that masochism is the counterpart to sadism. After all, philosophically sadism and masochism are separate and incompatible in much the same way that theoretical Marxism is with Capitalism.

So, exactly how did such totally opposite discourses develop into the single Siamese term, sadomasochism? It would seem, and this is merely my perspective, that Richard von Krafft-Ebing misinterpreted both the writings of Sade and Masoch when he coined the term sadomasochism back in the 19th century, which is not to say that he was not an extremely forward psychiatrist and thinker, and much more so than perhaps Sigmund Freud.

Since then, sadomasochism has evolved into the controlled, safe, sane and consensual sexual dynamic that we know and prctice today, but I still imagine that both Sade and Masoch must be turning in their graves to be so closely linked to one another.