This ground-breaking book explores contemporary forms of BDSM where women dominate in relationships and professions, opening new paths for psychological research in commercial and non-commercial BDSM.
Based on a unique combination of qualitative investigation and academic research, it examines how BDSM has often crystalized conflicts in contemporary feminist debates, where sexually dominant women are pictured either as victims or as agents of resistance to the patriarchy. Nathalie Lugand argues that female domination in heterosexual BDSM is above all situated in a continuum structured by the values of care and by the circulation of money. Through a novel psychodynamic approach, Lugand demystifies BDSM relationships where women dominate, considering the impact of social relations of work in the construction of sexual identity and analyzing the difficulties that they cause in the erotic economy. The book affirms that to better understand the pleasure taken in female domination practices and the difficulties for women to impose themselves as dominatrixes, it is necessary to shift the focus away from transgressive aspects and look towards the workplace and the organisation of work in women's sexuality.
Using field immersion to comprehensively investigate the blurred boundaries between life and work in the BDSM community, A Psychodynamic Approach to Female Domination in BDSM Relationships provides the opportunity for a new interpretation of sexuality, overturning the existing theoretical frameworks used in clinical psychology and psychoanalysis. This book is essential reading for researchers and academics in psychology, gender studies, political and social sciences, and human sexuality, as well as activists defending the human rights of sex workers around the world.
Author(s): Nathalie Lugand
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 132
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Psychological Framework
2 BDSM as a Social Behavior
3 Femininity and Domination are not Good Couples?
4 Thinking Female Domination through the Lens of Work
Bibliography
Research Methods, Design, and Ethics
1 The Point of Taking my Subjectivity into Account in the Interpretation
2 Being a Woman Speaking about Sex in the Academic Sphere
3 Chapter 1: The Weight of the Social and Sexual Division of Labor
4 Chapter 2: Investigating as a Researcher in Salons of Domination
5 Chapter 3: My First Steps Toward Demystification and the Meeting with Gynarchists
6 Chapter 4: Situating my Point of View
Bibliography
1 Pleasure in Female Domination Practices and Female Labor
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Definition of Care Work
1.3 Care in the Definition of Female Domination
1.4 The Nature of Care Practice Among the Interviewees
1.5 What Limits the Notion of Service Among Men?
1.6 The Dominant Women Crumbled under the Weight of the Quantity of Submissive Men
1.6.1 The Desire of Women in Question
1.6.2 The All-Powerful Male Sexual Drive in Question
1.7 On the (In)awareness of Vulnerability According to Gender
1.8 Create a Space for Play Where Female Desire can Flourish
1.9 Conclusion
Bibliography
2 Working as a Professional Dominatrix
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The Sexual Work of Dominatrixes in a Domination Salon in Berlin: A Space between Traditional Femininity and Resistance
2.3 The Organization of Work
2.3.1 Prescribed Work
2.3.2 Beyond the Prescribed, the Real
2.4 Being in the Border Area
2.5 Discussion
Bibliography
3 The Ideology of Female Supremacy in the Name of the Mother
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Female Supremacists as Communities?
3.2.1 S/M vs. Female Supremacy
3.2.2 A Fantasy that Remains in the Shadow of Melancholy
3.2.3 The Notion of Subculture Questioned through the Lens of Psychodynamic of Work
3.3 Lèchebotte: An Enchanted Meeting under the Sign of Courtly Love
3.4 The Role of Sublimation in the Fantasies of Lèchebottes
3.5 The Dangers of Practices Lived under the Prism of Fantasies where the Mother is Idealized
3.6 Discussion
Bibliography
4 Neighborhood Dominas and Pigeons: An Intersectional Approach to Financial Slavery on Facebook
4.1 Introduction
4.2 BDSM Subculture on Facebook: The Power of Images
4.3 Financial Slavery as Sex Work
4.4 Ostracization of the Neighborhood Dominas by Authorized Members of BDSM
4.5 The Practices of Financial Slavery from the Point of View of the Money Slave
4.6 The Money Mistress as a Subaltern Position
4.7 The Subversion of the Whore Stigma in the Fantasy of Financial Slavery
4.8 Between Guilt, Humiliation, and Enjoyment: On a Slight Slope of Dependence
4.9 Discussion
Bibliography
5 Conclusion
5.1 Separation between Professional and Non-Professional Domination: A Scam
5.2 A Logic of Separation that Touches the Unconscious: The Role of the Whore Stigma
5.3 Defenses Against the Whore Stigma or Working to become a Naturally Dominant Woman
5.4 A Logic that Touches the Heart of our Sexual Fantasies: The Subversion of the Whore Stigma and the Stigma of Prostitution and its Limits
5.5 The Choice to Work Together: Another Destiny for the Whore Stigma?
Bibliography
Index
