The smell of leather hangs in the air as the snap of a whip thudding against human hide echoes through a small room in the Memorial Union.

A student stands with her hands against a wall, her back to another student standing behind her with a whip in hand. The student with the whip pulls it back and lets go.

The woman’s rear end shakes and quivers with every hit, but she remains motionless, unaffected and unmoved by each hit, anticipating the feeling of the whip’s sting. A group of 10 students, clad in jeans and sweatshirts, watch as the display unfolds.

It’s a demonstration by the president of Cuffs, the ISU campus group dedicated to educating the campus about bondage, discipline, domination and sadomasochism (BDSM).

The president, Harlan “Duane” Long Jr. — dressed in a black t-shirt, black leather pants and silver-studded belt — pulls the flogger back slowly, as if it were a bow and arrow.

“OK, that was called the ‘bow and arrow’ technique,” says Long, senior in psychology. “It’s nice to use, because it’s fairly accurate and easy to control and direct the hit with the flogger.

“There’s more control, and there’s a smaller area where the tails will hit, which is what you want. Just make sure not to pull back too far.”

Long turns around to face the student subject, preparing to demonstrate more flogging techniques.

“Again, remember not to hit the sensitive parts of the back side, including the tailbone and lower back,” he says. “There are very sensitive vertebrae there that can be easily bruised or damaged.”

Childhood urges lead to adult, BDSM practices

Long said he has felt a desire to participate in BDSM ever since elementary school, but was never aware of it until he came to Iowa State. He attended his first Cuffs meeting during his freshman year.

“For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve had some kind of interest in this area. Back in high school, I can remember playing games where you’re wrestling with friends or trying to tie someone up — friendly slapping someone on the rear,” he said. “These are innocent manifestations of what I believe later, after I became more aware of it, I realized was part of my sexuality.”

At his first Cuffs meeting, he said he became more aware of his arousal from those innocent games and activities in high school and childhood. The meeting also taught him there was a new avenue present for him to explore that aspect of himself.

Long says it’s hard to explain to someone why one can derive pleasure from receiving or inflicting pain. He compares it to how difficult it is for a straight person to explain to a gay person how they can find someone of the opposite sex attractive — and vice versa.

“Ask someone why they like to be hugged and kissed. These are things we never learn why we like them, but we know we do,” he said. “When I’m being the dominant person in a scene, I don’t feel like I’m play-acting — I feel like I’m allowing a certain aspect of my life to be acted out in my thoughts and behaviors.”

Susan Johnson*, Ames resident and mistress, said she too felt a desire to engage in BDSM ever since she was a child. She requested not to be identified for fear of losing her job.

“I have had fantasies about this sort of thing even before I knew what sex was — even before elementary school,” Johnson said. “I’m seeing it more and more and feeling it more that people are just wired this way.”

According to psychologist and Princeton University professor Ronald J. Comer’s textbook “Abnormal Psychology,” most masochistic and sadistic sexual fantasies begin in childhood. However, the person does not act out the urges until early adulthood. In many cases, Comer states, sexual masochism and sadism seems to have developed through the behavioral process of classical conditioning.

“For me, it’s the power exchange,” Johnson said. “It’s the building of trust with your partner and the communication skills involved that draw me to it.

“If I weren’t to live out these fantasies, I’d be denying myself something. I’d be denying a part of who I am.”

Controversy surrounds Cuffs

Cuffs has received a substantial amount of coverage recently in the national news, such as CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Controversy has always seemed to follow this group, starting with its creation three years ago in August 2000. Members of the ISU community have said they feel uncomfortable with a practice they say is abusive, dangerous, disrespectful and unhealthy.

There are several aspects of BDSM that have raised questions and controversy, including the morality of the act, the respect it shows to others, the safety involved and the psychological aspects.

“Any technique which physically harms, humiliates or shames a person has the potential to be emotionally damaging to that person,” said Joyce Davidson, associate director of ISU Student Counseling Services. “Practices between partners that involve any discrepancy of power or control over the situation are potentially damaging to one or both individuals.”

Arousal practices that depend on the real or fantasized infliction of pain or submission, may be placing emphasis only on arousal and not on intimate aspects of the relationship; eroding mutuality and intimacy between partners, she said.

“Practices of sexual arousal which depend solely on real or fantasized pain or subjugation may become progressive in their intensity in order for the same arousal to occur, she said. “This can become dangerous, as the line of the real damage may approach without awareness of where that line is.

“I’m not saying BDSM is damaging in all cases, but we’re playing on the edge a bit.”

It’s not what a person does but the context in which the behavior is performed, Davidson said. She said if a person chooses to engage in sexual practices that include real or simulated bondage, certain issues — like consent and negotiation — need to be kept in mind.

“It’s just that people can get caught up in a way they didn’t mean to be,” Davidson said. “People need to ask themselves, ‘Do I know what I’m getting into?'”

Long said the group and BDSM behavior should not be seen as damaging or harmful, because it is a consensual practice that is done safely without harm being inflicted.

“My submissives are mine and no one else’s, but if they want they can leave and find someone else,” Johnson said. “They’re under my protection. It almost sounds like slavery, but it’s consensual. If BDSM is being done safe, sane and consensual, your submissive can wake up in the morning and say ‘I’m done.'”

Misconceiving what it is to harm

Long said a common misconception the public has about BDSM is that there is ill will or malice toward other people. He says this is false, as well as people’s ideas that BDSM internalizes the ideas of dominance and violence.

“It’s nothing but good will. You wish through BDSM to bring nothing but good things into your life and your partner’s life, through things they enjoy and will enrich their existence as a human being,” he said. “It’s a form of interaction with another person that lets me know they care about me. In a healthy BDSM relationship, the doming and subbing are ways of showing another human being that you care about them.”

Long said between people in BDSM activities, caring manifests through dominating and submitting.

“You understand it’s something they enjoy, because they’ve told you, so that’s how you can show you care about them,” he said.

Long said it’s similar to playing football with friends.

“If you’re playing football and your friend is on the other team, you’re trying to tackle that person, but you don’t have any ill will toward that person,” he said. “Tackling and being tackled are fulfilling in that context of a football game. In the same way when I’m spanking or paddling a submissive — I don’t have ill will. I have nothing but the best will for the other person. So, in this context, then spanking and paddling another person becomes perfectly logical and a fulfilling part of human life.”

Despite the enjoyment members get from either giving or receiving the pain, however, no harm is caused, Long said. Members are taught to inflict sensation (including pain) safely, so harm isn’t caused, he said.

“You’re not doing anything that will impair their functioning physically of psychologically,” Long said.

There is risk involved in BDSM, but no more than in a contact sport or in a “vanilla” relationship, Long said.

“In a contact sport, as in BDSM, there’s always the possibility of something going wrong and someone actually getting harmed,” Long said. “The same is true with vanilla relationships. There’s always that risk of getting hurt emotionally and psychologically.

“Abuse can happen in vanilla relationships too, as well as in BDSM ones. But would relationships be as fulfilling a part of human life if there were no risk involved? I certainly don’t think so. However, risk should be well understood, well-defined and not threatening, such as with BDSM,” Long said.

Abuse countered by community

Long admits abuse happens in the BDSM community, but the best way to address the problem is to have social networks in place inside the community.

“The number one biggest importance is the safety in numbers which Cuffs provides,” he said. “Just the existence of a community helps with the safety of its members because it forces dangerous people out.

“Predators out there — people who have serious psychological pathologies who would actively like to hurt other people, have learned they can’t prey on members of an organized community.”

Johnson said the risk in participating in BDSM is not in being kinky or acting out the behaviors. The risk, she said is in meeting people.

“There’s risk in meeting people you don’t know and playing with people you don’t know. It has very little to do with being kinky,” she said.

Before knowing there was a well-established community, she said she met and became involved with some very abusive dominants (a person who directs the scene and issues the commands).

“I take responsibility for my own part in being a participant in those situations, but I also wouldn’t want to repeat them or wish them upon anyone else,” she said.

After being in those abusive BDSM situation, she said she found a BDSM discussion group based in Des Moines.

“After going to them, I realized just how important it is to have a community, because I found people who were into the same thing I was into, but they didn’t do anything I wasn’t ready for,” Johnson said. “I had people who were watching out for me.”

Some see Cuffs as ‘disrespectful’

Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, said acceptance of Cuffs and BDSM practices at Iowa State University has jeopardized society’s morals.

“[Cuffs] promotes deviant, degrading and disrespectful behavior,” Hurley said. “It’s evident [with the creation of Cuffs] that our moral compass has been demagnetized.”

The Iowa Family Policy Center works to encourage churches and other community-based organizations to bring about cultural renewal that will return society to its Judeo-Christian roots.

“Our organization is trying to light a candle in the darkness that’s been creeping into society, by teaching respectful relationships and not disrespectful ones, such as Cuffs does,” Hurley said. “Cuffs has lost the element of positive interpersonal relationships because they’ve degraded relationships down to beating each other.

“This is relationship 101. You don’t beat people — it’s wrong. We learned that in kindergarten. We learn it’s disrespectful. We learn not to spit on someone, whether they like it or not; it’s disrespectful. Somewhere that lesson got lost.”

He said the university and Ames community needs to say no to the disrespectful behavior Cuffs promotes.

“There is an alternative to beating people, and that’s called love and respect,” Hurley said.

BDSM — different, but another part of human sexuality

Long said he realizes BDSM is a different phenomena for different people, but just because of this fact, people shouldn’t criticize the group and the behavior.

“There’s a lot of ignorance about Cuffs,” said Robert Hensley, graduate assistant in human development and family studies.

Hensley teaches ISU’s human sexuality class, HDFS 276.

“It’s different and unique, and it’s not for everyone, but to call it pathological and sick is purely subjective,” Hensley said. “Just because it’s not in the mainstream doesn’t mean it’s a pathology.”

Hensley said people who believe Cuffs and BDSM to be a pathology are misguided. The practice is consensual and they clearly set out what and how something will be accomplished in a scene.

“An individual has the right to believe it’s sick, but when you look closer to how these people treat each other, it’s not a pathology,” he said. “There seems to be this code of honor to protect the person you’re with, and there are precautions that are taken to respect each other.”

Hensley said BDSM is quite healthy, even though it seems different.

“There are many ways to express ourselves sexually, and Cuffs is just one of those many ways,” he said.

Stigma over Cuffs hurts BDSM community

Johnson said when groups like Cuffs receive controversy and condemnation in the news, opponents are shutting down an opportunity for safety.

The BDSM community, because it is a sexual minority, has been heavily stigmatized, making it harder and harder for people to embrace and accept this part of their sexuality, Long said.

“People out there just kind of discover this about themselves on their own and spend days, weeks, months, even years out there all alone, thinking there’s something wrong with them because of what society is telling them,” Long said. “They don’t tell even their closest friends and family for fear of being put down.”

He says in this aspect, Cuffs is similar to the role Iowa State’s LGBTA Alliance plays.

“Mass culture often has some belief that they are protecting society from something bad, when in actuality, what they are doing is make it more difficult for these people to find these safety nets that are out there, like Cuffs,” Long said. “Nothing anybody’s going to say is going to make me feel like I’m doing something wrong, because I’m not.”

*Names have been changed.