William Henkin
Related: heterosexual - sadomasochism
Consensual Sadomasochism (1996) - Bill Henkin, Sybil Holiday
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Intro
Dr. William Henkin is the co-author of Consensual Sadomasochism, Bodywise, and The Psychic Healing Book, and editor of But I Know What You Want.A review of S and M: Studies in Sadomasochism () - Thomas Weinberg, and G.W. Levi Kamel
I sought this book out because I found perhaps a dozen references to it in other people's contemporary writings about heterosexual SM. I was already familiar with Geoff Mains's Urban Aboriginals, Larry Townsend's The Leatherman's Handbook, Pat Califia's The Lesbian S/M Safety Manual, and the Samois anthology Coming to Power, but those books are oriented toward the gay communities, however useful they may be to hets as well. Gerald and Carolyn Greene's SM: The Last Taboo is a fair, traditional overview, but a great deal of behavior, theory, and understanding has changed since it was published in 1974. Gini Graham Scott's Dominant Women, Submissive Men, republished as Erotic Power, not only ignores the interchange between dominant men and submissive women but altogether fails to grasp the depth and meaning of these sorts of energy exchanges, remaining satisfied with the notion that they are somehow all about fantasies. Since the psychological literature in the field is dominated by late 19th and early 20th Century European ideas about pathology, and the experiential literature is imbued with late 20th Century American apporobations of homosexuality, I thought any volume so ubiquitous as Weinberg and Kamel's might contain information or insights I had not yet found concerning this increasingly trendy form of safer sex.
All in all I must say I was disappointed. I found S and M: Studies in Sadomasochism to be an intelligent book, an erudite book, and for the most part a pretty boring book. The editors turn out to be gay and so, once again, I find that no one has written cogently about heterosexual SM. But I can live with that small grief. I am more unhappy about the nature of this book itself. Though he is clearly a player and knows whereof he speaks, G. W. Levi Kamel still seems to be more concerned with developing or protecting an academic career than he is with making his knowledge accessible. The five essays he wrote or co-authored as contributions to the book are composed in the language and style favored by scholarly journals whose circulations number in the hundreds and whose readerships are mostly hopeful. -- http://www.sexuality.org/l/wh/whsandms.html
your Amazon recommendations