From Free Life, Issue 29, April 1999
ISSN: 0260 5112

Four or five years ago, I read about a book called The Correct Sadist, by Terence Sellers, a very attractive American female. It was supposed to document the extreme methods used by this professional dominatrix (aka 'Angel Stern'). The snippets I picked up about this book made me very interested in it, and I tried to obtain a copy. Unfortunately, the book had been banned in Britain and I have not been able to read it. So when I saw this sequel advertised I wasted no time in purchasing a copy (before it, too, got banned over here). Unfortunately, I found it rather disappointing.

The book is in three parts. The first part consists of some philosophical reflections on sado-masochism (S/M). She links S/M to an ideal of divine right: some are superior to others and should rule in a natural hierarchy in which the mass are in service to a small elite; but the elite are marked out by psychological factors rather race, creed, sex, money or social position. She is contemptuous of democracy and capitalism and has a nostalgia for a more aristocratic society.

The second part relates some case studies (of clients or contacts of Mistress Stern) and her reflections thereupon. Here we meet Mistress Helga and her subservient slave Jeffrey; Charles #106, a houseboy and drudge at the dominatrix' parlour; Eddie #9 who likes his breasts and genitals tortured with rose thorns; David V who likes to receive verbal abuse; Slave O.K., who writes out his fantasies of extreme genital torture (involving knitting needles, electric catheters, razor-sharp pins and a sharp, hot, jagged knife), but who never puts any of this into practice; Damen #111 who likes to play a game in which his 'wife' (played by Mistress Stern), being disappointed by his failure to make love on their wedding night, dresses him in a bridal gown and threatens to make him have sex with a man; John #21 who enjoys being severely whipped by the Mistress for having homosexual thoughts; Jed #17, who likes to play a priest who ticks off a harlot for leading his young boys astray while in return she ridicules and beats him and makes him confess to having 'unclean' thoughts about the boys; Randy #222 who enjoys being bombarded with cream pies, humiliated and beaten; Dorian who likes being sat upon and crushed; a couple of ex-Vietnam POWS who like to re-live their torments at enemy hands (one being severely whipped, the other having his penis and sac slashed with a razor blade); Hilda/Harry, a burley man who likes being dressed as a woman; 'Maryanne', a sixty-ish man who is spanked while dressed as a baby girl in diapers; and many more.

There is also a letter from someone purporting to be a female doctor giving the following opinions:
 

From a medical point of view, whipping of the cock should be done in a standing position, with restrictive arm and leg bondage...It is also important that a cock ring be placed around and behind the sac...With individuals used to receiving large amounts of heavy whip lashes (i.e. 100 plus in any given two-hour period) marking of the outer skin will occur. This is not a medical problem as long as once the entire cock outer skin has been marked, whipping must be stopped, or remain very restrictive... lashes to the cock of light strength up to almost the severest one-armed lash (that the average built woman can give) are medically acceptable (pp.132-133).

Ms Sellers seems to view her S/M sessions with clients as a kind of psycho-therapy, which she distinguishes from the work of psychiatrists (whom she terms 'incorrect sadists'). In general, she appears to regard S/M sex as being legitimate only when it is a way of resolving some psychological trauma.

The third part of the book contains some apparently disconnected and largely impenetrable reflections. There is the familiar theme that 'dirty' or 'perverse' desires are actually quite common, and straight laced women who will have nothing to do with them drive their husbands or boyfriends into the dens of 'dirty women'. She distinguishes the pervert, who accepts his/her condition and explores it, from the neurotic, who feels guilty about it and tries to repress it. She ends with a bombast of ranting about blood, death, pain and possession.

On the whole, this is not an erotic book. A few of the case studies did turn me on, but in general the details are related in a very matter-of-fact style which is not designed to be sexually stimulating. The theoretical, reflective and explanatory passages are disappointing for a number of reasons.

First, the political philosophy is shallow. S/M or sub/dom has no intrinsic connection with an aristocratic politics. For one thing, most participants engage in S/M or sub/dom as an erotic game: outside of the game, the submissive may dominate the dominant, or they may just be equals. Further, recognition of people's psychological and other inequalities is perfectly consistent with recognising equality of human (and political) rights. Indeed, it is under democratic institutions which recognise equal rights (and the freedom that goes with it) that sadomasochism can (and does) flourish, despite official disapproval.

Second, some of the psychological reflections are, I think, flatly mistaken. For example, some men like being forced by dominant women to engage in sex with another man. Her explanation is that these are men who are 'really' homosexual but who cannot admit it because of the social stigma attaching to homosexuality. But why not just allow that these are men who (amongst other things) enjoy relationships with women in which this game is played? Why do they have to be 'really' anything at all? Why not accept people for what they are instead of trying to pigeon-hole them? Again, there is a short chapter entitled 'the catholic religion as a sadomasochistic cult', the gist of which is that making people feel guilty about sex tends to turn them into sadists or masochists. But I think this is upside-down: sadism and masochism are integral parts of the human condition that manage to find expression in religion and elsewhere.

Finally, the more discursive passages are written in such florid language that it is a struggle to understand what is being said. It is more like poetry than theory. In places it is even unreadable.

But I would still like to get hold of a copy of The Correct Sadist!

Danny Frederick