BDSM and chronic pain
March 14, 2011 10:38 PM   Subscribe

Pain you choose + pain you don't choose. Who is writing (either on the web or in print) about intersections of BDSM and chronic pain/illness?

I'm specifically hoping to find writers who are talking about chronic pain conditions (as opposed to other kinds of physical difference/disability that don't cause chronic pain).

My perspective: long experience and comfort with BDSM (mostly as a bottom), along with excellent health (both physical and sexual) all my life. Then, about a year ago, sudden onset and diagnosis of a chronic condition (or conditions; docs are still figuring it all out) that will cause pain and debilitation unpredictably for the rest of my life.

Not surprisingly, my relationship with the idea of seeking and desiring pain is now more complex and unpredictable. Sometimes this unpredictability is fascinating to me, sometimes it's weird and unsettling.

I fortunately have partners I can talk to in depth about all this, but in this question I'm hoping to find any kind of writing on the topic -- practical and/or philosophical, first-person or otherwise.

(If you have thoughts you don't want to share in public, I made an account you can write privately to: chosen.pain@gmail.com )
posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (6 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite

 
There was just this post on the blue, with some previously-s. Bob lived with cystic fibrosis, and lived with it longer than anyone else.
posted by now i'm piste at 10:50 PM on March 14, 2011


Bob Flannagan's Slave Sonnets, also Eli Clare.
posted by PinkMoose at 10:55 PM on March 14, 2011


In addition to what he actually wrote, there is this book (alternate listing) available used cheap that compiles several interviews with BF. Predictably, it has a lot of overlap with the film mentioned in the blue.
posted by K.P. at 2:40 AM on March 15, 2011


This is all over fetlife, here, I just found a group. Try posting your question there. And join the mefite group while you're at it!
posted by By The Grace of God at 2:40 AM on March 15, 2011


By the Grace of God beat me to it. Come say hi!
posted by Forktine at 5:54 AM on March 15, 2011


It's been a while since I read it so I might be mixing it up with another book or something, but I remember Bust's Guide to the New World Order having some piece in it along these lines.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:26 AM on March 15, 2011


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