Queer BDSM Intimacies

Based on an extensive interview study with lesbian, transgender and queer BDSM practitioners, this book sheds new light on sexuality and current theoretical debates in gender and queer studies. It critically discusses practices of establishing consent, pushing boundaries, playing with gender and creating new kinds of intimacies and embodiments.

“Beyond its important contribution to an area in BDSM Studies where our knowledge is troublingly sparse, this book is also useful for scholars working in gender studies more broadly. … Queer BDSM Intimacies is an important addition to BDSM, gender, and sexuality studies.” (Brandy Simula, Sex Roles, Vol. 73 (9-10), November, 2015)"Bauer's interview partners are sophisticated and thoughtful; they are engaged citizens in their community, not blindly following what lawyers and psychiatrists say about them. Their voices are put to good use in this book when Bauer deftly uses their words as a way of negotiating the heady terrain of queer theory. [ ] "These new sociological studies of BDSM are important not least because they will be the historical source material of the future as readers of Jon Lawrence's studies of classic postwar British sociology will know along with the usual sources that include BDSM zines, art, pornography, memoires, literature, etc. In particular, these books will act as an antidote to the portrayal of BDSM by James in her Fifty Shades books. The thorough analysis of the German dyke + queer BDSM community offered by Bauer (and the works of other sociologists of sexual subcultures) will surely encourage future historical research into the genealogy of BDSM, in an attempt to historicize communities engaged in such practices, in their efforts to historically understand the ways in which the body and sexuality come together in certain communities to produce new possibilities of pleasure. This process has been significantly advanced in Bauer's groundbreaking study, which everyone interested in BDSM, sexual subcultures, gender (and especially trans*), or the use of queer theory should read." - Ivan Crozier, University of Sydney, Australia

Robin Bauer earned his PhD in Sociology at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and is currently Lecturer in Social Work at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University, Germany. He has authored numerous articles and edited anthologies in German and English in the fi elds of queer, gender and transgender studies as well as science studies.