Samois

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Samois was an American feminist lesbian group that campaigned politically for the rights of lesbian sadomasochists in the 1980s . It is considered both the world's first known organization of sadomasochistic lesbians and one of the world's first organizations of female sadomasochists at all. With Coming to Power: Writing and graphics on Lesbian S / M , the group brought later the world's first known BDSM - manual out its didactic structure is still a role model for many current advisor today.

The name of the group is that of the fictional estate of the lesbian Domina Anne-Marie from the novel The Story of O , on which O is pierced and branded by her.

Emergence

Well-known members and co-founders of the group were the Anglo-Saxon writer Pat Califia (now Patrick Califia) and the feminist scientist and later founder of the sex-gender system and sex-positive feminism Gayle Rubin .

Samois roots go back to a women's discussion group called Cardea within the mixed-sex BDSM group Society of Janus. Cardea only existed briefly between 1977 and 1978 before it broke up, but a small core of lesbian, sadomasochistic participants, including Califa and Rubin, were encouraged as part of their activities at the time to start Samois as an all-lesbian BDSM group.

The group was founded on June 13, 1978 in San Francisco by Pat Califia, Gayle Rubin and 15 other women. In the same month, the members held their first event at one of the women's homes. The name was adopted at the second meeting on July 10, in order, among other things against the censorship -Bestrebungen against the novel Story of O to protest. Samois gave the first public performance of BDSM on January 18, 1979 in the Old Wives Tales bookstore in front of around 140 women, after 30 to 40 were originally expected.

activities

In the summer of 1979, Samois and the BDSM group Society of Janus took part in the gay event Gay Freedom Day Parade against the resistance of the organizers and wore t-shirts with the words " The Leather Menace " for the first time . This is considered to be the first public appearance of a sadomasochistic lesbian group at a public event. The appearance of the group at this event revealed differences to non-adomasochistic lesbians for the first time. The parade also sold Samoi's first publication " What Color Is Your Handkerchief " and a list of the hanky code . The printed work was later regularly offered for sale in bookstores.

In 1980, Samois in particular and BDSM in general was attacked in the women's press in the United States. The attacks were usually aimed at the fact that BDSM and pornography were generally misogynistic and degrading for women. Pat Califia lists seven magazines with sadophobic articles, including the feminist magazine off our backs (not to be confused with the BDSM-positive lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs ). In addition, the group was exposed to massive censorship in the lesbian subculture, which tried to deny the existence of Samois and What Color . The openly exposed sadomasochism of the group broke a taboo within the lesbian community, which was very feminist in those years.

During its existence, Samois had an ongoing exchange of blows with sadophobic radical feminists , in particular with the anti-pornographic feminist group Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM). WAVPM expressly took the view that BDSM represented ritualized violence against women. In contrast to this, the representatives of Samois repeatedly emphasized that their practice of BDSM was in line with the idea of ​​feminism and that the sexuality propagated by WAVPM was conservative and puritanical. Samois took this position offensively against WAVPM, and the resulting discourse laid the basis for a dispute that continues to this day, known in the Anglo-Saxon world as the Feminist Sex Wars . Samois is now considered to be one of the very first advocates of a position in this dispute known as " sex positive feminism ".

Gayle Rubin (Rubin, 1984) later summarized the underlying conflict over sex within feminism as follows:

(...) There were two directions of feminist thought on the subject. One criticized the restriction of female sexual behavior and pointed to the high price paid for being sexually active. This tradition of feminist thoughts on sex called for sexual liberation that should work for both women and men.
The second direction viewed sexual liberation as an inherently mere extension of male prerogatives. The conservative anti-sexual discourse resonates in this tradition.

In July 1980, Samois asked for contributions to a planned book on lesbian BDSM through advertisements. It was published by the group's publishing committee (self- deprecatingly called the Ministry of Truth after the 1984 novel ) in November 1981 under the title Coming to Power . Writing and graphics on Lesbian S / M published. In the book, short stories alternated with specific hints and instructions. Due to this structure, which was completely new at the time, the volume is considered the world's first BDSM manual. Most of the later manuals on the subject of BDSM adopted this successful internal structure. Due to external criticism and the resulting internal disputes, the book also represented a tremendous burden for the group. Many lesbian / feminist bookstores boycotted the group's books because they strictly refused to publish sadomasochistic material.

In September, Samois held the first annual leather dance get-together - and the related Ms. Leather competition, with more than 300 participants. Corresponding events have been held regularly worldwide since then.

Self-dissolution and succession

Logo of the Exiles

Samois broke up in 1983, partly because of coming to power . The Outcasts was created as a successor organization on the initiative of Gayle Rubin in 1984 .

The outcasts continued until they too split in 1997 due to internal differences. One of the resulting groups, The Exiles , still exists in 2008 and is involved in the Samois and Outcast tradition.
Pat Califia and Robin Sweeney published in 1996 under the title The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke reader an anthology which is a continuation of Coming to Power represents and also historical source material about The Outcasts and other lesbian BDSM groups like the Lesbian Sex Mafia and Briar Rose contains .

See also

literature

  • Gayle Rubin : Leather Times. Samois 2004, 21, pp. 3-7. Online at leatherarchives.org (PDF file; 1.31 MB)
  • Samois: What Color is Your Handkerchief: A Lesbian S / M Sexuality Reader. SAMOIS; Berkeley 1979.
  • Samois: Coming to Power. Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S / M. 3. Edition. Alyson Publications , Boston 1987, ISBN 0-932870-28-7 .
  • Pat Califia : A Personal View of the History of the Lesbian S / M Community and Movement in San Francisco. In: Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S / M.
  • Pat Califia, Robin Sweeney (Eds.): The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader. Alyson Pubns, 1996, ISBN 1-55583-281-4 (contains, among other things, a description by Gayle Rubins of the history of the outcasts)
  • Mark Thompson : Lederlust - The SM cult . Bruno Gmünder , Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-86187-001-0 .
  • Gayle Rubin: Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In: Carole S. Vance (Ed.): Pleasure and Danger: exploring female sexuality. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Boston 1984, ISBN 0-04-440867-6 , pp. 267-319.
  • Nadine Strossen : Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights. New York University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8147-8149-7 .
  • Ellen Willis : Feminism, Moralism, and Pornography. In: Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, Sharon Thompson (Eds.): Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality. Monthly Review Press, New York 1983, ISBN 0-85345-609-7 , pp. 460-467.
  • Ann Ferguson et al: Forum: The Feminist Sexuality Debates. In: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 10 (1), 1984, (an account of the American discussion about the politically correct handling of sexuality)
  • Lynne Segal, Mary McIntosh: Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate. Virago Press, London 1992, ISBN 1-85381-385-0 .
  • Feminists Against Censorship (FAC), Gillian Rodgerson (Ed.), Elizabeth Wilson (Ed.): Pornography and Feminism: The Case Against Censorship. Lawrence & Wishart, 1991, ISBN 0-85315-742-1 .
  • Gayle Rubin: Samois. In: Marc Stein (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003,

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the general role of women in the sadomasochistic subculture, cf. z. B. the detailed description in Breslow et al .: On the Prevalence and Roles of Females in the Sadomasochistic Subculture: Report of an Empirical Study. In: Archives of Sexual Behavior. 14/1985, pp. 303-317. Reprinted in Thomas S. Weinberg (Ed.): S&M - Studies in Dominance and Submission Prometheus Books, New York 1995, ISBN 0-87975-978-X .
  2. ↑ On the history and function of Cardea and the origin of Samois cf. the representation Society of Janus: 25 Years. ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Pp. 12-14. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.soj.org
  3. ^ Translated from: Gayle Rubin: Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In: Carole S. Vance (Ed.): Pleasure and Danger: exploring female sexuality. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Boston 1984, ISBN 0-04-440867-6 , pp. 267-319.
  4. ↑ Leatherarchives (PDF document; 1.31 MB) ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.leatherarchives.org