Image Management in a Bondage, Discipline, Sadomasochist Subculture: A Cyber-Ethnographic Study

This article explores a number of chat rooms devoted to cybersex. Case studies have been utilized to relate the intricacies of image management used by the chatters in an effort to balance the often times paradoxical circumstances in which they find themselves. The article includes an area of sexuality that many may find difficult to imagine translating to a cyber activity—that of bondage, discipline/domination, submission/sadism, masochism (BDSM)— and discusses the community of participants formed around BDSM postings. Two female cases are addressed, both of whom subscribe to male/female dominant/submissive BDSM. Although all the material discussed here is authentic, all handles/net names have been fictionalized to preserve confidentiality. Any resemblance between the names in this article and participation by people using these names in BDSM chat sites is purely coincidental—none of the people discussed use the names attributed to them.