Why has BDSM become mainstream?

I don't normally contribute to newspapers' discussion boards, but this piece in the Telegraph by Rowan Pelling was too good to miss.

To be honest, I am genuinely puzzled by the way in which BDSM has become a mainstream pastime whilst spanking has gone almost underground. My posting was made in the hope that someone would come up with an answer, and that's why I am reposting it here:



Hi, Rowan, and lemme start off by asking you to excuse the cheesy pen name. Back in the day we were all calling ourselves Hugh Janus, Tanya Hyde or Ben Dover. I just haven't changed, that's all. Besides, if you check out my Amazon page, you will see that it is the name I use to write my CP works under, so allow me to use it to comment here.

Here's a thought for you: Why has spanking, the great English pastime, been taken over by BDSM? Not only that but taken over to the extent that BDSM has become respectable whereas spanking is seen as almost beyond the pale? You don't believe me? The University of Birmingham has a fetish society which is basically another name for the BDSM club - how's that for respectability? Needless to say, there is no spanking society.

When I started writing in the 1970s the world seemed to be full of retired colonels who all believed that the smack of firm government began at home or in the office, as applied to recalcitrant wives and naughty secretaries. The fact that they got turned on by all this did not alter the fact that they believed in it as a way of ordering society. My job as a writer was to churn out the fiction that reinforced what they already believed, and make some easy money by doing it.

Your point about Christopher Hitchens and his notion that any man can be made ridiculous by adding "Spanker" to his name is really only true in so far as the male submissive is concerned. Certainly that was Hitchen's point in writing 'The rise and fall of Paul "Spanker" Johnson," which is where the idea first appeared. That brings me back to BDSM which is not just about wearing strange clothing, but often about femdom as well.

You could argue that the retired colonels have all died, but why were they not replaced by their sons and grandsons - we are all the inheritors of our country's past and we walk the paths that our ancestors walked, so why the sea change? Do today's men enjoy being pussy whipped curs? Perhaps I was on holiday when that happened...

Alternatively, since there is still a vast market for traditional spanking stories, it could be that spanking has gone underground, to become the attitude that dare not speak its name, and at the same time BDSM and femdom has become respectable.

 I can sort of see how that happened, but I will be damned if I can understand why it did.