The Commerce of Peoples

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Representations and coverage of sadomasochism (S&M) have become quite common nowadays, whether we see them in the fashion industry, commercials, the news, television, film, the Internet, and so on. But in the population at large, and in the academic community as well, it is still persistently stigmatized. This marginalization, along with its ambivalently persecuted status, is a result, significantly, of a nineteenth-century legacy. This legacy begins with Richard von Krafft-Ebing's designation of sadomasochism, along with gay and lesbian desire, as a perversion, and continues in current popular and expert (mis)understandings