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Revue d’études benthamiennes
25 | 2024
Queer Utilitarianism
Irregular Sexuality; or, The Story of a Girl in Three
Parts
Irrégularités sexuelles: Histoire d’une fille en trois parties
Heather Heckman-McKenna
Electronic version
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/11717
DOI: 10.4000/129mp
ISSN: 1760-7507
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Centre Bentham
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Heather Heckman-McKenna, “Irregular Sexuality; or, The Story of a Girl in Three Parts”, Revue d’études
benthamiennes [Online], 25|2024, Online since 30 August 2024, connection on 25 July 2025. URL:
http://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/11717 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/129mp
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Irregular Sexuality; or, The Story of
a Girl in Three Parts
Irrégularités sexuelles: Histoire d’une fille en trois parties
Heather Heckman-McKenna
Content warning throughout the essay: domestic and sexual violence. In sections that involve
trauma, all content warnings will be included in brackets just after the section break. Please
always read each section’s bracketed content before proceeding.
Introduction
1 While Jeremy Bentham predominantly referred to homosexuality and homoeroticism
when he wrote of sexual liberty, his thoughtful approach is equally relevant to all
‘sexual irregularities,’ to use his phrase.1 Such irregularities include my sexuality,
though he likely had little to no exposure to it: that of kink and fetish. Even today, my
sex is not recognized as ‘sex’ by our culture. My sex is non-penetrative. My sex entirely
eschews the ‘productive’ sexuality that Bentham writes of as the only kind with the
license of power: that of cis male to female genital insertion with the intent to
impregnate. My sex is no sex at all, really—that is, if you buy into our cultural
narratives. My sex was long the bane of my existence and, much, much later, the
fulfilling of everything I could’ve imagined and more. When I use the term queer, I
think of myself. Because what is more queer—more other—than sex having nothing to
do with our reproductive organs? What is queerer than sex that involves no
penetration, no genital stimulation, no climax? What is queerer than sex that is not sex
at all?
2 Bentham categorizes sexual irregularities into two types: ‘mischievous’ and ‘not
mischievous.’ He writes of mischievous as ‘a neat balance on the side of pain produced
or pleasure lost.’2 A ‘neat balance,’ he says, though there is nothing neat about sexual
irregularities nor their balances. Nevertheless, this differentiation matters. He points
out that mischievous sexuality is that which causes the loss of pleasure, and it is this
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mischievous variety only that he warns us of. He promotes in its entirety the non-
mischievous type.
3 So now we get into it. This essay is three-fold:
The ‘not mischievous’ sexual experiences are those that are desired and affect an increase in
pleasure. These sections indicate my current and future life and are signified by this code
preceding the section: + Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +
The ‘mischievous’ sexual experiences are those that were not consented to, involve trauma,
and caused great harm. These sections refer to my past and are signified by this code
preceding the section: ― Mischievous/Non-Consent ―
Reflections on how Bentham’s theories reverberate still today, signified by the code *
Benthamian Reflections *
4 Pay special attention to the brackets that start some sections. They offer content
warnings for what’s to come in that section. Read those before moving on to the new
section.
5 And with that: are you ready? I’m not sure that I am, but here we go.
+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +
6 Skin tingles. Painful heat where Capzasin was rubbed in. Wrists pull slightly against
bindings. Stars explode in my periphery through closed eyelids blanketed by soft fabric.
Patters of rain tap dance on the window to my left. Purple splotches of color bud
behind closed eyes, bloom and merge, shift with subtle burgundy.
7 ‘You’re smiling,’ Derek says. ‘I’m not sure I did my job right.’
8 I feel my smile widen.
9 ‘Hmm. Or maybe I did.’
10 Face still crunchy with mucus from minutes or hours ago when I forgot where I was.
Tell me what you need, he says. You are here with me now. You are here with me. You are here
with me in our cabin. You are in Provincetown with me. You are warm and safe. You are warm
and safe. You are warm and safe. Breathe. Deeper. Take your time. Tell me what you need. Tell
me when you can. Holding me in a bear hug and not letting go until my breathing calmed
and my heart rate monitor beeped its alert that I was back below sixty beats per
second: the agreed upon protocol if I were to be triggered.
11 He holds me to his chest and doesn’t let go.
12 I imagine raindrops, oblong and overfull, dripping through invisible cracks in the roof
overhead, falling and burstingon my upturned face, bouncing off those pretty dark
floors and upwards and back towards me yet again.
13 The maelstrom comes from all sides, rain licking thewindows on all four wallsof the
cabin. The softer sound pattering a rhythm all its own on the roof above our heads.
14 We are quiet for moments without end. Cadences of murmuring rain melding with his
irregular pulse strong on my cheek merged with rhythms of my own stuttering breath.
15 ‘What do you need now, Heather?’ He uses my name so I know the scene is over.
Another agreed upon signifier.
16 I am snuggled in. I am warm. I am safe.
1.
2.
3.
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17 ‘Still hold me?’ I ask quietly. And he does.
18 I am warm and safe.
19 I am warm and safe.
20 I am warm and safe.
21 My new mantra in this strange, strange world. A gift I will neither lose nor forget. This,
for now, is good. Still, maybe someday I will find a way to create my own rhythmic
precipitation.
―Mischievous/Non-Consent ―
22 [Content warning: graphic sexual assault and domestic violence.]
23 Though he didn’t use the word, Bentham wrote frequently of consent as a matter of
utmost importance when it came to any form of sex. In brief: if there was desire and
consent, Bentham argued, then ‘irregular sex’ was of the ‘non-mischievous’ variety and
should be warmly accepted by a society seeking to maximize the happiness of its
citizens.
24 Bentham, though, is specific when it comes to non-consent: to ‘mischievous’ sexual
activities.
25 So when I say that I was sexually assaulted by a past partner—let’s call him Anders, for
the sake of an identifying name—I’m referring to this ‘mischievous’ variety of sex,
though admittedly the word ‘mischievous’ irks me given our current cultural
understanding of the term as one we often apply to children inclined to non-malicious
impishness. Nevertheless, when the first entry in the Oxford English Dictionary describes
‘mischievous’ as an event that is ‘unfortunate, calamitous, disastrous’ and as one
causing unequivocal harm, that’s Bentham’s framing and so that’s the definition I’ll use
as well.
26 For instance: when I discuss, say, bondage, I’m discussing a consensual activity. When I
tell the story of being bound by Anders, I’m telling the story of a highly mischievous
act.
27 I am bound to the bed with technical scuba diving line, also called distance line. It is
hard polymer with ridged edges. It must not fray when rubbed against the rusty edges
of a sunken wreck, nor from friction against a rocky cavern wall, nor from the barbed
barnacles affixed to almost everything in the northern Atlantic. It is designed such that
it can pretty exclusively be cut only by a sawing motion from the serrated edge of a
diver’s knife. If I wriggle too hard against it, it sloughs skin almost as readily as a grater
on firm cheese. It is the only binding material Anders had nearby. It is the only binding
material he had that would allow everything that happened next.
28 When Anders whispered in my ear—in response to my desperate pleas—that clearly I
wanted this because I’d asked for it in the past: well, let’s just say that the distinction in
my early-twenty-something brain was muddied. And Anders made damn sure I believed
that I’d brought this out in him. He conflated the mischievous and the non-
mischievous, and I was too young, and too inexperienced, and too desperate to find
sexual fulfillment for the first time in my life, so I bought it. I thought that this must be
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a part of BDSM. I thought that if I didn’t just take what he wanted to give, well, then I
wasn’t really submissive, was I? Just like he said.
29 In my desperation, I failed to understand the difference.
+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +
30 Turns out that Bentham might’ve known what he was talking about vis à vis sexual
liberty. He writes at some length of the foolishness of self-denial: that, when denial
offers no happy benefit to the self-denier, it is in fact ‘folly and weakness,’ and
needlessly ‘self-tormenting.’3
31 And I was confused, irretrievably so, for long years after Anders. Confused and scared.
If my core needs had the capacity to elicit such violence, how could I possibly safely
explore them?
32 It required decades of therapy to move past this. Decades that could’ve been far better
spent if our culture around irregular sexualities had progressed beyond the LGBT and
included more of the +. If our cultural narrative included power play as readily as it did
homosexuality and, eventually, the fluidity and expansion of gender. The years were
long, those decades when I didn’t live my authentic life: those times of self-inflicted,
self-annihilating torment. Those were the times I fixated on my sexuality to the point
of neglecting everything else in my life. I could not be there for friends, family. I could
not do work that mattered to me. I could either focus on my desperate need to find
sexual fulfillment, or I was wholly fixated on shoving my needs back into the dark
matter where I thought they belonged. I was too busy needing to do much of anything
else.
33 So, now—as of a mere year ago—that I’ve finally fought my way into a desperate,
reluctant, excruciating, and utterly necessary acceptance:
34 The world I create. It is my world. A safe one. A safe irregularity all my own, made for
and by me.
35 It’s about me, my world. About my own needs. It is a means through which I create a
world that makes sense, to me. A world with rules I imagine, and create, and
understand.
36 Here’s the thing: my world is one, for example, without the misogyny that causes me to
be treated like a silly, hysterical woman when I try to explain to my surgeon—twenty-
two surgeries in, no less—what is happening inside my own body. It is a world in which
men don’t alternatively try to take advantage of my kindness and then disparage with
biting words when I stand up and assert my own needs. It is a world in which I do not
have to worry about my safety when I limp alone to my car after dark each evening,
knowing that I am now a vulnerable target in my disability. My world is one that is fair.
A world in which I know all the rules before playing the game. A world in which I can
safely break those rules, if I want to. Or need to. A world in which I’m seen enough by
someone that they notice that I broke the rules. In which someone notices that I too
have needs, and wants to satisfy them. In my world I am seen and known.
37 There is nothing arbitrary in my world. I have built it carefully. I intimately know its
walls, its corridors, its open expanses, its tunnels and its burrows. My world is
consistent. I know my world because I am attentive. I know my world because I know
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what I need. I know my world because it is me. Because I know, finally, who I am. And
in my world, I make sure to give myself what I need.
38 The rules tend to be little things. Insignificant but for the significance I give them:
You may tickle Derek’s right foot, but never the left.
Do not hide Derek’s keys in coffee mugs. Clear drinking glasses are fair game.
If you make the bed, make both sides. Under no circumstances make your side of the bed
and leave his all crumpled.
39 Arbitrary rules. Playful ones. Ones I can choose to break, when I need to. Ones I can
break when I desire consequences. Consequences too that are predetermined and safe.
Consequences that I have negotiated and specifically consented to. It is a game, and a
fun one. What can I get away with today? What can I not get away with? What actions
must I take to instigate desired reactions?
40 It is in playing to perceived submission, in controlling the scene I wouldn’t normally
get to control, in setting the boundaries and the rules, that I subvert my own weakness
and pain. That I turn it all on its head and manifest power. Or feel I do, anyway. And
isn’t one’s individual perception, after all, the catalyst for sexual fulfillment and of self-
actualized identity?
* Benthamian Reections *
41 Bentham wrote of the innate dangers of ‘productive sex.’ Often the mortal danger of it.
Some of these involved unwanted pregnancies, and others involved the growing
population. World population in the early 1800s was around one billion, and Bentham
wrote of the suffering, squalor, and starvation of vast swaths of the world’s—and Great
Britain’s—population. Why, he asks, would we dissuade people from engaging in sex
that comes with no risk of population increase?4 At a time in which the world
population was 1/8th of what it is today, Bentham intuited a specific reason not to
dissuade people socially or legally from irregular practices.
42 Perhaps more to the point, Bentham pointed out that women were at far less risk when
women and men engaged in homosexual acts. Risk of pregnancy: non-existent. Risks
involved with abortion or infanticide: also non-existent. Venereal disease: in many
cases (though certainly not all), a lot less likely. Risk to women’s virtue: greatly
mitigated.5 Bentham argues that women who suffered with unexpected pregnancy were
often subject to an ‘untimely death, preceded by a long course of suffering in the shape
of hunger, disease, and misery in an infinite variety of shapes.’ Instead, he argues, ‘how
prodigious is the quantity of suffering that might be saved in and to the world’ if we
were to allow alternative sexualities.6 Any chance at reducing suffering, Bentham
writes, seems worthy indeed.
43 Again, when sex isn’t sex, we might ask: in our culture, why still do we experience such
negative reactions for acts that cause no social harms and, if anything, only add to
human happiness?
1.
2.
3.
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+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +
44 I pull hard against fleecy ropes with all four of my limbs. Derek bound me and stretched
me into a mildly contorted shape. Dark silky material covers my eyes. I see nothing
besides exploding shapes that merge and shift, same as I do every time I close my eyes
when I play. I wonder, does everyone like me experience this visual maelstrom? This
play of lights and shapes when I am getting this thing I so urgently need?
45 Corners, four of them, supporting shelteringwalls that rebuff darkness and cold and
theinclementand, often, pain. It feels a lighthaven, this cabin, a place of warmth and
comfort, of drawing and building, of creation. A refuge from the lingering chaos of
what feels to me an often-nonsensicalworld. Just outside, gardens further insulate and
protect.
46 ‘What did you say you needed?’ Derek asks, pulling the blindfold up to my forehead.
47 I look up at him, eyes wide.
48 ‘You can do it.’
49 I shake my head no.
50 ‘It’s hard, I know, but you can try.’
51 My eyes feel large in my face.
52 ‘It’s okay. You’re safe,’ he says gently. ‘You can try.’
53 I pause, then do as he asks, or at least try to.
54 He smiles and approaches the bed. Puts his hand on my torso, tickling upwards. I try
not to move.
55 ‘You’re the one who broke your rule. You know what happens next.’
56 One deep breath, in and out. I recall that bright green meteorite two nights ago,
burning ancient nickel into my atmosphere, primordialhistory turned present turned
past all in one sweeping arc across mysky. Time is nothing, after all, but air and space
and heartbeats between strung-together words. My astrophysicist father always tried
to convince me that it doesn’t exist, time, not really.
57 Euphoria rises lighter than air in my chest.
58 I feel as if I just might be ableto do anything. Anything at all.
59 I create now. I create my own world with my own rules in the sanctity of our cabin. I
live the life I always wanted.
60 ‘Are you ready?’ Derek asks.
― Mischievous/Non-Consent ―
61 [Content Warning: physical and psychological domestic violence.]
62 After a particularly harrowing twelve-hour drive to Nova Scotia for vacation—and a
particularly harrowing argument along the way—I wake alone in a bedroom in my
parents’ cottage. It is one in the afternoon and I rouse, hungry. Anders is not in the
bedroom, but I smell coffee. I walk into the kitchen, pick up a mug and fill it.
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63 ‘Rough night,’ he says when he sees me. I can’t tell if this is a statement or a question. I
shrug.
64 ‘Don’t ignore me, Heather. We’re gonna hafta deal with this sooner or later.’
65 ‘Later, please. I’m groggy.’
66 ‘It’s my issue that you slept into the afternoon?’
67 ‘I was awake for over twenty-four hours. You got to nap.’
68 ‘See, this attitude is exactly what I can’t have.’ He picks up an extension cord from
behind his seat.
69 ‘Don’t talk to me like that again,’ I say. ‘Not like you did last night and not—’
70 ‘Don’t you dare interrupt. It’s your turn to listen. You’ve been talking for half a year
about wanting us to play rougher. I think it’s time.’
71 That throws me. ‘Play rougher?’
72 ‘Rougher.’ He holds up the cord, brings it close to my face. ‘Spice it up, right?’ He rises
from his seat. I back away. ‘You’re the one who’s been trying to get me to. What, you
don’t like it now? Now that you know it’s deserved? I said don’t interrupt. This is how it
works, right?’ He pauses. ‘Don’t make me come get you, Heather.’
73 Our dog rises, stands between us, not sure of what’s happening but sensing danger. She
looks from one of us to the other, as if uncertain as to whom she should protect.
74 ‘What…who are you?’
75 ‘Get over here,’ he says. ‘Now.’
76 I suppose mischievous is one word for it. Using my irregular sexuality against me as a
means of control. Could anything be considered more mischievous?
* Benthamian Reections *
77 Bentham writes about ‘the appellation of unnatural,’7 of irregular sexualities, of the
social mores that culture artificially overlays. Of course in Bentham’s time the risk for
being caught engaged in irregular sexuality could entail state-sanctioned death. While
that’s rarely the case now in the West, Bentham writes of the surveillance culture that
caused such danger for those with alternative sexualities, and this is still true today. He
refers, amongst other things, to the risk of ruined reputations, to loss of employment,
to social humiliations, and the significant, potentially lethal issues that can arise from
such extortions.8
78 Today, those with sexual irregularities still risk their livelihood, financial security,
ostracism, social isolation, and self-shame. Not to mention the shame others overlay on
us—something that would be much more difficult to accomplish if culturally we were
closer to accepting irregularities as legitimate alternative sexual drives from that of
penetrative sex. It’d be a heck of a lot more difficult to convince fetishists that they
should accept blame for abuse if our culture accepted power play instead of
pathologizing it.9
79 So we’re not so far off from Bentham’s time after all. It feels to me as if social
acceptance surrounding power-dynamic kink and fetishes is about a generation behind
that of mainstream LGBTQ. But why? When consensual power play dynamics are
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included in the cultural narrative, people like me can share what we know. Mainstream
society likes to boast of its culture of consent, yet people like me, out of necessity, have
far more robust conversations about consent, and we could help others learn more too.
The stakes are higher for us, especially given the higher risk of injury in our style of
play. We intimately know negotiation and consent. And sexual fulfillment? Of the order
that can only be achieved through authentic, fully embodied expression? Consensual,
carefully negotiated kink shifts what was once pain into a beautiful wholeness that
exceeds my ability to describe. A wholeness that transcends sexuality and veers far
more into identity. But that’s a story for another time.
+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +
80 My earliest memories include this knowledge about myself. I have memories from
younger than three in which I knew—really knew—that I was different. That this part of
who I am needed to hide beneath a placid surface. I had deep curiosity about certain
words: punish; discipline; dominate; rules. I don’t know how I knew I was different
—‘bad,’ even—more than likely a result from subtle responses from my parents and
peers when I made comments and asked questions. And I fixated. Obsessed over every
book, television program, and movie that portrayed playful power relations. When I
was old enough, I obsessively looked up words in the dictionary. Often the same words
every day. I realized those particular pages were starting to look worn, so one year,
fearing that my parents would notice, I bought my own dictionary at an elementary
school Scholastic Book Fair. At least then I could live in peace and obsess over my own
dictionary in the sanctuary of my room.
81 I knew I had to hide. I knew I was different. I knew I couldn’t help it. I knew it was who I
was. I knew I needed self-created rules. I knew I yearned to break them. And I knew I
needed—not wanted—consequences when I did.
* Benthamian Reections *
82 Perhaps Bentham’s most compelling points involve his ethical framework in which
humanity must strive to maximize happiness and minimize pain. To this effect, he
points out of consensual sexual acts that they are ‘positively beneficial: for, unless
attended with pleasure, it is never performed.’10 An apt point. Generally speaking, we
wouldn’t do the things we do, play the way we play, if we didn’t derive pleasure or
fulfillment from it. He goes on to argue that allowing for this can only increase ‘the sum
of happiness,’ and rhetorically asks, ‘By the removal of that cloud of prejudice...what
calculation shall comprise the aggregate mass of pleasure that may be brought into
existence—the value of the services that may be rendered to mankind—in a word, the
mass of good that may be done?’11 His refrain, ‘The greatest happiness of the greatest
number’,12 a common one in his time and ours, though we didn’t then nor do we now
seem to put it to good practice.
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― Mischievous/Non-Consent ―
83 It hadn’t always been like this with Anders. Earlier in our relationship, his body would
curl around mine like roots of adjacent trees. I would ask him to play and his strikes
would tingle, warmth blooming pleasantly on my skin. His face often looked semi-
static, even bored during our sessions, but I wondered if that was just the look he got
when he was focused. He didn’t get aroused, but I wasn’t too worried about that—I
didn’t always get aroused by play either. It’s beyond sexuality for me anyway, veers far
more into identity. I thought maybe that was true for him too.
84 After years of suppression, I finally learned that relationships couldn’t work for me
without this piece. I finally learned that this wasn’t mere sexuality to me. It was
something more. He acted so unsurprised by my big secret—more so than anyone else
before—that I thought maybe he was that way too.
+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +
85 I’ve lain on my bed for some minutes or hours since Derek untied me. Faces rush past
my window, stormy and grey as the sky overhead, anxious and movingfast, many eyes
fixed on the sky. Fractals reflect fractals (reflect fractals reflect fractals), the air and the
sky mirroring a dance all their own. The sun, old and milkybehind darkening clouds,
kindles an impossible luminescence, one that brightens the very shadows the storm
threatens further to shroud.
86 A harsh and beautiful wind. The kind that stingswhen it hits your face. The kind that
comforts in its shocks of cool breath. It whipsveiny greenleaves and velvet pink
petalsby the open window.
87 Just as immediately, the wind pauses, takes in a deep breath all its own, the briefest
respite. Perhaps it is peaceful because of its ephemerality. The second breath feels as if
the clouds themselves tense and tease.
88 The naturalthird breath never arrives.
89 A child shrieks as the sky opens. She bounces in joy, small face raised skyward towards
the peltingdroplets. Her mother smiles, winces, drawsher daughter’s hand closer,
pulls her and rushes towards the safety of home.
90 I sit inside, warm, and smile.
* Benthamian Reections *
91 So why? Why are power-dynamic fetishes still looked upon as taboo? Bentham makes
the salient point that ‘What affects the feeling of one with delight, produces uneasiness
in another,’ adding, ‘This is confessedly the case with regard to all of the bodily
senses.’13 Is this it? That because so few are wired this way that our sexuality is looked
upon with fear, derision, sometimes even with disgust? As something that is
pathologized, seen as ‘wrong,’ those of us oriented this way seen as ‘damaged?’ How can
we help others understand fetishized sexual identities, at least to the point that people
understand what it actually (merely) is: an expression of sexual identity. And one that
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brings great pleasure—and, perhaps more importantly, utter fulfillment—for those of
us with fetishes.
92 It is as simple and as complex as this: in my world, when I lose power, I gain a beautiful,
dynamic, fundamental control.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bentham, Jeremy,Of Sexual Irregularities, and Other Writings on Sexual Morality, ed. Philip Schofield,
Catherine Pease-Watkin, and Michael Quinn (Oxford University Press, 2014).
NOTES
1. Bentham, Jeremy, Of Sexual Irregularities, and Other Writings on Sexual Morality, ed. Philip
Schofield, Catherine Pease-Watkin, and Michael Quinn (Oxford University Press, 2014).
2. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.3.
3. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.21.
4. In contrast to Bentham’s hypothesis, current research shows that there is no definable
correlation between sexuality and population increase or decrease. This is increasingly irrelevant
since the advent of IVF.
5. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.138.
6. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.26.
7. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.37.
8. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.95.
9. Pathologizing paraphilia: something that even the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM) dissuades against—arguing that it has no clinical meaning—yet still we
persist.
10. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.58.
11. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.113.
12. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.119.
13. Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, p.141 n. 1.
ABSTRACTS
This essay merges memoir and scholarship to explore three intersecting narratives: one in which
the author is temporarily entrapped in domestic violence, one in which the author finally accepts
her queer sexuality, and reflections on Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth-century interventions in
‘sexual irregularities,’ to use his phrase. The author especially explores dynamics of power,
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particularly that of perceived submission’s subversion into power in consensual acts, and she
asks us to consider why we still render dominance/submission kink as illegitimate or taboo.
Le présent article, à cheval entre autobiographie et recherche, donne à lire trois récits
entremêlés: dans l’un d’eux, l’autrice est temporairement prise au piège d’une situation de
violence conjugale ; dans un autre, elle accepte enfin sa sexualité queer ; enfin, le dernier
consiste en une réflexion sur les propos, au XVIIIesiècle, de Jeremy Bentham sur les «
irrégularités sexuelles », pour reprendre sa formule. En particulier, l’autrice se penche sur les
dynamiques de pouvoir, notamment sur la subversion de la soumission apparente, devenue
pouvoir, dans le cadre d’actes consentis, et interroge ce qui nous pousse à faire du kink de
domination/soumission un comportement interdit ou tabou.
INDEX
Keywords: Queer, Domestic Violence, Sexuality, Fetish, BDSM
Mots-clés: queer, violence conjugale, sexualité, fétichisme, BDSM
AUTHOR
HEATHER HECKMAN-MCKENNA
University of Missouri
Irregular Sexuality; or, The Story of a Girl in Three Parts
Revue d’études benthamiennes, 25 | 2024
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