“Michelene Nelson is a dark-haired, dagger-nailed dominatrix who pounds paying men into whimpering submission. Next month, she hopes to make the court system whimper when she challenges her recent arrest on prostitution charges. The 47-year-old Northeast Philadelphia woman was arrested, along with another woman, two weeks ago after police raided her Tacony sadomasochistic dungeon. But Nelson, who beat similar criminal charges earlier this year, insisted that her business doesn’t involve sex and that she’s being persecuted for a misunderstood lifestyle that has become so popular that followers have to wait for appointments… ‘BDSM [bondage/discipline/sadomasochism] is one part performance art, one part psychotherapy and one part erotica — and that doesn’t mean sex,’ said Nelson… ‘There’s never any type of sex, no handjobs, no blowjobs. I do nothing to make my clients climax. That’s not part of the session.’ Lt. Charles Green, commander of the citywide vice-enforcement unit, disagreed. ‘She’s really splitting hairs. Sexual gratification for money is prostitution, whether it’s S&M or traditional sex.’” — Philadelphia Daily News (US)

If you asked the man on the street if S&M is a type of sex, he would probably think of a blonde babe in black leather beating a handcuffed masochist with a whip — and he would answer yes, S&M is a type of sex. But is it really? Or does the man on the street only think it’s sex because he jerks off to stereotypical images of BDSM behavior?

In theory, the typical dungeon experience does not have orgasm as its purpose, at least not in the same sense as a typical session with a hooker. In practice, on the other hand, men who visit dungeons do have orgasms, though with what frequency it would be difficult to say. And when men do orgasm in a dungeon, usually the dominatrix does not induce it so much as tolerate it — or more precisely, make the man suffer for it. Consequently, a common-sense way of ascertaining whether a dungeon is a brothel might be to apply a cum yardstick. Did the client climax? If so, the dominatrix is a prostitute, and if not, then not.

But then again, this narrow focus on ejaculation is precisely what S&M attempts to avoid. S&M expands sexuality into non-orgasmic territory: rather than sprint to pleasure, it takes the slow road through pain. And in that sense, S&M really is sex, it’s just not a kind of sex able to be characterized strictly by the occurrence or non-occurrence of orgasm. For men, it is what intercourse must often be for women — a pleasurable sexual activity that may or may not lead to orgasm. And would you say that a woman didn’t have intercourse if she didn’t orgasm? Of course not. So why say a man didn’t pay for sex just because he didn’t climax?

Logically, it’s hard not to conclude that dungeons are brothels of a sort, and yet at the same time you can’t help but root for this dominatrix to beat the system — not because she’s not a prostitute, but because prostitution shouldn’t be illegal.

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