[CLIP: Lady Harper Chase, speaks in her Intro to Whips class: “For me, my style of dominance…, I call myself, like, a nurturing pervert.
This is a two foot signal whip. I call him swishy…. I just go like this on a person: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.”]
[CLIP: Intro music]
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Kate Klein: There’s this, like, whole world underneath people’s clothing that no one talks about.
Sari van Anders: Our science, in some ways…, is sort of, like, catching up with people’s existences.
Meghan McDonough: I’m Meghan McDonough, and you’re listening to Scientific American’s Science, Quickly. This is part one of a four-part Fascination on the science of pleasure. In this series, we’re asking what we can learn from those with marginalized experiences to explore sexuality, find the female orgasm and illuminate asexuality. In this episode, we’ll take you inside the world of BDSM, which stands for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.” Practitioners say that, when done with proper consent and communication, rough sex can be not only pleasurable but also healing.
[CLIP: Chase in Intro to Whips class: “This is a kink whip class…. I’m not really talking about sport cracking techniques, though I have studied with Renaissance fair performers and circus performers…. For today…, we’re going to talk about how to throw it forward in a safe way for it to land on a person.”]
McDonough: It’s a cold evening in December 2023, and a dominatrix who goes by the stage name Lady Harper Chase is teaching an Intro to Whips workshop at the Crown, a BDSM collective and domination school in a Brooklyn basement apartment.
McDonough (tape): And how do you define BDSM, for people…
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