Girard, Texas
After recent efforts of BDSM groups to have Bondage, sadism, masochism and other fetishes removed from the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5), the American Board of Psychology is striking back with demands of their own.
In an open letter, written to the BDSM and fetish community, Dr. Franz Helbruner, a 58 year old practicing psychiatrist has demanded that “people in the kink community remove the DSM portion from BDSM.”
According to Helbruner, “we had it first. And if you want to take BDSM out of the DSM, we are going to take DSM out of BDSM. It only seems fair.”
The DSM, first published in 1952, catalogs all forms of mental illness and has served as the yardstick for defining psychological pathology for almost seven decades.
Helbruner, who did some of the earliest work on BDSM, still believes it to be a pathology and was a chief opponent against its removal from the DSM.
“When we added paraphilia and other forms of BDSM to the DSM in 1987, we were moving in the right direction,” Helbruner told The Daily Flogger.
Efforts by kink civil rights groups eventually pressured the APA into removing kink and kink-related activities from the DSM-5 in 2013.
“It was a real victory for us,” said Sarah West, spokesperson and founder of the National Sexual Freedom Federation (NSFF). “Losing the rest of the letters is totally worth it, especially for the bondage people. I mean, keeping the B is a pretty big deal.”
Mainstream kinksters found the demands from Helbruner and others to be a bit too much.
For Master Konrad, a 32 year old leather top, it is all a matter of perspective. “Yeah, well fuck those guys. What’s next? Cow farmers telling us we can’t be leather? Nobody owns leather and nobody owns BDSM.”
