Bound by history: power, pain, and pleasure through the ages
Location
Ponderosa Room B
Presentation Type
Presentation
Presentation Topic
Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies
Start Date
6-3-2026 2:30 PM
Event Sort Order
41
Abstract
The first recorded usage of the specific acronym ‘BDSM’ has been traced back to a 1991 post in the online forum Usenet, which was popular in the dawn of the internet. However, research shows that people have been partaking in BDSM for a long time. The practices we now describe as BDSM have been around for millennia. Some of the oldest texts in the world describe rituals that sound strikingly familiar. For example, take the worship of Inanna, a Sumerian fertility Goddess. Worshipers of Inanna threw their naked bodies to the floor, submitted themselves to being whipped, and danced ritualistically. While screaming in pain, they begged the goddess for “mercy.” BDSM historians argue that the history of the dominatrix traces back to this goddess, Inanna (Ishtar in the Akkadian Empire). She serves as an example of a powerful, sexual woman who dominates men and gods, who submit themselves to her. As well as existing texts from Ancient Greece, Etiuia, Pompeii, fifteenth-century Japan, and “Kama Sutra. Even though people have been participating in BDSM for a millennia there is still a huge stigma surrounding BDSM. This presentation decreases the stigma surrounding the BDSM community as well as covers active research that consists of primary and secondary source review as well as interviews.
Bound by history: power, pain, and pleasure through the ages
Ponderosa Room B
The first recorded usage of the specific acronym ‘BDSM’ has been traced back to a 1991 post in the online forum Usenet, which was popular in the dawn of the internet. However, research shows that people have been partaking in BDSM for a long time. The practices we now describe as BDSM have been around for millennia. Some of the oldest texts in the world describe rituals that sound strikingly familiar. For example, take the worship of Inanna, a Sumerian fertility Goddess. Worshipers of Inanna threw their naked bodies to the floor, submitted themselves to being whipped, and danced ritualistically. While screaming in pain, they begged the goddess for “mercy.” BDSM historians argue that the history of the dominatrix traces back to this goddess, Inanna (Ishtar in the Akkadian Empire). She serves as an example of a powerful, sexual woman who dominates men and gods, who submit themselves to her. As well as existing texts from Ancient Greece, Etiuia, Pompeii, fifteenth-century Japan, and “Kama Sutra. Even though people have been participating in BDSM for a millennia there is still a huge stigma surrounding BDSM. This presentation decreases the stigma surrounding the BDSM community as well as covers active research that consists of primary and secondary source review as well as interviews.
Presenter Bio
Marrs J Rutz (he/they) is a trans masculine, queer, disabled and neurodivergent person and a student in his sophomore year at the University of Central Oklahoma, he is a researcher with the Women’s and the BGLTQ+ Student Center at their university. Marrs’s research is BDSM and how it correlates to neurodivergence and consent. Along with that he was a co-organizer of a Safe Sex Carnival and Sexy haunted house in October 2025 as well as a for “Take Back the Night“; march and rally against sexual assault in April 2025. In Marrs’s free time they enjoy gaming, thrifting, reading, and spending time with his cat, family, friends, and his fiancé.