This thesis examines BDSM bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, masochism practices in Singapore. The author notes that most literature on BDSM comes from a Western perspective and neglects how it is practiced in Asia. Through interviews and analysis situated in Singapore's socio-historical context, the author contends that the experience of BDSM in Singapore cannot be separated from gender, class, and race.
Preliminary findings suggest that, contrary to expectations, the dominant figure in Singapore's BDSM scene is often not the stereotypical Singaporean Chinese male, but foreign women dominating local Chinese male subs. The author aims to understand how concepts of dominance and submission are created and experienced among. Well, and then came the sixth hour! It was impossible to grant all the requests to be allowed to watch it from near by.
The Commandant in his wisdom ordained that the children should have the preference; I, of course, because of my office had the privilege of always being at hand; often enough I would be squatting there with a small child in either arm. How we all absorbed the look of transfiguration on the face of the sufferer, how we bathed our cheeks in the radiance of that justice, achieved at last and fading so quickly!
Chapter 3: Transnationalism 3. Patched-up Jeans, Patched up Souls 3. Hokkien: "What are you saying? This falls into the trap of psychological determinism in attributing pathology to the sick mind of the individual and does not consider the socio-historical factors that discursively produce BDSM.
Furthermore, virtually all the literature on BDSM is Western-centric and neglects the phenomenon as it is practiced in the East; any interpretation of the discourse surrounding BDSM necessarily involves situating it within a particular socio-historical milieu.
