Fennell interviewed some 70 members of her community to ask how big a factor actual, penis-in-vagina/butt-sex was to their enjoyment of BDSM. Only 29 percent said it was a big factor, 21 percent said it was no factor at all, and everyone else was in the "it depends" category. As Fennell explains, the line between sex and not-sex can be kind of blurry: "... There are plenty of dungeons around the country that flatly forbid sex. Some people laugh at that because they get really permissive of what's allowed -- I went to one and was allowed to fuck a girl with a baseball bat." She added that, for her, fucking that girl with a bat wasn't particularly erotic. "I didn't feel sexual ... I felt like I was topping someone."
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"The background music wasn't helping, either."
So what's the thrill of BDSM if you're not going to fuck during, or immediately after? Julie told us one story of a "ritual" she and her partner planned out ahead of time. They had a longstanding agreement that whenever she wore an all-black dress around him, he was allowed to destroy it. The "how" was left up to him. Later, at a Pagan altar party (more on that in a moment), she says that he ...
"... threw me down on an altar and ripped my dress apart ... It felt like he was ripping ME to shreds. It was just my dress, but it felt like he was ripping me, offering ME as a sacrifice ... and I think he slapped me around a lot too while he did it ... the thing that sticks out in my mind is just the way I felt blissfully helpless. A lot of people I interviewed talked about how it's almost religious to give up control."