The Independent Collegian

Issue date: 1/26/06 Section: News

Media Credit: dave hochanadel Sean Shannon, a graduate student majoring in English, demonstrates safe bondage techniques. Shannon wants much of her work with UT Un/Gagged to be devoted to safety education.

In the farthest corner of a sixth-floor stable of cubicles in University Hall, a running conversation on the virtues of whips, ropes and nipple clamps is filling an otherwise dull workspace.

Explaining the basics of such equipment may tend to elicit school-girl laughter or vulgar intensity, but Sean Shannon is exhibiting neither.

The graduate student speaks of bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism as one speaks of English literature (in which she's well-versed) or the History Channel: with considerable restraint.

Shannon is in the later stages of organizing an official university group to be called UT Un/Gagged, one that socially and politically advocates for practitioners of BDSM sex.

The bondage safety demonstration that Shannon has given on campus in the past is perhaps one of the only things that will make the transition from bedroom to university.

"This isn't a group where people are going to be titillated," Shannon said. "This isn't going to be a big sex group. It's going to be educational and social."

Other colleges, such as Columbia and New York University, have established similar groups formed around a shared interest in BDSM.

But at UT, the first Un/Gagged meeting attracted a "handful" of students, Shannon said, and while their application is in the final stages of approval, they'll need at least 10 members to make it official.

Finding those people has proved problematic. Besides some recent local publicity, Shannon's graduate student schedule has thus far been able to accommodate one Friday meeting and a few e-mail inquiries.

But she wants to find those lone collegiate souls willing to take what is often traditionally considered private into a "school club" setting and is one of the people furthering the change from taboo to popular.

And there is difficulty in drawing the line between where "vanilla" sexual encounters end and BDSM exchanges begin.

As psychotherapist Dr. William Henkin said in a telephone interview, "With 6 billion people on the planet, it's hard to say what most people do."

Continued...

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