Talk:Sexual masochism disorder

In contrast to sadomasochism and the article's sourcing

James Cantor, regarding this edit at the List of paraphilias article where you stated "sadomasochism is the NON-paraphilic type. Sexual masochism disorder is the paraphilia in the DSM.", I have to ask: Do you have any high-quality sources, preferably non-WP:Primary sources and non-DSM-5 sources, showing that the medical field generally agrees with stating that sadomasochism is not a paraphilia? Although sadomasochism, like the Sadomasochism article currently states, is only a clinical paraphilia under certain circumstances outlined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and other diagnostic manuals, the term sadomasochism is still in common use among medical professionals to mean that it is a paraphilia and/or a mental disorder (usually simply a paraphilia). As was stated in this 2013 WP:MED DSM-5 discussion, we should not base medical articles purely or overwhelmingly on what the DSM-5 has stated (unless, of course, the article is about the DSM-5); this is because, besides the DSM-5 being criticized by many medical professionals, it has employed new terminology for terms that have not been superseded in the medical field, and it is an American classification and diagnostic tool; it's not as international as the World Health Organization (WHO). As was stated of gender identity disorder, that the DSM-5 does not list it by name as a disorder does not mean that the DSM-5 does not treat it as one to some degree or that the medical community in general no longer treats it as a disorder (or as a disorder to some degree). And as was stated at the Pedophilia talk page, the fact that the DSM-5 calls pedophilia pedophilic disorder does not mean that there should be a Pedophilic disorder article and a "general pedophilia" article...as though there is a form of pedophilia that is not a disorder; the vast majority of the medical community still refers to pedophilia as a disorder. The Sexual masochism disorder article is currently almost exclusively sourced to different versions of the DSM. Flyer22 (talk) 23:48, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Flyer. My basic intent was really to clean up the inconsistencies between link source and link destination. The ICD does indeed use "sadomasochism" as the superordinate term for the two paraphilias (sadism and masochism), and a few research articles (mostly historical ones at this point) also use that word. Much more frequently, however, the word "sadomasochism" refers to the "mild" type of sexual play. Ultimately, "sadomasochism" is ambiguous, whereas "sexual sadism" and "sexual masochism" (and "sexual sadism disorder" and "sexual masochism disorder") are unambiguous in referring to the paraphilia. ("BDSM" is unambiguous in referring to sexual play.) I am not actually a fan of the DSM system, and have no need to enforce its use, but the great majority of research articles use the terms from the DSM-III, -III-R, -IV, and -IV-TR ("sexual sadism" and "sexual masochism"). The actual sadomasochism article currently on WP is very clearly about the non-paraphilic type. It barely mentions the medical/paraphilic use of the term at all. All this is to say that the source of the link (from the List of paraphilias page) was very clearly referring to the paraphilic sense of the word, but the content of the article getting linked to (the sadomasochism article) was very clearly referring to the non-paraphilic sense of the word, which made no sense. So, although I have no real opposition to using "sadomasochism" to refer to the paraphilia, we would have to drastically change the content of that page.

I am happy to discuss it all on whatever forum, but I think the most logical thing for us (and the most helpful to readers) is to use Sexual Masochism Disorder and Sexual Sadism Disorder (or Sexual Masochism and Sexual Sadism) for the paraphilias, and to use header links etc. to point readers to the other page if that's what they're looking for.

I very much appreciate the comparison with "pedophilia" versus "pedophilic disorder." I don't think that that applies to sadism and masochism, however. That is, there is no real debate among experts or RS's about distinguishing pedophilia from pedophilic disorder, whereas there is enormous effort among the experts and diagnosis-RS's to keep separate diagnosable sadism and masochism from healthy kink. Indeed, this is one of the areas where the kink advocates want the same thing as the medical experts.

Is that a help?

— James Cantor (talk) 00:52, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, James. To see where I am coming from on this matter, which I think you already do, look at this Google Books search link (which concerns the words "sadomasochism paraphilia"); there you can see how common it is to refer to sadomasochism as a paraphilia. The vast majority of the time that the term sadomasochism is used, and I mean still used today (not simply in the past), it is to refer to it as a paraphilia instead of as a "...'mild' type of sexual play." Some of those Google Books sources note the DSM and/or the ICD-10 criteria, making it clear that it's the criteria that determines whether or not sadomasochism is a paraphilia, but there is still the matter of how the term is most commonly used (in both a clinical and non-clinical setting). The Sadomasochism article speaks of paraphilia because, as we've noted above, sadomasochism is commonly labeled a paraphilia by medical professionals. I'm not sure that a separate article is needed to address that. I feel similar regarding the Sexual sadism disorder article you created. But I don't heavily oppose separate articles on these matters. I brought up the pedophilia comparison as an example of the different DSM-5 terminology. You and I both know that the vast majority of medical professionals consider pedophilia a mental disorder, but, in 2013, you and I discussed what you phrased as "some disagreement among experts and psychiatric manuals over when pedophilia should be diagnosed as a disorder, called Pedophilic Disorder in the DSM-5 and Paedophilia in the ICD-10." Flyer22 (talk) 01:40, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes. There are indeed still examples/authors who use "sadomasochism" to refer to the paraphilia; it's just that there are many more examples/authors using sadomasochism to refer to the non-paraphilic kink. Running a google books search using sadomasochism+bondage (here) retrieves many more hits than the sadomasochism+paraphilia search of your example. Moreover, if you take a close look at the contents of the books from the sadomasochism+paraphilia search, many (most?) are not actually using sadomasochism as a paraphilia; rather, they are contrasting sadomasochism (the kink) with sexual sadism and sexual masochism (the paraphilias). (This isn't very clear from the snippets that appear on the search results page, however.) As I say, both the folks on the academic side and the folks on the kink activism side want to put a big distinction between the phenomena. Similarly, if one runs a scholar.google search on sadomasochism (here), the great majority of results retrieved are referring to healthy kink in the community, not the serial rapists etc. (Also, running sadomasochism+bondage retrieves many more results than does sadomasochism+paraphilia).

So, as I said, the term "sadomasochism" is ambiguous, whereas "sexual sadism" (and "sexual sadism disorder") and "BDSM" are unambiguous. It just makes sense (to me, anyway) that the main articles should be under the unambiguous terms, with pointers and links to get readers from the ambiguous terms to whatever content they are really looking for. Some readers, like kink activists and the curious, will use that term when looking up fetish information, and other readers will use that term when wanting to learn more about Ted Bundy et al. I would have no opposition to moving Sexual sadism disorder to Sexual sadism, but I don't think there is anything resembling a consensus among the RS's for using sadomasochism to cover both.

— James Cantor (talk) 14:43, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that nowadays the term sadomasochism refers more to the "mild kink" aspect than to the paraphilia aspect, especially as far as the general public goes. When I read the term sadomasochism in medical or legal books, and I mean relatively new medical or legal books (within the last five or three years, or even 2013 or 2014 books), the paraphilia aspect of sadomasochism is usually noted. My point was that sadomasochism refers to both the paraphilia and "mild kink," but I think that it refers more to the paraphilia among medical professionals even today, and that there is no need to have a separate article just to cover the paraphilia aspect. Wikipedia usually is supposed to cover differences regarding a term in one article, per WP:Content fork. And, from what I see, the term sexual sadism disorder is mainly DSM terminology. Furthermore, I don't see why sadism and masochism shouldn't be covered together, similar to how they were before you redirected the article on that elsewhere, which led me to comment on that. Sexual sadism currently redirects to the Sexual sadism disorder article because you redirected it there; so whether that article is called Sexual sadism or Sexual sadism disorder does not matter much. All that stated, maybe you having created the Sexual sadism disorder and Sexual masochism disorder articles is what is best, for reasons you noted above.

On a side note: LOL, there was no need to make this WP:Dummy edit at the List of paraphilias article; I state that because I'd already pointed people to this discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 22:30, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Consent

No! 67.6.63.232 (talk) 17:59, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Negative energy

They have detailed scientific explanations for the temperature of the cotton in your aspirin bottle some blow hard has to write a policy! The word phenomenon will no longer be excepted as a valid excuse! 67.6.63.232 (talk) 18:04, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Non-sexual

Where does that lie? 67.6.63.232 (talk) 18:15, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Addiction Section

There is a fairly long section about "a study compared masochism to addiction".

I will delete this. It seems entirely based on the Kurt/Ronel study. This is a study based on interviews with merely 9 participants, in a criminology journal, by someone who has not made any other publication on the topic.

The other sources (also related to Ronel) do not even refer to masochism, and are references from the original paper.

That is clearly WP:UNDUE for a single, fairly obscure study. If someone wants to re-add the topic, I would suggest finding more and better sources than this. Averell (talk) 11:36, 29 October 2023 (UTC)