Based on extensive field research, this book analyzes the way that BDSM is practiced in contemporary Poland, and asks what social, cultural, and political conditions are necessary for BDSM to be possible to practice in the first place. Through a nuanced analysis of the way that practitioners navigate conflicting understandings and politics of kink, this book provides an alternative to Western-centric narratives of BDSM communities, and challenges a number of long-standing notions about the status kink which circulate in sexuality and queer studies

Jay Szpilka is cultural anthropologist and cultural studies scholar, currently holding a post-doctoral fellowship at the SWPS University in Poland.