National Taiwan University (NTU) took a dominant role last week when it blocked students who wanted to start a club centered on BDSM, the broad range of erotic practices mostly identified with domination and sumbission role-play.
A committee made up of students, teachers and administrators met on Wednesday to hear proposals for new student groups, but hopes for a BDSM club soon unraveled when it only managed to harness support from six of the 17 committee members.
The BDSM Club president, who calls himself Lisa Lu, said that while students at the university might be the first at the nation’s schools to try and set up a society involving ropes and role-play, similar clubs are in existence at other distinguished academic institutions around the world.
“There do not seem to be any others [in Taiwan],” Lu said. “But as for schools abroad, I have learned that Harvard has an S&M [sadism and masochism] student group on campus.”
Harvard approved a BDSM society in 2012. Iowa State University established a bondage club called Cuffs in 2003, and Columbia University’s Conversio Virium, established in 1994, claims to be the oldest student-led bondage group in the US.
“It is not easy to talk about this, as BDSM is still a taboo issue, and we face the pressure of being harassed. We want to create a place for people in this culture to meet up and work together to build their respective senses of identity,” Lu said. “Our aim is to explore the diversity of eroticism through academic discussion and practice.”
It is the practice part that has caused friction and made some people uncomfortable, even though Lu said that only makes up “about a quarter” of the group’s mostly academic agenda and would be implemented under a strict policy of informed consent.
One teacher on the committee was very concerned about safety and kept asking what the “standard operating procedures” were in case of an emergency, Lu said.
That is the issue that tied up the committee meeting and eventually resulted in several members voting the proposal down.
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