Pain as culture: A postcolonial feminist approach to S/M and women's agency

The interaction of gender, culture, race and sexuality is a central dynamic to this article, which seeks to move forward feminist debate on the benefits and harms of sadomasochist practices for women by applying the critical race and postcolonial method of world-travelling. The article seeks to make a novel contribution to the feminist analysis of consensual violence and sadomasochism in law by filtering the issue through a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework to productively circumvent the current analytical impasse in this area of feminist 'sex wars'.