A Conversio Virium member after a caning demonstration at Columbia University.

“Sometimes my friends and I stop each other mid-sentence and say, ‘Oh my god, you guys. We go to Harvard. This is so weird,’” Maria, a junior, said recently over Skype chat.

Harvard had been Maria’s dream school for years. (She requested a pseudonym, but not because she’s not proud of her alma mater.) A valedictorian of her New England public high school, she got in on the basis of a 4.0 GPA and started working toward an English major. Last year, she began looking around for some extracurricular activities to enrich her college experience. There were more than 400 student groups to choose from. Maria chose a group called Munch. Her goal was to meet new people, to explore something new, maybe to release some of the pressure that comes with trying to compete in an intimidating hothouse of rampant overachievement.

Maria is petite, with honey-blonde hair and brown eyes. They widened as she ticked off a few of the areas she hoped to explore in her free time: “Bondage, handcuffs, ice play...”

Maria is, she said, less a masochist than a submissive. “So a lot of taking orders and stuff like that,” she explained. “I’m really into the whole exhibitionist thing, semi-public places, mirrors...” In addition to educational meetings on campus, Munch members have occasionally gotten together in private to “play.” Since joining, Maria’s had a chance to explore some of her fantasies. “I’ve been hit with a riding crop, a belt, a paddle, canes, a flogger ... floggers are my favorite.”

The popularity of 50 Shades of Grey has accelerated a mainstreaming of the BDSM subculture already underway—the initials stand for bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism—and the trend has been especially pronounced in our more elite institutions of higher learning. Columbia has a BDSM group. So do Tufts, MIT, Yale and the University of Chicago. Brown, UPenn and Cornell have hosted BDSM educators for on-campus seminars entitled “The Freedom of Kink” and “Kink for All.” It looks like conservatives who have long viewed the Ivy League a bastion of depravity may have a point after all.

But some young members of such groups are finding the subculture is offering them more of an education than they expected, confronting them with serious issues involving consent, disclosure, anonymity, sexual violence, guilt and innocence, crime and punishment.

While the scene’s mantra—“safe, sane and consensual”—is heard so often it might as well be translated into needlepoint, violations of these maxims are common. In the last year, hundreds of people have come forward to describe the abuse they’ve suffered within the scene. The victims are mostly women, and like 50 Shades’ fictional 22-year-old Anastasia Steele, many are also young, submissive and uncertain about their boundaries.

In December, Victoria (not her real name), a 20-year-old English major at an Ivy League school, had decided to skip reading period, apply more makeup than usual and venture on her own to a kinky meet-upshe had read about on FetLife, a social networking service for fetishists. Victoria didn’t have any experience with submissive sex, but she had been drawn to it for years; she sometimes had fantasies about dungeons or about being restrained or embarrassed, and she recalled family trips to Medieval Times having given her an unusual erotic charge.

The meeting was fun. Victoria had interesting conversations about neurobiology and religion and, of course, about kinky sex. It was near the end of the evening when a man walked in whom she recognized; he had tried to form an S&M club on her campus a few years before. Eric had a doughy, impish face and slicked-back hair, and he wore his cell phone in a carrier on his hip.

A week later the two went to a “play-party.” After some reluctance, Victoria agreed to negotiate some tentative participation, defining safe words and off-limits actions. But once the two were alone in a corner, she said, Eric put a knife to her throat and began groping her. Victoria was shaken, but she couldn’t help doubting herself. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be, she figured.

The next day, when Eric asked her to send him an email stating what had happened and describing it as consensual, she complied. “At the time, I felt like this must be normal,” she said. “Now it seems obvious he was just building up a defense.”

The BDSM scene can be violent by nature. Physical and psychological power, and the lack thereof, are at the heart of the erotic experience. As a result, sexual assault can be harder to define and harder to prove. But that’s not to say it doesn’t happen. Indeed, awareness of the problem seems to be growing, and controversies around the issue have been roiling the tight-knit fetish community all year.

Kitty Stryker and Maggie Mayhem were up late one night, chatting online. Both are known as sex-positive activists and celebrities within the sadomasochism world. That night, they began to swap sexual-assault stories and realized the experience was more common than either had known. The pair began collecting similar tales online, and it wasn’t long before they had amassed more than 300 anecdotes. The stories ranged from more benign assaults (unwanted groping) to tales of being drugged and raped. Many of the victims described abusers who were well-known members of the community, people who hosted parties or helped to organize the scene.

“What we found is that the abuse was systematic,” said Ms. Stryker, who regularly goes by a pseudonym. “People had these stories, but when they went to report them to community leaders, they were dismissed as drama. Not only that, but people were ostracized for reporting. It becomes clear how easy it is for an abuser to swoop in on a newbie.”

Meanwhile, Andy, a 24-year-old law student who lives in New York City, also began collecting abuse stories, publishing them directly on FetLife. Andy is something of a New York scene fixture, known for throwing massive BDSM galas that include such attractions as “glitter bathtubs” and fake-blood tableaux modeled on the TV series Dexter. A transgendered male, he quickly collected hundreds of anecdotes, many from fellow New Yorkers, some of which called out abusers by FetLife username. “I knew the people they were naming,” Andy said. “There were party organizers and influential people that users were saying had done horrible things to them,” he said. Publishing these accounts on the social network had a galvanizing effect. Every time someone “loved” a post it showed up on their feed. Soon, everyone on the site knew who was being accused of what—though they didn’t always know the identities of the accusers.

When FetLife employees caught wind of the posts, they began removing usernames. Employees warned that lodging criminal accusations against users violated the site’s terms of service. CEO John Baku then got involved, stating that he was sorry for everyone who’d experienced abuse and suggesting that victims go to the police. (Mr. Baku declined to comment for this article.) The CEO’s involvement spurred hundreds of comments from users, many siding with the site’s administrators and warning of an epidemic of false accusations. Others backed Andy, arguing that the community should police itself and support victims. BDSM is illegal in some states, and many practitioners do not feel comfortable going to the police.

“The types of abuse that happen when you are new and vulnerable are happening to us now,” Andy said. It was a fall afternoon, and he was sitting in an East Village cafe, wearing a fedora, white suspenders and a black Janelle Monae shirt. “There are people in the New York scene that everyone knows are bad news, and people tell you but no one does anything about it. Since FetLife has emerged, we’ve had this giant influx of young people coming into the scene who haven’t been around long enough to hear the whispers.”

As word spread about the multiple accounts of consent violation, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) launched a survey. “We haven’t closed it yet, but so far we have 5,000 responses, and over 30 percent of them had have their previously negotiated limit violated, which I think is horrific,” said spokesperson Susan Wright. “There is still confusion between consensual BDSM and assault.”

As the debate around naming abusers wore on, FetLife stuck to its policy.

Things got more complicated when Mr. Baku himself was accused. The story came to light on the personal blog of a woman named called SinShine Love. “Let it be clear,” she wrote, “the reason John sees no problem with any of this rape apologist bullshit is because he has a foggy ass notion of consent and acceptable behavior himself. And because he personally benefits from people like me staying silent.”

Mr. Baku issued an apology for his behavior on FetLife, stating that he was drunk the night in question, though he didn’t specifically admit to abuse.

“We enforce the idea that you can say no to anything,” said Holli, a leader of Columbia University’s BDSM group, Conversio Virium. “There are a lot of young, inexperienced people that come to us for guidance and an introduction to the scene. A lot of them become easy targets for people to prey on at play parties. Sometimes young people like to say ‘Yes, yes, yes’ to everyone they encounter at a fetish party or event, but if you say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘I’m not so sure about this,’ the lines about whether actual consent was given start to blur.”

Samantha Berstler, a student at Harvard who had studied the scene, supports Conversio Virium but questions the group’s willingness to admit non-students. “Why not just put a big neon sign on the door that says, ‘Vulnerable young nubile college students, many without strong support networks in the city yet, please come take advantage of them?’” she wondered.

Every time she logs into FetLife she sees the same story, Ms. Berstler added. “Someone else I know is writing that a relationship was completely abusive, and of course she was young and a college student and pretty and new.”

Consent is paramount at Harvard’s BDSM group, Munch, said the group’s leader, who asked to be identified as Michael. Right now, the university is considering giving the group its official backing, provided it adopts specific policies to educate members on how to deal with abuse. “We are working on developing standardized policies,” he said. “Right now that mostly exists with the function of an email list—anyone who joins the list gets a spiel.”

Victoria could have used the support of a good student group. After she and Eric broke up, she told her friends about the darker elements of their relationship—how he would repeatedly threaten to rape her and how maybe sometimes what he did actually seemed like rape, and how he once casually suggested he might be a serial killer. She said she had sometimes felt forced into sex acts, including electrocution and “fire play.”

Everyone agreed that this was abuse, but when she talked about reporting it, they waffled.

The NCSF has been working on new community guidelines about what constitutes consent and what doesn’t. Ms. Wright says she’s also been developing an app with FetLife that will direct members who have been abused to the authorities, as well as a new program that helps victims report to the police in general.

Meanwhile, despite FetLife’s best efforts, alleged abusers are still being publicly identified. A tech-savvy member of the BDSM community named MayMay recently developed an app that puts a yellow square around the profile photo of anyone who has been accused of abuse, along with a description of their alleged misdeeds. The yellow square can only be seen within the app, a free download.

After her breakup with Eric, Victoria sought out the help of a therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD. Eventually, she decided to press charges.

“I met a lawyer and we just picked the three most obvious instances of rape,” she recalled. “He said it wouldn’t make sense to file a report of 20 instances. I was worried that if I made the report, Eric would come attack me or kill me, and I didn’t want to put my life in danger unless I was certain something would come of it.” Victoria’s lawyer went to a friend who was a DA and asked what he would do with such a case.

Victoria was sitting in the school library weeks later when she received the email from her lawyer. The DA said he would throw the case out. BDSM scenarios are just too complicated to prosecute, he said.

One afternoon, Michael again met with school administrators about Munch gaining official recognition as a student group. Michael and two other group leaders sat and waited for their turn to be seen. Other student group leaders had arrived late and were wearing shorts. Michael and the other Munch members had worn suits. They were nervous.

The meeting was tense, but Michael felt it went well. “One of the big concerns that they had were issues of consent, and I’m proud to say we did a good job of representing ourselves as a group that takes consent very seriously,” he said. He hopes that Munch can become a leader in larger discussions about sexual abuse on campus, taking its consent-is-paramount model to the “vanilla” world. Harvard will make a determination about the group’s official status at the end of November.

editorial@observer.com

Cole Carter's website

I’m not going to sleep with Darren. I’m not going to sleep with him. I’m not.

I am in professional mode, despite the fact that for all intents and purposes I am on a “date” with a paid escort. Darren, sporting a straw fedora and very tight shirt, met me at a Brooklyn restaurant known for its trendy southern comfort food and politely pulled out my chair.

I knew what I was getting, having perused photos of Darren and his colleagues on the website where he peddles himself to female clients. In the pictures, his muscular chest and abs glistened like sweaty chocolate. There were rows of other male models and former athletes to choose from, all shirtless and squinting at the camera. One can rent them for $550 for two hours, $1,000 for four, or $2,000 to stay the night. The owner of Darren’s agency, ‘Cowboys 4 Angels’ interviews clients before a date to find a good match. He fixed me up with Darren knowing that I was a journalist—one without an expense account—but making me promise I’d treat the meeting less as an interview than an ... experience. A freebie. A gift.

At the table, Cowboy Darren’s knees graze mine. I begin to I tease him a little. “Most of you guys can’t actually make money doing this, right?” He leans back in his chair. “I can tell you what I make a month,” he tells me with fixed eye-contact. “About $3,000, from only a few dates.” Escorting isn’t Darren’s only gig, he has a steady job working for the city—this is “fun money,” he explains.

Most of his fellow cowboys work in the service industry or as massage therapists.

Cowboys 4 Angels is also the escort agency featured on Showtime’s reality series Gigolo. That program, HBO’s drama Hung and the recent film Magic Mike, seem to have accelerated a growth in the M4W escort industry, as have online clearinghouses like Backpage.com and Concierge Du Monde, an online forum where female johns (janes?) can interact with each other and rate various services. But what really seems to be driving the trend is 50 Shades of Grey.

Hits to the website for maleescortsusa.com have increased by 50 percent since the book’s release, as have the numbers of escorts looking to sign up, according to a representative. Escort Pierce Urban has seen a similar increase in bookings, noting that clients are increasingly paying to fly him around the country. “And they’ve all read the book,” he said.

A rep from menforhire.com agreed that “the book has ignited a spark of curiosity with regards to desires women may not have been aware of previously, and a male escort is a perfect way to explore this.” Many, she added, have been emailing with special requests for dominant guys and wondering just how far things can go.”

Concierge Du Monde is where I found London-based casanova Cole Carter. His website reads: “He’s not your cardboard cut-out male escort but a man of greater substance, someone who you can laugh and dream with.” A date with him lasts 24 hours, minimum. “What I am doing is playing to my strengths, which are forming connections and listening to people’s stories,” he said via Skype. “What can you sell about yourself to women? If I was an hourly escort I would have big muscles and a big cock and all. But that is not what I am selling.” Carter offers the boyfriend experience. “Women are emotional creatures,” he said. “Very few pick a male escort solely based on looks.” Photos show Carter as a tan Asian in dark rinse jeans and a tucked in white shirt. Thin but not toned. Nice looking.

Carter usually meets clients in a hotel lobby, bar or coffee shop. “These women are nervous as hell,” he said. The important thing, he said, is to make the date feel comfortable and to be lighthearted. “The woman will be paying thousands of dollars and picking up all the tabs, but she does want you to take the lead,” he added. Which gets tricky with sex. The client may be overturning traditional gender roles by paying for it, but she generally still expects to be seduced.

“You can’t propose sex right away,” he said. “Sometimes it seems funny—they’ve spent all this money! And yet they are not gonna verbalize what it is they want.”

DIANA IS A SINGLE WOMAN who uses Cowboys 4 Angels as part of a dieting plan. Each month, if she meets her weight loss goals, she celebrates by paying for sex. She has a few favorite escorts but would like to try them all. “It is safer that way,” she explained. “I don’t want to get emotionally attached to any one guy.” She’s even started a blog to track her journey. Photos of Diana on the blog show a grinning woman with round cheeks and blond hair. Before a date, she likes to smoke a joint and take her time getting ready. “I never repeat my outfits with any of the guys,” she confided. Clothes she’s worn and can’t wear again include a red and white polka-dot rockabilly dress and an array of cute tops that show off cleavage, “my best asset,” she laughed.

The 10 minutes before the escort arrives are “the most exciting” part, she said. “I feel like a kid on Christmas.” Diana greets the cowboy at the door and they sit down with a glass of wine and chat for about 20 minutes before disrobing. “Every single one of my dates has been 100 percent focused on my orgasm” she said. The cowboys all begin the same way—dropping their faces below the sheets and seeing what works. “Some of them ask, ‘Is this good?’ and I’ll be like, ‘Lower, left,’ or whatever.” Diana says one escort brought a giant bag of sex toys and an iPod and speakers—everything you could need. “There have only been two dates where we didn’t end up having intercourse, and also only two dates where the guy did not climax. And what I love is that I don’t have to feel bad about that or analyze it. He doesn’t climax, not my problem!”

It is this paradigm shift that makes sex with the professionals so good, she said. “When I am with someone I am dating, my head is constantly going, ‘Am I getting this right, what does this mean?’” she explained. “But with the pros, that isn’t there. I am mentally clear and I can focus on getting what I need.” Diana says there is a safety in going to professionals—it just feels less complicated that way.

What it takes for things to remain uncomplicated for Casanova Carter is to stay single. “It would feel like a betrayal, being so emotionally intimate with patrons, if I had a long-term partner,” he said. He has been seeing one of his clients for five years, he said, adding, “which is the longest relationship I’ve had—period.”

For him, the job fulfills a certain emotional need. “I wasn’t the popular guy growing up,” he said. “But I always loved getting into women’s minds and figuring them out.”

Clearly, some of the drive to succeed comes from the sexual cachet of being a gigolo in addition to the “fun money,” but I wonder if it also stems from loneliness.

Despite his hunky appearance, Cowboy Darren was a square growing up. This admission came over dinner, when I asked, “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.” Darren added that he was still a mama’s boy. His mother knows about his side-gig and doesn’t approve. While he has never told a client “I love you,” he admitted there is one patron who gets to him. His demeanor changes from smooth to distant and wistful as remembered how she insisted on going to the same barbecue joint every time, how they would often just sit in Times Square and make fun of people for hours. I feel a heaviness in my chest for him as he talks.

Corrine lives in Vegas—a city where advertisements for escorts are in yellow pages and on the tops of cabs. She had gone recently through a bad break-up when she came across Smith, an escort who offers the boyfriend experience. Corrine booked him for her birthday, at a rate of $2,000. He showed up at her hotel room with red roses. Online photos depicted a man in a suit and a lip ring, with most of his face obscured—it turned out he was handsome. The first time they kissed was a few hours later, out for drinks at the Flamingo. “He asked me, ‘Can I have my kiss now,’ and took me to a secluded area.” After dinner when the two walked down the Strip holding hands and an old couple stopped them and asked if they were newlyweds, Corrine couldn’t stop laughing.

At the hotel reality sunk in. “I realized, I paid this guy. Would he be here if I hadn’t?” Sensing her hesitation, Smith got down on one knee. “He told me I didn’t have to do anything I was uncomfortable with,” Corrine said. Over the next few months, she saw Smith again and they talked on the phone. Corrine wasn’t seeing anyone else, and she knew she was getting attached. One night, she had a fight with her ex-boyfriend. Corrine called Smith crying and asked if he would see her for free. He wouldn’t. It was over.

Casanova Carter says he has fallen in love with clients and doesn’t view it as a problem. The only bad part of being an escort, he says, is when women “treat him like a piece of meat.” The worst part, he added, is being told “You have to do this—you’ve been paid for it.”

COWBOY DARREN is supposed to be splitting a margarita with me, but I’m the only one drinking. Feeling light-headed, I press him for details about his clients. Many of them are beautiful, he says, and a lot are married. Sometimes the husbands actually book the appointments. “These are busy guys, rich guys, who don’t have a lot of time,” he explains. “They want someone to take their wife shopping or to dinner.”
That sounds pretty innocent, I say. He laughs. “The women make the most of the sessions,” he said. “They always go in for the physical.”

Darren is bursting with cowboy adventures. He says the youngest woman he had dated was 24 and wildly gorgeous. Now, inexplicably a little jealous (that would be the tequila) I change the subject. “I heard that you cowboys can do some tricks with your tongues,” I say.

After dinner, we part outside the restaurant. Darren asks if he can put his number in my phone, and I let him. I go to hug him goodbye and my hat falls off. “Whoops,” I say, and then we give each other one of those confusing kisses—one that is supposed to land on the cheek but somehow winds up near the mouth instead.

editorial@observer.com