Romance with Discipline

Mask by Leonor Fini

by C. Margery Kempe

I gave a paper at the Popular Culture Association Conference last week called, “Knocking from Inside: Forging Strength through Pain in V for Vendetta and The Story of O” and it seemed to go over well in the BDSM/Kink area panel, despite the fact that I was the only panelist who turned up. (O_o) The title comes from a Rumi poem about struggling with your own constrictions:

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It...