Jay Szpilka, "BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

In BDSM Practices in Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire

(Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), cultural anthropologist and cultural

studies scholar Jay Szpilka analyzes the way that BDSM is practiced in

contemporary Poland. Based on extensive field research, she 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 a visiting fellow at Edinburgh Napier University and

an assistant professor at SWPS University in Poland. She is the author