Sadism

What is sadism?

Sadism is drawing arousal from pain, discomfort, or humiliation you inflict on someone else, with their consent. It names a preference, not any one act. Together with masochism it makes up sadomasochism, the S and the M of BDSM; the one who gives is called a sadist, the one who receives a masochist.

What sadism means in a scene

Mostly paying attention. From the outside sadism is the active role, but the work is in reading what comes back.

Take an ordinary case: someone asks for caning and says up front that she doesn’t know how much she can take. The sadistic side of that evening is not in the number of strokes. It is in the moment the breathing changes, in the choice to then do nothing for half a minute, and in knowing that the silence lands harder than the next stroke.

That giving is a different experience from receiving has also been measured physiologically. Brad Sagarin and colleagues took saliva samples from 58 practitioners before and after a scene and published it in Archives of Sexual Behavior. In those who were tied up, given stimulus, and followed orders, the stress hormone cortisol rose during the scene. In those who gave the stimulus, the orders, and the structure, it did not. Sadism apparently costs no stress; it costs attention.

Where the word sadism comes from

From a French writer who lost his own name to a diagnosis.

The English sadism shows up in 1888 according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, taken from the French sadisme, and back then it literally meant “love of cruelty”. Behind that word sits Donatien de Sade (1740-1814). Two things are rarely mentioned alongside it. Etymonline calls him a count and notes that he was not really a marquis, though almost everyone calls him one; Wikidata carries both titles. And his family name comes from a place: from the village now called Saze, in the south of France.

The French word is much older than the English one. The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands dates the French sadisme to 1841 and the first Dutch use to 1884, in De Groene Amsterdammer; the Dutch masochisme did not follow until 1899. So sadism was here fifteen years earlier, and it entered in the sense of “morbid lust to torment”. A good part of the reputation this word still drags along sits right there.

Why sadism is not cruelty

Because the consent is not an add-on but the core.

The World Health Organization draws that line itself. In the ICD-11 there is one sadism diagnosis, code 6D33, coercive sexual sadism disorder, and it is about inflicting suffering on someone who does not consent. In that same description the boundary is spelled out word for word: “Coercive Sexual Sadism Disorder specifically excludes consensual sexual sadism and masochism.” Consensual sadism is not in the manual, then, and that is not an omission but a decision.

Psychology now has a measuring tool for it too. Charlotte Kinrade and colleagues describe in Psychological Assessment the building of the Index of Consensual Sexual Sadism, given to 1,391 people from the general population. Their reason is telling: nearly all the research into sexual sadism up to that point had been done on forensic groups, and there was no instrument for anyone else. The result is that consensual sexual sadism can be told apart statistically from everyday sadism, the pleasure in someone else’s misery outside the bedroom.

What sadism gives the one who gives

A kind of concentrated watching that is asked for nowhere else.

The one on the giving side reads another body non-stop for an hour: where the tension sits, whether she is still answering, when a pause does more than a stroke. That is the appeal sadists name most often themselves, and it is something other than enjoying suffering.

• For the one who gives, sadism offers control without anything having to succeed; the scene has no goal that must be reached.
• For the one who receives, a sadist who pays attention means there is no plowing on at the moment it becomes too much.
• For two people together, Sagarin’s research gave a clue: in participants who felt their scene had gone well, cortisol dropped afterward and the felt closeness went up.

That did not hold for everyone. In participants who felt it had gone badly, closeness sometimes went down instead. A scene that goes wrong does not repair itself.

Misconceptions about sadism

“Sadism means you enjoy someone else’s pain.” Not in this sense. Kinrade and colleagues could separate consensual sexual sadism statistically from everyday sadism; they are two things that happen to share one word.

“A sadist is the dominant party.” Those are two separate axes. Who chooses the stimulus and who sets the evening need not be the same person; that second question belongs to D/s. There are sadists who have no say in a scene and carry out exactly what is asked of them.

“Then you are in the psychiatric manual.” Not for a long time. The only sadism diagnosis in the ICD-11 excludes consensual sadism in as many words.

What I see myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. I rarely use the word sadism myself, and there is a reason: for the women who write to me it calls up an image of someone who mostly wants it to hurt, while in practice it is about dosing.

The giving side gets underrated. People think the easy work is on my side. It is the other way around: you get to let go, I have to keep watching.

And one thing you only learn by doing it. The moment to ease off does not announce itself as a scream.

What you can do yourself

• Ask a sadist beforehand what he watches for, not how hard he can hit. The answer to the first question tells you everything about the second.
• Agree on what happens when you stop speaking. In sadistic play silence is the most important signal and the easiest to miss.
• Say in advance what kind of pain you are after. Sharp or dull, building or sudden: that steers a sadist more than a number.
• Count on the day after. Arrange aftercare and keep in mind that the after-swing can reach the giving side too.

More reading on sadism

Within this glossary, sadist is about the person behind this word, masochism stands for the receiving half, and sadomasochism covers them both. On the blog, the difference between sharp and dull pain is about the choice a sadist makes every time.

Beyond this site you can read the ICD-11 description of 6D33 yourself; the exclusion line is there in a single sentence. Sagarin’s hormone research is the only work that has laid the giving and the receiving side side by side physiologically.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to know what it feels like when someone on the giving side really pays attention, you can try that with me. I build up slowly and watch above all for what you don’t say. What we agree on beforehand is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• The Index of Consensual Sexual Sadism (ICSS): Scale development, validation, measurement invariance, and nomological network comparisons with everyday sadism. Charlotte Kinrade, William Hart, Danielle E. Wahlers, Braden T. Hall & Joshua T. Lambert, Psychological Assessment 37(4), 148-160, 2025 (DOI 10.1037/pas0001365; authors and pagination checked against Crossref). The American Psychological Association’s journal for measurement instruments, and the first instrument to measure consensual sexual sadism in the general population. Gives the finding that nearly all earlier research into sexual sadism involved forensic groups, the preregistered sample of 1,391 adults and students (mean age 24.21, 68.40 percent women), and the finding that in its correlations with other measures the scale could be told apart from everyday sadism.
• Hormonal Changes and Couple Bonding in Consensual Sadomasochistic Activity. Brad J. Sagarin, Bert Cutler, Nadine Cutler, Kimberly A. Lawler-Sagarin & Leslie Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38(2), 186-200, 2009 (DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9374-5; authors and pagination checked against Crossref). Two field studies with saliva samples from 58 practitioners before and after a real scene, and the only research that compares the giving and the receiving role physiologically. Gives that cortisol rose significantly during the scene in participants who were tied up, received stimulus, and followed orders, but not in participants who gave stimulus, orders, or structure; that female participants on the receiving side also showed a rise in testosterone; and that in participants who felt the scene had gone well, cortisol dropped and the felt closeness went up, while in participants who felt it had gone badly, closeness went down for some.
• 6D33 Coercive sexual sadism disorder. World Health Organization, ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics, version 2025-01, retrieved via the official ICD API on 4 August 2026. This is the classification itself and so the only document that settles which diagnoses exist. Gives that 6D33 concerns inflicting physical or psychological suffering on a non-consenting person, that the diagnosis also requires that someone has acted on it or suffers greatly under it, and the exclusion line “Coercive Sexual Sadism Disorder specifically excludes consensual sexual sadism and masochism”.
• sadisme. Etymologiebank, hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, carrying the entries from the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Philippa et al., 2003-2009) and the Etymologisch woordenboek by Van Veen and Van der Sijs (Van Dale, 1997). A collecting page that sets the standard Dutch etymological works side by side. Gives the description “perverse lust to torment”, the borrowing from the French sadisme “morbid lust to torment” with the French dating of 1841 from the Trésor de la langue française, the first Dutch use in De Groene Amsterdammer of 1884, the formation with the suffix -isme from the name of de Sade (1740-1814), and for comparison the Dutch dating of masochisme at 1899.
• sadism. Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper. A word-history reference that notes for each entry when it first appears on paper. Gives the year 1888 for sadism from the French sadisme, the original sense “love of cruelty”, the description of de Sade as a count with the note that he was not a marquis though he is now usually called one, and the origin of the family name in the place name of the village now called Saze. Note: Etymonline prints 1815 as the year of death; Wikidata and the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands both give 2 December 1814, and that is the year used on this page.

Related terms

Sadism says something about which side of the stimulus someone stands on, and nothing about who is in charge.

• Sadomasochism. The umbrella sadism is the S of, with the history of the diagnosis.
• Sadist. The person behind the term, and what the word does and does not say about someone.
• Masochism. The other half, with the research into how context changes pain.
• Algolagnia. The nineteenth-century umbrella word that sadism and masochism both fell under.
• Impact play. The form sadism is carried out in most often.
• Pain threshold. The two points a sadist works between, and why they move.
• Rope top. The same giving position in a rope scene, where it is not the pain but the steering that counts.
• Top. The role that carries out the act, with the dating of the word.