Sadist

What is a sadist?

A sadist is someone for whom inflicting pain, discomfort, or humiliation is arousing or satisfying, as long as the other person consents. It names a person, not an act. Within BDSM the sadist stands opposite the masochist. Outside BDSM the same word means something much uglier: a tormentor.

Why almost no one calls himself plainly a sadist

Because outside the scene the word is an accusation.

Anyone who says “sadist” in Dutch pictures someone who tortures an animal or bullies a subordinate. That is no accident: the earliest Dutch use the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands gives is in De Groene Amsterdammer of 1887 and reads “a lecher, a sadist”. The word came in as an indictment and has stayed that way in everyday speech.

You see that in how people use it about themselves: almost always with a softener or in a list. In Zoey Jones’s dissertation (Carleton University, 2020), based on twenty-three in-depth interviews with rope practitioners, one participant describes himself as “a rigger, rope top, Master, Dominant, and semi-sadist”. That semi is the whole point. Another participant calls herself “both a sadist and a masochist”, a third even “masochistic, sadistic, submissive, and dominant”. No one puts the word down on its own.

Where the word sadist comes from

From the concept, and earlier than you would think.

The Dutch sadist is derived from sadisme on the model of other -isme and -ist pairs, or taken from the German Sadist. The first Dutch use is 1887, three years after sadisme itself, which appears in the same paper in 1884.

The comparison with the other half is interesting. In English sadist appears in 1892 according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, built on sadism with the suffix -ist. The word masochist came three years later, in 1895. So the giving side got a name before the receiving side, and in both languages that name came from the direction of accusation.

How you can tell someone is a sadist

By how he looks, not by what he picks up.

A sadist who knows what he is doing asks beforehand about the kind of pain you are after, not the amount. During the scene he watches your breathing, your muscle tension, and whether you are still answering. And he stops at a moment when you had not asked him to yet.

A recognizable case: someone asks for twenty strokes and gets twelve, with longer pauses than agreed, because the other saw that the rest would no longer land the way it was meant to. That is not a weak performance. That is the craft.

Are sadists different from other people?

Measurably different on one point, and precisely not on the point people fear.

Kate Jansen, Adam Fried, and Jared Chamberlain gave 279 BDSM practitioners two questionnaires in The Journal of Sexual Medicine: a scale for interpersonal dominance and a scale for empathic concern. On dominance the dominants scored higher than the switches, and those higher than the submissives (61.44 against 53.99 against 49.41 on average). On empathy there was no difference at all between the three groups.

Two caveats belong with that honestly. The study measures the dominant role, not the label sadist; those are related but not identical things. And the dominants did score higher, but according to the researchers not in the markedly elevated range, and not so high that it would color their daily dealings.

Misconceptions about sadists

“A sadist enjoys someone else’s suffering.” Not in this sense. The arousal is in the effect a stimulus has on someone who asked for it. Take away that asking, and what made it appealing is gone too.

“A sadist is the one in charge.” Two separate things. Giving the stimulus is one; setting the evening is another, and that second belongs to D/s. Some carry out exactly what they are told within a scene, and that makes them not one bit less a sadist.

“Sadists have less empathy.” That has been looked at, and Jansen and colleagues found no difference on the empathy scale between dominants, submissives, and switches.

What I see myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. If I say the word sadist out loud, I see people flinch for a second. An image comes with it of someone mostly out to make it hurt, and that is not how it goes in a room.

There is a lot of holding back. The skill this work asks for is not dealing it out but stopping, and stopping at a moment when the other is still asking for more.

And there is one question almost every woman asks me before we agree on anything. Not “how hard do you go”, but “how do you know when it is enough”.

What you can do yourself

• Let someone who calls himself a sadist first explain what he keeps an eye on. If a concrete answer comes, he has thought about it. If he starts straight in on gear, he has not.
• Say so if you are the type who keeps pushing for more. A sadist who knows that in advance weighs your “more” differently.
• Make clear beforehand what going quiet means for you. Some women fall silent because it is going well, others because it is no longer working, and from the outside that difference cannot be seen.
• Do not draw the conclusion from a result. The BDSM test gives back sadist as an archetype; that opens a conversation and settles nothing.
• See a doctor for a wound or a numb feeling, and tell them honestly how it happened.

More reading on sadists

Within this glossary, sadism covers the concept itself, sadomasochism sits a level above it, and masochist is about the counterpart. Dominant explains why being in charge is a different axis than the stimulus. On the blog, why you need an experienced gigolo to play with whips safely tells you exactly what gets weighed on the giving side.

Beyond this site, the research by Jansen and colleagues is the clearest rebuttal of the idea that whoever picks this role feels less. Etymologiebank shows how the Dutch word came in around 1887 and why it still smells of an accusation.

Where this fits on this site

If you are looking for someone who has mastered this role rather than someone who likes how it sounds, an appointment with me can give that answer. Twenty-five years of practice sits above all in the holding back. How an evening like that is prepared, you can read on the BDSM date.

Sources

• An Examination of Empathy and Interpersonal Dominance in BDSM Practitioners. Kate L. Jansen, Adam L. Fried & Jared Chamberlain, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 18(3), 549-555, 2021 (DOI 10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.12.012; authors and pagination checked against Crossref). A comparative questionnaire study of 279 people who count themselves part of the BDSM community, using the Personality Assessment Inventory and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and the only research that measures empathy by role. Gives the split across the roles (25.4 percent dominant, 38 percent submissive, 36.6 percent switch), the mean scores on interpersonal dominance (61.44 for dominants, 53.99 for switches, 49.41 for submissives), the finding that there was no difference in empathic concern between the roles, and the researchers’ caveat that the dominants did score higher but not in the markedly elevated range.
• sadist. M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, Amsterdam University Press 2003-2009, consulted via Etymologiebank. The standard work for the origin of Dutch words, and so the right source for the Dutch dating. Gives the first Dutch use of sadist in 1887 in De Groene Amsterdammer (“a lecher, a sadist”), the first use of sadisme in the same paper in 1884, the description “someone who torments out of perverse lust”, the formation from sadisme on the model of other -isme and -ist pairs or from the German Sadist, and the life years of de Sade (1740-1814).
• Pleasure, Community, and Marginalization in Rope Bondage: A qualitative investigation into a BDSM subculture. Zoey Jones, sociology dissertation, Carleton University, Ottawa, 2020 (pdf downloaded and searched). A qualitative study with twenty-three in-depth interviews of rope practitioners in Canada and the United States, and on this site the only source in which people name themselves in their own words. Gives the participant who calls himself “a rigger, rope top, Master, Dominant, and semi-sadist”, the participant who calls herself “both a sadist and a masochist”, and the participant who calls herself “masochistic, sadistic, submissive, and dominant”.
• sadist. Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper. A word-history reference with the first use per entry. Gives the year 1892 for the English sadist and its build on sadism with -ist. That fixes the word for the giving side in English as three years older than masochist.

Related terms

One word, one message: which side of the stimulus someone stands on. The rest of the terms below are about everything it does not say.

• Sadism. The concept itself, with the split between consensual and coercive sadism.
• Sadomasochism. The umbrella, and why those two sides more often sit in one person than in two.
• Masochist. The opposite pole, and why that word came three years later.
• Dominant. The axis of power, which sadist says nothing about.
• BDSM test. The questionnaire that gives back sadist as an archetype, and what a result like that is worth.
• Impact play. The form a sadist works in most often.
• Pain threshold. The range a sadist doses within, and why it shifts from one evening to the next.
• Top. Who carries out the act, which is separate from who chooses the stimulus.