Tony DeBlase and SM University
BDSM Education in the Early 1980s
Tony DeBlase emerged as the premier BDSM educator in the late 1970s and shaped the developing BDSM community in profound and lasting ways. Today, he is most remembered for creating the Leather Pride Flag, but that’s probably his least important accomplishment.
Before 1970, most BDSM education took place within sexual encounters. People learned by experimenting and shared what they learned with their sexual partners. One might also pick up a few tricks by watching others in the backrooms of the handful of leather bars with play spaces, or perhaps at a private party, if lucky enough to be invited. Tony DeBlase changed that by popularizing the hands-on demonstrations that remain the centerpiece of BDSM education today, as well as creating and publishing DungeonMaster,the first magazine devoted exclusively to BDSM education.
The first BDSM organizations, TES in New York, Society of Janus in San Francisco, Tri-State Couples Club in New Jersey, and the Chicago Hellfire Club, formed in the early 1970s. All four made education a central part of their activities. This was particularly true of the Chicago Hellfire Club whose annual multi-day Inferno party, first held in 1976, attracted experienced BDSM men from across the United States.
DeBlase worked in academia and museums and earned a Ph.D. in biology, specializing in bats, hence the Fledermaus pseudonym he used for his erotic fiction. DeBlase joined the Chicago Hellfire Club a few years after its 1971 founding and helped develop and formalize the club’s educational efforts. These became an important part of Inferno, which featured demonstrations of both BDSM equipment and technique. After returning home, Inferno attendees shared what they learned with their partners and friends, and this unique knowledge spread from there.
DeBlase became the central figure in this web of BDSM knowledge. He learned from others, developed and refined a wide range of techniques, and shared that knowledge widely. He recognized the need for more detailed BDSM education and traveled to New York and other cities where he presented BDSM seminars and demonstrations. In 1979, he founded DungeonMaster in which he shared what he learned, describing BDSM activities, both routine and unusual. The first magazine of its kind, DungeonMaster focused entirely on BDSM technique. DeBlase recruited adept BDSM practitioners to write for DungeonMaster, and together they advanced BDSM play, introducing readers to an ever-growing variety of toys and techniques to employ in “safe and sane SM,” a term coined by DeBlase, and from which the more commonly known “safe, sane, consensual” slogan developed.
As DungeonMaster flourished, DeBlase developed a parallel initiative, the Sandmutopia University School of Continuing Education. Sandmutopia (S and M Utopia) University, or SMU, as most folks called it, was a nationwide network of BDSM instructors. In the early 1980s, they lectured about BDSM at Toché in Chicago, the Mineshaft in New York, and other leather bars and kinky venues in major American cities. They offered demonstrations of catheters and sounds, erotic shaving, fisting, mummification, piercing, rope bondage, water sports, and other topics.
SM University students paid $3 for a lecture or $5 for a hands-on demonstration. They could also buy classes in bulk for $20 tuition and receive a Sandmutopia University student ID card (pictured above)granting them admission to a semester of classes. Instructors offered classes at a variety of levels and borrowed the common nomenclature of college catalogs, to designate progressively advance classes as 101, 201, and so on.
Some years later, a company sold “SMU: SM University” t-shirts. As far I know, they had no association with DeBlase. Those who wore the shirts were often disappointed to discover that people mistook “SMU” for Southern Methodist University, missing SM University’s slogan: “study till it hurts, and then some.”
Largely forgotten today, SM University helped diversify and standardize BDSM education by connecting students to talented, experienced teachers.
DeBlase and its other instructors also laid the seeds for dozens of men’s BDSM groups to form across the United States in the 1980s. Founders could focus on the numerous — often tedious — complexities of advertising and launching a new organization, knowing they could tap into this network for the hands-on instruction expected by the growing numbers of people who joined one of the more than 200 new BDSM groups that formed in the United States in the 1980s.
DeBlase helped popularize fancy rope bondage, even selling a beginner’s rope kit with instructions for tying what became the classic, diamond-shaped body harness. His video, “Rope That Works,” the first BDSM instructional video to hit the market, offered further instruction.
DeBlase popularized the hands-on demonstrations that became the centerpiece of BDSM education and the highlight of the monthly meetings of hundreds of local BDSM groups. He offered techniques and insights to both BDSM newbies and people with decades of experience. Throughout his presentations, he emphasized safety, even when exploring the outer bounds of edgeplay. The best way to ensure safe play, he understood, was making hands-on instruction available to people along with detailed discussions of technique in DungeonMaster magazine.
In addition to DungeonMaster and SM University, DeBlase arranged the workshops and seminars at Living in Leather I (1986), the first national BDSM conference. For the next decade, Living in Leather remained the premier BDSM conference, inspiring a host of similar conferences. DeBlase organized its workshops into the late-1990s, attracting the community’s premier educators and presenters.
DeBlase liked the Sandmutopia name and used it for several endeavors. It was the name of the fictional BDSM community in which he set several of his erotic stories, as well as his mail order BDSM toy business, the Sandmutopia Supply Company. In 1987, he launched a new magazine, the Sandmutopia Guardian.
Patterned on DungeonMaster but aimed at a pansexual audience, the Sandmutopia Guardian brought DeBlase’s thoughtful explorations of BDSM play to a whole new audience. It became the journal of record for the BDSM community, covering important legal and political developments, and publishing some of the best articles on BDSM technique to ever appear in print, including Quartermaster’s “Fundamentals of Flagellation” in issue 5 (1989) Joseph Bean’s “Pleasure Not Panic: The Art of Welcoming Pain” in issue 11 (1993), and Tony DeBlase’s three-part series on male genitorture in issues 33–35 (1999).
The magazine remained in publication through 2001, outliving DeBlase by a year. Adam’s Whips and Gillian’s Toys (ASWGT.com), which acquired the magazine from DeBlase, still has some back issues for sale.
While magazines like DungeonMaster and Sandmutopia Guardian are no longer published, DeBlase’s educational legacy lives on in the hundreds of BDSM organizations around the world that make educational demonstrations the centerpiece of their meetings, as well as more than 100 annual BDSM conferences offering educational demonstrations and seminars.