A lanky guy in jeans and a red T-shirt announced that he had recently had an “awesome” time learning how to play with needles. A young woman in a Columbia ‘05 sweatshirt described her interests as “knitting, crocheting, flogging and bondage.” A studious-looking man in horn-rims identified himself as a “funny kind of sadist.”

Laundry lists of fetishes were ticked off as if they were top choices for graduate school. The group sidetracked into an erudite discussion of the psychological underpinnings of sadomasochism. Finally, club members got down to the business at hand, which was scheduling discussion topics, activities and outings for the semester.

In the article, May May and I talk about pleasure, pain and how those two things relate to [kinky] sex.

If you haven’t already seen the article, you should check it out on their website (it’s a PDF). The article is called “Tie Me Up: A Gadfly Interview with Conversio Virium” and begins on page 13 of the magazine.

Without notions of pain, we could not know pleasure—pleasure and pain, one might argue, are two sides of the same token. Or, as the following interlocutors might argue, one side of the same delicious, voluptuous token. In exploration of this latter view on pleasure-pain, Gadfly is proud to bring you an interview with Vice President Tyler and webmaster Maymay of Conversio Virium (CV), Columbia’s very own student BDSM club.

Read the rest of the article here.

[Kyle] is currently an associate brother in the New York boys of Leather, after being a full brother for a year and a half. From 2005-2006 he served as the Vice President for Conversio Virium, the BDSM discussion/education group of Columbia University. Kyle moved to Boston at the end of August and has started working as a bootblack at the Ramrod. While his primary D/s relationship is with Northeastern University’s School of Law, he still finds time to engage in extracurricular activities.

Just feast your eyes on all that sexy leather. If you’re going to be in the area, wish him luck from all of us here in New York!

From Nicole’s paper, On Sadomasochism: Taxonomies and Language:

A final complication concerns the slippage in the public imagination from S/M to physical abuse and forced sex. Conversio Virium, a BDSM (bondage and discipline S/M) support group at Columbia University, has developed a policy statement outlining the differences between S/M and abuse. According to the group, “S/M includes intimate activities within the scope of consent that is freely given”, while abuse is defined as “acts inflicted on a person without their freely given consent.”⁴⁸ A popular phrase among the S/M and fetish communities is that all sexual encounters should be “safe, sane, and consensual.”⁴⁹ The limits of S/M encounters are mutually agreed upon by both participants, and a safe word that when uttered means the scene must end immediately, is arranged. The “safe, sane, consensual” benchmark is also adopted by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), an advocacy group supporting the rights of sexual minorities, specifically practitioners of S/M,⁵⁰ although some in these communities question the applicability of this slogan to all who practice BDSM. One S/M participant noted that, “Sane is so close to meaningless for me that I find it useless. Who is to say what is sane? Shall we pass judgement on each other, as to whether people and/or activities are sane?”⁵¹ Such individuals do not question the propriety of the standard of consent, but do raise an interesting issue of how safety and sanity are determined, and by whom. Even the S/M guidelines published by Conversio Virium highlight consent as the most essential aspects of S/M, and stress the importance of mutual pleasure and respect in the S/M relationship.⁵²

Things like this remind me that, even when our club is spoken of by sensationalist bloggers who can usually only see dirty side of CV, we are actually making a positive difference in the way the community to which we belong (and have, to some degree, created) is viewed by the rest of the word. Hooray for taking some of the bias against BDSM and its practitioners out of sociology (and for my run-on sentences)!

By the way everyone, if you have links to any other CV media stories, send them to us (or comment here) and we will post them accordingly.

Click here to read the entire article

By MELANIE WENIGER

“Which all begs the question­—what does the kinkiest club on campus due to celebrate V-Day?

Officially, CV members are planning to celebrate Valentine’s Day just like everyone else. Hannah, BC ’08 and president of CV, says that, in addition to reaching out to Coulter, “We [club members] are planning to send out kinky Valentines with dirty poetry” to other people as well.

“One of our members is having a ‘seven deadly sins’ theme of parties,” Tyler says. “Like seven consecutive parties and this one is envy for Valentine’s Day. So, you know, I think the BDSM community does sort of entertain this holiday in a light-hearted way.””

If you haven’t seen the interview, don’t. Ann Coulter has made a name for herself by pissing people off and she’s good at what she does. Nonetheless, I’m posting a link to the transcript, as an item of historical interest.

Click here to read the transcript

Wild sex 101
BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, November 26th, 2006

“Others volunteer for the bullwhip at Conversio Virium, the university-sanctioned S&M club that means “exchange of power” in Latin. It calls itself a “discussion group” that provides “education and peer support” and promotes “safe, sane and consensual play.” But the club doesn’t just talk.Late on the night of Nov. 13, a Daily News reporter sat in room 303 of Hamilton Hall, a venerable classroom building where Columbia students have studied Poe, Plato and Plutarch for nearly 100 years.

As a female student volunteer stood facing the blackboard, and two dozen Columbians watched, a lecturer who identified himself only as Dov flogged her repeatedly with leather whips, rubber hoses - and a cat-o’-nine-tails.

“I’m Dov, and these are my toys,” he said, and for the next 14 minutes he demonstrated lashing techniques. The activity was consensual, but the squeals of delight mingled with the occasional yelps of pain.”

Trick or Treat?

Sexplorations
Miriam Datskovsky
Posted: 10/30/06

“Think bondage, think domination, think sadomasochism. Think discipline, think submission, leather, whips, and paddles. Be scared, but not too scared. Breathe, feel, want. Sigh. Have you ever been spanked?

Apparently Columbia has a club. Conversio Virium, which apparently means “exchange of power,” is an official BDSM discussion group. BDSM, by the way, officially stands for a combination of the acronyms B&D (erotic bondage & discipline), D&S (domination and submission), and S/M (sadomasochism). Over coffee, Jamie, the petite junior who has served as CV president for the last year and makes me feel like I know next to nothing about sex, fills me in on the details: at 11 years old, the club has a great relationship with the administration, about 35 regulars, and meetings smacking of erotic discussion-from rope bondage to boot-blacking to flogging. Safety is at the front of every discussion. One of the best things about CV, Jamie tells me, is its presence in the city: the club has very close ties with The Eulenspiegel Society, or TES. Members of TES, the oldest BDSM education and support organization in New York City, present to CV almost every other week.”

CV, Go Ask Alice! and Role-Playing