You were told to believe he was the father of BDSM. He wasn’t!

BDSM existed long before Marquis de Sade ever wrote a word. Power, surrender, cruelty, ritual, devotion — these currents move through human history far deeper than the 18th century. So perhaps the assumption shifts: maybe he shaped BDSM into what we recognise today.
Still no.

The truth is more precise, and more revealing.

Sade has nothing to do with BDSM as a lifestyle or practice.
And yet, he remains deeply relevant to how BDSM is misunderstood.

His relevance lies in contrast — and in language.

Born in 1740 into French aristocracy, Sade lived in a world obsessed with order: moral order, religious order, social order. Church and State dictated how desire should appear, where it should exist, and who was permitted to express it. Appearances mattered more than truth. Silence protected reputations. Hypocrisy was structural.

Sade refused that silence.

His writings are not erotic invitations. They are confrontations. Relentless, repetitive, excessive by design. Pleasure is drained of beauty. Cruelty is stripped of symbolism. Power is shown without ornament or justification. He does not seduce the reader; he overwhelms them. Comfort would dilute the exposure.

What Sade places on the page is power without recognition.

The libertines in his work are not Dominants in any BDSM sense. They do not engage another person as a presence. There is no shared structure, no exchange, no acknowledgement of the other as human. Desire is treated as entitlement. Pain is inflicted because it can be. Power exists without interruption.

Through this connection — and because sadism came to mean taking enjoyment in the infliction of pain — the line was blurred. Stripped of context, structure, or meaning, pain becomes nothing more than torture, and Sade’s work brought into full view the vulgar, barbaric actions already present in his era. As a result, BDSM became historically and linguistically entangled with both his name and those actions.

But this is not BDSM — at least not as people like me understand it. What Sade exposed was harm without relation, excess without purpose, power without presence. BDSM, by contrast, exists precisely because meaning, intention, and shared understanding are present. This distinction is explored more deeply when examining power exchange as mastery rather than entitlement. The confusion does not come from BDSM itself, but from the shadow Sade cast when pain was severed from everything that gives it shape.

Historically, Sade spent decades imprisoned, often without trial. Officially for obscenity and scandal. In reality, for refusing discretion. Many men of his class lived freely while committing similar acts because they respected appearances. Sade wrote openly. He exposed behaviours society preferred to keep hidden, especially when practised by those in authority — a dynamic echoed in later discussions of how unchecked authority distorts human connection .

He did not invent cruelty.
He removed its disguise.

Philosophically, Sade rejected divine morality altogether. Human beings, in his view, were creatures of impulse and appetite, shaped by nature rather than soul. This worldview offers a stark counterpoint to modern BDSM thought, where structure and training exist to prevent power from collapsing into harm .

And this is where his relevance sharpens.

Sade is not a foundation in the sense of origin.
He is a guide in the sense of contrast.

The BDSM mindset stands clearer because of him — not by following his path, but by seeing it fully illuminated. Light only carries meaning when darkness is visible, and Sade exposed the night without flinching. By laying bare power stripped of recognition and relation, he made it impossible to confuse cruelty with depth or entitlement with desire.

Through him, boundaries gain definition. What is chosen becomes clearer because what is imposed is shown without disguise. What is shared carries weight because what is taken is revealed as empty.

Marquis de Sade did not build BDSM.
But his name became attached to the very misunderstanding BDSM has spent decades correcting.

He revealed the terrain BDSM consciously refuses to inhabit — and in doing so, helped clarify the difference between pain inflicted and pain exchanged, between power taken and power entered.

Exploring Sade Beyond BDSM

For readers who wish to approach Sade outside any BDSM framing, the following works offer insight into his historical and philosophical position:

• Philosophy in the Boudoir — dialogues attacking religious morality and social hypocrisy

• Crimes of Love — short stories exposing emotional manipulation and moral façades

• Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man — a concise confrontation with religious belief

• Aline and Valcour — a utopian and dystopian exploration of law, governance, and human nature

For additional historical context on how Sade’s name became embedded in psychological terminology, see historical definitions of sadism and cultural misunderstandings of BDSMand consent.

Read him carefully.
Not for imitation.
Not for validation.
But to understand where lines are drawn — and why they matter.