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Wonder Woman is a BDSM Icon: Her Hidden Kinky History Revealed
44 Plays6 hours ago
Wonder Woman’s origin story isn’t just feminist — it’s kinky. In this episode of Pleasure Science, sex scholar Nadège reveals the hidden BDSM history behind Wonder Woman, and the unconventional polyamorous throuple who created her. You’ll learn how psychologist William Marston, his wife Elizabeth, and their partner, Olive Byrne, infused dominance, submission, bondage, DISC theory, and radical relationship ethics into the Wonder Woman’s comics.
This is a deep dive into sex history, power dynamics, ethical kink, and how non-traditional relationships can change culture for the better.
From kinky psychology to underground 1930s fetìsh parties, this is the story DC Comics never expected you to know…
Show Notes
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Pleasure Science Podcast - Season 1, Episode 6 with Nicoletta
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Transcript
Introduction to the Pleasure Science Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Music
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome back to the Pleasure Science Podcast, where we make sexual liberation your new normal by changing how you love and feel loved.
Origins of Wonder Woman: A Unique Love Story
00:00:20
Speaker
Today, we are going to be learning about a sex history icon. You know her as Wonder Woman, but did you know that Wonder Woman was created by kinky thruffle? Yes. You heard me correctly. In case you didn't know, throuple is one step up from a couple. Instead of two people, it's a relationship of three together.
00:00:43
Speaker
So back to Wonder Woman. In 1925, two professors fell in love with one of their students. Their names were Elizabeth Holloway, William Marston, and Olive Byrne.
00:00:57
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William and Elizabeth were married and teaching psychology, and they were also in the process of inventing the lie detector test. How freaking cool is that?
00:01:08
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And Olive Byrne was a student on campus. And what's also really interesting is Olive was not just any student. She was the niece of birth control activist and sex educator Margaret Sanger.
William Marston's Influence on Wonder Woman
00:01:24
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So Olive enrolled in one of William's classes. And guess what William was teaching about? Kinky psychology, although he called it by another name.
00:01:35
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William was the creator of disk theory, which observes how people behave in social environments like you can think at school, at work, at home, for example, and theorizes based on your environment, how your behavior will shift into one of four personality types. And these personality types are dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance. Now, William believed that dominant and submissive power dynamics were a part of everyday life. And he was researching how we could explore these power dynamics ethically and consciously.
The Throuple's Life and Challenges
00:02:20
Speaker
Basically, he was looking at how do you make power or a lack of power work in relationships in a way that's beautiful and loving and consensual, as opposed to it being oppressive and it taking agency away from another person. It actually reminds me of when I discussed non-monogamy last season with sex therapist Nicoletta Heidegger.
00:02:41
Speaker
And she said, are you choosing into your relationship and creating it consciously? or are you sliding into your relationship dynamic without awareness and choice?
00:02:54
Speaker
By the way, that episode is from season one, episode six. It's called Your Relationship, Your Rules, Non-Monogamy Tips for Beginners and Veterans. Go listen to that episode after this if you haven't already.
00:03:08
Speaker
But what I hope you realize is remarkable is that before anyone had the audacity to talk about power and relationships, Dr. William Marston was teaching students about these kinky power dynamics and the psychology of it.
00:03:24
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And you can imagine why Olive, the niece of Margaret Sanger, would enjoy a class like that. Well, it didn't take long for Olive, Elizabeth, and William to fall in love.
00:03:37
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And soon after meeting them, Olive actually moved in with the married couple. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be polyamorous in the nineteen twenty s to be thruple almost a century before we had any word to describe it.
00:03:54
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Well, the threesome eventually moved somewhere new and they started telling people that Olive was Elizabeth's widowed sister-in-law in order not to raise eyebrows as to why she was living with the Marstens. And against all odds, Elizabeth, Olive, and William stayed together their entire lives and had four children together.
00:04:16
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Elizabeth even named her only daughter after Olive. And then after William passed away, Elizabeth and Olive stayed together for an additional 38 years until they too passed away.
00:04:31
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Let that sink in. We've been conditioned to think that when you see a relationship that isn't monogamous and heading towards marriage or kids, it will be doomed to fail. But that is not true.
00:04:45
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You just never hear about all the awesome lives of people who are living non-traditionally and thriving like the Marstons. In fact, Wonder Woman's bracelets were based on the bracelets that William and Elizabeth gave Olive as wedding rings, which brings us back to the 1930s. This is the decade that would inspire Wonder Woman.
00:05:10
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By 1935, the threesome had been living together for almost 10 years and life looked different from when they had first gotten together.
Wonder Woman as a Feminist Icon
00:05:20
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They left academia years ago and now had kids to support. And Elizabeth ended up becoming the breadwinner of the family.
00:05:28
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In fact, she was actually described by the friends who knew her as a small packet of dynamite. but And as for Olive Byrne, she was actually pursuing a freelance journalism job, and she even got published in some major magazines. And then she also managed the household and raised the kids. So shout out to you, Olive. What a bad bitch.
00:05:50
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And as for William, he would soon land a consulting job at DC Comics. Here's another delicious fact about 1935.
00:06:01
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Fetish play and bondage were exploding in underground party scenes all across America and Europe. And at these private parties, people could anonymously explore rope bondage and role play or wear very extravagant and sexy fetish outfits.
00:06:20
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And it's well documented that Elizabeth, Olive, and William explored kink and BDSM in their personal life, which is why when William got a job at DC Comics in 1940 and Elizabeth suggested that William pitched DC Comics a female superhero, a kinky inspiration was born.
00:06:45
Speaker
William pitched Suprema the Wonder Woman to DC Comics, and he pitched her as a benevolent yet dominant superhero who had a lasso of truth that forced villains to be held accountable when they were bound by her power.
00:07:03
Speaker
DC loved it and William got to work. And he just looked no further than Olive and Elizabeth for inspiration. William made Wonder Woman by blending these two women together. And he intentionally made Wonder Woman strong and independent and unconventional. at a time when women needed to sanitize their sexuality to attain and keep positions of power. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman did not need to be desexualized to remain powerful. And even when she found herself bound in chains, Wonder Woman always freed herself by herself.
00:07:44
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And William later admitted that these chains actually symbolized the patriarchy and William's feelings about the world and how power dynamics are a part of everyday life.
00:07:57
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You are already always in chains, but you always have the power to free yourself. This is why the Amazonian warriors recreationally tied each other up, and Wonder Woman always saves the day through the value of truth.
00:08:14
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William was daring us to notice that the entire world is kinky, and he was asking us, are you going to navigate this kinky world consciously or not?
00:08:26
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Each comic that William wrote for the first series of Wonder Woman was filled with seductive situations of bondage, dominance, and submission.
00:08:37
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But they were also filmed with themes of restorative justice, redemption, and female empowerment, where Wonder Woman always saved herself and made her enemies bend to her will.
00:08:51
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and of course william was still a man so wonder woman did not escape the sexualization of the male gaze but still for the 1940s she was a big step forward and in december of 1941 wonder woman was officially released to the public and she became an instant hit comic book lovers enjoyed her fresh contrast to that hyper-masculine superhero that everyone was used to and Wonder Woman was steadily bringing in a new audience of women to the comic book world.
Censorship and Defense of Wonder Woman's Themes
00:09:25
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William couldn't be happier about this, and in fact, he explained, quote, "...Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who I believe should rule the world." End quote.
00:09:39
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I personally love that William believed that women should rule the world. And growing up, William surrounded himself with suffragettes and birth control activists. While he was a student at Harvard in 1911, he even attended suffragette speeches and included suffragette symbolism in the Wonder Woman comics. Well, despite William's efforts to use Wonder Woman as a force for good, it only took one year for the backlash to begin. Censorship bans raided down on Wonder Woman, and the erotic nature of the comics was called into question.
00:10:17
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And it created a frenzy, and by 1943, William was fighting both publicly and privately. In private, William was struggling with cancer. And in public, William refused to let Wonder Woman go down without a fight.
00:10:33
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and in an interview, William declared that the sexiness in his comics was intentional. He explained that he hoped Wonder Woman could get rid of the male ego and that the eroticism in his comics was strategic.
00:10:49
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He wanted to condition readers to be more accepting of power dynamics, especially since we are already existing in them. And he thought that perhaps this would make men less entitled, especially less entitled to power.
00:11:05
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However, William had a punchy way of getting this message across. And here's another direct quote from William Marston. Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves.
00:11:24
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End quote. So you can imagine how well that went down in 1943 America. ah People just couldn't understand William's logic as anything other than a threat to society. And William continued to stand up for his beliefs, but he was too ahead of his
Wonder Woman's Evolution and Cultural Significance
00:11:44
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time. So Wonder Woman was unfortunately slipping from his grasp.
00:11:48
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By the time he passed away a few years later in 1947, Wonder Woman's sanitization had begun. Suddenly, Wonder Woman was obsessed with Steve Trevor. She gave up her powers and opened up a clothing boutique.
00:12:04
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And these sexist changes didn't stop Wonder Woman from growing in popularity. And DC continued to do their best to downplay any themes of bondage or lesbianism because remember, Wonder Woman comes from an island of sexy female warriors who dress in fetish gear and high leather boots where no men exist and they spend their days in the sun training and tying each other up.
00:12:29
Speaker
Hello, can I move there? But in all seriousness, DC really tried to sanitize Wonder Woman and they did for a time. However, Wonder Woman still did wonders for pop culture. And in 1972, Wonder Woman did start to get her powers back. And Gloria Steinem even put Wonder Woman on the first cover of Miss Magazine, declaring Wonder Woman for president.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yes, please. ah Wonder Woman still shows us that you can be sensual and feminine and powerful. You do not need to desexualize yourself to be credible or hold positions of power. But what is most beautiful to me about Wonder Woman is where she came from.
00:13:19
Speaker
Elizabeth, Olive, and William's relationship was one of the most unconventional and beautiful love stories in history. I'm currently writing my second book, and in it, I'm diving even deeper into their love story, like how Olive snuck William and Elizabeth into her sorority and the threesome watched sorority sisters spank each other during hazing rituals. But you'll have to wait for my book to get that really juicy story.
00:13:49
Speaker
Ultimately, what I hope you gain from this is that non-traditional relationships are not doomed to fail. Actually, they can have an enormous positive impact on the world. We are still dealing with the fact that the majority of people think that anything outside of monogamy and marriage and children is a threat to society.
00:14:10
Speaker
But here's the thing. One of my friends growing up wanted to be a mother her whole life, and truly it was her bliss and passion. I'd watch her talk about it, and when we were teenagers, and when we were adults, and when she finally gave birth to her first child, it was like her purpose for life had been finally actualized. She loves being a stay-at-home mom, and her husband has the means to provide for the entire family.
00:14:37
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They love their
Challenging Perceptions of Non-traditional Relationships
00:14:38
Speaker
dynamic and it empowers them. But when I come over to their house as a sex scholar who is queer and a dominatrix and has tattoos up the wazoo and I'm talking about my latest sex party, they don't see my lifestyle as a threat to theirs and they welcome me into their family.
00:14:59
Speaker
We can exist together in harmony. Because my bliss does not take anything away from their bliss. Just like Elizabeth, Olive, and William's love didn't take anything away from society.
00:15:13
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Actually, it gave us one of the most well-known superheroes of all time. And it threw our kinky society back in our faces. This is what makes Wonder Woman a sex history icon.
00:15:30
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She was born from a kinky, unconventional love and continues to push boundaries because even when you try to ignore it, she is a dominant warrior with magical bondage rope who comes from an island of lesbians. And And she makes the world a better place. Elizabeth, Olive, and Williams Love had an enormous positive effect on the world.
00:15:57
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And it's because they had the audacity to follow their hearts. I hope you follow your heart too. That's it for this week's episode of Pleasure Science.
00:16:08
Speaker
Please join us next week when I will be talking Javay DeBay. She is a sex scholar with two PhDs who is no stranger to how power dynamics work and how they seep into our relationships and make us eroticize dominance and submission. And Gervais is even creating a TV show so that is a BDSM cartoon series for adults. So you guessed it. Next week, we are diving into all things kink, BDSM, and the psychology of taboos. Are you ready to discover why the forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest?
00:16:46
Speaker
I know you are, and I can't wait for you to join us next week. but In the meantime, come and say hi on Instagram and TikTok at Pleasure Science. And if this episode taught you something new or made you feel a little smarter and empowered, please subscribe and leave a review. Now more than ever, it is so important to support sex education. And I know you believe in the mission of this podcast, which is making sexual liberation your new normal in a world that profits off of shame. So please take a moment to leave a rating or a review. And for all the cuties watching on YouTube, tube leave a comment and let me know what you think about Wonder Woman's history. It's crazy, right? ah
00:17:27
Speaker
And speaking of YouTube, if you are listening on Spotify and Apple and you haven't already, come hang out with me over here on YouTube because you don't just get to watch the podcast. I also release exclusive behind-the-scenes looks, into my life as a sex scholar. And I also go live from my bedroom and share personal stories and show you what yummy toys I am currently playing with, including things like floggers and yummy BDSM toys.
Exploring Power and Kink with BDSM Fantasy Lab
00:17:59
Speaker
It's a good time.
00:18:00
Speaker
And finally, if this episode resonated with you, i want you to have everything you need to bring your fantasies to life. in ways that make you feel confident and celebrated because we all have sexual fantasies and studies overwhelmingly show that it is healthy and cathartic to experience your fantasies without shame.
00:18:22
Speaker
And of course, the number one question i always get after I share that little piece of information about sexual fantasies is, okay, so it's healthy for me to fantasize, but how do I bring my sex fantasies to life?
00:18:36
Speaker
Well, I am so glad you asked that because I created the BDSM Fantasy Lab. It is my video guide and it shows you how to explore power, kink, and your imagination with a lover or a play partner. And if you don't know what a play partner is, definitely come and join the BDSM Lab to find out. But but also what's so great about the BDSM Lab is I show you how to find your people in the BDSM community.
00:19:04
Speaker
How to negotiate, how to talk to folks, it's really, really helpful information. And this will help you feel confident as you explore your desires because you will know the exact protocols, etiquette, and savvy you need to find your people in the BDSM community.
00:19:21
Speaker
And remember, listeners of this podcast get 10% off by using the code PleasureSciencePod.
Episode Conclusion and Preview
00:19:28
Speaker
Start streaming the BDSM Fantasy Lab right now by clicking the link in the show notes or by going to PleasureScience.com and clicking on the BDSM Fantasy Lab.
00:19:40
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining this week. And before we go, a quick reminder for you to go experience pleasure in the next 24 hours. It's healthy for your brain. It's healthy for your heart. It's healthy for your mind. And I want you to feel good.
00:19:53
Speaker
So whether that means going out into nature, getting a well-deserved massage, or buying a new sex toy, go out there and experience pleasure in the next 24 hours.
00:20:06
Speaker
I'll see you next week.
00:20:11
Speaker
This podcast is a Pleasure Science production, hosted by me, Nadege, your resident sex scholar. The Pleasure Science podcast is produced by Laura Moore and edited by Camille Furman-Colo.
00:20:26
Speaker
Our music is by Octasound and is licensed under the Pixabay Content License. To find out more about Pleasure Science and to sign up for our online courses, please visit
00:20:46
Speaker
I put her down and I haven't picked, I haven't shown her yet. Okay. And also, oh my gosh, I took it out of, I don't know how this happened, but it got water on it.
00:20:59
Speaker
And i took it I took it out of its bag the first time. but I am notorious, that is very Nadege, takes the damn comic out of the out of its bag one time and and got water on it. Tell me how.
00:21:16
Speaker
This is going to be a great blooper. Yes. For anybody who gets to watch the blooper reel, my dad got this for me for Christmas after I finished my residency at the Carter Johnson Library and was researching Wonder Woman. And it was a present from my dad to celebrate my sex research. And I got water on it.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yay. Yay.