Taiwan BDSM Community ChronicleCommunity, media, law and public events
From early web forums to academic conferences, from tabloid exposés to court rulings: key moments in the history of Taiwan's BDSM community.
- Events
- 39
- Years
- 2000–2026
- Key events
- 12
Timeline
In date order. Highlighted entries are key events; fuller context for them is on the way.
20001 event
- Online platform
Adult board Huakui Yiseguan opens on KKCity
An adults-only board, Huakui Yiseguan, was set up on the KKCity BBS. Under the declaration “break the stigma, rebuild sexual rights”, it became an online gathering place for people exploring their desires and for sexual minorities, and grew into the board with the most users of any site hosted on KKCity. Many of its active users from that period later became key figures in founding organisations and running events in Taiwan's kink community.
20011 event
- News mediaPublic incident
Gay suitcase death case
In February 2001, a gay man using the handle “Nuequan” met up with a man he knew online for erotic asphyxiation and accidentally caused his death, then put the body in a suitcase and dumped it. The case caused a public uproar. Media coverage was largely speculative and sensational, and went as far as stigmatising gay people as a group. The case brought together the Taiwanese gay movement, then still in its early days, and pushed it to organise, take to the streets, campaign for legislation and human rights, and challenge structural inequality in the system.
More context coming
20031 event
- Event
2003: the 4th Taipei LGBT Civil Rights Festival holds the first Pride march
The Taipei LGBT Civil Rights Festival was Taiwan's first series of LGBT civic events hosted and budgeted by the government (Taipei City Government). First held in 2000, it featured a rainbow fair, community group stalls, issue forums, and arts and performances. Its aim was to promote diversity, inclusion and equal rights. In 2003 it held its first Pride march, a milestone in the Taiwanese LGBT movement's move into the open and into legitimacy. Founding members of BDSM Company took part in organising from the very first Pride march.
More context coming
20041 event
- Event
BDSM Company's first munch
The earliest public kink event that can currently be traced in online records. (We welcome more historical material.)
20051 event
- PerformanceEvent
2005 Yese Shengyan (Night of Rope)
The first time Taiwan's kink community publicly invited a rope artist from abroad (Kannagi) to perform in Taiwan, and the first ticketed public rope bondage performance.
20063 events
- Publication
Book BDSM Company, named after the group, published by Xinglin Culture
The book records the history and shared experience of Taiwan's first public BDSM group, and also looks back at earlier writing, practical techniques and personal reflections.
- LawPublic incident
Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 617
Divided the “obscene materials” in Article 235 of the Criminal Code into “hardcore” and “softcore”. Material containing violence, sexual abuse or bestiality that objectively has no artistic, medical or educational value was defined as hardcore, and its distribution banned.
More context coming - PerformanceEvent
2006 Winter Yese Shengyan (Night of Rope)
Japan's most professional dominatrix Chiaki Kano and rope artist Mira (狂美) were invited to share the stage at Huashan 1914 Creative Park with Wu Zhenye, the most ambitious self-suspension dominatrix in Taiwan's kink community. It was the first performance in Taiwan to bring Taiwanese and international performers together, and the first time funding was sought from the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs and a government grant received.
20102 events
- Publication
Print edition of the novel Military Dog published by Gbooks
Military Dog by Xia Mu-cong was first serialised online and later collected into a book, becoming Taiwan's first published original novel on a BDSM theme.
More context coming - Organisation
BDSM Company member Shiye runs for Taipei City Council
Song Jia-lun, one of the founders of BDSM Company, stood as an SM dominatrix for the Green Party in the 11th Taipei City Council election, in the fifth district (Zhongzheng and Wanhua), with the slogan “Train a humble government”.
20116 events
- Event
BDSM Company's BDSM Talk Day begins, held on the second Saturday of every month
BDSM Company's Talk Day was the first gathering in Taiwan's kink community held every month on a fixed schedule.
- Organisation
BDSM Company Theatre Troupe officially registered
The BDSM Company Theatre Troupe became the first kink performing arts group in Taiwan to be registered with government approval.
- Publication
12P Desire Talk Room published by Gbooks
12P Desire Talk Room is a collective work completed over one year by the Sexual Rights Team of the Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association. It gathers honest, raw writing and reflection on desire by 12 members, and openly lays bare the many sides of sexuality that conventional education dares not teach and parents will not discuss, including homosexuality, bisexuality, BDSM, group sex and other taboo subjects. The book has two parts. The first uses fiction, memoir and other lively forms to take readers back to the members' sexual awakenings, from childhood to adulthood. The second examines community issues through reasoned argument, to break through society's ignorance of and prejudice about sex. It is a landmark Taiwanese sex education book that gently embraces the confusion in everyone's heart and turns moral panic about sex on its head.
- News media
Next Magazine secretly photographs BDSM Company's Kinbaku Rope Banquet
BDSM Company held a public performance, Kinbaku Rope Banquet. Next Magazine then covered it without the consent of the organisers or participants, through secret photography and in a sensational, voyeuristic way, exposing participants' private images and identities to the public. The incident drew strong protests from sexual minority and sexual rights groups, who argued that, for commercial gain and clickbait, the media had seriously violated kink practitioners' right to privacy and their right to decide for themselves whether to come out. It not only brought real harassment and fear into the lives of those involved, but also deepened public stereotypes and stigma about the kink community.
More context coming拒絕偷拍！還我「猥褻」的權力！──針對壹週刊偷拍事件之聲明稿皮繩愉虐邦 敬覆 壹週刊 之公開信：沒有不堪入目的文化，只有不堪入目的報導
- Event
BDSM Company begins holding munches at a fixed time and place, at Zhizou Café
The first event in Taiwan's kink community held at a fixed time and place.
- Public incident
KKCity closes and goes read-only
With the rise of Web 2.0, social networks and blogs, the BBS model steadily declined, and KKCity's parent company, Yuanjing Wangxun, decided to stop running the site. The closure of KKCity also ended Huakui Yiseguan, bringing to a close an online space that had accompanied Taiwan's erotic practitioners and sexual minorities for 10 years. There were later attempts to rebuild the site on other servers, but in the end they could not hold out against the tide of the times.
More context coming
20123 events
- News mediaPublic incident
Taiwan Railway train sex party case
In February 2011, a user on KKCity organised a sex party in a chartered carriage of a Taiwan Railway Chu-Kuang Express train, modelled on Japan's “chikan train”. In total 18 men and 1 woman took part. The event challenged traditional morality and the boundaries of public space. Because the woman at its centre was 17 and a minor at the time, it drew fierce criticism from the public and child and youth welfare groups for corrupting public morals, while sexual rights groups published commentary in support, arguing that adults gathering for erotic purposes in private and by mutual consent should not face excessive interference. In the legal proceedings that followed, most of the men who took part were not indicted for lack of evidence or were only fined under the Social Order Maintenance Act, and the young woman was placed in custody and counselling by the juvenile court. The organiser was sentenced under Article 231 of the Criminal Code (profiting from causing another to have sexual intercourse) to six months in prison, commutable to a fine of NT$180,000, with the verdict final, and Taiwan Railway also sued him for civil damages.
More context coming - Space
Commander D opens for a trial run
As well as being a gay bar, Commander D was Taiwan's first commercial venue open to the public with BDSM as its theme.
- Event
BDSM Company begins holding Talk Day at Commander D
The starting point of Taiwan's kink community becoming intertwined with the gay men's community.
20132 events
- Publication
The Craft of Rope Bondage by Xiaolin Shengwu published by Gbooks
Written by Xiaolin Shengwu, this is the first rope bondage instruction book in Taiwan and the Chinese-speaking world. It covers the many tools and details newcomers to rope bondage should know, and introduces a wide range of rope techniques in meticulous detail through step-by-step photo instructions.
Kink community begins compiling a monthly events calendar
BDSM Company began publishing Taiwan's community events calendar as graphics, so kink practitioners could easily see what was on each month.
20143 events
- Organisation
NTU BDSM Club founding meeting
National Taiwan University's BDSM Club was the first university student kink club in Taiwan to challenge the campus establishment in order to form, and the first organisation to hold regular talks. The club's aims are: 1. to make the diversity and agency of desire visible to society; 2. to oppose the desexualisation of students and to value students as sexual subjects; 3. to promote understanding of BDSM on campus; 4. to support other sex and gender causes.
- Event
BDSM Company begins holding Vanilla Talk Day at Banlu Café
Before this event, most community events were both social mixers and play parties. Once Vanilla Talk Day began, social munches started to separate from play parties.
- Organisation
NTU BDSM Club's application rejected by the Student Club Advisory Committee
National Taiwan University students applied to found the BDSM Club. On 19 November 2014, the university's Student Club Advisory Committee rejected the application by a single vote (8 in favour, short of a majority). Many committee members and professors had reservations about the safety of BDSM activities, how far they go, and the boundaries of sexual autonomy; at the meeting one member even played a porn video and mocked the club with a voyeuristic and discriminatory attitude. After the rejection, club members and other campus clubs criticised the university, saying that under the relevant rules it could only check that the club's charter was formally complete and had no authority to carry out “substantive review” or “moral review”. They went on to organise public protests on campus, using rope bondage demonstrations to show how seriously the club takes safety.
More context coming
20152 events
- Event
NTU BDSM Club approved by the Student Club Advisory Committee
After repeated protests, and after club members revised the application documents as the committee had asked, the NTU BDSM Club was finally approved at the Student Club Advisory Committee meeting in May 2015. It became Taiwan's first student BDSM club officially registered on a university campus, and began holding regular sessions such as talks, workshops, discussions, reading groups and film screenings.
More context coming - Event
Kink Democracy and the Art of Naughtiness: the first Asia-Pacific international academic conference on BDSM desire and culture
The conference was held on 31 May 2015 at Lin-Tse Hall, NTU College of Law, and was Taiwan's first conference on BDSM. It was co-organised by the NTU Graduate Student Association, the NTU BDSM Club, the Taiwan Queer Transnational Alliance and BDSM Company. It set out to take BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism) desire and practice seriously, exploring feminism, sexual and gender diversity, the relationship between violence and pleasure, and the difficulties of founding student clubs on campus. Combining academic research with community action, it also stood in support of the newly founded NTU BDSM Club.
20161 event
- Online platform
PTT BDSM board opens
After Huakui Yiseguan closed, the PTT BDSM board, set up through a petition on the PTT Sex board, gradually became another important online bulletin board and discussion hub for the kink community.
20171 event
- Online platform
BDSM Calendar website launches
https://todo.smertw.com/
20191 event
- Performance
BDSM Company's original musical Kink Community
The BDSM Company Theatre Troupe's first production sponsored by the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs.
20201 event
- News media
CTWANT secretly films a BDSM Tonglehui event
In March 2020, a reporter from the Taiwanese weekly CTWANT entered a basement pub on Nanjing East Road in Taipei, which the BDSM Tonglehui group had booked for a social event for practitioners. Without the knowledge or consent of those present, the reporter filmed inside, and on 18 March CTWANT published a series of sensational reports under headlines such as “Bodily fluids break pandemic defences: rich kids go wild with SM”. The reports strongly accused the more than 100 people present of tying and flogging each other “without masks”, and used the COVID-19 pandemic of the time to label the event a “breeding ground for disease” and depraved. After the reports came out, the group announced on 19 March that it was suspending further events. The incident caused deep anger and soul-searching in Taiwan's kink and sexual minority communities. Many condemned the media for covertly filming in an intrusive way and for taking the moral high ground in the name of “pandemic prevention” to smear and stigmatise the private, legal activities of a sexual minority. The incident laid bare how tabloid media of the time, driven by clicks, trampled on subcultures' privacy and engaged in witch-hunts.
More context coming
20211 event
- Public incident
Nationwide COVID-19 Level 3 alert
In 2021, in response to a sharp rise in local COVID-19 cases, a nationwide Level 3 alert was imposed for the first time. Masks had to be worn at all times outside the home, indoor gatherings of 5 or more and outdoor gatherings of 10 or more were banned, leisure and entertainment venues were closed, and dining in was banned everywhere. The kink community had to stop all events that involved gathering in person. Some social meetups moved online, and some people started online reading groups and similar activities. The alert lasted more than two months; some venues closed for good, and Taiwan's kink community became more active on online platforms.
More context coming
20222 events
- Performance
BDSM Company's unconventional original musical Kink Community 2.0
The BDSM Company Theatre Troupe's first production sponsored by the Ministry of Culture.
- Parade
2022 Taiwan LGBT+ Pride: “An Unlimited Future: deconstructing frames, sex/gender without limits”
The 20th-anniversary theme statement said that “issues such as master/slave relationships in BDSM should also be seen”, and BDSM Company was invited to speak on the main stage about the past 20 years of BDSM community development in Taiwan.
20241 event
- Event
First Asia-Pacific Kink Conference
Organised by the Taiwan Affective Education Association and the Kink Academic Committee, the conference was held in July 2024 at Soochow University's Chengzhong Campus. Through paper presentations, forums and group discussions, it explored law, culture, risk, community, and gender and sexuality as they relate to kink. It also held forums looking back at community culture and history, including BDSM Company, student kink clubs and pup play culture. It is currently Taiwan's first regularly held academic conference on kink.
20251 event
- Court rulingPublic incident
New Taipei District Court, 2024 Su No. 836 criminal judgment
In this case the court found that consensual BDSM images were obscene materials depicting “sexual abuse” as defined in Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 617, in violation of Article 235 of the Criminal Code.
More context coming
20264 events
- Court ruling
Taipei District Court, 2025 Qin-Su No. 103 criminal judgment
This criminal judgment concerned Article 227 of the Criminal Code, sexual intercourse with a minor under 14. In the judgment, the judge weighed the defendant's claim of a consensual D/s relationship with the complainant (the underage victim), and the fact that the defendant had settled with and compensated the complainant's mother. Considering that the defendant had not used force or coercion and had admitted the offence from the start, the judge reduced the sentence at their discretion, although the minimum under Article 227 is three years in prison, and sentenced the defendant to two years, suspended for three years. Because it involves both the sexual abuse of a minor and kink, the case sparked wide discussion in online communities.
- Event
Second Asia-Pacific Kink Conference
With “(Un)safety × (In)equality ⇆ Recovery × Empowerment” as its central theme, the conference invited master's and doctoral students, scholars and researchers from many fields to examine closely the dynamic relationship between safety and equality, and to explore together how to move from unsafe, traumatic experiences and present inequality towards recovery, resilience and repair, with the aim of self-empowerment and collective empowerment.
Taipei city councillor's questioning mentions Commander D
During questioning at the City Council, Taipei city councillor Hung Chien-yi said he had received complaints from parents alleging that Commander D, a gay BDSM bar in Ximending, had let minors in, and asked the Taipei City Government to look into it and strengthen protections for minors. Mayor Chiang Wan-an said the matter would be investigated strictly and that any wrongdoing would not be tolerated.
Police search of Commander D
On 3 October 2026, Commander D, a gay BDSM bar in Ximending, Taipei, was raided by the Wanhua Precinct of the Taipei City Police with a search warrant. Officers at the scene were reported to have told people there not to put their clothes back on and not to film or record, and to have made discriminatory remarks about disabled people. After the raid, police not only handcuffed and took away the bar's owner but also said that 51 customers had “voluntarily” gone to the police station for questioning. Public outrage spread quickly. On 4 October, more than 100 people protested in front of the Red House in Ximending, criticising the police for excessive enforcement and discrimination against sexual minorities, and marched to the Ximending police station to demand an explanation and the owner's release. Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an later apologised for flaws in the enforcement, and the Taipei City Police acknowledged that officers had behaved improperly, giving six officers and supervisors administrative penalties such as reprimands and demerits.
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