SAMOIS was a lesbian-feminist S/M organization established in San Francisco in 1978. It provided lesbian sadomasochists with a structured community for discussion, education, political organization, mutual support, and the development of consensual BDSM practices at a time when both mainstream society and significant parts of the feminist movement regarded sadomasochism with suspicion or hostility.

The collective treated lesbian S/M as a legitimate form of consensual erotic expression and argued that negotiated power exchange could coexist with feminist commitments to autonomy, equality, and sexual self-determination. Its members helped articulate an early sex-positive lesbian perspective that challenged the assumption that all eroticized dominance reproduced non-consensual social oppression.

SAMOIS is best known for producing Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M, first published by the organization in 1981. The anthology gathered essays, personal accounts, practical discussions, artwork, and political arguments, becoming one of the foundational texts of lesbian BDSM and Leather history. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}

SAMOIS emerged in late-1970s San Francisco during a period of expanding lesbian political organization, feminist debate, and developing queer Leather communities. Lesbian practitioners were beginning to establish their own spaces within a BDSM world that had often been identified primarily with gay male Leather culture.

The organization became closely associated with the feminist sex wars of the late 1970s and 1980s. Feminist critics of pornography, role play, hierarchy, and sadomasochism frequently regarded lesbian S/M as incompatible with liberation, while SAMOIS members defended consensual erotic autonomy and the right of women to define their own desires.

The publication of Coming to Power in 1981 gave these debates a lasting documentary form. A revised third edition was published by Alyson Publications in 1987, demonstrating the anthology's continuing relevance beyond the original collective. SAMOIS itself was relatively short-lived, but its intellectual and cultural influence continued through later lesbian BDSM organizations, writers, educators, and Leather communities. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

SAMOIS should not be understood as representing every lesbian BDSM practitioner or every feminist position on sadomasochism. It emerged from a particular political, cultural, and geographic environment, and its members did not necessarily share a single interpretation of feminism, Leather, authority, or sexual practice.

Its enduring importance lies in making lesbian S/M visible as a self-defined community rather than as a subject interpreted exclusively by medicine, law, pornography, or hostile political movements. SAMOIS helped establish that lesbian practitioners could speak for themselves, preserve their own experiences, debate ethics internally, and create educational traditions grounded in consent and community knowledge.

Within the genealogy of contemporary LezDom and Lesbian Leather, SAMOIS occupies a foundational position. It helped create the intellectual and organizational space from which later communities, including Lesbian Sex Mafia, could develop, while Coming to Power remains one of the central documentary works of lesbian BDSM history.