A couple of notes as I read it....
Pat Califia has transitioned to a male gender role and now prefers to be referred to as "he." He's technically a pre-op transsexual.
From a technical academic standpoint, your tone may be a bit partisan. For example, your criticisms of Havelock Ellis's writings, while correct, seem to be mainly your own opinions rather than supported by outside evidence or authorities. That's usually what distinguishes an academic paper from an essay. It's true that you later brought in opinions like Gebhardt, but even there you seemed to be evaluating his writing from your own POV.
There ARE ways to make a point like that in an academic paper. What you do is show that an opinion with which you disagree is contradicted by stronger evidence. For example you might note that modern clinical psychology (as represented by DSM-IV) no longer regards sadism or masochism as inherently pathological. But it's usually better to avoid actively taking sides. Were I your professor, I'd probably ding you for that.
I differ with Gebhardt, BTW, on the importance of "scripting" in S/M. Negotiation is critical, yes, to define the boundaries within which play occurs. However heavily scripted scenes - and particularly "discipline" scenes in which the play is contexualized as some sort of deserved punishment - are a relatively small subset of S/M play.
The section on S&M as Social Behavior was very good. I think that S/M can indeed be used as a sort of magnifying lens to study a number of "normal" social interactions and structures. I would have liked to see this made more explicitly a part of your thesis in the beginning of your paper.
I was glad to see that you found Charles Moser's stuff. He's very good in this area. Did you come across Dark Eros by Thomas More or Different Loving by Gloria Braeme, et al?
