Coming to Power - Writing and graphics on Lesbian S/M (ISBN 0-932870-28-7) was a 1981 book edited by members of the lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 feminist S/M

BDSM

BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...

 organisation SAMOIS

Samois

Samois was a lesbian-feminist BDSM organization based in San Francisco that existed from 1978 to 1983. It took its name from the fictional estate of Anne-Marie, a lesbian dominatrix character in Story of O, who pierces and brands O...

. It is an anthology of lesbian S/M writings.

It was quickly out-of-print and reached a worldwide audience the following year when it was reprinted by Alyson Publications

Alyson Publications

Alyson Books, formerly known as Alyson Publications, is a book publishing house which specialises in LGBT fiction and non-fiction. Former publisher Don Weise described it as "the world's oldest and largest publisher of LGBT literature" and "the home of award-winning books in the areas of memoir,...

. The book alternates short stories with advice on techniques, a model that has been used by various other BDSM books since then.

A sequel The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader was published in 1996, edited by Pat Califia

Patrick Califia

Patrick Califia , born 1954 near Corpus Christi, Texas is a writer of nonfiction essays about sexuality and of erotic fiction and poetry. Califia is a bisexual trans man.-Biography:...

 and Robin Sweeney.

Many of the authors in Coming to Power see sadomasochism as the epitome of eroticism

Eroticism

Eroticism is generally understood to refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love...

.

It is described in Coming on strong: gay politics and culture as containing lesbian erotica.