When one reads the works of Sacher-Masoch, it is apparent that he longed to be dominated by a woman. Sure, he wanted to be whipped by a sexy female as she was adorned in furs and he wanted her to humiliate him, but as we have examined throughout this book, such desires are rather common within man. Sacher-Masoch was a gifted writer who happened to express his fantasies through the written word, but how many men had similar submissive fantasies which remained hidden within their own souls? Krafft-Ebing recognized that such a form of sexuality was common enough that a word was needed to classify such sexual desires. However, Sacher-Masoch was not the Yang to the Ying of Marquis de Sade. Marquis de Sade wrote of rape, murder and torturing women for sexual pleasure. Sade chose to personify and identify the animal world with that of mankind. Sade's pessimism in humanity came from his own persecution and imprisonment at the hands of the elite aristocracy.

Sade’s “Juliette” was one of his most ardent attempts to explore the depths of how far the limits of morality could be stretched. Her journey throughout the novel is begun as an investigation of the human body.

Every inch of the flesh is defiled over and over again. In one particular disconcerting moment, the house of a Duc is visited where Juliette is flogged and molested to an inch of her life in a room where bodies are recklessly thrown around. Over blood pouring from Juliette's flayed buttocks, the Duc screams,

"By the guts of Almighty God, I have no great fondness for women; if God made them, why can't I exterminate them?… I see blood and I am happy… (Juliette, 197)."

Now contrast this to the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. In “Venus in Furs”, he wrote of a man who loved women so much, that he wanted to be the slave of a woman. He felt inadequate to be superior or even the equal of a woman because he esteemed women to be so beautiful and so mysterious, almost Goddess-like.

“Overcome by desire I fell at her feet and threw my arms about her.

“Yes, you have brought my dearest dream to life!" I cried. "It has slept long enough."

“And that dream is -- ?” She laid her hand on my neck. The pressure of her warm hand, and the tender searching gaze she bent on me through half-closed eyes, filled me with a delicious vertigo.

"To be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman whom I love, whom I worship!”

Sacher-Masoch lived at a time when men ruled women but he was not comfortable in that role. He wanted women to rule him. He wanted to be abused by a woman because he felt guilty about the sins of the patriarchy. He was in need of loving female authority.