”Kivun kauneus” (”The Beauty of the Pain”) is the first Finnish book about sadomasochism-scene in Finland. This book (ed. by Taru Höykinpuro) is a collection of essays and texts written by Finnish sm-people. Some of the essays are historical or analytical views to the subject but most of them are personal stories that tell how these people have found their sm-identity. Book is very interesting and I'm sure it's important to have this kind of book written in Finnish too. One of the best essays is the one where Finnish author Sofi Oksanen asks why sm is still considered to be sickness and says that it should be removed from disease-classification like we have already did with homosexuality.

Personal stories in ”Kivun kauneus” are interesting too but somehow I feel that there were maybe a little bit too many same kind of stories. Especially reading those stories one after the other made me realise something very interesting that maybe talks against the whole idea of this kind of book. Many writers tell in their texts how glad they first became when they found other sm-people and how good it felt to be around same kind of people. But after a while almost all of them got disappointed or bored and realised that even if they all wanted to be spanked it didn't mean that they had anything else in common.

It's easy to believe that this might be a problem. There are so many things and ideas people put under ”kinky”-title that it's hard to think that all those people would have that much in common. Some writers also tell how conservative sm-people and their rules can be in their own way. So after all this book of kinky-people tells us how many differences there are amongst kinkys and how impossible it is to write a simple book about them... 

Anyway, let's hope this book finds it's way to all the little libraris in Finnish countryside and maybe someday it helps cute little girls and boys with their strange teenager feelings... Besides pictures were really beautiful! You can find more of them here.