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< div align="left" dir="ltr" >The Marquis de Sade may have been the most famous French pervert of the 18th-century, but apparently, his celebrated contemporary Jean-Jacques Rousseau also liked his sex rough.

Now, Rousseau is best known as the philosopher who lamented the loss of primitive man’s natural equality and preached the redemptive power of civic virtue – in particular, submission to what he called “the general will.”

However, there was another side to Rousseau – the side that liked to submit to violent femmes (two points: alternative rock reference!).

In his autobiography "The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau," the philosopher recalls being spanked as a child by his 30-year-old governess, an experience that later inaugurated fantasies of sexual submission.

“To be at the knees of an imperious mistress, to obey her commands, to have to implore her pardon, were for me bliss beyond compare,” Rousseau writes.

Interestingly, this childhood story parallels in some ways Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s own sexual development. (If you don’t know who Sacher-Masoch is, give yourself a hard slap. Hmm, on second thought, never mind.)

Young Leopold first discovered sex when, during a game of hide-and-seek, he ducked into the bedroom closet of his aunt, the Countess Xenobia. Soon afterward, the countess entered the room with a lover and, as the kids say, tapped that.

When Xenobia’s husband came home unexpectedly, the unfaithful countess – rather than panicking or begging for forgiveness – drove him away with a whip. Then discovering Leopold hiding in her closet, she turned on him too.

And, thus, a pervert was born.

Granted, the similarity between the stories could signify nothing. Still, I wonder how many heterosexual masochists got slapped/hit/kicked by an attractive member of the opposite sex a little before puberty took hold.

Your thoughts are most welcome.