Instead of whipping the statues into submission, they themselves submit: "the peasants somehow inverted the idea of coercing the holy powers and began flagellating themselves instead, in the hope that such a sacrifice of blood would appeal to the white gods whom they took to be as murderous and rapacious as the representatives of the Royal Viceroy of Mexico who ruled the archipelago" (156), metonymically enacting the imperial rhetoric of inferiority and the achievement of cultural hegemony.

Tops & Bottoms approaches S&M ideologically, first from a historical perspective, working its way up from the flagellating monks in the Middle Ages, through the 1700s and the Marquis de Sade, the 1800s and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Dr.

Griffin writes intelligently about Wright in other contexts, but when she approaches him from her Feminist point of view, she yields to the current trend of flagellating him for his portrayal of black women.