There are a lot more people having rough sex than there are individuals taking on the stigmatized identities that comprise the leather family's taxonomy. These experiences are not carefully thought out or planned. Consent is expressed by the failure of the bottom to escape. The victim's refusal to scream his head off is the equivalent of a safe word. Rough sex is clandestine, rushed, made more thrilling by the fear of detection.
Any pain is provided by the simple expedient of a blow or a bite.
Because it has no pretensions of being healthy or politically correct, rough sex can proceed in a more fluid fashion, without the yawnsome interruptions for polemics that pepper the Marquis de Sade's and John Norman's works. It is the first pen to contain the herd and serves to divide the completely clueless from those who might have some spark of potential. But those who have aspirations to more serious Work proceed rapidly into a smaller holding area. In his disdain the narrator overlooks or willfully ignores a split in leather aesthetics that has existed pretty much from the '50s on. The sadist-pedant Carney so vividly brings to life is definitely in the former camp.