In the farthest corner of a sixth-floor stable of cubicles in University Hall, a running conversation on the virtues of whips, ropes and nipple clamps is filling an otherwise dull workspace.

Explaining the basics of such equipment may tend to elicit school-girl laughter or vulgar intensity, but Sean Shannon is exhibiting neither.

The graduate student speaks of bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism as one speaks of English literature (in which she's well-versed) or the History Channel: with considerable restraint.

Shannon is in the later stages of organizing an official university group to be called UT Un/Gagged, one that socially and politically advocates for practitioners of BDSM sex.

The bondage safety demonstration that Shannon has given on campus in the past is perhaps one of the only things that will make the transition from bedroom to university.

"This isn't a group where people are going to be titillated," Shannon said. "This isn't going to be a big sex group. It's going to be educational and social."

Other colleges, such as Columbia and New York University, have established similar groups formed around a shared interest in BDSM.

But at UT, the first Un/Gagged meeting attracted a "handful" of students, Shannon said, and while their application is in the final stages of approval, they'll need at least 10 members to make it official.

Finding those people has proved problematic. Besides some recent local publicity, Shannon's graduate student schedule has thus far been able to accommodate one Friday meeting and a few e-mail inquiries.

But she wants to find those lone collegiate souls willing to take what is often traditionally considered private into a "school club" setting and is one of the people furthering the change from taboo to popular.

And there is difficulty in drawing the line between where "vanilla" sexual encounters end and BDSM exchanges begin.

As psychotherapist Dr. William Henkin said in a telephone interview, "With 6 billion people on the planet, it's hard to say what most people do."

"I do think long before BDSM became a cultural phenomenon, lots of people who would never think of aligning themselves in such a community would be involved in tickling their partners, holding their partners hands down during intercourse," said Henkin, who is based in San Francisco and well-known as a sex therapist in the BDSM community. "At what point does slap and tickle move from one place to another?"

The visibility of BDSM has been aided by pop stars like Madonna, who although "was really seen as someone who was a poser," Shannon said, also associated with the sexual phenomenon a degree of accessibility and especially an element of cliché.

This latex-clad image and domineering was one that Midori, the Japanese author, sexual educator and ex-professional dominatrix, was conscious of avoiding for the cover of her book, "The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage."

"It's a very conscious decision [to go with a stark, Japanese-style cover]," Midori said in a telephone interview. "Part of what was being expressed in my book and what I was trying to share with others is the sensual aesthetics of the contemporary and classical Japanese [sexuality], as best I can translate for an American audience without it being entirely alien."

While niches have been formed around BDSM since the 1950s and 1960s, Henkin said, it initially was thought to be a pathological disorder, and practitioners have perhaps become accustomed to a lack of understanding from the mainstream.

Despite the risqué image, Shannon and others in the BDSM community are concerned with safety, hence Un/Gagged's potential focus on safety demonstrations.

The idea that it is for the emotionally damaged or disconnected simply further encourages some misunderstanding - Midori is the upbeat spokeswoman, though, and dutifully recites the lists she's composed of people who shouldn't be involved in BDSM.

In it she advises: "if you're broken as a person, SM won't fix you."

"There are couples that get into BDSM so much that the sexual and sensual elements really get backgrounded," Shannon said.

And there are those people "who through a consensual exchange of power reach a higher level of intimacy," she said.

That BDSM does not suit many people's tastes is fine by Henkin, Midori and Shannon, but putting limitations and prejudices on the community is not, they say.

"There are a lot of things that people really like that I don't get," Henkin said. "The fact that I don't get it doesn't mean that it's not valid ... it just means I don't really belong there."