Sure, but this stuff is pushed from on high not down below. Sade is promoted and held up as something (not sure precisely what) important.

So the simple rebut is that the pseudo intellectual classes always poo poo what appeals to the common man. But they love this stuff, and, the common people do not like it. That’s really the only thing that is interesting about de Sade and his fan club: the curious inversion.

& p.s. my personal sense is that de Sade legitimizes oppression as natural pleasure and that’s what makes him the court philosopher of the modern elite.