I was abused quite a bit; mostly many kinds of sexual abuse, from a variety of sources. For most of my life I have had a large “V” for victim tattooed in red on my forehead. Only horrible people can see it, which may be why you haven’t. Somewhat regularly I wonder if I am into sm because of this abuse. I was asked last night what I get out of being hurt (a very vanilla acquaintance was wondering why I consented to the bruises that are on my arms) and he asked if it was an orgasmic kind of reaction or if it was just about endorphins—like runner’s high. I told him that it varies based on the kind of pain. Stuff like the punching that I took is not orgasmic for me. No no no no. It hurts, largely in a bad way the same as it would for pretty much anyone. The difference for me is that I get a deep personal satisfaction out of taking pain that I don’t enjoy because someone wants to hurt me. I don’t know why I react this way. Sometimes, on introspective days I do think that it is fucked up of me and I should try to change it. Other days, I stop and wonder who I am hurting? I don’t actually get into non-consensual abusive relationships. I don’t get hurt in ways that will damage me or be long-lasting. I get my violence in controlled bursts from people in whom I have faith. Other kinds of pain (mostly single-tails or canes) do actually cause me to orgasm.
I gave a partner a book on being a partner of an incest survivor. One of the things mentioned is that incest survivors should never engage in sm or D/s. Heh. I can kind of understand that, only I can’t. I think for me to try and get over my interests would be almost as damaging as following them might be. I am just who I am. Am I actually damaged? Or ‘broken’ as I am so often called? I feel conflicted.
If you were conducting your scene life in a way that you were ending up with partners who were crosing the boundary between consensual bdsm and abuse, or were using submission as a way of evading responsibility for your choices, I’d think that engaging in bdsm was unhealthy for you. But you’re not.
In general, you are in control of your scene life, even if once in a while things go badly. So I’d think that it’s not hurting you, and it may even be helping you by giving you a safe outlet for your issues.
Yeah, I have a friend who drives me up the wall because she’s constantly trying to use submission as a way to avoid responsibility for herself, and as a result gets into one abusive relationship after another (and then follows the classic pattern of perpetually excusing the abusive person’s behavior and saying things are getting better).
That pattern really does not appear to exist at all in your (K’s) life currently, so I wouldn’t worry about it. “Safe, sane, and consensual.” And don’t worry too much about how mundanes define sanity — after all, up until relatively recently, homosexuality was officially listed as a mental illness.
I’ve certainly never been abused and I take satisfaction from being able to withstand pain. There’s a machismo to it. I think the most important part isn’t whether you follow your interests or not – it’s whether you understand them. Once you come to an understanding you can either continue or not as that understanding leads you.
Does anyone ever really understand though?
100% to every minute detail? no. close enough to draw some reasonable hypothesis? hell yeah. I think my life’s project is to understand my own psychology. I’ve learned to understand a LOT of things about myself. I’ve still got a lot to learn, of course, but it’s fun stuff. Need to be better about not using other people as guinea pigs in my data gathering experiments though…
Need to be better about not using other people as guinea pigs in my data gathering experiments though.
Squeak?
It was just too tempting a joke! Sorry! In any case, I still think guinea pigs, hamsters, etc, all look like catfood.
I second this one from a slightly different angel. Mom was borderline abusive and there did come a point where I learned to stop feeling it, and my reaction at that moment so freaked her out that it gave me power over her (and stopped her hitting me for a few years). From that point on I also drew a kind of machismo glee from the fact that someone could be hurting me (my brother, a boyfriend, a friend of a friend, an attacker) and I could stare them in the eye with a perverse little grin on my face and not respond to it in any of the ways they expected. And in every case it gave me a power over them as well and often served to block any further mistreatment. Knowing that I can mentally (generally through anger) block any pain that comes to me from an attacker has made me a lousy choice for a victim, and made it possible for me to turn the tables on my attackers on every occation where I was physically attacked.
But the only time I ‘ask’ for it as such is when trying to fuck with my attackers head the way it fucked with mom’s …. for example, my brother who is a bully threatens to hit me to get me to kowtow to his will and I respond “go ahead, hit me, I dare you, you haven’t got the balls, go ahead hit me”… he does, I go flying across the room get back up and am his face daring him to do it again, he does it harder this time leaving actual bruises, usually a nice juicy one that the rest of family will see … I win! Because not only is the family on his back but once his anger as subsided he goes into a huge guilt thing about having wanted to in the moment really hurt me, if not kill me. And he, unlike I, is actually a big marshmellow about that stuff and could never go there as a choice, he can only go there in anger.
But I can’t imagine wanting that in a scene…
It hurts, largely in a bad way the same as it would for pretty much anyone. The difference for me is that I get a deep personal satisfaction out of taking pain that I don’t enjoy because someone wants to hurt me. I don’t know why I react this way.
Then it could be either good or bad for you. Since you don’t know why, you don’t know whether it’s good or bad.
I’ll admit flat-out that I think your scene life is a combination of good and bad for you. I don’t entirely know which, and more to the point, it’s not my place to tell you what to do or what not to do. I mainly decide what I think of particular things when I’m deciding whether to participate in them 🙂
I respect that you know your boundaries. That is one of the many reasons I like you so much.
Conflicted
Now I’m really conflicted. I don’t know which would be more fun, caning you to orgasm or making you take pain you don’t enjoy just to see you suffer.
Re: Conflicted
Well, seeing as you and I don’t have an established D/s relationship that would make me want to take lots of pain for you. I suggest caning. 🙂
Re: Conflicted
Well, that solves that, then. It would be much more fun to make you take lots of pain.
Re: Conflicted
Buster, I still get to say no. Reconsider.
Re: Conflicted
OK, I reconsidered, and I still think it would be more fun to cause you a lot of pain. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but it sure would be fun.
For me.
And that’s what’s important, after all.
V for Victim
On my forehead too.
One of the reasons I haven’t explored D/s or sm more is that I’m not sure the possibility of payoff is worth the risk. I don’t want to see my partner differently (in a negative sense).
I still have more to say on this topic, but I think it will go in my journal rather than hogging your comment space here.
One of the things mentioned is that incest survivors should never engage in sm or D/s.
Yeah, and there’s a reason for that idiocy. Grr.
It is apparently really hard for sexual-abuse-survivor-advocates to be actually pro-sex. Sometimes they try. Sometimes they don’t even see a need to try. Probably that’s because they are a part of our society, and our society tends not to be pro-sex.
Does that book think that s/m is okay for anyone at all? Somehow (getting judgmental here) I have my doubts…
I have some not-so-good stuff in my background. And I know that my mother and *her* mother experienced abuse, probably sexual abuse. And my father’s mother as well. Children of sexual abuse survivors often have twists in their own sexualities, such as showing common reactions to abuse even though not having been themselves abused. I know that in my sexuality, I’m expressing my mother’s reaction to *her* mother’s reaction to her own history.
None of that means I should not enjoy my sex life to the best of my ability, and I hope you feel the same is true for you.
.
Actually the book does say that sm is fine for healthy people. However, I don’t know how many people are actually healthy in their opinion.
Self-Confidence
I think it boils down to confidence in yourself. If you have this, whichever decision you make is the right one.
And, self-confidence tends to ward off many predators…
You already have some of this self-confidence, and it will only get stronger over time.
You are just fine the way you are, and you will remain just fine whether you change this interest or not. Certainly, you should not change just because other people disapprove.
In other words, whatever decision you make, you should ‘own’ it.
Re: Self-Confidence
You rock. Thank you for your commentary.
Re: Self-Confidence
“In other words, whatever decision you make, you should ‘own’ it.”
I personally think that’s the most important part – making decisions – particularly when you have had so many “decisions” made for you in the past – it is powerful to have choice, whatever you might choose.
Am I actually damaged? Or ‘broken’ as I am so often called? I feel conflicted.
I think I’ve had the same response as you are having, but with respect to my being bi and poly. Not to D/S; for some reason my childhood sexual abuse seems to make me (non-judgementally) less interested in D/S than most people in our community.
What I eventually decided for myself is that I need to stop thinking about the effects of childhood sexual abuse specifically as “damage”. Some of the effects are notably bad — it took me a long time to overcome sex-negativity and fear of men. Some of them are good: I’m bi and poly and a whole hell of a lot more independent than your average person, and I like me that way. Some of them are weird, or just are: my instantaneous reactions to words like “childhood” and “parent” are almost all negative, and I have to stop to remember that when acquaintances bring those sorts of words up, they expect a warm, fuzzy, idyllic reaction from me (and probably aren’t so interested in the reasons why my reactions aren’t warm or fuzzy).
Not all effects from bad things are bad. Not all effects from good things are good. And I’m mature enough and self-analytical enough to make my own decisions as to which is which, using friends and books and therapists as advisors and not all-knowing visionaries. I would guess that you are, too.
my instantaneous reactions to words like “childhood” and “parent” are almost all negative, and I have to stop to remember that when acquaintances bring those sorts of words up, they expect a warm, fuzzy, idyllic reaction from me
I know enough people who have unhappy relationships with their parents (none or nearly none of which were actually abusive, just unpleasant to deal with) to not expect that. I’m curious who these people are. My own reactions are probably about neutral – there were good things and bad things and life has moved on.