some of my thoughts on BDSM
Jun. 6th, 2008 01:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
as i mentioned in a prior post, i'm seriously squicked by certain aspects of BDSM, and i've worked for some years on getting the squick down to at least be respectful of people into it, since strangely enough a fair number of people with whom i am friendly are, and not all of them have filters or even use cut tags for that stuff -- and i don't actually WANT to be judgmental of them. i've pretty much managed that, overall.
though whenever i see BDSM drama on my flist, my eyes still roll a little harder -- sane, safe, and consensual seems to not work as well in practice as it's advertised, and many people in that subculture seem to me to have personality traits that make me wonder whether they don't need counseling more than another scene (especially doms). but it's not like the poly community is all bunnies and daffodils either; i know i am not being as fair as i could be.
anyway, this isn't about them, this is about me, and my unreasoning squicks. i don't like to have those.
so i am reading, both nonfiction, and fiction, because the fiction gives me more of the emotional "flavour" which the nonfiction tends to miss. if you want to recommend something, please feel free -- i'm currently perusing different loving by brame & brame & jacobs in the nf category, and have just finished the deviations series by owen & payne (which is remarkably well written, insightful, and erotic as all get-out for me, despite it being heavily BDSM). when recommending fiction, please let me know which sexual preferences are represented (i much prefer m/m, but i will read others), and what sort of potentially squicky things i might come across.
there is background for some of my squicks -- physical abuse, and some sexual abuse. i don't want to go into detail on that, and i well realize intellectually that there is a huge difference between consenting play (or even lifestyle), and things forced upon a child.
not surprising giving that background, my major squicks are pain, humiliation, and d/s. i am ok with bondage, as long as it falls short of pain. i am utterly not fine with blood play, spanking makes me shudder (not in a good way), and whipping makes me want to stab the person wielding the whip because i so do not have good memories of whipping. oh, gags -- hate them hate hate hate them. master/slave terminology is just SO WRONG.
so those are the things i want to most understand.
my attitude towards pain is that it is to be avoided, that pain is a signal that something is wrong with my body somewhere, and that i need to stop doing whatever is causing the pain. i read about people where pain leads to entering subspace, or where pain lies so close to pleasure that they run into each other, and i do not grok it. i don't know WHERE subspace is. when pain gets too much for me, i don't pass into some form of trance, i pass out (and i pass out fairly quickly).
the whole pain/pleasure complex is likely related to endorphins, and i think i might have a deficiency there. the famed runner's high? i don't get it. people who feel great after exercise? i envy them -- i never feel great; i feel tired and hungry, or nauseated if i pushed it too far. sex? even when it's great, the earth doesn't move, and i don't feel transported. ever. i read about people and the amazing feelings they have during sex and especially orgasm, and uh, it's like i am an alien because i just don't. it feels nice, but nothing special, a scrumptuous meal feels just as good, and there are a number of things for me that feel better.
i am starting to fade, but i want to touch on one more part of the d/s aspect -- now that i am reading m/m fiction i am realizing that some of what turns me so off about d/s is the standard dom = male and sub = female formation. that just goes against the grain so badly, while i seem much calmer about d/s when it's all-male. power exchange games work better intellectually for me when the power balance seems equal before the play starts. of course the power balance for individuals isn't the same as it is for societal gender roles, and i need to ruminate on that.
there's lots more; this is just starting to shake loose.
though whenever i see BDSM drama on my flist, my eyes still roll a little harder -- sane, safe, and consensual seems to not work as well in practice as it's advertised, and many people in that subculture seem to me to have personality traits that make me wonder whether they don't need counseling more than another scene (especially doms). but it's not like the poly community is all bunnies and daffodils either; i know i am not being as fair as i could be.
anyway, this isn't about them, this is about me, and my unreasoning squicks. i don't like to have those.
so i am reading, both nonfiction, and fiction, because the fiction gives me more of the emotional "flavour" which the nonfiction tends to miss. if you want to recommend something, please feel free -- i'm currently perusing different loving by brame & brame & jacobs in the nf category, and have just finished the deviations series by owen & payne (which is remarkably well written, insightful, and erotic as all get-out for me, despite it being heavily BDSM). when recommending fiction, please let me know which sexual preferences are represented (i much prefer m/m, but i will read others), and what sort of potentially squicky things i might come across.
there is background for some of my squicks -- physical abuse, and some sexual abuse. i don't want to go into detail on that, and i well realize intellectually that there is a huge difference between consenting play (or even lifestyle), and things forced upon a child.
not surprising giving that background, my major squicks are pain, humiliation, and d/s. i am ok with bondage, as long as it falls short of pain. i am utterly not fine with blood play, spanking makes me shudder (not in a good way), and whipping makes me want to stab the person wielding the whip because i so do not have good memories of whipping. oh, gags -- hate them hate hate hate them. master/slave terminology is just SO WRONG.
so those are the things i want to most understand.
my attitude towards pain is that it is to be avoided, that pain is a signal that something is wrong with my body somewhere, and that i need to stop doing whatever is causing the pain. i read about people where pain leads to entering subspace, or where pain lies so close to pleasure that they run into each other, and i do not grok it. i don't know WHERE subspace is. when pain gets too much for me, i don't pass into some form of trance, i pass out (and i pass out fairly quickly).
the whole pain/pleasure complex is likely related to endorphins, and i think i might have a deficiency there. the famed runner's high? i don't get it. people who feel great after exercise? i envy them -- i never feel great; i feel tired and hungry, or nauseated if i pushed it too far. sex? even when it's great, the earth doesn't move, and i don't feel transported. ever. i read about people and the amazing feelings they have during sex and especially orgasm, and uh, it's like i am an alien because i just don't. it feels nice, but nothing special, a scrumptuous meal feels just as good, and there are a number of things for me that feel better.
i am starting to fade, but i want to touch on one more part of the d/s aspect -- now that i am reading m/m fiction i am realizing that some of what turns me so off about d/s is the standard dom = male and sub = female formation. that just goes against the grain so badly, while i seem much calmer about d/s when it's all-male. power exchange games work better intellectually for me when the power balance seems equal before the play starts. of course the power balance for individuals isn't the same as it is for societal gender roles, and i need to ruminate on that.
there's lots more; this is just starting to shake loose.
no subject
on 2008-06-06 09:21 (UTC)(I do have a thing where if I'm really aroused, it becomes a bit harder to hurt me, but that's different -- I still don't like it when the sensation passes over into pain. That's why I joke that my safeword is "ouch".)
no subject
on 2008-06-06 09:45 (UTC)Also what you tend to see on LJ in BDSM and poly is the drama. The ordinary getting on and just being tends not to make it (it sometimes does, of course).
Anyway, BDSM is a risky business, and SSC does not make it not so.
WRT d/s I have an affinity with d/s, or I had, and may have again, and I also find heterosexual male dom/female sub d/s really problematic in most manifestations I have observed. That whole "housework and blowjobs on command" thing. I think het d/s is a major reason why I don't participate in BDSM forums anymore. They used to be fairly queer and diverse, but are no longer and I really can't stand watching people with bad gender politics yuk it up.
I think pain functions in a variety of ways in BDSM. Some people want to conquer it/themselves, some want to be punished/hurt, some enjoy the sensation, some have an affinity with a hurt/heal dynamic. Some can process it a number of ways. Physically speaking I don't relate to most BDSM writing/scene reports I have read.
no subject
on 2008-06-07 01:27 (UTC)The prevalence of M/f D/s is tiresome; much of it downright worries me. Also, as a male sub, I'm ever so often annoyed that every darn picture, story, bondage technique illustration, book, whatnot one finds is making the (for me) wrong gender assumption.
On the other hand, I enjoy F/m play tremendously. Only for me it has to be a bit more than just play; I'm not good with roleplay, so I can't walk in and out of scenes. For me to enjoy D/s it must have place in the relationship. Sub is something I am far more than something I do.
no subject
on 2008-06-07 05:45 (UTC)i do think there are more people with broken stuff who get into BDSM than into golf, but i also think more people with broken stuff become mental health practitioners than become golf instructors. by their nature some areas attract people with issues that tie into certain defining aspects of those areas.
i envy people who can do roleplay. i am too self-conscious for it.
roleplay and BDSM
on 2008-06-08 02:34 (UTC)[I think it's really interesting that there are three significantly different arenas of roleplay (that I know of) which nevertheless seem to overlap a lot in their effects when you get into them: gaming (eg D&D, which is where I came from), BDSM, and psychotherapy.]
no subject
on 2008-06-06 10:24 (UTC)Why do I have the squicks? Partly just that I really can't deal with pain. I have a ridiculously low pain threshold, I'm really a total wuss. But also I find pain a huge turn-off; I have been in (totally vanilla) situations where there was chatting during foreplay and the conversation happened to turn to someone getting hurt or being ill, and it made me totally lose interest in anything sexual. So although intellectually I know about endorphins, and I can theoretically see why people might seek out the thrill and intensity of painful sensations, emotionally, I just do not get it.
I am really uneasy, though perhaps somewhat less squicked, about power stuff. I think I'm coming from a similar position to yours about power exchange being horrible when it reinforces existing power imbalances. Morally, I don't believe it's wrong for men to top women consensually, but emotionally it upsets me, and I do agree that that kind of sexuality draws some men who have an unhealthy attitude towards women (so does vanilla, I know).
A lot of other things which aren't straightforward M/f fall into the same category: any kind of domination which involves feminizing the sub, whatever the gender configuration, for example. I do find it hard to be as open-minded as I'd like when it comes to subs pretending to be children or slaves or rape victims. Again, my rational mind knows that playing with these scenarios is not the same as actual child abuse, slavery or rape, but emotionally find it hard to understand how such obviously horrible things can be positive and arousing.
Aggressive domination seems to cut across both categories for me: it's making sex into an attack, and the frisson comes from the sub getting hurt, even if emotionally rather than physically. And it reinforces the bad real world dynamic where aggressive, rude, bullying people quite literally dominate meeker, more vulnerable people.
Things I can more readily see as potentially positive: as you mentioned, bondage that doesn't involve pain. (I also find gags really upsetting, though.) D/s where there's some kind of respect being enacted between the players, such as some of the "service" stuff. Playing with the edges of pain and being aroused enough to be able to enjoy intense sensations that would normally be painful. (I think that for a woman there's always some element of this in any sex, so why not extend it?) I like the idea of intensive negotiation around sexual scenes, so that you can try out either sensations or roles other than the most obvious and expected ones, but with cast-iron consent and really open communication. Opening up possibilities to make sex more complex and interesting is always going to appeal to me.
Reading material: I've not yet found fiction that strongly works for me, but then there's very little erotic fiction that does even when it's vanilla, because of bad gender assumptions and the like. Online, though, I am learning a lot from
Squicks you might come across
on 2008-06-06 10:34 (UTC)Re: Squicks you might come across
on 2008-06-07 05:07 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-06 15:03 (UTC)One angle I have seen people come to this from is reclamation; that horrible thing X that happened to them no longer defines them, that they can, to pinch theological terms, divorce the accidents of whatever-it-was from the substance, such that they can place the accidents in a different context and therefore weaken the horribleness of the associations said accidents have. That there can for some people be a scale of victory beyond getting away from abuse and learning to interact in a healthy way and finding good people to have healthy relationships with, in terms of being able to reach back into what was a bad thing and use it and take it apart and understand it and make it less of a present-day emotional presence thereby.
Aggressive domination seems to cut across both categories for me: it's making sex into an attack, and the frisson comes from the sub getting hurt, even if emotionally rather than physically. And it reinforces the bad real world dynamic where aggressive, rude, bullying people quite literally dominate meeker, more vulnerable people.
The thing about that done sanely, though, IME (from both sides of the dynamic) is that the control really lies with a sub who can safeword at any time, and who can thus experiment with how much control they can surrender to the other party, and what they might find in there to enjoy. The power of it for me, again from both sides, is in the depths of trust it allows one to explore, in giving over that much control or taking on that much responsibility for another person respectively, and also in the existence of a context where modes of interaction for which there is no other readily available ethical context can be experienced and thereby better understood. (Feeding the writerbrain new experiences is something I am easy to hook by, definitely.)
no subject
on 2008-06-06 15:27 (UTC)(In case it's not clear, the point of my comment was not to say that this kind of thing is morally bad, just that I personally have a hard time coming to terms with it. I likewise don't think it's evil if people who haven't been traumatized at all are into this stuff, if it's consensual I don't think there needs to be an excuse.)
no subject
on 2008-06-06 15:43 (UTC)I was trying to talk about aggression, specifically. To me, dominating someone by yelling at them and calling them names falls into a similar category as dominating someone by whipping them. I'm not against it on principle, I just can't really imagine how it can be fun. And it reminds me of something that is nasty in real life, the thing where shouty and rude people trample over sensitive and gentle people.
no subject
on 2008-06-07 04:53 (UTC)i can't even stand people fighting in my presence. the cutting words my mother used against me have stayed with me longer than the scars, and the memory doesn't go away. i doubt i could reclaim anything if i let somebody else call me the same names.
reclamation, trust
on 2008-06-07 05:16 (UTC)i think i might have to seriously think about some of my squicks in that light -- not all of them; as i said to livredor below, i don't think i even _want_ to lose my squick about humiliation. but oy, even beyond that the dynamics of so much of it are so hideous to me. yet one more reason to have a sex change, *wry grin*, which is also never going to happen.
i also understand the trust angle -- that's in fact the very first thing i understood about d/s, and i can see how that would be powerful, from both sides. i don't know that i even want to trust anyone that much, but i know it would be a total rush if somebody trusted me like that.
the edges of pain
on 2008-06-07 05:07 (UTC)there is? i've been trying to get at the pain -> subspace idea from thinking about things that for me hover at the edge of pain, but there seems to be nothing there but a black abyss (i too am a total pain wuss). i can't think of anything ever done to me sexually that was an edge case; it's always either pleasurable or painful -- of varying degrees, of course, but there's a very clear boundary.
Re: the edges of pain
on 2008-06-07 10:58 (UTC)Re: the edges of pain
on 2008-06-07 18:35 (UTC)Re: the edges of pain
on 2008-06-08 01:19 (UTC)datapointing
on 2008-06-06 10:55 (UTC)Most of my limited play has been around that pain threshold. It also has huge trust component for me - being able to trust my partner is strongly erotic for me.
I have interest in the physical aspects but not really in power play. I don't want a slave and definitely don't want to be somebody else's. (I do enough shit around here as it is, thanks.) Humiliation is right out. Slapping my face gets an instant kill response.
I'm also an abuse and sexual assault survivor, so I don't know if that figures in at all.
no subject
on 2008-06-06 11:34 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-06 14:19 (UTC)I'm not convinced that there are more sick people doing bdsm than there are sick people doing other kinds of erotic intercourse. Some people just can't do sex without hurting someone [and not in the s/m way], and their partners are equally difficult to understand if they stay and keep getting hurt.
Anyway, that's my noodling about the whole thing. Good on you for trying to think about it and work with it.
no subject
on 2008-06-06 14:49 (UTC)While that entirely makes sense to me, I can also see how some aspects of the worldview-constructions of the BDSM community might appeal to particular kinds of sick people and tend to attract a disproportionate number of them.
no subject
on 2008-06-07 05:21 (UTC)no, i don't think it's necessary for everyone to understand, but... hm... well, understanding feeds tolerance. i read news reports about people being persecuted and prosecuted for their kinks, and i definitely wish that to stop, and i don't know whether it will unless more people understand.
no subject
on 2008-06-06 14:46 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-06 14:52 (UTC)However, I will say a thing about pain. I used to be a really good athlete, and I still like to, say, go on hard bike rides. I learned to think of pain as one of several ways my body communicates with me; to me, pain does not always mean "danger - back off!".
When I ride hard and hit a hill, the muscles in my legs will react to the strain. If I then accelerate, the reaction is pain. But this good pain - it's not pain caused by things breaking. It's a reaction to the body being asked to perform at the limit of what it can do - and to keep doing it. It's a pain I can face and then "go through", and that's a remarkable feeling. There's this saying in sports that the biggest win is when you win against yourself, and that's that to me.
It's not the same as "runners high", I think. The experience of the pain is much more direct. It's not the endophins - it's more that this kind of pain make me aware of my body like nothing else, make me present in the here and now and experience my body at work, my body performing like a fantastic machine, real close up. It creates a physical awareness that's amazing to me. And it's an awareness that will last for a good while after; I guess it puts me in a frame of mind where I'm out of my head in into my body, if that makes sense.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Maybe more when I'm more coherent.
about pain
on 2008-06-07 05:31 (UTC)i know that athletes talk about "the burn" but i've never been an athlete, and if anything burns, i back off slightly.
but i do get into a zone where it feels a little zen-like when i continuously, regularly, keep pushing myself just a little bit, if i keep stretching my abilities a little more. i'll feel quite good while i am doing it, very centred, and even a bit floaty at the end -- if i am alone, that is; if somebody else is there, they distract me from paying attention to my body and just sorta sinking into that zen feeling.
is that zone something akin to subspace?
no subject
on 2008-06-06 15:04 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-06 15:06 (UTC)This is where one of the problems comes in for me. I have absolutely no interest in doing something to someone that they don't want done. What I've been told by several people I've played with is that talking through those things ahead of time makes it not work for them as well because they're into the sub thing at least partially for the thrill of the "danger". Again, another reason people pick me is that they know I have no interest in actually hurting them or doing things they don't want, so as long as we don't talk about it ahead of time they can feel the "danger" while knowing deep down that they are completely safe.
That doesn't cut it for me...that creeps me out. Especially with how some of the date rape laws are written, etc. So, for these situations to work for me at all, I have to be positive of everything that the other person wants done, and how they want it done, but for it to work well for them, I have to have figured that out completely on my own without having spoken of it directly beforehand. Now, since I'm perfectly fine with talking about past sexual escapades (yes, on ice, with skates) it's generally easy enough to lead someone down the path where they talk about things that have happened in the past that they liked and didn't like and so find out some boundaries.
I also really wonder sometimes about there possibly being a significant mental/emotional broke part to people who want to be dominated and especially the people who want to be hurt. It echoes to much of cutters to me. Especially the woman who eventually made it clear that at some point she wanted me to literally force her to have sex. Creeped me right the fuck out, so I stopped everything.
At least with the people who are into just bondage, that's easy. It's easy to tie someone down so that they aren't being hurt, and they can make their own fun by struggling against the bindings.
So I'm with you on some of the squick. It hurts my brain.
no subject
on 2008-06-07 05:36 (UTC)that doesn't have to happen during or right before sex, but it does have to happen before sex, some time. if somebody wants the sort of danger that comes from me not knowing what i'm doing, i'm not a good partner for them.
no subject
on 2008-06-06 16:32 (UTC)I do get a huge endorphin rush from orgasm--sometimes the room spins, I see abstract color patterns, I can't stop laughing, and I can't walk.
I also got an endorphin rush from being tattooed. And another the one time I was whipped at my request. But neither of those were erotic, they were pleasure in another direction entirely.
Being aware of adults who like to do consensual d/s hurts my brain and challenges my tolerance.
no subject
on 2008-06-07 05:38 (UTC)i sometimes ponder getting a tattoo in this general context (aside from liking the art). maybe i should try for a small white one, *snicker*. i'm worried i'd pass out though.
no subject
on 2008-06-06 17:16 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-07 05:39 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-06 18:18 (UTC)Also very good: _Exit to Eden_ by Anne Rampling (Ann Rice) TEH HOT!!
The Sleeping Beauty Series by A.N. Roquelaure (Ann Rice)
no subject
on 2008-06-07 14:20 (UTC)I liked Exit to Eden. I have read some BDSM fiction I liked a lot (the names of which are not popping up for me).
no subject
on 2008-06-08 01:23 (UTC)is exit to eden m/f?
i read the story of o some decades ago and remember nothing about it.
no subject
on 2008-06-08 03:16 (UTC)The Anne Rice stuff is less literature, more wank material.
no subject
on 2008-06-08 03:22 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-06 18:34 (UTC)I haven't got any fiction recommendations, but I read a lot of blogs with plenty of emotional flavor. A short list: Devastating Yet Inconsequential (http://devastatingyet.wordpress.com/), Dev's sub's LJ The Slave Within (http://joscelinverreui.livejournal.com/), A Place to Draw Blood Laughing (http://bloodylaughter.com/), Eileen's sub's blog Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed (http://maybemaimed.com/), Bitchy Jones's Diary (http://bitchyjones.wordpress.com/), and Under the Boot (http://undertheboot.wordpress.com/). These are all dominant women or submissive men (neatly alternating, like proper dinner party seating, except I put the partners together which you're not supposed to do at dinner parties really).
Lately in my own head I've been picking apart the different strands of things that are all lumped together as BDSM. A lot of things are associated in the general culture that just don't have much to do with each other for me. (Not in the sense of different activities like spanking vs. whipping vs. bondage, as you mention in the post, but different kinds of dominance and different kinds of submission.)
no subject
on 2008-06-07 02:46 (UTC)Humiliation and d/s -- I am imprinted on my own fantasies about subsets of them (I use the term "imprinted" because I can't explain why), but attempts to act them out in real life, no matter which role I was taking, mostly don't work out. It just feels weird or silly.
d/s in the bedroom I don't have a squick about, wrt other people, but I have a squick about 24/7 d/s, even though there are people I highly respect who do it, so there must be something I'm not understanding about it.
Cheese, peanut butter, and bondage
on 2008-06-07 05:58 (UTC)Someone yesterday told me the same story, only she said it was "I like peanut butter!"
Who would have thought that BDSM is the magical third topic?
BDSM thoughts
on 2008-06-07 12:47 (UTC)I'm not into BDSM, I haven't been physically or sexually abused (I suffered some emotional abuse in the form of bullying at school). I can get endorphins from exercise, but not from pain. If I'm sexually aroused and I experience something that feels like pain (or believe the other person suffered pain) my arousal literally disappears and I have to recover from the pain and then get back on the arousal track (if that feels worthwhile).
I don't know what subspace is meant to be, but there's a place I sometimes get to during sex that might be the same thing, only "subspace" is (from my point of view) completely the wrong name for it. To the extent that I believe that place is the same as subspace, I can understand why subs want to get there, and at some emotional level why they take the path they do to get there, but it's completely the wrong route for me. I'm not sure there are any further words on this topic, certainly in that space I don't have words for anything, including myself.
I was a "tourist" in a BDSM club once, and it was a fascinating experience. I went because I wanted to make sure my lack of interest in BDSM wasn't just that I was absorbing social messages about its wrongness, so I wanted to be in a place it was okay and normal. I felt very much like an anthropologist among some tribe with a culture almost unimaginably different from my own. There was no doubt the club was about sex; the arousal in the air was so palable I was getting aroused from it (which is an interesting thing to know about myself, of course) - but whenever I looked at the actual BDSM activities - which were generating this atmosphere, the participants and the onlookers - I went straight back into "these people are strange, how can they possibly get this from that" mode.
The other thing I found very, very interesting - I was there as part of a group of four, one (T) our "guide" and somewhat of a regular there. Late in the evening, when we met up to talk about whether it was time to leave, K complained about how much she was being hit on. I said I hadn't been hit on at all, and wondered about being so much more undesirable (I mean, I could understand K getting more, but the relative numbers seemed completely out of whack from my experience). T said I wasn't going to get hit on, but there were a number of people he'd seen who were waiting for me to hit on them - apparently K came across sub and I came across dom.
It helped me understand certain aspects of some past "vanilla" non-relationships better - the BDSM language allowed me to say that these people were attracted to me and wanted to sub to me, and I had no interest in that.
As a result, I've decided that dom-sub isn't a linear axis, but two more-or-less independent axes. I score low on both, but enough lower on the sub than the dom axis that I get read as dom by people who are trying to fit me on the single-line scale.
Re: BDSM thoughts
on 2008-06-07 16:37 (UTC)Hey, that sounds a lot like the butch/femme discussion over at my place just recently. Also covers the distinction between people who just aren't interested (androgynous/vanilla) and the people who are interested in both (genderfuck/switchy). Neat.
No more linear axes!
on 2008-06-07 21:12 (UTC)I use it to explain why, even though I test as N on the N-S axis of Myers-Briggs I often prefer hanging out with S rather than N (I'm both N and S, just more strongly N, but strong N without S drives me batty.) I also want to pull T-F apart because most of those questions feel like "embrace the power of AND" to me (and explains a lot of my problems fitting into science). I'm busy pulling apart E-I at the moment - I've always tested strongly I but I'm starting to suspect I'm at least moderate E with fairly major social anxiety.
"Intelligence" as a linear scale is of course laughable. IQ is a self-reinforcing statistical illusion. Autism spectrum, I suspect similarly, because I'm just plain tired of being counted as a fellow-traveller when I share what to me are obviously quite distinct characteristics that are just more easy to identify in people who are what I think of as on the primary Autism axis.
no subject
on 2008-06-07 20:21 (UTC)Have you ever had a bad mosquito bite or something, and it hurts and it's all achy and yuck, and then you scratch it really hard for just a second, and it hurts but feels good? That's basically where masochists are at all the time.
no subject
on 2008-08-01 20:51 (UTC)but. my inner self was not pleased, and could not handle it, and became gradually enraged -- and it snuck up on me, because i was trying to be GGG, and put the subterranean rumblings in the category of "unreasonable squick," and, hell, i was having orgasms too. seriously, it didn't hurt that much, and the guy was really careful. and he deeply appreciated that i wanted to give this to him.
but. i was mad, and it was growing, and there it was, and there it is. i left the relationship in a raging fury, still not even sure myself of what the hell was going on -- there were, of course, other issues. but the other issues seemed to me to be an outgrowth of the evil games, and in the end, i was scared of the guy, who, really, is a gentle soul. except. and but.
i am still angry, and "see red" when i think of having given in to the kind of play i put myself through -- though i really had no idea. perhaps because i too was taken advantage of sexually as a child, by an older boy next door? is it my own issues that made me so deeply vulnerable?
in any case -- sometimes these games can fuck shit up in ways that you yourself don't understand until it's too late.