The secret guilt…
June 2nd, 2009 | Author: Zille
Just a couple days ago I linked to a post by Haron of The Spanking Writers which discussed the painful truth that: “without taking on and processing different kinds of violence visited by one human being on another throughout history, we would be bereft of any settings for role-play.”
Well, Pandora also had thoughts on the matter, and it inspired her to write this amazing one, in which she points out:
Reading this material is uncomfortable in several different ways. The first and obvious is basic human compassion and empathy: we are horrified to hear of suffering, particularly prolonged cruelty visited on the most vulnerable. At the most basic level, it’s painful to imagine torture because the idea of experiencing it ourselves is horrible.
As a pervert, it’s uncomfortable because of the superficial resemblance between the horrific reality and the sex games we enjoy. Never mind the consent boundary, the crucial factors of choice and agency; the difference between an experience that one chooses and can stop at any point; that is short-lived; that one shares with loved ones – and an experience that one does not choose, that is inflicted by people you hate, that is ongoing. The idea that we enjoy something which looks like something real and tragic and horrible makes us feel doubtful and guilty. The idea that we might be selfishly exploiting the suffering of others adds to that guilt.
Both Haron’s post and now Pandora’s have got me thinking, and I actually have a moment to write it down!
I have a lot of fantasies or general interests I probably ought to feel guilty about — and sometimes do, although less and less as the years go by….
When I was but a wee little girl, I knew I was into spanking, and I knew it was something to hide. And other ideas got my little mind all hot and bothered: the sight of a girl in a guillotine (I like to think it was about the bondage aspect of it, not the decapitation, but I was a sick lil’ thing, so who knows…), or the violence of the afternoon cartoon line-up when I was a kid — particularly Tom and Jerry, although they were all quite violent, come to remember it! I was fascinated by violence and couldn’t take my eyes of the screen, or close the pages of the book — well, unless some adult came by, in which case I’d very studiously be interested in something else, or flip to another page in the book. Me, fascinated by this stuff? Never!
When I was 12 I renounced all my kinky fantasies, and decided I would only allow myself a straight, vanilla sexuality. I didn’t have those words for it, obviously, but basically I looked around, found women’s romance novels, decided that was the paradigm of what I should be “into,” and banished all my kinky, bisexual notions from my head. (What I didn’t realize at the time was that romance novels are kinky in their own way, being generally either pre-feminist or so post-feminist as to have forgotten feminism ever existed, and having the fetish of “Big Strong Men With Shiny Muscles.” And there was usually a sexy bad guy who looses out in the story, but to whom my heart — and, errr, my loins — were always much more sympathetic.)
I thought I was well on track, despite the fact that first adult male I had a true sexual crush upon was David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth. I was obviously in a deep and sincere state of denial that it didn’t occur to me that this was kinky; that such lines as, “Just fear me, worship me, and I will be your slave,” might not be what is normally said in vanilla relationships. And the fact that I hated Sarah for not taking Jareth up on the above offer, but spurned his obviously superior affections … well, all I can say is that I obviously never had a good idea of what “normal” was in the first place, so it’s no wonder I should fail so utterly at trying to live up to such unknown and illogical standards!
Getting back to serious matters, though, I didn’t really understand the guilt of liking things other people “knew” were wrong until well after I accepted my kinkiness at age 17. It was my boyfriend Iago who got me into role-playing, and so even while I was a schoolgirl, I was playing “schoolgirl visits her Uncle Iago’s house and gets taken advantage of,” as well as my first explorations in bondage and rough sex. (He also gets the credit of talking me into shaving my pussy for the first time, and as I have done so ever since, I do owe him a thank you for that, even though he dumped me at my prom — leaving me to find my own way home, I’d add — which does temper my gratitude, rather!)
It was some years after that in which the big moment of disgust at myself for my twisted desires occurred. I’d done a fair bit of “rape play” (or, to use a far more comfortable and p.c. term, “consensual non-consent”) by this time, and I’d always been entirely sanguine about it.
And then one of my little sister’s best friends got raped. Really horribly raped.
I knew the girl and liked her a great deal. And she so didn’t deserve it — not that anyone ever does, but this girl had had a hard enough life without adding that much more trauma and pain and years of self-doubt and god knows what it did to her ability to have a normal sexuality, whatever “normal” was for her.
Suddenly, I hated myself. How could I — how dare I? — get turned on by playing with the idea of something so terrible, so destructive, so wrong! And my sister insisted on telling me details — I knew I really oughtn’t hear them, but I did need to provide support to my sister if she needed to talk about the situation — and to make things all the worse, the details sounded like something that, if I was doing them in a role-play setting, would have turned me on no end. Even just hearing about them caused physical, sexual reactions in my body, even as my mind was horrified at the details — and all the more horrified by my response.
It took years to get me back to that innocent appreciation of rape-play. That sentence may sound funny to some, but the fact is that if women were safe to play with such concepts, and never fear actually suffering them in real life, it would be a much better world! Now, with my Master, I can explore my darkest fantasies, because I trust him so utterly. This is something I deeply appreciate.
But I still have a reaction when I see a brutal beating in a film, or a rape scene. One part of me despises it — wants to cover her eyes so I don’t see the violence. The other part of me can’t shut her eyes because it’s too erotically hypnotic. I can wince in total empathy … and yet get wet at the same time. And both are unconscious reactions!
For example, my Master and I have been watching Heat of the Sun
Well, I nearly fell off the sofa. I’m not made hot by the actual fact that things like this really happened in East Africa in the ’30s, but all the ingredients for a hot role-play (by my standards!) were there! Move the beating from some poor worker to me, and suddenly we have a winner: Daddeh and I (Motheh is out of the picture — it’s just me and Daddeh on the farm in the middle of nowhere) go out to a party, and I have a bit too much of the bubbly and flirt with a boy. Maybe even a native boy! [gasp shock] Well, Daddeh drags me home, where I am suitably unapologetic enough to warrant myself a serious beating — possibly with Daddeh’s belt, as it may be the first thing to hand! Then, because I’m like that, Daddeh takes me roughly (probably in the ass, which is what normally happens in my fantasies) to prove that I belong to him. What really gets me off in this fantasy is that it is entirely true for my character: as an unmarried young lady, I’d be the charge of my father, and he’d be within his rights to beat me. And, in that time and place, no one would pry into Daddeh’s business (he’s rich, a “gentleman,” you see) so he could really do whatever he wanted with me — use me as vilely as he liked, and there’d be nothing I could do to stop it. That’s the really hot part for me.
Of course, for me to get aroused while watching the scene in the show, I had to seriously overlook the poor guy who gets beaten to death. I have to seriously overlook how terrible the scene I just wrote above would be in reality.
My Master, noticing my humping his leg during the scene in the show, and perhaps noticing that I wouldn’t stop talking about it, the next day showed me a scene from made-for-TV movie, “The Happy Valley”
Again, overlooking certain truths means that I can find that extraordinarily arousing. I’m bugging my Master all the time now, “You can’t show me that and not do a role-play of that with me, Sir!” and [tugging on sleeve] “When are we gonna play Happy Valley, huh huh?!”
This post has taken me five days to write, not just because I’m rather busy caring for my Master post-his accident, but because I’ve had to think through this stuff a lot. (And, in the case of The Happy Valley, think about it with Mr. Buzzy held between my legs.) Just last night, with strange correspondence, we watched a show with Trevor Eve from Heat of the Sun, and a grown-up Holly Aird from The Happy Valley. It was Waking The Dead Season Four’s “The Hardest Word”
(Spoiler warning — don’t continue unless you want to know the plot of the episode )
In the episode, a girl was abused by her father, and her sexuality gets stuck on that, so she has to role-play the abuse over and over again. (The even worse problem comes in when her father starts killing all the guys she’s role-played with…) I watched it with all of these thoughts I’ve been having about guilt and arousal in mind, so I very much saw the two parts of my mind in action — the part racing with arousal, and the part disgusted by the scene and myself.
After the show was over, I broke down crying in my Master’s arms. How dare I get turned on by that, I asked him, how dare I want to rush off and do a role-play with him?!
What followed was an incredible discussion and the reasons I want to be with this man for the rest of my life made abundantly clear (yet again!) He pointed out that rape and happy consensual sex were, if you just look at the physical motions, the exact same thing. Where it becomes rape is in the head — either you do or do not want those sexual things happening. There is a switch that goes from “want” to “do not want” — and everyone’s switch is different, and there is nothing wrong with that switching turning from one to the other (the problem comes in either when you cannot/do not communicate that change, or if your partner does not honour it.)
When he and I role-play or otherwise do kinky things, no matter what he does to me, it is done with the switch in the “want” position, because I can trust him to push me places where I might normally have a big neon flashing “DO NOT WANT!” sign going off. This doesn’t invalidate that those things may happen to women and they indeed do not want them, but we are together celebrating being able to do pretty much whatever we like with that switch happily settled in the “WANT!” position.
I don’t need to feel guilt. If I want to help with the problem of non-consensual sex and violence, there are plenty of places where I can do that and do the world a lot more good than feeling guilty about my own desires. The fact that I can and do live out those desires safely is only a good thing — it hurts no one, and, since I blog openly about it, maybe it might help someone….
I think the best way to look at it is: the most conventional act of sex is horrific without consent, yet with consent the most horrific acts can be oh so hot…
Northern Spanking
I Feel Myself.com
Hope you have...
Zille, I love the way that you delve into your own mind, and the way that your Master explained that situation.
I remember Happy Valley, sometimes in the late 80’s, as I recall I was both horrified and fascinated.
I didn’t feel guilty as by that time I had come to terms with my kink.
An excellent and thought provoking post, thank you dear girl.
I hope that your Master is making a full recovery, please give him my regards.
Love and warm hugs,
Paul.
Oh gods…yeah, Zille.
Yeah.
What she said.
I had a horrible, horrible time watching the rape scene in “Irreversible” for that very reason. The brutality pegged for me at one point yet part of my id-level thinking was too far gone to fully disengage when the violence pushed me past arousal to fury and horror.
But those emotions, at the core, feel so very, very similar.
And Ganesha knows I know a little something about kink blurring the line between what we find arousing and what is genuinely horrifying.
Can we say “race-based kink play”?
I offer you a fierce cry of solidarity for your making yourself so flagrantly effulgently vulnerable in your strength and your utter soulnakedness.
Love
Mo
ROTFLMAO
OK
OK
**wheeze**
Thanks for WARNING A BITCH that homeboy just rips right in and calls someone a “bloody nigger” right in the beginning of that clip!!
**DIES**
lulz.
I couldn’t even say the word ‘rape’ for years because I was ashamed to be the girl who “wanted it.” But understanding that bdsm can happen is a mutually loving, mutually satisfying way changed everything. Even though there are times when I still feel guilty, the not-guilty feeling impels everything I do now, gives it worth, and that’s why I know it’s important to share. So thanks, Zille!
I have to admit that my initial reaction to the concept of master/slave-dynamic relationships was something like “How can you do this when there are people actually, forcibly enslaved in the world?” But then I realized that even if your made your marriage entirely vanilla right now, that wouldn’t change a thing for the people suffering under real oppression. Fantasizing about rape scenes doesn’t cause people to actually be raped. Guilt-tripping people about their dark sexual fantasies reminds me of guilt-tripping couples who are childfree by choice because there are other couples who want children but aren’t able to conceive them. No amount of fertility in the former couple will repair that lack in the latter.
Mo — You rock! And, uh, sorry about not giving you warning — it ain’t my cuppa tea, so I didn’t even notice it! (Unless perhaps I winced and blocked it out, as a proper white girl should do!)
mumbojumble — You’re very welcome, and I’m glad you have also worked through your guilt (mostly — I don’t think any of us will ever banish it completely, and nor should we — keeps us aware of the facts outside our fantasies) and you’re able to enjoy your kink!
Naohai — Goodness, I’m sorry you had to feel that — I’m not trying to squick anyone out by just being in this relationship! Thank you so much for sticking with me through that unease — I value your comments a great deal!
I’ve actually gotten the child-free couple guilt-tripping a time or two! Last time was on a plane — the (vulgar, I might add) woman beside me started asking about my life, and inquired whether my husband and I had children. When I said we had no plans for that, she sniffed, “Oh! You were an only child, weren’t you?!” “Umm, no…” I replied, for I have a full younger sister and four half older siblings, and my Master has two full siblings and three step-siblings! “Well, why don’t you want children, then?” she cried, as if having siblings would somehow make you a better (less selfish, obviously) person!
I thought later that I should have guilt-tripped her right back, and made up a tale of tragic infertility due to an extremely painful and horrific illness. Next time someone does that to me, I’m ready!
(You’d really think that people being self-aware and responsible enough to decide not to bring children into the world unless they are in a space to care for them properly would be something that was admired. But no….)
I have been following your thoughts on this with interest, but I have to say, the comments your Master said made me really angry. I feel that in trying to make you feel better, he has diminished and belittled the experience of rape.
I just want to preface this with – I think rape play is perfectly normal and I have no issues against it, and also that this is all in my opinion and experience from having been raped, and obviously I cannot speak for anyone else who has been raped. I was raped by my ex-boyfriend, which is probably the closest you could get to the line between rape and rape play.
Firstly, the physical motions are NOT the same thing. Think of it as the difference between someone hitting you with baseball bat to steal your purse, and your Master hitting you with a cane (this is the closest analogy I can think of.) In the first instance, your body’s reaction is probably to double up in pain, to protect yourself. The pain is excrutiating, and you would do anything to rid yourself of it. You try and crawl away, but he keeps hitting you with the bat. Your body tenses up, which makes the pain even worse. You don’t know when the pain will stop, or if it will end in your death. In the second instance, this is something you have welcomed. The pain is bad, and sometimes you may want to get away, but you are not in a total state of panic and self-defense. Your body may go into shock but it also accepts the pain, and far from your whole body becoming rigid with terror you get turned on. You will often know when it will end (as long as you keep counting out the strokes!)
Secondly, it is not a simple matter of a “do not want switch”. He probably didn’t intend it, but to me it sounds like everyone has a sort of ‘rape scale’. For some it’s ok if your boyfriend has sex with you when you don’t want it, but anal is too far. For others it’s ok if you give him a blow job when you don’t want to, but sex is too far. I don’t have a certain point or act where it is too far. Rape isn’t just strangers kidnapping you off the street and having sex with you at gun point. Rape can start before you’ve even taken your clothes off, when he guilts you into having sex. Rape can be when you begin to have sex and it’s too painful because you’re not ready and you tell him to stop but he won’t. Rape can be when a man gets you too drunk to say no. It’s not a problem of communication – if a woman says “I don’t want to have sex” and a man persuades or bullies her into it, it is still rape. It is more a situational thing than a definitive, “This is my line don’t cross it” thing.
There is a huge difference between the emotional factors of rape and rape play, too. I would describe my rape as terrifying, humiliating, and painful (both physically and emotionally.) When you are engaging in rape play, you would probably agree with the later two, and maybe the first if it is in your scene. The difference is, once the scene ends, the emotions end. I lived with the humiliation and terror for years. Until I worked through my experience, sex was painful as I kept having panic attacks and flashbacks to my rape. I experienced my rape as a negative in my every day life, and if you experience your rape play it is probably as a positive.
The main difference for me is that at the end of the day, you trust your partner and you consented. You may not have consented during that particular scene (because that would negate the purpose) but at some point, you and your partner probably had a discussion where you agreed that this was an allowed sexual act. You have the trust that he will never take you too far, no matter how much pain you are in. You have the trust that if he really pushes you over the line and you break, you can say so and he will stop. You know that there is an end. With rape, there is no trust. As soon as a man does something sexually that a woman does not want, he has gone too far. With rape play, there is always that little bit further towards the end of the scene, but with rape, everything stops at the start. You have no trust that if you say no he will stop, because often you have already said no and he didn’t. There is no end in sight, and if the pain is too much you cannot end the situation.
Again, I have no problem with rape play – because it is PLAY. I think of it as something entirely different to rape, because in so many ways they have absolutely nothing in common. There are so many emotions and physical responses you have to deal with for years after the rape, which (apart from your guilt maybe?) you don’t experience with rape play. Don’t feel guilty about it, really. You have every right to do what feels good to you, and what you are doing isn’t harmful (I guess you get my wider meaning of that?) You indulging in rape play doesn’t diminish my experience. But please think of it as rape play, and not anything, anything like real rape, because it’s not.
Poppy,
I need to take very strong exception to your comment, because this is very significant to both of us. (This blog is a reflection of reality, not a reality in itself – the post is an essence of a lot of discussion, not the totality of it). In your anger you may have (inadvertently, perhaps) claimed “ownership” of what is, and is not, rape. Rape is a legal concept, and while your personal experiences might match your differentiation (e.g. “you have to deal with for years after … ”), that’s not the legal reality. Whether you like this fact or not, rape does not have to be physically intrusive or harmful — all that matters is the lack of consent.
And that’s where your assertions got offensive; pretending that rape has to be injurious and/or have long-lasting harmful effects is just self-absorbed. Rape is rape regardless of whether the victim recovers in hours, days, months or decades, regardless of whether it was painful or not. As a parallel, you are like someone claiming that the theft of a single dollar isn’t theft because someone stole everything you had — the severity and harm done are different, but it’s still theft – and lacking that buck may make a difference.
And at the risk of pointing out the blindingly obvious, if one’s partner is bound and gagged (for fun) and one day is happy and the next day you do it all again but they change their mind and withdraw consent midway (for any reason at all), no external observer would be able to tell the difference, because (no matter what you claim) the physical ACTIONS are precisely the same both days. In our universe, and in law, one day its sex and the next it’s rape. (It’s probable that prosecution wouldn’t happen, but let’s not pretend that the offense of rape depends on whether or not the courts prosecute).
One your second point, I find it truly amazing that you have, for your own reasons, decided that I have a “rape scale”, even though the concept is clearly binary (want/do not want; consent/nonconsent). We all KNOW there are an infinite variety of rape circumstances (not including, by the way, your “guilt them into having sex” example, because that ISN’T actually rape — if someone consents to sex, it’s not rape, even if the consent was unwise or alcohol-fueled or out of sympathy or out of guilt).
The whole POINT is that actions with consent are NOT rape, while the exact same actions without it are. So if a simple act like, say, a blowjob can be either rape or not rape, depending on consent, then a complex and apparently brutal act like, say, tying someone down, gagging them and sodomizing them can ALSO be either rape or not rape.
The rest of your post complete diverges from this core point. If there’s consent, there’s no rape, so no long-term harm… even if the actions look a lot (to an outside observer) like rape. The reason you (and everyone else) should have no problem with rape play is not that its PLAY, but that its NOT RAPE.
As an aside, the sort of play we (and many, many others) do can be variously cathartic and occasionally problematic. People have worked through issues – including rape – through play, and others have uncovered problems that require profound effort to resolve. So sometimes, when a scene ends, the feelings and maybe even trauma continue and the healing work begins.
The Boss.
Oh my god, I’m catching up on blogging and just found this post now, but had to immediately comment because I totally feel the same way about David Bowie in Labyrinth! I even mentioned it on my blog once, when I was choosing Bowie as the rock star I’d most want in my fantasy spanking harem: “And I invite all the other kinky weirdoes out there who found themselves strangely turned on by his performance as the goblin king in “Labyrinth” to step forward. (It can’t really be just me, can it?!)” …No one said anything, and I started feeling rather silly, so I’m glad you’ve confessed to also wanting to be one of his minions!!!
(And the rest of your post is very good too : )
I really enjoy your blog, but I’ve been away (got married) and I just found this post. I think I have to leave my first comment now.
“Where it becomes rape is in the head — either you do or do not want those sexual things happening. ”
I have to take exception with this. The victim of rape has *nothing* to do with when an act is rape, or not rape. It has *nothing* to do with what’s inside the victim’s head.
On the contrary, it has everything to do with what’s going on in the head of the perpetrator.
You see, even when your master and you, or me and mine, do something that the submitting partner doesn’t consent to, it’s done in an environment of consent. You and I have consented to give UP our right to say no to things.
Anything that happens between you and your master therefore is by definition consensual. When our owners do things we don’t like, they still have our safety in mind. Anything done to us is not done out of the pure sadistic desire to destroy another human being. It’s not the evil that wants to see another person’s soul crushed, or see them literally broken into pieces.
If our masters do that to us, it’s a creative act: they break us so that they can build us back up, and we have consented to – even begged for – the breaking. When a rapist does it, it’s an act of intentional malice.
None of our relationships with our masters is based on sheer malice. It’s a violent love, but the key part of it is the love. Have you ever thought of how much work and effort goes into being an owner? (Of course you have! You’ve even commented on it…) The majority of their time is monopolized by us! It takes so much effort! Every action they take towards us they are thinking not just of their own desires, but about us. It’s never purely about what THEY want! Even when they say it is! They are making sure we’re safe, and stay breathing. They are making sure no permanent harm comes to us. They’re considerate of us in every action.
Their goal is not sheer destruction.
In the case of the rapist, they only consider their victims when they are enjoying the harm they cause. It’s an act of malicious destruction.
With our masters, the act is always an act of love, even if it is functionally or even legally identical to the malicious acts carried out by rapists.
The difference does *NOT* take place within the mind of the victim, with some simple on/off switch. The difference takes place in the mind of the perpetrator, acts of malicious harm, as opposed to acts of love.
About me: I’m in a relationship that involves as much of the lifestyle as we can manage with our hectic lives. She doesn’t have the time or energy to be a 24/7 master, and I am and have always been defiance incarnate, so I need a lot of work to be a good slave. Life gets in the way of our lifestyle.
We’re not there yet, but I’ve loved your blog about the lifestyle we hope to someday be capable of 24/7.
Thanks for your blog, and your comments.
Leo v. SM
Leo,
You’re concentrating on one type of rape (often known as “stranger rape”). However, another very common type of rape — and no less rape, and no less harmful — is sometimes known as “date rape”. (Rape by a person the victim knows.)
And by looking at “date rape”, one can clearly see that your attempt to cast the rapist’s mindset as the only important factor is, well … incorrect.
With “date rape”, in some cases, the rapist may actually believe that his (or, rarely but not impossible, her) attentions are desired. So there’s no malice, but if the lack-of-consent was communicated in such a way as “a reasonable man” would understand that there was no consent, then the act is rape. Period.
A lot of people have trouble with this, mainly because of the bad old days when a husband could force himself on his wife with impunity; “He’s her husband, therefore he loves her, therefore it’s not rape” goes the thinking. If you really think through your claim, it’s obvious nonsense. How can the motives of the aggressor change the criminality of the act? If that were the case, then I could rob banks as long as the proceeds were for a good cause!
What makes the crime of rape is exclusively based on the consent of the victim: with consent, it’s not rape (and there’s no victim); without consent, it’s rape.
Other factors, of course, impact what action society takes against the offender, including your point about whether the mindset is benevolent or not, but we’d all agree there is a difference between a criminal who is treated leniently and an innocent man!
The Boss.