Humiliation and degradation

Domwoolf

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Humiliation and degradation. What is it about these two things that seems to turn some women/men on and what would you be turned on by?

I used to have a girlfriend that was totally turned on by being humiliated in public, the more degrading, the more it rocked her world. Yet she was never able to articulate why.

Any input from either male or female perspectives would be appreciated.

Dom Woolf
 
Humiliation and degradation. What is it about these two things that seems to turn some women/men on and what would you be turned on by?

I used to have a girlfriend that was totally turned on by being humiliated in public, the more degrading, the more it rocked her world. Yet she was never able to articulate why.

Any input from either male or female perspectives would be appreciated.

Dom Woolf

I have wondered about this also, and I have no interest in either side of it. I will never willingly read about such things os golden or brown showers, and I will most deminitely never write about either.

I'm puzzled about the idea of being humiliated in public. Did you curse and revile her, while she cringed from it? Did you attach a leash to a collar around her neck, and lead her around on her hands and knees? I have written about that kind of thing, but not in public.
 
An example I once took her into an adult video store to buy her a new toy. She brought me the anal plug she choose crawling on hands and knees.
Dom Woolf
 
note to Dom

the peculiar appeal of humiliation and degradation are pretty well described in the literature. i don't suppose you've read 'venus in furs,' by masoch, or 'story of O' [endlessly recycled in Lit stories] by Reage? both are available online. the former is male perspective, and the latter, female, btw.
 
o is of course a classic

the peculiar appeal of humiliation and degradation are pretty well described in the literature. i don't suppose you've read 'venus in furs,' by masoch, or 'story of O' [endlessly recycled in Lit stories] by Reage? both are available online. the former is male perspective, and the latter, female, btw.

O is of course a classic but was she really degraded or humiliated? I would think Last tango in Paris was more of a degradation movie.

Dom Woolf
 
from the story of O

. So they made her kneel down again, this time with her bust on an ottoman, her hands still tied behind her, with her hips higher than her torso. Then one of the men, holding her with both his hands on her hips, plunged into her belly. He yielded to a second. The third wanted to force his way into the narrower passage and, driving hard, made her scream. When he let her go, sobbing and befouled by tears beneath her blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only to feel someone's knees against her face, and she realized that her mouth was not to be spared. Finally they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry finery, lying on her back in front of the fire.

---
a movie exploring the degradation/masocishism issue is haneke's "the piano teacher," 2002.
 
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Humiliation works differently in men and women, I think. In women, it has to do with surrender to the lover, the surrender of pride, surrender of ego. It lets the lover define the boundaries of the person's self and to define them in a way as to make the victim a totally sexual, totally dependent function of the humiliater's desire.

Love is sacrifice, and we feel the depth of love in how much we're willing to give up or let someone take from us or how much we're willing to take from someone else. In sex we're forced to give up control of our sensations. In orgasm we give up control of our entire person, which is terribly threatening to some people. In BDSM we give up even more control, and in humiliation we give up control of our very concept of who we are and let the other person define us.

I also think that many women are still plagued by guilt over their sexual urges and feel that the experience of sexual pleasure deserves punishment. They're most comfortable when these urges are accompanied by punishment or degradation, so they invite this kind of thing. It can range from simple spanking all the way to the most abject kind of sex. The humiliation is essentially liberating and fulfilling.

There's another angle to it too that works for both men and women, and that's that a lot of people get a certain thrill out of being put in their place and having choice taken away from them. This is especially true for privileged people who are used to having their way, and I think it's what sends so many powerful males to dommes. (Washington DC has more professional dommes per capita than any city in the US) This 'status crush' can be a thrilling acceleration to the bottom, to a feeling of powerlessness and victimhood which is actually a kind of liberation from responsibility.

I think with your girl crawling on hands and knees, the thrill was in subsuming her ego to yours. She was constantly sacrificing herself to you, offering up her own pride as something she didn't even want to stand between you.
 
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Humiliation and degradation. What is it about these two things that seems to turn some women/men on and what would you be turned on by?

I can answer this but not really.

It's appealing because it is completely giving power over to another person. Your own dignity is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is this other person's desire. It's that power exchange that is so erotic.

But that's just replacing one question with another. Why is that disparity in power so erotic to me? Why does the complete loss of control turn me on?

I don't know that these questions have answers.
 
I can answer this but not really.

It's appealing because it is completely giving power over to another person. Your own dignity is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is this other person's desire. It's that power exchange that is so erotic.

But that's just replacing one question with another. Why is that disparity in power so erotic to me? Why does the complete loss of control turn me on?

I don't know that these questions have answers.

Wouldn't you agree that by giving a person power over you, you give them 'ownership' over you? You become an extension of that person rather than an independent entity. It's ultimate surrender.

If the goal of love is fusion and ego annihilation, then humiliation is like a demonstrative form of submission, burning up your pride in a visible and highly dramatic bonfire of surrender. Pride and dignity are one of the last things we have to lose when everything else is gone. Giving them up via humiliation is like the ultimate in submission.
 
Any input from either male or female perspectives would be appreciated.
I think it's actually quite simple. When people are shamed or humiliated, they experience a physical sensations. They blush (blood rushes from one part of their body to another), their stomach turns over, their heart speeds up.

This feeling is very similar to the excitement and rush of sex. It's so similar that they crave the feeling; just as some people crave extreme sports for that rush, or pain for that rush, or going to a horror movie for that rush. All these things elicit an "excitement" response in the body.

Now this excitement response can also lead to "fight/flight." And it depends on how the person was raised or what connections they've made to sexual pleasure as to whether *any* of this induces them to fight/flight or to get aroused. There are women who will run from a boxing ring, hating the sight of men beating on each other--and there are those who will get that same response--heart pounding, palms sweating--and get aroused rather than feel the need to take flight.

Also, humiliation, though it's all about denigrating a person, also puts them in the spotlight. Those who enjoy humiliation of the kind you describe (public) are likely those who need to feel that they're getting some attention, even if it's "negative" attention (consider little children, ignored by a parent, who act up because even negative attention is attention). The object of their affection is focusing on them--and drawing everyone else's attention on them as well. Dr. M. talks about sacrificing ego, but I wonder if it's not the opposite in some ways; humiliation makes one the center of attention, special and singled out. And, once again, like being put on stage, that makes the heart race faster, gives the stomach butterflies, makes the person break out in a sweat...all physical reactions similar to excitement.

Whether that kind of physical reaction is addictive and connected to sexual excitement rather than fight/flight response is up to the person, of course. My point, simply, is that the sweaty palms and pounding heart, the feeling of being the center of attention, likely gave your girlfriend a visceral feeling that was, to her, no different from the visceral feeling she'd get being kissed/caressed (which leads to sweaty palms and pounding heart, a feeling of being the center of attention, right?). And so it triggered arousal.
 
If the goal of love is fusion and ego annihilation, then humiliation is like a demonstrative form of submission, burning up your pride in a visible and highly dramatic bonfire of surrender. Pride and dignity are one of the last things we have to lose when everything else is gone. Giving them up via humiliation is like the ultimate in submission.
That's all well and good, Dr. M, but I have to ask...have YOU felt these things personally by being humiliated, or are you speaking of someone who's humilated others? Because you sound like the later. In which case, I don't think you really know what the former is feeling; I think you're imposing on the other what you want to believe they're doing (i.e. surrendering to you their pride) as that arouses *you*

The person being humiliated may be feeling no such thing. They may just be feeling, as I argued, the same physical reactions of excitement that others experience from extreme sports.

I'm not ignoring the idea of love here; we all surrender to love as it were, and showing someone our love--be that giving up our pride to them or just presenting them with a dozen roses, feeling their pleasure in this--can arouse us. But the question is about arousal, and arousal isn't always about feeling love.

Putting it another way, I think you're letting your manly ego, which gets excited by submission, and adores women who sacrifice, to get in the way of why a woman may feel sexually excited if humiliated. Some women who feel this have no ego or pride--they are giving up nothing. What they like is the attention, as they don't usually get it. Yes?
 
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I'm thinking of a book I've read, Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm.

He described D/s in terms of ego. The submissive lose their ego, their sense of self, but become part of their dominant. The dominant reinforces their ego by the submissive essentially becoming a part of them.

This plays into the loss of responsibility on the part of the submissive. Their only concern is to do what their dominant lets them do. They needn't worry about responsibility. All they have to do is enjoy.

The book was mostly about how many people fear freedom and why they turn to authoritarian governments in this fear. Essentially authoritarian societies are a complex D/s relationship. ;)

I got a good story out of this idea. :)
 
Humiliation works differently in men and women, I think. In women, it has to do with surrender to the lover, the surrender of pride, surrender of ego. It lets the lover define the boundaries of the person's self and to define them in a way as to make the victim a totally sexual, totally dependent function of the humiliater's desire.... etc, etc.
Two things; That's the standard boilerplate for submission, which does not necessarily entail humiliation/degradation.

and-- you explained what you think women get out of it-- what do you think men get out of it?

I do not think the h/d kink has fuckall to do with love, personally. I tend to agree with 3113; it's all about the abusee-- totally egocentric, at least in the abusee's mind.
 
comments to mabeuse, 3113 and rg

as 3113 asked, is there anyone reporting direct experiences? i see what i take to be the theories and speculations of these posters; i will comment on them. autobiography does not seem appropriate here, but perhaps some people are ready to listen to what comes from life and, indirectly, from the one on whom my life centers.

mabeuse has a theory of male female differences. focussing on the woman, he refers to surrendering in love and 'giving up' in sexual experiences, //in humiliation we give up control of our very concept of who we are and let the other person define us. // he also sees women as fleeing or avoiding sexual guilt.

further he says, //Pride and dignity are one of the last things we have to lose when everything else is gone. Giving them up via humiliation is like the ultimate in submission.// of dw's girl he says She was constantly sacrificing herself to you, offering up her own pride as something she didn't even want to stand between you.

i think doc may be right about 'ultimate submission,' but it's unclear why 'sacrifice of pride' is specifically linked to the female in love. certainly the issue of 'male pride' is linked in a male's humiliation experience. too, we have to suggest that the problem has merely been moved back. one asks, 'why then are you aroused by surrendering pride.' mab here seeming accentuates the positive. he ignores the pain of losing pride and the issue of its eroticisation.

one further complaint i have is that doc describes a kind of one sided process under the concept 'giving up' and offering up. yet it's true that an essential part of humiliation is that the humiliator [h'tor] is taking something from the humiliatee [h'tee]. taking away someone's pride is hurting them. as h'tee, i relish this, as coming from the one who has chosen me. my leaning is importantly maso in orientation.

too, the idea of not wanting something to stand between, is perhaps less true than its opposite. if, as in domw's example, the h'tee is acting the dog, then 'nothing between' seems to fit ill. there is in one sense a chasm of difference between h'tor and h'tee. as the h'tee, i may feed on this 'difference of kind' whether being designated pet, toilet, or whatever. the chasm of difference between me and my master is erotized.



---
3113 has a theory about arousal, that the htee is aroused and it's next door to or linked with sexual arousal. 3113 is perhaps thinking of domw's example where the humiliation is public. 3113 is apparently using a theory according to which emotions are similar in the underlying physiology, but differ in virture of cognitive events. the h'tee then interprets the arousal of humiliation as sexual arousal.

3113 adds the interesting observation that the htee is receiving, typically, a LOT of attention

Those who enjoy humiliation of the kind you describe (public) are likely those who need to feel that they're getting some attention, even if it's "negative" attention (consider little children, ignored by a parent, who act up because even negative attention is attention). The object of their affection is focusing on them--and drawing everyone else's attention on them as well.

3113 is careful to link the interpretation to the specific example. i think the public aspect does perhaps suggest the htee's desire to be seen by others, but of course she may not be controlling where the events occur. shame, of course, is based on others. so it's perhaps a bit too facile, IF the htor has set it up, to suggest the htee is manipulating for attention, as opposed to genuinely feeling shame in front of others. this suggestion is that her desire to crawl away is sham, as compared with standing up and saying 'look at me and my bone.'

not limiting ourselves to domw's example greatly complicates the picture. if i receive humiliation, i receive attention. if i'm raped i receive attention, and likewise if i'm beaten up. 3113 seeming suggests there's an underlying desire for attention, manfested in humiliation episode.

i'm not sure how this would be verified. but outcomes do not supply us, invariably, with motives. it's just too facile and common stereotype to deal with events like in the famous 'mr goodbar' movie, and say, 'well, she is trying to get killed' because she does. this would seem to undercut the master's prerogative. surely she, in giving attention, is to be recognized as acting for her own ends, as least sometimes.

3113's last comment is intriguing:

Some women who feel this have no ego or pride--they are giving up nothing. What they like is the attention, as they don't usually get it. Yes?

i'm not sure why she says they may be giving up nothing. perhaps because it's not there to begin with? licking floors always came easy.
she says they like attention and don't usually get it. assuming ftsoa that nothing is given up, 3113 trots out the theory that the female htee is aroused..

does the sub 'give up' anything? this is a big topic. certainly the 'narcissistic sub' issue exists and applies to the htee as well in some cases. indeed the 'faux sub' issue exists as well. in theory and in some cases the htee may in fact be orchestrating everything.

that said, i find the 'negative attention' theory a bit too facile. for one thing it's parasitic on commonsense theory of the child and negative attention, postulated to be a stand in and substitute for positive. yet it's possible this begs the question entirely: WHY is the child into negative attention? perhaps he is already a forerunner of the tortured or humiliated adult 'pervert.' so his dynamic does not exlain the problem, so much as replicates it.
---

rg has a theory whereby the sub loses ego and is absorbed into the dom's. the sub escapes responsibility, in escaping from freedom into an authoritarian situation. the sub, he says, has only to enjoy. this has affinities with mab's views. and is likely pushed esp. on the female sub who becomes, it's claimed, an extention of the master.

this view is entirely schematic. it assumes a dynamic of sexual satisfaction that the master bestows because the sub has surrendered. as mab says, she's free of guilt. this ignores lots of obvious possibilities. the htor may choose to leave the htee aroused and UNsatisfied, for example. or satisfied in the most minimal way. the male htee being sent, AFTER the episode to jerk off into the toilet.
it can be seen that this is the opposite of what mab and rg postulate. the coming is NOT guilt or shame free, but LADEN with one or both.

===
i will close by a couple observations about the issue of love and humiliation. mabeuse seems to argue from love related surrender to an explanation of the sexual aspect of humiliation. 3113 seems focussed on the physical sensations and on the sexual side. i may not be reading 3113 correctly, but 3113 seemingly thinks the love and surrender issue is a distraction, since arousal is unaccounted for. see the paragraph i've bolded.

i think neither account, if such was intended, of the role of love is adequate. mab is stuck in a gender-centered view of 'woman's love as surrender.' her avidity for humilation flows from this. i suppose, according to him the man's love is different, being more (i'm guessing) active, eager and protective. so if i am a man, how does he explain my attraction to humiliation? is my surrender to my master not so loving, as his sub's surrender to him?

3113 seems to want to divorce love and humiliation, because 3113 has a phsyiological theory. here i'm more in the mab camp, i think. surrender, even painful surrender in love makes sense in my experience. without going on, the 3113 arousal theory ignores or downplays the cognitive mediation of arousal. if i get aroused becuase it's my lover (and master) and she hurts me, it's a bit odd to say, 'the fellow's experience is centered in his arousal, not his love.'

lots of good ideas my friends. thanks for listening.

====

dr mabeuse.

Humiliation works differently in men and women, I think. In women, it has to do with surrender to the lover, the surrender of pride, surrender of ego. It lets the lover define the boundaries of the person's self and to define them in a way as to make the victim a totally sexual, totally dependent function of the humiliater's desire.

Love is sacrifice, and we feel the depth of love in how much we're willing to give up or let someone take from us or how much we're willing to take from someone else. In sex we're forced to give up control of our sensations. In orgasm we give up control of our entire person, which is terribly threatening to some people. In BDSM we give up even more control, and in humiliation we give up control of our very concept of who we are and let the other person define us.

I also think that many women are still plagued by guilt over their sexual urges and feel that the experience of sexual pleasure deserves punishment. They're most comfortable when these urges are accompanied by punishment or degradation, so they invite this kind of thing. It can range from simple spanking all the way to the most abject kind of sex. The humiliation is essentially liberating and fulfilling.

There's another angle to it too that works for both men and women, and that's that a lot of people get a certain thrill out of being put in their place and having choice taken away from them. This is especially true for privileged people who are used to having their way, and I think it's what sends so many powerful males to dommes. (Washington DC has more professional dommes per capita than any city in the US) This 'status crush' can be a thrilling acceleration to the bottom, to a feeling of powerlessness and victimhood which is actually a kind of liberation from responsibility.

I think with your girl crawling on hands and knees, the thrill was in subsuming her ego to yours. She was constantly sacrificing herself to you, offering up her own pride as something she didn't even want to stand between you.
---
Wouldn't you agree that by giving a person power over you, you give them 'ownership' over you? You become an extension of that person rather than an independent entity. It's ultimate surrender.

If the goal of love is fusion and ego annihilation, then humiliation is like a demonstrative form of submission, burning up your pride in a visible and highly dramatic bonfire of surrender. Pride and dignity are one of the last things we have to lose when everything else is gone. Giving them up via humiliation is like the ultimate in submission.
=======
3113
I think it's actually quite simple. When people are shamed or humiliated, they experience a physical sensations. They blush (blood rushes from one part of their body to another), their stomach turns over, their heart speeds up.

This feeling is very similar to the excitement and rush of sex. It's so similar that they crave the feeling; just as some people crave extreme sports for that rush, or pain for that rush, or going to a horror movie for that rush. All these things elicit an "excitement" response in the body.

Now this excitement response can also lead to "fight/flight." And it depends on how the person was raised or what connections they've made to sexual pleasure as to whether *any* of this induces them to fight/flight or to get aroused. There are women who will run from a boxing ring, hating the sight of men beating on each other--and there are those who will get that same response--heart pounding, palms sweating--and get aroused rather than feel the need to take flight.

Also, humiliation, though it's all about denigrating a person, also puts them in the spotlight. Those who enjoy humiliation of the kind you describe (public) are likely those who need to feel that they're getting some attention, even if it's "negative" attention (consider little children, ignored by a parent, who act up because even negative attention is attention). The object of their affection is focusing on them--and drawing everyone else's attention on them as well. Dr. M. talks about sacrificing ego, but I wonder if it's not the opposite in some ways; humiliation makes one the center of attention, special and singled out. And, once again, like being put on stage, that makes the heart race faster, gives the stomach butterflies, makes the person break out in a sweat...all physical reactions similar to excitement.

Whether that kind of physical reaction is addictive and connected to sexual excitement rather than fight/flight response is up to the person, of course. My point, simply, is that the sweaty palms and pounding heart, the feeling of being the center of attention, likely gave your girlfriend a visceral feeling that was, to her, no different from the visceral feeling she'd get being kissed/caressed (which leads to sweaty palms and pounding heart, a feeling of being the center of attention, right?). And so it triggered arousal.
---
That's all well and good, Dr. M, but I have to ask...have YOU felt these things personally by being humiliated, or are you speaking of someone who's humilated others? Because you sound like the later. In which case, I don't think you really know what the former is feeling; I think you're imposing on the other what you want to believe they're doing (i.e. surrendering to you their pride) as that arouses *you*

The person being humiliated may be feeling no such thing. They may just be feeling, as I argued, the same physical reactions of excitement that others experience from extreme sports.

I'm not ignoring the idea of love here; we all surrender to love as it were, and showing someone our love--be that giving up our pride to them or just presenting them with a dozen roses, feeling their pleasure in this--can arouse us. But the question is about arousal, and arousal isn't always about feeling love.
Putting it another way, I think you're letting your manly ego, which gets excited by submission, and adores women who sacrifice, to get in the way of why a woman may feel sexually excited if humiliated. Some women who feel this have no ego or pride--they are giving up nothing. What they like is the attention, as they don't usually get it. Yes?
=================
rg graham
I'm thinking of a book I've read, Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm.

He described D/s in terms of ego. The submissive lose their ego, their sense of self, but become part of their dominant. The dominant reinforces their ego by the submissive essentially becoming a part of them.

This plays into the loss of responsibility on the part of the submissive. Their only concern is to do what their dominant lets them do. They needn't worry about responsibility. All they have to do is enjoy.

The book was mostly about how many people fear freedom and why they turn to authoritarian governments in this fear. Essentially authoritarian societies are a complex D/s relationship.
 
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Thanks to all that replied

I would like to thank all those that replied to this thread, your comments were well written and thought out and have provided me with a lot to think about. Thank you.

Dom Woolf
 
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You've got two theories here, one based on romance and one based on physicality. I am amused by the fact that a man argues for romance while a woman takes the pragmatic viewpoint.

But these two theories are not mutually exclusive, and any particular person may have a complex tangle of motivations and rationalisations guiding their actions, one from column 'A' two from column 'B'.

So DomWoolf, did this girlfriend love you, do you think?
 
. So they made her kneel down again, this time with her bust on an ottoman, her hands still tied behind her, with her hips higher than her torso. Then one of the men, holding her with both his hands on her hips, plunged into her belly. He yielded to a second. The third wanted to force his way into the narrower passage and, driving hard, made her scream. When he let her go, sobbing and befouled by tears beneath her blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only to feel someone's knees against her face, and she realized that her mouth was not to be spared. Finally they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry finery, lying on her back in front of the fire.

---
a movie exploring the degradation/masocishism issue is haneke's "the piano teacher," 2002.

Volcanic.

Watch it.

The written text is from the 'Story of O' and not 'The Piano Teacher.' You are deliberately misleading on this point and methinks it is a conscious misdirection in order to avoid copyright infringement. The Piano Teacher was more visceral and accessible; lacking a fantastical edge with the December/may flavor. Much more steeped in the 'consequences are guaranteed due to the initial act.' Sumptuous all the same. Accurate disclosure is a must. Otherwise, what exactly is your duty here ... Sir? Deceptive duplication or an accurate simulacrum?
 
aggravated:

aggrThe written text is from the 'Story of O' and not 'The Piano Teacher.' You are deliberately misleading on this point and methinks it is a conscious misdirection in order to avoid copyright infringement.
[snipped]

Accurate disclosure is a must. Otherwise, what exactly is your duty here ... Sir? Deceptive duplication or an accurate simulacrum?



pure: this is an insult. your reproduction of my posting is misleading. you may retract immediately. (this is an unofficial note; i am NOT a moderator of this forum).

aggravated's reproduction of pure:

Originally Posted by Pure
. So they made her kneel down again, this time with her bust on an ottoman, her hands still tied behind her, with her hips higher than her torso. Then one of the men, holding her with both his hands on her hips, plunged into her belly. He yielded to a second. The third wanted to force his way into the narrower passage and, driving hard, made her scream. When he let her go, sobbing and befouled by tears beneath her blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only to feel someone's knees against her face, and she realized that her mouth was not to be spared. Finally they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry finery, lying on her back in front of the fire.

---
a movie exploring the degradation/masocishism issue is haneke's "the piano teacher," 2002.


==
pure's actual posting WITH HEADING

from the story of O
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
. So they made her kneel down again, this time with her bust on an ottoman, her hands still tied behind her, with her hips higher than her torso. Then one of the men, holding her with both his hands on her hips, plunged into her belly. He yielded to a second. The third wanted to force his way into the narrower passage and, driving hard, made her scream. When he let her go, sobbing and befouled by tears beneath her blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only to feel someone's knees against her face, and she realized that her mouth was not to be spared. Finally they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry finery, lying on her back in front of the fire.

---
a movie exploring the degradation/masocishism issue is haneke's "the piano teacher," 2002.


===
it is crystal clear that the quote is from the book. and it's not copyright infringement to quote a short piece for discussion.
 
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Defiantly Love

You've got two theories here, one based on romance and one based on physicality. I am amused by the fact that a man argues for romance while a woman takes the pragmatic viewpoint.

But these two theories are not mutually exclusive, and any particular person may have a complex tangle of motivations and rationalisations guiding their actions, one from column 'A' two from column 'B'.

So DomWoolf, did this girlfriend love you, do you think?

I'd say we were in love. She was our third in our poly marriage. We were all together for about two and 1/2 years. She died a year ago January from medical complications but I would not trade those two years for the world.

She was a beautiful, loving, complex woman and I miss her every day.
Dom Woolf
 
I think a lot of people get confused when they talk about humiliation and degradation in BDSM, because many people think about whether they would feel humiliated by what the sub is doing, and if they would, they call it humiliation. But often the sub doesn't perceive it as humiliating. Oh, sure, there are subs who get off on humiliation, I'm not denying that, but that doesn't mean that every time you make someone your submissive you're humiliating him or her.

I'm a woman, and I used to have a male submissive, G. G wanted to feel owned, and he wanted to be a slave. He didn't want to only do D/S in a scene every once in awhile; he wanted to feel as if he were owned all the time. That's more than most people would sign up for, right there, and part of why most people wouldn't sign up for that is because they perceive giving up that much control to be humiliating, and they think the word "slave" and the status of slave are automatically humiliating. But we never did any humiliation -- I didn't want to give it, and he didn't want to get it, so we were in complete agreement about humiliation having no part in our relationship.

Yes, G was my property, but I treated G as if he were very valuable property, as if he were a great treasure. Neither of us perceived this as humiliating for him. Yes, he was the sub, yes, his power was intentionally lowered, but humiliating him was neither our goal nor the effect of this practice. He wanted the freedom that comes from not having to make as many choices as usual, the attention that comes with having someone else take so much notice of the detail of one's life, the sense of pride that comes with being good at something that many people perceive as difficult, and the sense of altruism that comes from giving to another. Freedom? Pride? From slavery? No, it wouldn't work that way for everybody, but yes, it did for him.

I'm a switch. I've done a lot more of the dom side than the sub side (there are very few doms that attract me, and the ones who do seem to be afraid of me -- go figure :) ), but I've been able to experiment with it a little bit here and there. As far as I can tell, every sub has his or her own take on what they're doing and why. My own personal headspace is very close to Zoot's "sacrifice" idea, and I like giving my top more than I want to give, if that makes any sense at all. But I don't give up my pride -- I feel more proud, to be able to give so much (or take so much, depending on what we're talking about). I don't do humiliation, even though some people might consider things that I've done to be humiliating if they were done by them.

J, my occasional bottom, is a switch who's into humiliation when he tops, and I asked him if he understood what the turn-on was for the sub. He said that of course it varied from person to person, but he'd gone to a presentation at a BDSM convention, where a sub who was into very serious humiliation explained what she got out of it. The short version is that she was humiliated by abusive parents throughout childhood, and being humiliated by her dom gives her two things. On the one hand, the closest thing she ever got to love as a child was from parents who humiliated her, so at some deep level, part of her mind perceives humiliation as parental love. On the other hand, the constant humiliation as a child was extremely hurtful, and one way she deals with the trauma that it caused her is to ask to be humiliated, by someone who will stop the instant she gives the word. This gives her a sense of control over her current humiliation, in an effort to take retroactive control over what she experienced in the past. Certainly I know plenty of people who were physically abused as children who like to play with pain for similar reasons.


I also agree with 3113, whose theory goes along with Schachter & Singer's classic work in the psychology of emotion. I'm sure what she said plays a role in the appreciation of all kinds of things that are usually perceived as negative; the lady is a smart cookie.
 
My contention that male and female humiliation works through different mechanisms is based on personal experience, which uses a sample set of exactly one (myself), so my theories are very probably skewed. I'm more usually dommish, and when I have played bottom, what thrill I've found in it comes from being relieved of the responsibility of having to do much of anything sexually, so I extrapolated from that to assume that most men find the primary thrill of submission to be the relief it provides from the burden of having to be the sexual aggressor and act in accordance with the usual sexual stereotype. But I always thought the same kind of ego submission occurs as a secondary sexual effect with men as it does with women anyhow. It happens naturally in orgasm whether humiliation or BDSM is involved or not.

In any case, this theory might describe how submission works but it doesn't really address humiliation, which is something else. I'll admit, I don't have much experience with hard-core humiliation. It's not something that appeals to me, being humiliated, and it has limited appeal to me as a dom, humiliating my subs.

But I have had the experience of "getting someone's number", of verbally abusing/arousing someone to the point where they were helpless in my hands, where I held the key to their arousal, and that is an undeniably powerful and terribly intimate moment. Humiliation is a way past a person's normal defenses.

Maybe that's what humiliation is in the first place, that portion of your ego that's left when all defenses have been destroyed.
 
can you clarify

doc said, It's not something that appeals to me, being humiliated, [1)] and it has limited appeal to me as a dom, humiliating my subs.

But I have had the experience of "getting someone's number", of [2]verbally abusing/arousing someone to the point where they were helpless in my hands, where I held the key to their arousal,


pure: doc, 1) seems to contradict 2). maybe you can explain. is not verbally abusing someone to the point of helplessness one way of humiliating them?
 
doc said, It's not something that appeals to me, being humiliated, [1)] and it has limited appeal to me as a dom, humiliating my subs.

But I have had the experience of "getting someone's number", of [2]verbally abusing/arousing someone to the point where they were helpless in my hands, where I held the key to their arousal,


pure: doc, 1) seems to contradict 2). maybe you can explain. is not verbally abusing someone to the point of helplessness one way of humiliating them?

Ah, I was afraid we'd get into this.

I think of humiliation and then degradation. Calling your lover various names can be humiliation, and I have no problem with that. Telling her she loves what you're doing to her and that must make her a whore, etc.; that everyone knows what she is; that you're going to expose her, things you're going to do to her; that kind of thing. That's common verbal play for me and I don't consider that extreme. In the case in question, talk like that was very effective and touched this person deeply.

Then I think of some of the more extreme forms of humiliation: floor-licking, drinking from toilets, scat play, other abjections. These are anti-erotic to me and I can't see ever engaging in them.
 
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