Why do they lump BDSM together?

: ) You want the last word on this, don't you.

Athalia said:

I ran across a story on this site that describes my attitude quite well:

http://www.literotica.com/s/helens-night-in

It's about a woman who's into self-torture as a way of being in pain, yet being in control of that pain. I can't say that I ever took it as far as Helen did, but I was certainly part of the way there.

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I bet you thought this thread was dead, didn't you.

Inspired by "Helen's Night In," I wrote a story with that subject. The URL is

http://www.literotica.com/s/the-path-of-pain

I'm happy to see that the story has scored well. It has even eclipsed "Helen's Night In" which surprised me. More on that later.

It took a long time to get posted. It was first rejected because two paragraphs were too long. Then it was rejected because the intensity of the torture seemed to violate the rules of the site. However, after I pointed out that the torture was absolutely voluntary and that no lasting damage was done, the moderators approved the story without further ado, for which I thank them.

I'd submitted for the category "BDSM" because of the pain theme, but the moderators chose instead to put it into the "Fetish" category. I'm still scratching my head about that, but concede that it can go there as well. Perhaps the mods agree with the contention that you can't have masochism without sadism, and the lack of the dom/sub relationship makes it ineligible for the BDSM category.

About the scoring: On this site, the story has the highest score of any that I've ever posted. I posted the story on another site which has most of the stories I've posted here. On that site, it received the second lowest score of any I've posted. (The lowest score went to a torture-themed story that was far too extreme for this site, so it won't show up here.) I can only conclude that either the Literotica crowd is a more sophisticated crowd that appreciates the psychosexual portrait that I painted, or that the other site's readers were used to a more hard-core type of story that mine didn't measure up to, and psychosexual analysis be damned. I dunno.

I personally knew a serial killer - now deceased - who as far as I understand killed at least three relatively young and good-looking women.

He was one of the most fascinating people I have ever met and extraordinarily intelligent too - BUT also clearly suffered mental problems that every now and then showed up as complete loss of memory about certain things, events, time periods.

At the time I knew him I did not know that he was actually a killer although he did make references to killing and torture in what he talked about and said. Towards the end of his life I suspected him of being either a killer or at minimum linked possibly by way of some sexual involvement with a killer and so I trod very carefully with him.

He outright told me once that he had battled with certain 'deadly issues' in his own psychology the whole of his life and had been able to exert quite a lot of self-control, but not complete self-control over these urges.

This man was a little unusual in that he was normally very urbane and polite and possessed a lot of experience and sound knowledge about a lot of interesting things.

If you knew him a bit you could see that he suppressed this constant urge to transgress, and it was the kind of urge to always enact a towering transgression that would make the normal person's jaw drop. I realized though, that he was not being bombastic or just saying things, but he was likely actively DOING some of them outside the sight of authority.

I think he was incapable of normal feelings - I saw signs that it wasn't all about some 'mere' fetish personality; he was genuinely lacking in emotional feedback on many many fronts.

Personally I really liked the guy and I also admired him because he seemed to have a sense of protecting his own ego and personality even though I am very sure that intellectually, he knew he was someone who did bad and wrong things. He told me so in so many words and I think I do believe him and did believe him even at the time. At the time, deep down inside I suspected there was something pretty bad going down, but then, I never actually saw anything factual that equated to actual murder, so I can't think what I could have done to avert anything. He had a respectable position in banking, I had a responsible position in an economic consultancy firm - there was the 'realism' of normal life to think of.

Except that 'normal' life, was far off the mark of actual reality! As it turned out.

People often employ the words 'psychological' or 'psychosexual' when it comes to things that include different or even bizarre dealings with pain that some individuals have.

However, 'pathological' is the word that I would use in the same contexts. My friend - and I do consider him in some respects a friend (I think he saved my life once in the business sense and maybe even once in the outright sense) - suffered, along with his victims.

He suffered. There was nothing even vaguely 'fetish'-ist or BDSM about him and his life and practices, although he did use those phrases - incorrectly, I consider.

There are borders and lines that people these days think one can cross and not ever be challenged about those significant transgressions involved. The borders and lines are where the human statistically normative links between pain and sexual pleasure become totally cut and then substituted with bald assertions about the validity of 'other' links to sex and pleasure or emotional response, let's say.

And this happens because so many more people get a chance to speak and to be heard these days - if only via the internet. But such people cannot insist that they are somewhere on a bell curve. They are not on it at all.

There's going to be a while yet before a new and better definition appears for someone sticking fifteen needles through their nipples - other than either fetish OR BDSM. A while yet before people are going to accept to live with being okay about self-medicating or self-treating a serious pathology, and refraining from distracting the world of fetish and/or BDSM.

Meanwhile, the story of Antipas of Pergamum is worth bearing in mind - the one about some zealot in ancient times who was roasted alive inside a brass bull which seemed to come to life and bellow when the victim trussed up within died horribly.

Apparently the citizens of Pergamum also gave five stars to the priests of the 'golden' bull, cheering on their urges to find the next victims.

...I notice nobody has instituted this estimable 'religious' consecration anywhere on or in any country anywhere in the entire modern world, except of course for possibly in North Korea, which is roundly thought of as led by a nutcase with too easy access to flamethrowers.

Possibly Kim Jong Un IS a fetishist or into the more extreme and extravagant BDSM practices than the 'norm.' But only in a South Park episode!

And I guess my point is directed at these words of Athalia: "being in control of the pain."

No. I don't think control is the correct word or the correct concept.

My friend also thought he was 'mostly' in control of his own condition.

Throwing yourself off the Niagra Falls in a barrel because you survived the last time you did it, is not 'being in control' of the tumultuous circumstances of falling. Jumping off a tall building does not mean that you are actually flying until you hit the pavement.

I don't personally have a problem with the word 'demonic.' Sanskrit classicists would say - and I have heard them say it about this kind of thing - that the story I just read was demonic.

'Demonic' being an inability to get away from or change some impulse that is not fully rational and is also positively harmful. A fractured or kaleidoscopic sense of realities, may be 'rational' strictly within the lense you're looking through to see only the broken pieces of colored glass, but not on a broader basis. 'Demonic' is a sort of a trap; a trapped way of thinking that causes harm and suffering as a starved response to a vacuum of emotion or pleasure responses.

'Psychosexual?' No. Pathological.

Desiremakesmeweak said:

And I guess my point is directed at these words of Athalia: "being in control of the pain."

No. I don't think control is the correct word or the correct concept.

My friend also thought he was 'mostly' in control of his own condition.

Throwing yourself off the Niagra Falls in a barrel because you survived the last time you did it, is not 'being in control' of the tumultuous circumstances of falling. Jumping off a tall building does not mean that you are actually flying until you hit the pavement.

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I was the editor of this story, and Athalia and I went the round with this discussion. At first, my reaction was somewhat like yours. She convinced me that the subject was indeed in control, and that it made a big difference in the way the story is presented. It is true that Elise is a kind of pain junkie, looking for the next fix, and probably couldn't walk away from her ritual without some therapy, so in that sense it's pathological. But Elise carefully calculates the risks, does what she can to minimize them (using sterile equipment, sanitizing the skin, etc.) and wouldn't vary the ritual without doing some research on what uncertainties that variation would bring up. So, in that sense, she feels in control.

I think it might be like skydiving, a subject I actually know something about. If you screw up, you die. So you go to great lengths not to screw up, by relying on weather reports, by checking your gear (some of us get certified to actually pack our own 'chutes to eliminate that variable), acquainting yourself with your drop zones from the ground, and so on. That's a very different situation from going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

When Athalia first sent the story to me, I said "This isn't an erotic story, it's a psychological portrait of a very sick woman." I had my reservations that it would meet with much acceptance on this site. (Frankly, I said that it was too good for this site.) Considering the score, I may have been wrong about that.

The attraction of the story is that there aren't any real answers to the question of whether she's in control or not. Athalia didn't want there to be easy answers; she said that an important component of the story is that the reader ask himself or herself the question and answer it in their own way.

Having said what I said, however, I am nevertheless one of those in the 'I want to hear about/from the WHOLE ENTIRETY of whatever is out there,' category.

This particular story read to me like a psychology doctorate's template for some extreme-ish subject or case study.

And I would also consider it inclines towards 'fetish' rather than BDSM. But I mean hey, these things all pose difficulties as far as neatly categorizing goes.

Desiremakesmeweak said:

Having said what I said, however, I am nevertheless one of those in the 'I want to hear about/from the WHOLE ENTIRETY of whatever is out there,' category.

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Thank you for your comments, Desire. (And thanks to Jehoram for his contribution, as well.) I didn't want to tell the story in that great a detail because I preferred to leave that part of Elise's psyche a mystery. I think I told just enough to explain where she was coming from, and what led her to be kneeling in front of that mirror, without overloading the story.

This particular story read to me like a psychology doctorate's template for some extreme-ish subject or case study.

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That's what my editor said, too. I took it as a compliment, because it assured me that I had made the character real. If I had portrayed her as the tortured soul she surely was, I made the connection with the reader that I intended to. Believe me, I wrote and re-wrote the story many times, trying to figure out how much detail I needed in order to make the story persuasive.

And I would also consider it inclines towards 'fetish' rather than BDSM. But I mean hey, these things all pose difficulties as far as neatly categorizing goes.

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You're certainly right about the fetish aspect. I had originally thought that "fetishes" were reactions to objects or situations that were not sexual in and of themselves...underwear, toes, spanking, and so on...but became sexualized to the point where a climax cannot be obtained without them. Elise's needles certainly qualify. But so do alligator clips, ropes, ice, candle wax, and other ordinary household objects when used to cause immobility and pain for sexual purposes. And most people would have no problem with putting such activity into the BDSM category. So It was a coin-toss, really. I went with BDSM because of the pain context, but it could have gone the other way as well, particularly if a dom/sub relationship was critical for the BDSM category.