Since we talked about abuse and BDSM lately

Evil_Geoff said:

Like any relationship - A decent partner who gives a shit, communicates, shares, guides, praises, rewards, builds up instead of tearing down, who validates and supports makes all the difference in the world.

It's the PERSON, not the lifestyle, that has made a difference in that woman's life. In this particular case, the decent person is a Dom. A lucky flip of the coin for the woman with submissive tendencies.

Don't get me wrong, I'm tickled to death at the story. But give the credit where it's due, to the people involved, not how they get their freak on.

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catalina_francisco said:

Maybe it is just me but I much prefer hearing stories of people who have chosen submission as their desired role from a position of power and informed choice, not vulnerability and straight from a relationship based on abuse which will have left them damaged and in little position to make an unbiased and unencumbered choice right for them and their future. IMW submission takes an enormous amount of strength and does not translate to someone who has been abused and needs another to take power over them. Emerging from abuse requires strength, empowerement and knowledge, not another standing by with a collar and leash and telling you this is obviously your true destiny.

Catalina

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DeservingBitch said:

I agree with pretty much everything you said in your post Cat.

But from what I got from this story -- which I admitedly skimmed rather quickly -- is that someone else than her actual Dom pointed her to the possibility that she may have submissive desires/needs, and that she discussed it with another, experienced submissive friend (the one who wrote the blog entry) before getting into her new D/s relationship.

Basically, I didn't get the impression from this blog entry that this woman went straight from an abusive vanilla relationship to a D/s one without doing some thinking and regrouping in between.

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DeservingBitch said:

I agree with pretty much everything you said in your post Cat.

But from what I got from this story -- which I admitedly skimmed rather quickly -- is that someone else than her actual Dom pointed her to the possibility that she may have submissive desires/needs, and that she discussed it with another, experienced submissive friend (the one who wrote the blog entry) before getting into her new D/s relationship.

Basically, I didn't get the impression from this blog entry that this woman went straight from an abusive vanilla relationship to a D/s one without doing some thinking and regrouping in between.

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graceanne said:

That's what I got - it seemed to me she saved herself. She was leaving her husband, under her own steam not cause she was saved. She had a friend point her to bdsm, another friend agree to keep an eye on her, and she found a dom to help her explore.

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catalina_francisco said:

If she was only at that point leaving her abusive husband, she had not reached a point of saving herself, only taking the first step to escape the situation. During that period, most abuse victims are at their most vulnerable, often meet and take on another partner or friend who is an abuser, though often in another form they do not recognise because it does not resemble their former partner on the surface. This is why many abuse victims will report a series of abusive relatonships. Until they have had time to process what they have been through, learn to recognise the patterns of abuse for what they are and in the many forms they may come in, gain the strength and confidence to stand alone, and reclaim their power and feel empowered, they remain vulnerable to the many shapes and forms of abuse and abusers within the world.

Catalina

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catalina_francisco said:

That may well be but still does not convince me she is submisive. I have had 2 friends who were formerly in abusive relatonships mistakenly believe they must be submissive, fuelled by well meaning friends telling them they also thought that must be it, only to discover after a couple of years of exploring and experimenting etc., and feeling it was who they were, it was the firtherest thing from their reality and they had to go back to square one and not only begin reworking on the recovery from the former abuse, but the remnants of D/s they had dabbled in which had in its own way left them further damaged and confused.

I think people are just too quick to jump on the band wagon of looking for a D/s related reason why a person may be vulnerable to abuse than the much more substantial empirical knowledge base around abuse and how and why people become abused. It sort of goes hand in hand with how some categorise everyone they know including family into either submissive or Dominant groupings. The world is not D/s dominated, otherwise we would not have so much resistance to it from the mainstream, and as such it is not automatic D/s roles can support why people experience life the way they do. recovering from abuse takes a long time and is a period of time when the abused remains very vulnerable to repeating the pattern and falling prey to any attempt to provide an easy explanation for what happened, even better for some if it is an excuse like saying they are naturally submissive which sort of removes any need for them to take any responsibility and thus learn how to move forward without becoming a victim again. It just delays the process of recovery.

Catalina

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graceanne said:

He said that she was living in a crappy area even though her husband was already shacked up with someone else. That tells me they were already seperated.

I agree that people should give themselves a break between ANY relationship, let along abusive relationships. But I don't get the feeling she was 'rescued'.

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catalina_francisco said:

Really? I would think that if she was living in a 'crappy' neighbourhood while her ex was not she would be feeling fairly lousy and depressed, not to mention obviously not in a great place in her life. It also provides the perfect foil for a rescuer or abuser to come in and appear to be a knight in shining armour. From reading it, all I get is that she has been told by submissive friends she is submissive and so gone with it...it is easier to find a reason for why you were abused which removes all responsibility from the abused than work through it and guard against further abuse. Who decided she needed barriers to prevent her family being so close and 'taking advantage of her'? Isolation is one of the fundamental tools of the abuser so the abused does not have a support network if they decide they want out. Who decided she needed all the other modifications in her life such as giving up smoking?

If she was already self rescued, why does it say she feels like she is in a cage with an open door just waiting to find the courage to escape? Why does it say "The way she took to the discipline of the d/s and the focus it provided her got her stable and secure in a way I had never seen her. He took care of her in quiet, straightforward ways; she commented more than once, in stunned tones, that she did things with him that the asshat ex had tried to coax and berate out of her for years." He has just been clever and found ways to get her to do things her ex could not, and play on her desire to not disappoint him as someone who has done so much for her...as it says, he took care of her (that does not mean it is a good way of taking care of).

I do not see anywhere that it says she is doing what she always wanted...only that she has been and is being guided by others to do what they feel is right for her. I can't find anything that says anything has been her choice or decision outright...just reactions to what others have suggested and she has followed...that to me is not empowered or someone who is operating under their own steam, doing what they want deep down, making their own decisions, capable of preventing further abuse in their life...quite the opposite.

Maybe he is good for her, maybe she is a submissive, but after working in the field of abuse so long it just sets off too many alarm bells for me and speaks volumes that she is still vulnerable, still under someone elses control and unaware of it or how to escape, and nowhere near ready to be a position to protect herself or make informed and independent choices. D/s and abuse both operate on a theme of power and control, only difference is that D/s is made from choice and consent, not coercion and stealth and vulnerability which so often underlies abuse.

Catalina

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Betticus said:

This hits on the biggest thing that I try to make a point of when people ask me about bdsm. That it's a trusting, nurturing relationship that goes much deeper than most vanilla ones do.

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graceanne said:

You could be very right. I just didn't get the feel - but you do have more professional experience than me. *shrugs*

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catalina_francisco said:

I am always wary of such stories of how someone from and abusive situation has been 'rescued' for want of a better word and steered in the direction of D/s under the guise that this is who they really are but just didn't know it. To me, it is often a situation of the abused being ultra vulnerable and someone exploiting that history of abuse and the subsequent mindset it places the abused in to get their own needs fulfilled. Yes, this story seems to have a positive note, but as EG said, it is about the people involved, and still does not convince me she is a submissive as much as ready and sensible enough to embrace the offer of stability within a relationship and guidance where she is not at this point in time able to provide on her own.

It could be she has a family background which poorly prepared her for handling life well, didn't teach her life skills, and left her floundering for direction and her own power and self esteem. This a submissive does not make. Leading her into believing she is submissive is not a huge step up from conventional abuse IMHO if it is not who she is, just another opportunist playing on her weaknesses and exploiting her in a way they know she will have least resistance as she has not been in the habit of being able to make her own decisions, choose her own path, fight back etc. While she may have needed to develop boundaries with faily, it might be just as true she is being set up for isolation from family which is common in abuse situations.

Maybe it is just me but I much prefer hearing stories of people who have chosen submission as their desired role from a position of power and informed choice, not vulnerability and straight from a relationship based on abuse which will have left them damaged and in little position to make an unbiased and unencumbered choice right for them and their future. IMW submission takes an enormous amount of strength and does not translate to someone who has been abused and needs another to take power over them. Emerging from abuse requires strength, empowerement and knowledge, not another standing by with a collar and leash and telling you this is obviously your true destiny.

Catalina

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Sunday, 27 January 2008
Not your usual BDSM and abuse story

I have this friend.

When I met her, she was in a marriage with a lot of partially hidden problems; those problems started coming out more blatantly as things started to fall out, through the separation, through the divorce: the extensive emotional abuse, the 'I got over my situational depression just fine, you should just cheer up out of your clinical depression and stop being such a whiner', the waving his penis in her face to demand oral sex. When they separated, he resented any suggestion that he take responsibility for her, because hey, they were broken up, that gets him out of any obligation to his wife, even though divorce paperwork wasn't even being negotiated yet, even though he wound up shacking up with "a hot redhead" and blowing vast amounts of recreational money while his wife was struggling to make rent in part because he insisted on moving to an area of the country with rampant unemployment where, furthermore, she's miserable.

I helped talk this friend through the breakup and the divorce, pointed out things that she was missing like, "Your asshat ex is really treating you very badly" and "You are being taken advantage of here". Supported her through a bad time and helped her out of the abusive situation.

And one might think that would be the end of it.

Of course, like many people who have been in abusive situations, she has done a lot of thinking about how she got into that place, what patterns there were in her life, and how she needs to change to not go there again. Which includes talking that over with a variety of her friends to try to pick things out.

And at some point, one of the people she was talking about her relationship history with, asshat ex and before, said, "You know what you sound like to me?" And said she sounded like someone who was wired up like a submissive, but who hadn't the experience or knowledge to figure out how to deal with that without turning into a doormat, and who had had partners who were willing to take advantage of that set of psychological hooks.

So she came to me, as the out submissive she knew, to talk to about this. And we talked. And after a bit of thinking, she took this fellow up on his offer to give her a grounding in managing her own submissiveness to see if she felt better for it. I got tapped, sort of, as her spotter, as someone she could talk to about the experience of being a sub, as someone to give her advice and resources, as someone who would understand things.

I watched her flower.

The joy she took in the early parts of that relationship was amazing. The way she took to the discipline of the d/s and the focus it provided her got her stable and secure in a way I had never seen her. He took care of her in quiet, straightforward ways; she commented more than once, in stunned tones, that she did things with him that the asshat ex had tried to coax and berate out of her for years.

Even the difficult times -- and there have been more than a few of those -- she has tackled with dedication and devotion, with the support of the commitments she's made and the simple not wanting to disappoint him. She's given up smoking, she's learning to draw boundaries to keep her family from taking as much advantage of her as they have in the past, she looks at the terror of having all of her emotional issues in relationships coming up faster and hitting harder than they have in the past and says, "This time, I'm going to work through this shit."

And she has patterns to work through and break, and is utterly frustrated by them at times, and is working on building up the capacity to choose, to act freely rather than constrained by fears and phobias and the scars of past damage. She talks at times about feeling like she's in a cage with the door open, and is trying to work up the guts to escape so she can be with him.


And so when I see people going on about the abuses of BDSM, I find myself thinking of her, and the way she's been building herself away from being readily abuseable by dealing with someone who respects who she is and how she responds.

(This post was written with her permission, her dom's okay, and her pre-posting approval.)

Posted by Dw3t-Hthr at 15:07

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Netzach said:

sometimes you may make me stamp and shout, but sometimes I really really heart you, like now.

I basically feel like the second post in the comments, you know, the rain on parade one.

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