Shame and Humiliation

[Stella_Omega]

Thank you Shwenn, that is my understanding; it's an existential experience, and respect for it, respect for you as a social being is fundamental to the balance within the dynamic, and I can also see where that might be difficult to explain, men don't think so deeply about this, on average, as women do, I don't think.

And we do have those desires, and we too are trained to suppress them, to sublimate our Dionysian physical/psychological urges to social ends, punished for admitting them, which for both sexes often only serves to increase them to the point of madness. Women have fewer acceptable outlets, and why, re: The Story of O, the confusion over the dichotomous seeming doublespeak of submission=freedom.

And, you have experienced the fallout of all of this via its affect on several women personally, over the last couple of days.

I just adore this-- here you are, explaining things I've reiterated at least ten times.

"Great idea, boss! You're brilliant!"

 

[Safe_Bet]

And, you have experienced the fallout of all of this via its affect on several women personally, over the last couple of days.

I just adore this-- here you are, explaining things I've reiterated at least ten times.

"Great idea, boss! You're brilliant!"

Well at least you know he's read ONE of your posts.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well at least you know he's read ONE of your posts.

The power behind the throne.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Bumping my reply to Doc from the previous page;

...The shame paradigm Ive been talking about as essential to hot or dirty sex is more subtle. It simply has to do with the idea of transgressing one's own self-imposed boundaries....

Okay, this makes it all much clearer to me.

Once again, we have that definitions issue-- "self-imposed boundaries" and "shame" just mean such extremely different things to me. I would say embarrassment, humiliation, trepidation, pride, a host of terms.

So we seem to be on the same page-- even if they are written in different dialects.

 

[Shwenn]

And, you have experienced the fallout of all of this via its affect on several women personally, over the last couple of days.

I just adore this-- here you are, explaining things I've reiterated at least ten times.

"Great idea, boss! You're brilliant!"

Well, I think it's difficult for men to read about these things because it makes them feel like we consider them to be the enemy.

In many ways, they are just as victimized as we are by this mentality.

My post touches on that and it was the post xssve read and understood.

I don't think that is so very coincidental.

I don't know how he in particular feels about this but there is a lot of frustration in the male sector of society about constantly being made to feel evil and dictatorial which isn't entirely fair. And I agree to some extent that the pendulum may have swung a little further than is reasonable.

We have every right to ask men for empathy but we have got to return the favor.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well, I think it's difficult for men to read about these things because it makes them feel like we consider them to be the enemy.

In many ways, they are just as victimized as we are by this mentality.

My post touches on that and it was the post xssve read and understood.

I don't think that is so very coincidental.

I don't know how he in particular feels about this but there is a lot of frustration in the male sector of society about constantly being made to feel evil and dictatorial which isn't entirely fair. And I agree to some extent that the pendulum may have swung a little further than is reasonable.

We have every right to ask men for empathy but we have got to return the favor.

I wasn't referencing men in the generality, I'm speaking to one person in particular, about one behaivior in particular.

 

[Shwenn]

I wasn't referencing men in the generality, I'm speaking to one person in particular, about one behaivior in particular.

I know.

I'm just offering a possible explanation for that behavior.

I occasionally try to play ombudsman, though I'm not terribly successful at it.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I know.

I'm just offering a possible explanation for that behavior.

I occasionally try to play ombudsman, though I'm not terribly successful at it.

 

[AllardChardon]

Self imposed boundaries change over time. From the virgin teenage years to birthing children and beyond menstration. I have imposed boundaries, removed them and then built new ones, just to tear them down. But the time my boundaries were the highest was when I was a mother. And I was a mother to young children for 25 years. Two sets of children with a seven year gab in between kept the child rearing focus in the forefront.

Now that reproduction is no longer an issue and my youngest is 18, I am free to enjoy myself without boundaries, for a change. A wonderful time in my life. Almost as good as the free love sixties. Actually, even better.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Self imposed boundaries change over time. From the virgin teenage years to birthing children and beyond menstration. I have imposed boundaries, removed them and then built new ones, just to tear them down. But the time my boundaries were the highest was when I was a mother. And I was a mother to young children for 25 years. Two sets of children with a seven year gab in between kept the child rearing focus in the forefront.

Now that reproduction is no longer an issue and my youngest is 18, I am free to enjoy myself without boundaries, for a change. A wonderful time in my life. Almost as good as the free love sixties. Actually, even better.

Quite so-- it's very difficult to retain those highly personal desires for things like... a three-day marathon with your favorite sub ... when you have to get your five-year-old to kindergarten and nurse the baby!

 

[xssve]

And, you have experienced the fallout of all of this via its affect on several women personally, over the last couple of days.

I just adore this-- here you are, explaining things I've reiterated at least ten times.

"Great idea, boss! You're brilliant!"

Musta missed it.

Please have your people contact my people if you feel there has a been a copyright violation.

I don't know about that. I didn't think about it much at all until I started writing my stories.

No, it's complicated, something felt more on a gut level than something articulated - I probobly wouldn't have tried to articulate it myself except for the writing thing.

A number women in this position seem to feel more comfortable expressing themselves through poetry whereas many, including most men, seldom make it past the "tie me up and fuck me" part - what they do in privacy, I have no idea, I'm only going by what they present in public. i.e., just my impressions.

It was a woman, for instance, a female submissive who said: :"love is when you love yourself when you're with that person", which is to me, very possibly the best definition of love I've ever heard.

It's very stressful to be around someone who is dedicated to making you miserable, life is too short.

 

[DevilOrAngel]

LMAO Wow Joe

Winks sounds like that was from personal experience SubJoe

Humiliation - made to feel humble (lowly), often by someone wielding a whip or cattle-prod

Shame - when you find you left your wallet at home and find you can't pay for above

 

[xssve]

Self imposed boundaries change over time. From the virgin teenage years to birthing children and beyond menstration. I have imposed boundaries, removed them and then built new ones, just to tear them down. But the time my boundaries were the highest was when I was a mother. And I was a mother to young children for 25 years. Two sets of children with a seven year gab in between kept the child rearing focus in the forefront.

Now that reproduction is no longer an issue and my youngest is 18, I am free to enjoy myself without boundaries, for a change. A wonderful time in my life. Almost as good as the free love sixties. Actually, even better.

I should have more boundaries than I do probably, but the deck is already stacked against me: mid Forties raising two school age children, one of them disabled, an only intermittently ambulatory invalid myself for all practical purposes - time is not on my side. You have to love me for my mind, there ain't a whole lot else.

Ah well, I'll always have Stella - apparently.

 

[DevilOrAngel]

Shame is personal and private to me while humiliation to me is very much a public thing.

For example the shame a cheating spouse would feel going back to here not so happy home with her panties soaked from here lover's seed would be different from the humiliation of her husband finding said panties soaked when he attempted to make love to his wife upon her arrival home.

I think shame is felt by one person while humiliation is a shared experience.

 

[xssve]

A cogent distinction. What does the husband feel when he realizes he likes it?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Shame is personal and private to me while humiliation to me is very much a public thing.

For example the shame a cheating spouse would feel going back to here not so happy home with her panties soaked from here lover's seed would be different from the humiliation of her husband finding said panties soaked when he attempted to make love to his wife upon her arrival home.

I think shame is felt by one person while humiliation is a shared experience.

yeah, that's the way I see it too.

A cogent distinction. What does the husband feel when he realizes he likes it?

Perfect example! He's humiliated because he's faced with the opinon of other people, via his wife's panties, but his realisation that he likes it-- he might feel a sense of shame about that.

 

[DevilOrAngel]

Laughs it maybe the best thing to happen to their marriage cause now they have open discussion bout why she's going to other men to get sexually satisfied Damn ya'll I feel a story brewing ;-)

 

[AllardChardon]

XssVe, I do love you for your mind and I love the Doc's for the same reason. We all want to be loved for our minds. The brain is the largest erogenous zone, you know. Snare me intellectually first and then follow through...

 

[xssve]

Laughs it maybe the best thing to happen to their marriage cause now they have open discussion bout why she's going to other men to get sexually satisfied Damn ya'll I feel a story brewing ;-)

My work here is done.

(Tips hat and rides of into the sunset)

It would be interesting to see all the place this one could go, maybe we should compare notes in a day or two.

 

[xssve]

XssVe, I do love you for your mind and I love the Doc's for the same reason. We all want to be loved for our minds. The brain is the largest erogenous zone, you know. Snare me intellectually first and then follow through...

I'm trying to crawl through the monitor at this very moment...

 

[AllardChardon]

If you find a way, please tell me the secret...

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Okay, this makes it all much clearer to me.

Once again, we have that definitions issue-- "self-imposed boundaries" and "shame" just mean such extremely different things to me. I would say embarrassment, humiliation, trepidation, pride, a host of terms.

So we seem to be on the same page-- even if they are written in different dialects.

Yeah, I should have known people would get confused about the type of shame I was talking about and assume it was just heavy sexual guilt, which isn't what I meant. Well in a way it is sexual guilt, but it's so mild and minor compared to that other that it's really a different beast altogether. The stuff I mean is very subtle and is more like what Schwenn means when she talks about her limits for scat. Anyone involved in urine play is not going to have deep sexual guilt issues, but as she says, she still has limits.

That barrier of the forbidden or the taboo is where a lot of erotic energy comes from, and that's all I was saying in my central thesis. When nothing's off limits or forbidden, then you can still have sex, but I don't know if you still have the same degree of erotic energy.

But you know, we must have been talking about something important here to take up 27 pages.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Objectification & Humiliation

Thing is, I see very few subs who are really into objectification/humiliation

I'm surprised you lump objectification and humiliation together. To me, objectification means treating someone as a sexual body without a soul, while humiliation is all about psychology and character, almost the opposite. I suppose you mean that by objectifying them we humiliate them, but I don't think that's necessarily true.

One of my great current fetishes involves masks and hiding identity, which is probably objectification taken to its logical limit. Even in the world of BDSM, people seem to find the idea of masks threatening and extremely perverse, if not simply downright insulting. (I tend to fantasize about featureless masks that would render the wearer's face totally blank. Ideally they'd be able to see out through them but you couldn't see in.) Making your partner wear a mask might be humiliating to them as a person, but the sexual persona it produces is beyond humiliation because they no longer have an identity to be humiliated. They become a sexual fetish. In that sense it's totally liberating.

It's this objectification and the tension between submission and liberation I find so fascinating and erotic, and downright spooky. I've never really done this, just explored it in stories, but it seems to me to be like a logical extension of the control of D/s: control of someone's identity. The fact that they can see out lets them be a voyeur to their own seduction.

But I always thought that the objectification in BDSM was a large part of the attraction. I know that for the dom, in my case at least, the sub's passivity goes a long way toward fulfilling xssve's criteria of "loving yourself when you're with somebody" -- being selfish with their body. It's something you can't do as well if you're worried about their needs as another human being.

 

[Shwenn]

It was a woman, for instance, a female submissive who said: :"love is when you love yourself when you're with that person", which is to me, very possibly the best definition of love I've ever heard.

Probably the foremost scientific researcher on the subject of love is a woman. Her name is Helen Fisher.

I think this is really cool in my own geekazoid way:

Chemistry.com, the internet dating site, is her baby. She created it and uses it to collect data on a study she is doing on why we choose the mates we choose.

Match.com got in touch with her to ask her what makes people choose the mates they choose, in an attempt to make their own site better. She didn't have the answer but they got her thinking about it. She wanted to find out. In order to do that, she ended up creating a competitor to match.com.

They really shot themselves in the foot, there.

 

[AllardChardon]

Masks on Halloween. Very subtle, Doc.

I have always adored masks but the opportunity to wear one is limited to Halloween anymore in my neighborhood.

Masked Balls throughout the ages have afforded people the kind of
anonymity, sexual or otherwise, that thrills us to the core. It is our chance to explore the unknown as an adventurer without revealing the truth of our identity. A person can lose themselves in this masked alter ego and finally enjoy themselves without restraint.

New Orleans and Mardi Gras seem to be all that is left of this realm, publically, but I suspect there are private clubs were these things still exist.