Shame and Humiliation

[AllardChardon]

Personally, I think sex can be a violent act, and so much the better. Rough sex is just fine.

But sex as a violation. No, it has never been that for me. I have always welcomed penetration. Needed it desperately, at times. Women are, by design, penetratable in more ways than men. Hooray for that! I revel in it!

We all have our own 'space' around ourselves and if we like someone, we let them in and if we don't, well, we do not let them in. Once inside the space, the possibility for penetration gains ground. If nothing goes wrong during this courtship dance, then it is off to the races.

As a woman, I feel like I enfold my lover in my arms and we soar away on the heavenly sensation of flesh on flesh. No violation. Only desired penetration.

 

[Safe_Bet]

Triple post! I'm so ashamed!

Hey, I think you should be allowed as many posts as the number of multiple orgasms you can achieve. Go for the six-pack BABE!!!


P.S. This would also apply to the old ass impotent fucks that haven't come for the last twenty years. See ya JBSJ!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Personally, I think sex can be a violent act, and so much the better. Rough sex is just fine.

But sex as a violation. No, it has never been that for me. I have always welcomed penetration. Needed it desperately, at times. Women are, by design, penetratable in more ways than men. Hooray for that! I revel in it!

We all have our own 'space' around ourselves and if we like someone, we let them in and if we don't, well, we do not let them in. Once inside the space, the possibility for penetration gains ground. If nothing goes wrong during this courtship dance, then it is off to the races.

As a woman, I feel like I enfold my lover in my arms and we soar away on the heavenly sensation of flesh on flesh. No violation. Only desired penetration.

I remember being on top of a guy, looking down at this very pretty, youthful face all lost in sensation. While I was thinking how much of a vampire I was feeling, his face twisted and he suddenly said; "Take it, bitch!" Without even thinking about it, I laughed and said; "You can't hurt me, little boy!"

 

[CharleyH]

Then Doc, as i've said a number of times-- you've redefined the word. 1.
1. A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.
2. Capacity for such a feeling: Have you no shame?
2. One that brings dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.
3. A condition of disgrace or dishonor; ignominy.
4. A great disappointment.

Yes, I too agree that all sex is violational. Yes, yes and again yes.

Yes, indeed sex makes one or the other partner vulnerable, sometimes both. yes indeed, passionate sex can be more terrifying, have longer repercussions than unemotional sex.

Yes indeed, I know all about the urge to own or be owned. yeah, but why oh why oh why do you insist that these dynamics are all covered under this one single word? Why is it so important to you to reject all the other possible nuances out there?
Um, yeah in so many ways it is-- considering the straitlaced Victorian era the book was written in, and the plethora of really weird ideas prevalent at the time!
See, now-- that's just insulting and tells me you are not reading anyone else's posts. If you want respect, give respect.

I am going to have to read all of this more thoroughly, but ... why as a Dom can't Doc redfine any word that's personal to him as he wants to pleasure him and his sub?

 

[xssve]

As I've mentioned in other threads, males typically venerate the act of penetration: to be the penetrator is to be strong, to be penetrated is to be weak. In many ways, out entire culture is built around this metaphor, from spears to ICBM's, we reckon our strength by our ability to penetrate - the skies with our rockets and missiles, the enemy with our bullets and bombs, women with our penis's.

Thus, the act of being penetrated is the most shameful thing a man can endure (theoretically) - it implies helplessness, passivity and weakness.

Still, this largely a masculine point of view, women express their power in other ways - in a sense, the vagina consumes the penis, engulfs, drains it, and then nurtures the result.

This is also not an uncommon masculine fear, the fear of being consumed, weakened, unmanned, vagina dentata, etc.

In a very real sense, I believe these abstractions lie at the heart of the often rancorous sexual politics that are definitive of human culture: as long as there is history, cultural assumptions reflect either the masculine penetration principle (conservatism, today), or the nurturing feminine principle, whose price is the sublimation of masculine energy and independence to support the nurturer - liberalism, in this instance.

This, of course, is a very rough division, there are overlaps, and there are pockets where a healthy balance is struck.

The religious right is obsessed with the fertility principle, but fearful of mythical feminine voracity - the world view of the religious right is one of struggle with constant temptation, which they project onto the other - i.e., if they condone homosexuality, everybody will end up gay, and we'll all be fucking in the streets, etc., but this is a personal tempation, the argument similar to saying that if we distribute clean needles, everybody is going to run right out and get hooked on heroin.

Still, to repress a desire is to strengthen it, the harder one represses it, the more compulsive it becomes, and the more subversive those who go about it "gaily" (carefree and uninhibited), the external symbols of that internal temptation become, and the more rancorous the denunciations.

It's really a parallel system with basic Darwinian behavioral adaptations, a ghostlike, abstract symbolic overlay of magical thinking which masks some very practical evolutionary underpinnings: exclusivity in pair bonding (which birth control threatens - pregnant women are more economically dependent), as well as economic considerations; religions as institutions operate as vehicles of group fitness, and facilitate cooperation through common behaviors, some practical, some abstract artifacts of religion's paleolithic heritage.

I suppose I'm getting off topic again, but I wanted to address certain issues that VM raised w/regard to religion as group of individuals with common spiritual values, and religion as a social institution (corporate religion).

Shame and worse, is very much a tool of social control for corporate religion, I've seen people hounded to suicide in order to preserve the "natural order", and I'm afraid this works whether you share these beliefs or not: social ostracization is itself stressful to the point of madness and death - man was not meant to be alone.

I think this may be why people who practice BDSM and PE are more mentally healthy than the vanilla population (see the recent Australian study), as they confront these shame and control issues directly and indirectly, gaining power over them, instead of allowing themselves to be manipulated by status quo socio-sexual politics that often disproportionately benefit a self elected few, and almost always comes at someone else's expense.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I am going to have to read all of this more thoroughly, but ... why as a Dom can't Doc redfine any word that's personal to him as he wants to pleasure him and his sub?

"There's glory for you!"
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,' " Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master—that's all."

 

[CharleyH]

"There's glory for you!"
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,' " Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master—that's all."

Ah, the looking glass! It's not quite the same as Wonderland. I see your point, though, clearly.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Ah, the looking glass! It's not quite the same as Wonderland. I see your point, though, clearly.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

So have we resolved this issue, now? Being one of those in a long term relationship where all this was resolved before a few of you were born . . .

 

[Stella_Omega]

So have we resolved this issue, now? Being one of those in a long term relationship where all this was resolved before a few of you were born . . .

Linguistics and etymology?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Yeah, I'll chalk it up to Exxsv's post about being penetrated as opposed to being engulfed. I think that's at the heart of it.

I was just trying to describe it as it looks to me. Obviously it doesn't look this way to everyone, or maybe even to many.

 

[Corylea]

The inside of your head is an interesting place, Doc. I may not always agree with you, but I always find you interesting. (Sometimes I wonder if you're playing Devil's Advocate, just to encourage conversation, but I guess not in this case; your position has been awfully consistent.)

I want to chime in here and say a few things.

On the other hand, I believe that all sex is in some sense, maybe just a subconscious sense, violational. Even in the most loving sex, someone pokes and someone gets poked; someone pitches and someone catches, and this is a subtle source of guilt and shame, power and weakness.

Xssve had a good analysis of this and has said much of what I would have said, so I'll just add this. Look at the metaphor you used, of pitching and catching. In actual baseball, the pitcher has more power in the situation, since he decides when the pitch will be thrown, and the catcher has to wait for that. But that doesn't make the catcher weak, and I'd be astonished if the catchers in professional baseball said they felt the slightest shame or guilt for catching. Well, extend that metaphor to sex, and it's just the shame -- there's no shame in being the catcher. I have fucked both women and men and been fucked by both women and men, and while I agree that being the penetrative partner has a different feel to it than being the penetrated partner, I never felt as if I were better or more valuable in one role than in the other, and I never felt that being the receptive partner was inherently shameful.

Then again, pleasure makes a temporary slave of someone; orgasm makes us weak. [...] Just to make someone orgasm is enough to embarrass them, which is probably something we've all experienced.

Very interesting worldview. My experience of most men is that they seem proud when they come, almost like an 18-month-old on the toilet: look what I made!

Loving someone can be humiliating enough if it's not reciprocated.

Hmm. I have loved someone without reciprocation just recently, as you know, and I'd say that while it can certainly be painful, the pain is not necessarily humiliation.

For me, when you're talking about sex you're basically talking about this subtle kind of violation, so the notion of shame is inherent in your words. The idea of seduction means surrender of autonomy which is ultimately, viewed objectively, depowering. Someone conquers someone. [...] I don't know. No doubt you guys are thinking of a more wholesome, sex-positive type of thing. More of a partnership and less a competition.

Doc, I get the sense that sex is usually a competition in your mind, yet I'd be surprised as all hell if you turned out to be a rapist. In what sense is sex a competition when both parties consent?

 

[Stella_Omega]

In what sense is sex a competition when both parties consent?

When they consent to compete... like any other sport.

 

[Corylea]

When they consent to compete... like any other sport.

*laugh* Good one!

You mean there's anybody you have to actually compete with -- they don't all just lay it at your feet? *grin* *tease*

 

[AllardChardon]

Catcher/Pitcher, Engulfment/Penetration? Ah yes, like electrical outlets, things work best when there is a male and a female, so to speak. Viva La Differance!

 

[Safe_Bet]

Catcher/Pitcher, Engulfment/Penetration? Ah yes, like electrical outlets, things work best when there is a male and a female, so to speak. Viva La Differance!

Ummmm... no.

 

[Corylea]

Catcher/Pitcher, Engulfment/Penetration? Ah yes, like electrical outlets, things work best when there is a male and a female, so to speak. Viva La Differance!

Er, could we make this a "for you" comment? Queerfolk find that one of each isn't necessary.

 

[Stella_Omega]

*laugh* Good one!

You mean there's anybody you have to actually compete with -- they don't all just lay it at your feet? *grin* *tease*

Omigod yeah, and it's such a turnon to... lose.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Omigod yeah, and it's such a turnon to... lose.

Are there innings? Downs? Chuckers? Do you get different numbers of points for any given act?

Once again, I am totally in the dark, Vanilla Straight Guy that I am.

 

[Corylea]

Omigod yeah, and it's such a turnon to... lose.

*ahem* Have I mentioned that I'm very tall and weigh quite a lot? I'm not super-strong, but my reach and weight advantage over most women is quite large.

 

[Corylea]

Vanilla Straight Guy that I am.

I have read some of your stories, and you LIE! You're not always Mr. Vanilla Straight Guy. At least, in your imagination, you're not.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I have read some of your stories, and you LIE! You're not always Mr. Vanilla Straight Guy. At least, in your imagination, you're not.

Are you kidding? No tattoos, no piercings, thinning grey crew cut, pale blue eyes, gold rimmed glasses and the only black leather I have is my wallet, shoes and a belt. Monogamous, stay-at-home, academic orchid lover . . . with a strong sense of the rediculous. If that makes me kinky . . .

 

[AllardChardon]

Yes, "for me" it works best with the opposite sex. I meant no disrespect. Live and Let Live is a good motto to live by.

 

[Corylea]

Yes, "for me" it works best with the opposite sex. I meant no disrespect. Live and Let Live is a good motto to live by.

Whatever floats your boat, indeed!

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Yes, "for me" it works best with the opposite sex. I meant no disrespect. Live and Let Live is a good motto to live by.

But, but . . . you don't live within reach!