"You Fucking Cunt!"

I absolutely and vehemently believe that the act of deriving pleasure from degrading, slapping, choking, inflicting pain, humiliating, calling someone names, and using sex as a form of power comes from a place of low self-esteem.  It is my unwavering belief that the person who is driven to perform those sorts of acts to someone else does so to boost their own sense of self, not from a place of true power or benign sex play, but the need to objectify and demean someone else comes from a need to feel more empowered, to make themselves feel worthy, to feel superior to someone because there is something inherent in them that feels inferior.  It’s not psychologically healthy to want, need, or get pleasure from making someone else feel worthless or even inflicting pain on someone.  Conversely, it has to be said that the need to be and the act of deriving pleasure from being called names, degraded, humiliated, objectified etc., comes from an unhealthy psychological place as well.  There is something collectively wrong with our society that it creates people who both need to degrade and need to be degraded. 

Queue the entire BDSM community and people on both sides of the equation who are unwilling to look at their behaviors as unhealthy.  They will defend their behaviors as normal and rationalize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with their preferences.  Even average Sue and Sally who get aroused at being called a slut and a whore during sex will claim feminist status for this issue alone and defend her right to be choked and slapped as her right.  And it is her right.  But that doesn’t mean that it comes from a psychologically healthy place.  Western society is set up to reinforce to men who get off on degrading and humiliating women that it’s their right as manly MEN (grunt grunt) to slap women around and pull them by the hair, that it’s the way God with a penis wants things to be.   And men who desire to be subjected to degrading and humiliating behavior sexually are so conflicted that they will never acknowledge publically that is a desire or preference because that will mean that they will be seen as less than a real man.  NO ONE wants to acknowledge or give credence to the notion that there is something unhealthy, dysfunctional, or psychologically damaged about the way they view and experience sex.  No one wants to admit that, Goddess forbid, that there may be something “wrong” with them. 

I don’t think, in fact I KNOW that the fault doesn’t lie in the individual but society in general that doesn’t reinforce, teach, and structure healthy self-esteem into our children.  We, collectively, are doing something tragically and detrimentally wrong in the way we are raising our children.  We are shaming out children about sex and sexuality.  It’s manifesting itself in unhealthy behaviors behind closed doors as adults and the system is set up to keep things just as they are.  Patriarchy is unhealthy.  Corporal punishment is unhealthy.  Whatever is it that we do to raise our children where they can’t grow up to see their inherent worth, beauty, and divinity and say, “No, I don’t find it arousing to be disrespected,” or “No, I don’t need to slap, choke, or degrade someone in order to feel better about myself,” is WRONG. 

Our culture is set up to reinforce that sex is dirty and bad and wrong and shouldn’t be discussed in any way.  The entire system is set up so people refuse to acknowledge that there might be a better, healthier way to have sex and that this whole concept that WHATEVER we do is just fine as long as we don’t have a problem with it.  This puritanical, right-wing, close-minded, oppressive system of shaming people about their sexuality is set up so that even the people who like things that are sexually dysfunctional can pretend to be outraged, offended, and disgusted by even the mere mention of the word sex.  We don’t know how to determine what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy because we can’t even have a conversation about sex in any meaningful way without the slut-shamers, the bible thumping holier-than-thous, and the “I’m fine just the way I am, you can’t tell me,” contingency INSISTING that nothing is wrong with the way we are dealing with, addressing, and looking at our sexuality.  There has to be a better way. 

There IS a way to relate to each other in a healthy, enlightened, erotic, sensual way that doesn’t involve degradation and humiliation.  We can explore sexuality in a myriad of ways, far beyond vanilla, boring, unimaginative sex, that doesn’t involve the objectification of one partner to get our rocks off.   

Copyright 2013 Scottie Lowe