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