Reactive invalidation by others shows up a lot when someone experiences a sex act that makes them feel bad.
People are afraid of kink-shaming, others are afraid of being judged, sometimes everyone gets up in their feelings about something even if the situation has nothing to do with them.
And it’s because they feel attacked if someone is judging a sex act or dynamic that they themselves enjoy or appreciate.
This dynamic doesn’t only show up regarding sex acts either, I see it a lot whenever a discussion about age-gap relationships shows up.
Well, my age-difference relationship isn’t bad. You aren’t experiencing problems because of the age gap but because the other person is bad.
My parents met when my mom was 15 and my dad was 19, and they were happily married for 53 years!
Sex and attraction is where our subconscious reigns and can even reflect childhood triggers.
So it’s no wonder people get really protective about the things they like.
A lot of what people like, in some way, explores a power differential.
I remember reading an AMA from a necrophiliac and was blown away to discover that a lot of the appeal of it for him was subconsciously the idea that as a corpse, this ‘person’ wouldn’t reject him, that he had complete power and control, etc.
An extreme end of the power differential is degrading or objectifying one party in the dynamic.
There’s sex play that literally turns the submissive into a piece of furniture for the dominant to rest their feet on.
And this is why aftercare is so extremely important in the BDSM community
…because at the end of this ‘play’ is a time for connection where the submissive is assured that the dominant does actually see them as a person and cares for them, and the submissive reassures the dominant that they aren’t a ‘bad person’ because the submissive wanted to surrender in those ways.
Regardless of what we said to each other, you’re a human being and I see and care about you.
This is about to be an unpopular opinion, but I think BSDM can be a trap for child victims of abuse.
When you were raised and conditioned to associate “love” with someone who was selfish, someone who reduced your in your own humanity to serve their needs, someone who powered over you over and over, it is hard to psychologically untangle that wiring.
Finding someone who does that can light up your limbic system like you’ve won a jackpot at a casino, and tie that to our sexual system, means that ‘you in danger, girl’.
BDSM promises a way to have your cake and eat it, too. To meet the desires of your subconscious, the dark cravings it is hard to bring to the light and admit exist, but in a safe way.
But the trap here is that the people who are most desirous of these dynamics are often the people least able to assert themselves and communicate/set boundaries with a partner.
Because they’ve learned that love is to erase themselves.
Codependency is the chronic neglect of self in order to gain approval, love, validation, or self-identity through another person.
So people with bad boundaries get involved with something that is the psychological equivalent of a loaded gun, and they have no idea how to engage the safety, nor the capacity to do so. So they engage in acts of degradation, objectification, of training, of bearing physical and emotional pain, not only because it mirrors what they have learned love is, but they are (usually subconsciously) attempting to gain love through their submission.
The more I participate in my own degradation, the more I ‘prove’ to you that I belong to you, that I ‘love’ you.
Child victims of abuse haven’t learned that ACTUAL love is patient, kind, supportive, centers them as a seen and whole human being. What they’ve learned about is ownership and possession and submission to what diminishes their soul as love.
And so re-creating this dynamic soothes their psychological conditioning, but can leave them feeling empty and hollow, depending on who they are ‘playing’ with.
It’s no secret that abusive people are attracted to BDSM and kink communities, because they can satisfy themselves in plain sight. A truly abusive person is powering over someone else at that person’s expense and for their own benefit. What makes it tricky in the BDSM community is how often the person in a position of power-down wants this, but subconsciously can harbor the idea that their submission is beautiful and will be cherished by the other, and therefore they themselves will be seen as beautiful and cherished by the other.
In a ‘true’ BDSM dynamic, the submissive actually holds the power.
To stop the other person when things get too much, when it’s outside their boundaries, when they need assurance that they are actually valued and seen by the other person as a whole human being.
But if you don’t know your boundaries?
If you’ve disconnected from your feelings in order to tolerate the abuse dynamic in which you grew up? If you don’t even know what it is like to be seen and valued as a whole human being?
This person is at the mercy of a dominant who may or may not care about them as a person, who may or may not solely be focused on getting what they want from another person.
The longer I’ve done research, the more I see how so many of the ways we harm each other are based in reducing someone else in their humanity so that we can get or do what we want instead of feeling badly about it.
BDSM centers this and plays with it, and taboos are often where our cravings exist.
I think instead of acting as if the BDSM framework is neutral, and invalidating people who struggle with their experiences with it, it’s important to recognize that the very nature of it is to get as close as possible to the worst ways humans treat each other without actually harming each other.
And also to recognize that many people will not be able to ‘play’ in this construct, because it takes a whole recognition of self and another.
The conversation around it shouldn’t be that it’s ‘only a kink’, it should be ‘this is balancing on the edge of a psychological knife in pursuit of intensity and exploring darkness, and isn’t for most people’.
Most people cannot handle power.
…because most people are selfish and will pursue their desires at the expense of others. Most people will reduce others in their humanity and will justify their ‘desires’ as needs.
Someone struggling with a BDSM experience doesn’t need to be told ‘it wasn’t BDSM, you just had a bad dominant’, they need to be reaffirmed that they were harmed.
They don’t need #notallBDSM. They don’t need to be made to feel that they were deficient in some way because they ‘chose’ the wrong person or didn’t stop it or whatever.
This is victim-blaming, even if unintentionally, and it doesn’t respect the reality of the dynamic.
That BDSM is dangerous.
Hopefully this makes sense. I’ve avoided the topic for many years because I wasn’t quite able to articulate where the gap was between concept and practice, and because many victims of childhood abuse truly want to engage in BDSM,
but there are so many people who experience damage on a soul level with it and have no idea why.