Is BDSM Sexual?
» BDSM, D/s, S&M: Speculations
(A nasty foot inflammation forces me to stay away from the PC or I’d have surely worked on this one a bit more. Of course, an inflammation of the lazy bone might have stopped me anyways.)
Sex is 90% mental. The other half is physical.
- Me, distorting a famous saying about baseball
(The downside of having written so much in so many places that sometimes I forget if I recently discussed some aspect of kink here.)
Very rarely have I fantasized about having an orgasm during BDSM play.
My kinky fantasies preceded masturbation. The elemental burst doesn’t encompass pain or surrender. (The first time I read a story with a slave having an orgasm I felt weird as though I was reading some alien text. The only reason I ever tried working an orgasm into a BDSM fantasy was because I read some other story.)
Plain bafflement was all I felt the first time I read a guy describing BDSM as asexual. I had great trouble believing him. Still do.
Perhaps a failure of empathy but I am unable to imagine exercising sadism, masochism, dominance or submission without a sexual component. I’m sorry but without sexuality it is difficult for me to believe that bottoms could undergo much of what they experience. Or how tops can become so motivated without their acts being powered by the dynamo of sexual need or desire.
Maybe it is a lexical failing. An assumption about what constitutes sex. Perhaps the impoverished belief that sex is about physiological orgasms. A belief I tend to think of as belonging only to limited and banal minds.
Perhaps replacing the word sex with the seemingly more diffuse word erotic will enlarge our sense of the emotional space?
Masochism
Voluntarily experiencing pain has to be split in at least two ways.
Consensual pain can be a sensual treat. The lash cuts into your flesh. It hurts but it also sends strange passionately experienced warmth through your body. Under the hands of a skilled sadist, given the synchronicity of desires it can become intoxicating.
Or it just hurts. With all your heart you strive to please the sadist by coping with your suffering. Often you struggle to offer your suffering to please her. Would you do that if there were no passion for her? And can that passion honestly be devoid of Eros?
(I can imagine other motivations, including accepting it as a form of vanity or strength. Or to please someone you do care for. The first is a special case. The latter fits fine with the preceding paragraph.)
Submission
You abolish your ego; forgo your own will. If in a personal context between two people can you imagine the motivating power to be anything other than the force of erotic need?
For an individual to modify his behavior for another takes more than an abstraction. And in the context of BDSM that must surely have an erotic root.
Erections
In the context of kink, a worthless indicator of sexual response. I - and I know this is true of plenty of similar guys - don’t always have them. Though kicking my penis is sure to engorge it.
More than one female top has had to learn that a flaccid penis is not a sign of failure.
Comments
A nasty foot inflammation forces me to stay away from the PC
Silly, that’s why you use the laptop while you’re lying on the sofa.
“Perhaps a failure of empathy but I am unable to imagine exercising sadism, masochism, dominance or submission without a sexual component. I’m sorry but without sexuality it is difficult for me to believe that bottoms could undergo much of what they experience. Or how tops can become so motivated without their acts being powered by the dynamo of sexual need or desire.”
Now you’re getting into the realm of the Freudian/Jungian depths of the psyche. I’ve seen this topic tossed back and forth on various groups, and while some people claim that it’s not a sexul feeling, I think that what they’re saying is that they’re simply not being sexual at that time. However, we know that certainly we can forgo the orgasmic or explicitly sexual part of the experience for hours or days.
I have this idea that most BDSMers are hesitant to admit to such a strong link because it’s too easy to be seen as “perverted” for eroticizing a D/s dynamic.
Posted by: Tom Allen | September 5, 2007 10:48 AM
How I wish I could afford a laptop. Had I one this problem wouldn’t have even arisen.
(I’ll respond to the rest when I’m able.)
Posted by: Richard | September 5, 2007 11:25 AM
“I have this idea that most BDSMers are hesitant to admit to such a strong link because it’s too easy to be seen as “perverted” for eroticizing a D/s dynamic.”
It took me a minute of staring at this comment in bewilderment to figure out what you meant, Tom. I look at an idea like this and all I can think is “… Huh? How is eroticizing a D/s dynamic perverted?”
But then I remembered the bit about D/s being mistakenly equated with non-consensual power exchange. I forget that people actually make that equation.
Posted by: Eileen | September 5, 2007 3:56 PM
The stuff about erections - yeah. I was surprised in my first few scenes with Joscelin that he’d lose his erection early and it would never come back. (These days, I keep the scenes a bit more sexy for him and he’ll be erect on and off.)
For me, giving pain is very sexual. Taking pain is sexual in motivation, but it’s not always erotic in the moment. I get wet sometimes but definitely not always. Sometimes it just feels more like a challenge or whatever.
But hitting someone? That is just unequivocally hot for me. Weird :-)
Posted by: devastatingyet | September 5, 2007 9:33 PM
“…how tops can become so motivated without their acts being powered by the dynamo of sexual need or desire.”
“But hitting someone? That is just unequivocally hot for me.”
See, for me, the hitting and the hurting aren’t “hot” per se, but exciting in a different way. I’ve described it before as a feeling of vicious glee.. There are elements of heady power and control, and of course being violent can be a wonderful release of sorts.
But I can’t say it’s ever got my knickers wet.
Posted by: almost.. | September 9, 2007 11:40 AM