Hello, it's Aria. When I write blog posts, I normally do it in a silly visual novel format. But today, I'm just using text, because I want to talk about a sensitive topic. It's something that's difficult to talk about, but important to me.
This text is about nonconsensual sexual situations, specifically those where your own consent is violated. However, it's not about real-life sexual assault or harassment. There are some people who imagine these situations, and inflict them on their imagined selves. There are some people who translate these situations into consensual roleplay, acting them out with a trusted partner. There are some people who write these situations into fictional stories. In other words, the violation of consent is situated outside of reality: in someone's imagination, as the backdrop for consensual roleplay, or in a fictional world. That's the kind of scenario I want to talk about.
I'm not someone who thinks that just because it's fictional, or just because you agreed on it with a partner, or just because it's only in your head, that it's automatically okay. When I was younger, I often thought that way, because it comforted me. But that view is too naive. These situations can really hurt people even if they're one step removed from the real world.
At the same time, I think the opposing view, that these thoughts are inherently harmful or morally wrong, is overly myopic. Some people say that if you habitually imagine your consent being violated in a sexual context, this means you're callously fetishizing the experiences of sexual assault survivors. I can sympathize with this view, and I think some people are certainly careless about how they discuss this topic. (I am being careful not to use unpleasant terminology like "rape fantasy" or cutesy shorthands like "noncon" in this text.) But I think it's reductive to assume this always applies. Thoughts like this can arise from varied and complex circumstances.
I've also seen people say that these thoughts inflict trauma, or can "retraumatize" a person in cases where the thoughts stem from trauma, and you should try to purge them. Indulging them in any way, like through writing or reading fiction, or recontextualizing them as consensual roleplay, or even just accepting them within yourself, is therefore harmful. I agree that these thoughts can be traumatizing, and can hurt you severely before you even understand that you've been hurt. But I believe, or want to believe, that you can reconcile them with a healthy sexuality and self-image. Purging these thoughts, which have shaped my sexuality since I was a teenager, feels impossible to me, so I have to either believe this or accept that I'm simply a fundamentally broken person.
In other words, I hate both the "sex-positive" and "sex-negative" viewpoints on this matter, and I think they're both psychologically harmful in different ways. I've been fucked up by both of them during different parts of my life. Lately, I feel like I've somehow stumbled into the vicinity of recovery, so I want to talk about what I've learned.
Around two years ago, a little bit after my first BDSM session, I sent an email to the person I played with, about what I wanted to try in the future. And I said this: "I think my strongest fantasy is to feel like my personhood doesn't matter, and I only exist for someone else's use and pleasure." Going back and reading this makes me a little sad, but it's also just what was normal to me for most of my sexual life. Sexual feelings passing through a prism of self-hatred and dysphoria and getting distorted into this kind of desire.
(As an aside, I don't like my use of the word "fantasy" here, as if it's something light and fun to think about, and not something I tortured myself with. But I probably used it because "fantasy" is the standard word to describe sexual thoughts, no matter their intensity, framing, or psychological effect. I think our vocabulary for talking about harmful "fantasies" is lacking....)
After that sentence, I continued: "But that isn't really possible in a safe, consensual setting, so I think I just want to simulate that feeling as closely as I can." That really illuminates the skewed way I viewed BDSM at that point. Part of me had become convinced that I want, or maybe deserve, to be treated abusively, and I gravitated to BDSM as a way to approximate that treatment without (hopefully) anyone going to the hospital or prison. That's what BDSM is about, right?
Well, I imagine the answer is sometimes yes, because if two people who both think this way get together and decide to do BDSM, that's what they'll strive for. And I don't want to make a claim like "that isn't what BDSM is really about!" I don't want to invalidate people who've been harmed by something that was called BDSM, and resembled what I described above. So all I can talk about is what BDSM has personally come to mean to me since I started making it a part of my life.
BDSM, to me, is a form of play. It's often described that way, but it took a while for it to sink in that people aren't just being cheeky, trying to make something violent and sexual sound more innocent. That really is the best descriptor to me. It's a way adults can play with each other, a form of play that recontextualizes pain, humiliation, shame, and self-hatred into something pleasurable.
What happens to those thoughts of being violated and dehumanized when they're subsumed into play? I didn't really understand until I tried it myself, acting out a roleplay scenario where I was pretending to be an unwilling participant. Beforehand, I was worried about the psychological effect of putting myself in that role. Would I get overwhelmed by the feelings of violation and break down?
But it didn't feel like a harrowing replication of a traumatizing experience. It felt like play. It was sometimes painful and intense, but it was play. If you've ever owned two or more pet cats, you might have seen them "playfight". They'll roll around, scratching and biting and getting on top of each other, but they don't go hard enough to cause serious injuries. Their play includes elements like pain, struggle, and resistance. And if we're comfortable with each other, and we trust each other, these can be part of our play too. If I resist, and my partner pushes past my resistance, and it's happening in a consensual and playful context, it doesn't feel like violation at all. When it was over, I shifted near-instantly from my "in-character" role, lying in a crumpled heap with a dead expression, to smiling and feeling warm. I was never truly violated, and never had my autonomy or humanity truly taken away.
Viewing BDSM from the lens of play, rather than the lens of "consensually" mimicking sexual violence, clarified a lot of things for me. For a long time, I struggled with the idea that "sadistic" or "dominant" people – the kind of people I would want as sexual partners – are potentially dangerous, since they "want to hurt people" by their nature. Just as I gravitated to BDSM because I felt I deserved abuse, I assumed they felt they deserved to abuse people. But taking an aggressive role in a playful game generally doesn't have an inherent morality to it; it just carries different or additional responsibilities. There are certainly people who use BDSM as a cover for abusive behaviour. But if you believe that most people are kind, I think you can believe that most people who enjoy "dominating" others only enjoy it in a mutually playful context. It's fun because you've agreed to play together, and the people you're playing with are having fun too.
I approached BDSM seeking a certain kind of catharsis. I think I wanted a specific sort of validation of my own self-hatred. Not the obvious kind of validation, where someone says, "It's correct and justified that you hate yourself". I wanted someone to say, "It's a positive thing that you hate yourself, because it makes you valuable to me". It's hard to pinpoint the feeling, but I think that's what I wanted. I would imagine the person who'd just violated me holding my crying, shaking body and comforting me. By discarding my humanity, by reducing myself to nothing, I was able to make them happy. That is the catharsis I sought.
I was almost a little disappointed when my first BDSM session ended with me simply feeling like I had fun and feeling good about myself. But these warm feelings helped me figure out how to reconcile my thoughts of violation with a positive view of myself.
I can't stop my brain from imagining all kinds of unpleasant things happening to me. But I can work with the understanding that what I enjoy isn't true violation; it's a playful resistance. Pull my hair and force my head into position, not because my pain means nothing to you, but because we both like these sensations. My goal shouldn't be to bring my miserable thoughts to life as accurately and miserably as possible. It should be to reshape them into positive experiences through play. I don't know if I'll ever stop wanting to be on the bottom of the hierachy, but I can establish that hierarchy without the help of self-loathing, and let it crumble when I'm satisfied.
The first few times I did BDSM, when I was asked to do something, I usually just did it obediently. It was fun, but it wasn't very sexy to me, because my sexuality had become so tied up with these ideas of being forced and resisting. And it was scary to incorporate those elements of force and resistance into play, since they're connected to thoughts I deemed ultimately harmful to my psyche. Am I setting myself up for a traumatic experience? Is letting this happen to me a form of self-harm?
I think.... it doesn't have to be. I don't know how doing this repeatedly will affect me in the long run, for sure. But I feel better than I've ever felt before about my sexuality. So I think I understand my path forward. I'll be true to my feelings in play, and have as much fun with it as possible. And I won't try to recreate feelings of violation. I'll remake them into something wonderful. Their place in my life isn't to be purged, but to be repurposed. That's all.