My sexuality is oriented around hierarchy. I want to feel "less than" others. Being their pet, their toy, their servant, or their prey.
I was stressed out yesterday, so I started getting weirdly introspective about my sexuality again, and I wrote the paragraph above. But then I noticed something interesting about those four descriptors I came up with. They're all kind of distinct feelings, aren't they?
Being someone's "pet" means being taken care of by them. But in a masochistic context, being a pet is also demeaning. The sadist's "care" is twisted into a form of humiliation.
Being someone's "toy" is a little different. It's more about having the sadist's whims inflicted on you. It's less about humiliation and more about suffering at the sadist's hands.
In both cases, there's a sense of fondness. A "pet" or "toy" is something that you play with and have fun with. But that fondness can also be absent.
Being a "servant" means performing tasks that are humiliating but routine and unremarkable. The sadist is indifferent as long as your performance is acceptable. It is humiliation that arises from the imposition of hierarchy itself, not from playful teasing.
The last category arises in darker contexts: being someone's "prey". A predator inflicts suffering without care for the prey or concern for the prey's well-being. Humiliation is at most a secondary goal of the predator's violence.
So, these four categories are not just distinct feelings but somewhat oppositional. The focus can be on humiliation, shame, and psychological aspects; or the focus can be on violence, suffering, and physical harm. And this cruelty can be inflicted with a sense of playful fondness and warmth, or with a cold indifference.
I don't think the names I chose draw perfect lines; for example, in practice, a "pet" or "servant" in a BDSM scene might suffer violence and "prey" or a "toy" might suffer humiliation. Humiliation and violence often go hand in hand.... And these terms have different meanings to different people as well; a friend commented that the term "toy", to them, is more associated with colder treatment. And a "servant" could certainly be beloved. And so on....
Nonetheless, I thought it was fun that these roles I like to inhabit loosely fall into four different quadrants, so I made this little chart:
The chart is intended for masochists, so the axes are meant to signify "I want to be treated this way!" But I suppose it could work for sadists too, if you interpreted it as "I like treating others this way!"
It was a hard to figure out where to place myself, because, well, I like all of these things :) So I tried to isolate the different moods that make me want different feelings. But I'm not even sure if I got it right!
Where do you fall on this chart, I wonder?
Or maybe you're a normal person and you don't fall on it at all.
Anyways, the original goal of my introspection was to think about how these hierachies I like to take part in actually get established – whether in fiction, in fantasy, or in an actual scene.... but I got distracted! I'll have to return to that another time....