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But It Hurts!
About The Pain In BDSM
" I like pleasure spiked with pain"
~ Red Hot Chili Peppers
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Science really doesn't know much about pain yet. Even in this day of advanced
medicine we don't have a way to quantify it as to degree, nor qualify it as
to specific type very effectively. We can't see pain on a meter or other gauge,
but we know when it is present and that it has power. Because pain can be
so potent it is used for many things. It tells the doctor that something is
wrong and where to look. It can be used to control people. From extreme torture
to a simple police billy club, governments and alike have used it to make people
do what they want them to do. Pain has also been used to measure the character
of men and women. From duty to country, to athletic commitment and religious
conviction, the person able to endure great pain for a cause has been trumpeted
as a great hero.
As a universal phenomena pain has always been something that humans must suffer
through. It's value has always been it's discomfort. Every living soul on earth
will experience pain and have to find some way to cope with it. It is not
welcomed by anyone...except us in BDSM.
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BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) has, as one of it's primary
practices, the giving and receiving of pain. Take pain out of 'BDSM'
and all you have is 'B', bondage. To the outsider this is what is probably
the most confusing observation that they make regarding our lifestyle. Why
do some people get turned on by pain?
I would like to say that not all BDSM scenes actually need to have pain involved.
Some people don't like the pain part and only play using bondage and fetish
themes. It's really not necessary to split hairs on what 'actually is' BDSM.
Is it really BDSM without some element of pain? Some folks like to use the
term D/s, or Domination and submission instead of BDSM. Frankly, it doesn't
matter to me. It's all the same thing, just a different flavor.
The flavor of pain though, is to many, the sole reason for their participation
in the lifestyle. They crave the feeling of a whip speeding down on their
flesh and taking a bite. Without the sensation of pain, there would be little
to motivate them to spend the time in the dungeon. In fact, it's not even
a matter of pain first, then sex. It's the pain alone and you can leave the
sex part outside. The experience of pain in an erotic environment is a purpose
in and of itself for many!
For
more on the American Psychiatric Association position. (Click Here)
The clinical word for the phenomena of enjoying pain as an erotic stimulus,
is masochism. It's companion is sadism, those that enjoy dealing out the
pain. For years the sciences have tried to figure out why people want to be
hurt and why others want to cause pain. Freud studied it extensively, Theodore
Reik wrote a whole book about it (Masochism in Modern Man, 1941),
and the American Psychiatric Association , keeps trying to define what it
is as a mental health issue, assuming that it is an unhealthy behaviour. All
sorts of people outside of the lifestyle keep working up a sweat over what we
the sadists and masochists, do with pain. Their main focus is to reduce the
enjoyment of pain to a problem, or illness, that needs to be cured. To date,
I really don't think anyone has a nuts and bolts theory that really works,
as to why there are sadists and masochists A comprehensive understanding keeps
eluding them like a crafty fox that raids a chicken coup. They think they
have it and then something they never figured on throws the whole theory out of
balance. I am not sure, but I would make a wager, that a truly objective,
scientific position cannot be made because the phenomena is really more of
a subjective value, much like the debate over what is great tasting food.
What I know is this; it doesn't matter what the doctors and scientists say,
or are able to agree on...we like it! So many of the masochists that I know
are highly functioning individuals, that any argument to the dysfunction
of their life, because of their fantasies, or real time experience in BDSM,
would be nullified by the personal and professional success these people have
achieved. I don't think that enjoying pain is unhealthy. Yes we like pain,
and we aren't crazy or dysfunctional people. It's just an acquired taste like
enjoying dry wine, blue cheese or jazz. As Louie Armstrong once said about
Jazz, "If I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand!"
We like it so much that we have developed our own terminology for it. Those
that enjoy pain we call Pain Sluts. What the pain slut seeks is a phenomena
we call 'Sub Space'. Sub space is a state of bliss for the submissive
that has both a physical and a mental dimension. Ask any real pain
slut, and they will tell you that there is no better place to be than in
sub-space. It beats the Super Bowl, a green on the best golf course in the
world and a seat in the best restaurant in New York. Sub Space, and the accompanying
Dom Space for the sadist, is the motivation for all of our effort to create
and receive, the most exquisite pain in a scene.
But It Hurts! (continued)
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