A couple of interesting links

I've found, fairly randomly through links on some other web pages, a couple of interesting things recently.

'I’m Gonna Need You to Fight Me On This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD' - an article by a female journalist whose personal experiences, along with her experiences of interviewing many women who'd been raped, led to the onset of a stress disorder. Her way to deal with it was essentially a ritualistic baptism of fire: she asked an ex-lover to rape her, as realistically as possible. By going through the experience, and proving to herself that she could live through the experience, she cleared all the emotional blockages that had caused her stress.

It's hardly a textbook clinical approach to her problem but it worked for her. That's not to say it would work for everybody, but I''m certainly aware of others who have used bdsm play ritualistically in the same way, to the same ends, and with success. The enactment of the scene reinforces the intent to sort out emotional responses, perhaps. It's a private ritual that relies on much the same psychological mechanisms that religious (or magical) ceremonies employ. Not all such approaches might involve violent sex; not all bdsm is done for such purposes. But there does seem to be a link, and the author of the article was brave enough to describe and discuss her problem and how she dealt with it successfully.

'BDSM’s Dirty Secret – The Real Risk of Kinky Sex' by Midori is another equally interesting thinkpiece. Midori, if you haven't come across her, is one of the foremost bdsm gurus in the US. The article notes that bdsm is indeed potentially dangerous, though of course many everyday activities carry equally health-threatening risks - you can fall walking down stairs, burn yourself while cooking, and so forth.

The interesting risk, she argues, is intimacy. Often, bdsm scenes are relatively technical: a dominant does whatever they do to a submissive, who gets off on having it done rather than on who's doing it; the relationship is, ironically, almost a non-relationship in which each party gets off on the activity in a solitary way rather than relating to the other person in the scene. But it isn't always like that, and where there is communication and connection between people. it can be a massive emotional bond - the strong intimacy you get where people really give each other absolute trust and commitment.

Her argument is that the greater the level of technical skill involved in a scene, the more disconnect there is and the less such intimacy is built; conversely, simple non-technical scenes may enable much greater intimacy. Personally I can see where she's coming from, though as someone who does bondage suspensions and other 'technical' forms of play, I'd say that technical challenges aren't necessarily a bar to intimacy. Someone who's proficient enough to know exactly what they're doing and who keeps a good level of communication going with their sub before, during and after a scene is also able to build and experience the same intense level of connection.

Especially if the 'technical' form of play is actually part of a ritualistic scene, of the kind I described above...

My 2p or 2 cents' worth. Your opinions may vary.

Of frogs and glue

I recently had cause to read the Wikipedia entry on sexual fetishism. As a definition, sexual fetishism is the condition of becoming aroused by particular physical objects or situations. I did note the article has warning labels all over it about being of disputed neutrality, and presumably there are judgements to be made there about what one might call the normal and conventional range of objects and situations that could cause arousal, and about the intensity of response and resultant behaviour. But I'll let that pass. Wikipedia notes that 'Many people embrace their fetish rather than attempting treatment to rid themselves of it' and on the whole I'd suggest that's probably a more positive outcome than anything a psychiatrist might attempt to 'treat' a fetish.

The terminology of fetish, of course, does throw one back to the older use of the term, which implies an object in which something sacred or supernatural resides, or perhaps which can be used to call up some sacred or supernatural part of oneself. But that's by the way.

There was one throwaway remark in the article that caught my attention:

The existential approach to mental disorders developed in the 1940s and influenced a view that fetishes had complex personal meanings beyond the general categories of psychoanalytical treatment. For instance, the Austrian neurologist and logotherapist Viktor Frankl once noted the case of a man with a sexual fetish involving, simultaneously, both frogs and glue.

Hmm... Well, real life can throw up situations wilder than any author might imagine, I guess. I'm not sure if I'd ever want to write a story that included such a fetish, though on past form even saying that is likely to mean some situation arises in which it becomes important that I do. I feel I want to know more, but also that I might not like what I find...

For the truly interested (or the truly perverse) the case is briefly mentioned in Frankl's book On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders (2004) - in footnote 9 on page xxiii, which refers you another footnote and that in turn to an audiotape of one of his lectures. I guess I might not get to find out more details anytime soon... unless anyone out there would care to enlighten me?

Scalpelfuck

An idea turned into a piece of flash fiction. But it's not on here. It's published on Frequently Felt.

For the inspiration behind this slightly weird piece I blame a late night conversation with Randy Wornhole (randywornhole.wordpress.com).

Meanwhile here's a slightly fuzzy pic of a scalpel: