On submission as my way to taste the forbidden

I have a tendency to be swept off my feet by men. People who have known me for a bit can confirm.

Not by all men, that is.

In general, I tend to be rather intimidating and hard to impress. Sometimes, I can be a girl who emanates the vibe of ‘better don’t come close unless you have something really interesting to say. And I mean: really interesting’. Sometimes, I am a girl who has a bunch of guys around her begging for her attention. Sometimes, men treat me like a princess. I can’t say that I don’t like it. It can be pleasant and flattering. But it doesn’t turn me on.

I was raised in a family of strong women. My mother is a kind of woman who is a feminist and at the same time sees anything feminine as a sign of weakness. I love my mother. She is an amazing person and she has taught me a lot. She also might have been one of the reasons why my sexuality has developed into something so dark and twisted.

This tendency of mine to be swept off my feet by certain men has been in me since I remember. It would not happen often but there were certain kinds of guys (guys whom I found admirable and respectable and who at the same time did not pay much attention to me) around whom I was melting. If I met a guy like that, I would do anything to make him notice me, anything to get a sign of his approval. I’d travel to the other side of the country just for a chance of seeing him for a couple of hours. Usually, I wouldn’t get what I’d hoped for but it wouldn’t keep me from trying.

My mother hated my behaviour around those men. She thought that the way I was acting around them was pitiful. That I should be ashamed of myself for being like that. That I make a joke out of me. She has always told me that it should be men who admire me and not the other way around. That if I behave like that, they will for sure never be mine. Because the path to the heart of a man is being inaccessible. Only then, they will desire me.

There might even be some truth to it in the context of the culture that she was raised in and the, still pervasive today, traditional goals of a woman. There might also be some truth in it if you like when the object of your desire also desires you.

To me, however, it is a slippery slope.

My problem with desire is that I can either be a subject or an object of it but not both at the same time. And if my object makes me their object as well, my subject role gets shaky.

Not that it ever happened to me. I’ve been choosing my objects wisely so far.

I don’t know if it is because, trying to impress my mother, I have suppressed my natural behavior so deeply that now it comes to the surface blown up to unnatural proportions. My hypothesis is: 'Possibly'. But I know that men who are everything to me while I am nothing to them are my ideal kind of men.

I want to crawl at their feet while they don’t even notice.

I want to seek beggingly for a glimpse of their sight while they are busy admiring someone else.

I want to be ecstatic from them merely noticing me.

I want to pray for their touch not believing that I will ever receive it.

I want to be the most miserable, pitiful, despicable kind of girl. The one my mother would shudder with disgust when looking at. I want people to cringe with pity when they see me. I want them to feel sorry for me. I want them to think of me as a loser, unloved, and unlovable. I want them to think that they would never want to switch their places with me and truly mean it.

Because they probably shouldn’t.

Without my highly developed taste for rejection, such experience might prove dangerous for them.

Without my appreciation of hardship, it might not be possible for them to take it.

Without an understanding of the calm beauty of loneliness, the velvety warmth of sadness, and the reassuring composure of disinterest, seeking what I seek might even prove deadly.

For me, however, submission is a means for exploration of exactly those feelings. It is a way to experience a part of me that has never been accepted. It is allowing myself to feel to the fullest the emotions that I have never been allowed to experience.

Not so that I can prove to myself it finishes with a happy ending. Not so that I can show to my mother that she was wrong, that if you truly give yourself to someone what you get in return is their love and devotion.

I don’t think that it is necessarily true.

Rather, submission allows me to experience the rejection that has been so demonized to me, to feel the unreciprocated desire that I have been taught one should never feel. Submission allows me to live through being unloved, unwanted, pitiful, low, and ugly.

So that I can finally, without guilt, taste the forbidden fruit of weakness.

So, apparently I've taught myself how to feel

This text is an affirmation of how much I’ve developed in my ability to feel. It is a reminder to myself that I’ve come a long way and that I wasn’t always that attuned with my emotions. In fact, there had been a time when I was the opposite of that. It is also an illustration of what is possible if you put your mind and heart into something. That there is no such thing as having a fixed personality. That we can always change if we want to. But it doesn’t happen without putting in the effort and practice.

One of my current best friends is my ex-boyfriend. We broke up a long time ago and we are often joking about how much good the breakup did to both of us. It is really great to have someone around who knows me intimately for such a long time and cares about me but at the same time is not too emotionally invested. Often, he can see the processes that I am going through much clearer than I am able to see myself. And make me aware of them.

I was talking with him recently about how much we’ve both changed since we were in a relationship together, and one of the things that he made me realize was how completely disconnected from my emotions I’d been back then. He reminded me how each time when he would ask me how I felt about something my answer would be “I don’t know”. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to reveal it to him but because I truly had no idea. The moment I was turning my attention inwards was like staring into a street clouded with fog where all you can see is 50 centimetres in front of you. You know that there is something behind that milky wall, but there is no possibility of telling what. 

Looking at myself now, I find it quite unbelievable. I like to think that currently, I have quite an unusual capacity to experience and express my feelings. Usually, even in the midst of the most emotionally challenging situations, I am able to observe what I feel clearly and objectively. I am able to analyse my emotions and separate them from facts. I am able to honestly express even the most uncomfortable feelings. And actually feel them at the same time.

The whole point of my favourite kind of BDSM play nowadays is being an outside observer of my own misery, taking a back seat and watching myself going through emotional pain while at the same time experiencing it. And the reason why I can enjoy it this way is that I can deeply feel even the most uncomfortable and painful emotions without shutting off. I can savour them without getting overwhelmed.
But it didn’t use to be that way. I wasn’t born with an innate capacity to feel even if it might seem like it sometimes. Or rather, I was born with it like all of us are, but I definitely lost it along the way. I did manage to gain it back but it was occupied with hard work, and what I’ve just realized, years of practice. 

What has helped me in making a change was the realization that in order to feel good, I needed to first feel at all. In the past, I’d shut off my feelings because I didn’t want to experience negative emotions. There were just too many of them and it seemed like experiencing all of it would make my life unmanageable. So I decided not to feel. And it was working. I was managing my life well and achieving more and more successes. Or so it seemed.

The point of change came when I had to make a big life decision and I realized that I am completely incapable of recognizing what is the right thing to do. I rationally kind of knew what it was but I didn't feel it. And without feeling it, I wasn't able to take a step. At that point, I understood that I needed someone to help me tap into my emotions because I am not able to do it on my own. So I went into therapy.

It took me 6 months to get even a small glimpse into my own feelings and to make the necessary step. It took me 6 years to become able to observe and express my emotions about a situation at hand in a reasonable time and not when they come banging at my door driven to a complete extreme. I am still not at the point when in difficult circumstances I can experience my feelings real-time and express them in a non-violent and constructive manner but I am working every day towards getting there. 

Learning to recognize and let my feelings in was a difficult undertaking. It took a lot of effort and hard work. It involved psychotherapy, meditation, journaling and other practices. But first and foremost, it required a willingness to look for the answers inside of myself. To face the reality of the turmoil within me and stop turning my face away from it. Before I could even think of changing anything, I had to first hear the thoughts and see the images that I was trying to push away. The ones that made me so afraid of feeling. 

Right now I tremendously enjoy my emotions. They are the soul of my life. They add colour and depth to it. They provide me with excitement and pleasure. They make me feel alive. 

Even more so, it seems that the things that I used to run away from, now became my biggest fetishes. The feelings of rejection, helplessness and fear that I used to shut off are now what I desire. Maybe it’s because being able to look them in the eye and allow them to rule me on my own terms is what makes me feel stronger. Maybe seeing them as simply manifestations of life takes away their power, leaving just the intensity. Maybe facing something that I used to be so terrified of gives me the feeling of thrill, and thrill is sexy. I am not sure, but I know that without consciously leaning into my emotions I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the kind of play that I do now. 

I see the kind of relationship that I have with myself as the deepest form of intimacy one can ever achieve. There is no other person in the world with whom you can get as close as you can get with yourself. And there is no way that you can build intimacy with other people if you do not have an intimate relationship with yourself. Being able to communicate and share my feelings with other people is a quality that I value enormously. It brings me closer to people. It deepens my trust and my connection with them. It makes me feel seen and understood. But without acknowledging what is inside of me, I would never be able to see and hear what is inside of them. 

Reconnecting with my feelings might just be the biggest work that I’ve done on myself so far. And being where I am now is both great and terrifying at the same time. 

The great thing is that it allows me to have all these amazing experiences that I could never have dreamed of having before. It gives depth and intensity to anything that I am going through and it allows me to learn from every single life experience because I can truly see things for what they are without wanting to turn away from them. 

It can be terrifying, though, because once you start feeling deeply, you feel the good as much as you feel the bad. And once you start seeing things truly, there is no way to unsee them. Once you know what it means to stay connected to yourself, it becomes difficult to slip into the slumber of not feeling because when you start doing that it is as obvious as if you would start cutting off your own leg. And sometimes there are things happening in my life when I wish I could not feel.

But then I remind myself how much I would have to give up in order to do that. All the wisdom that pain has brought me. All the joy that being in the moment has given me. And then I let go and allow myself to feel what I didn’t want to feel. And I am grateful for having taught myself how to do that. 

The unvoiced truth of your touch

Disclaimer: this is a highly personal post in which I talk about how I want to be treated. By no means, it is an opinion on how a Dominant should treat a submissive. Nor is it a critique of service tops in general. It is simply an account of my feelings in certain situations.

It’s unbelievable how much I can read from the way I am being touched by someone. How many unspoken desires and motifs can spring from under the tips of their fingers. How subtle but at the same clear those unuttered truths are.

Your touch can tell me everything about your desire for me. No matter how rough or reckless your gestures seem to be, it is very easy to read between them and see how much you actually want me. How your touch often might seem objectifying, but what it really screams is “I want you. I am dying to have you.” 

There are people who can beat you up in pulp and each of their powerful strikes reads like an insecure question: “Do you like it?” And there are people who can stroke your cheek gently and what you read them saying is “You’re mine and I will do whatever the fuck I want with you. And it won't be pleasant.”

The second type is what I fall for.

So don't think that you can fool me with your violent pose. I can see how you are trying to read if your actions are pleasurable to me if this is the way I want to be treated. It is clear that you are looking for the signs of enjoyment in me, that you are drinking greedily from the cup of my contentment. 

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad in wanting to please your partner. I don’t condemn you for wanting to give me the pleasure that I expressed my desire for. Your tender violence could be exactly what I need. By fulfilling my desire to be dominated, you could be giving me precisely what I want. 

And maybe sometimes you even do... But what I am certain about, is that by treating me this way, you will never make me yours. The moment I feel that you want me, I know that you’ve lost me. You handed the power over to me, no matter how much we want to pretend otherwise.

Being desired means holding the reins. If someone wants you, they will do anything to get you. They will do all the things that they know you want them to do to you. They will violate and hurt you. They will make you crawl on your knees and they will humiliate you. They will beat you up and make you beg to stop. But if underlying all this is their desire to please you, it becomes meaningless. An empty theatre of Dominance and submission. 

If this is the case, I can feel that all the things that are done to me happen only because I want it. One word from me and it would all stop and my Dominant would be at my feet. I stop being violated and start being served, in a twisted kind of way. And the thought of being served by my Dominant makes me cringe. Being served kills the sacrifice.

I love making sacrifices for the people I admire. I love to feel that I am serving them. I love to feel like I am giving up something for their pleasure. Sacrifice is one of my biggest fetishes. And what is the point of a sacrifice if it is not needed? 

When I feel like you are mine without any effort on my side, just because of the sheer fact of my existence, then I lose my appetite entirely. And I stop wanting to give you what you desire. 

Myself.

Even more so, I begin to wish to punish you for your weakness of falling for my whims. I start to torture you using your neediness. The door closes. By trying to win me over, you lose me irreversibly. 

I know that it is kind of cruel on my side. I know that I can be ruthless in my desire to be used and violated. I demand of my partners to truly disregard my needs. I demand of them to take pleasure in my real misery. I don’t want us to act like I am their property, I want to be their property. With everything that comes with it. 

It is a great responsibility because what is and isn’t too much for me becomes their decision. They need to decide how far we can go, without endangering my physical and emotional safety to an undesired level. I require them to know something impossible to know, that only I could know. I require them to know and state my limits. 

I would like to believe that what I desire is not a complete madness. That there are limits to the sacrifices that I will make. That I will see and voice those limits when they truly are unbreachable. 

I will never know until I get there, though. 

What I do know, is that being wanted makes me cold and cruel. Your avid and passionate touch turns me into stone. Your need to please me makes me indifferent and withdrawn.

I know that it's unfair and probably unhealthy. Especially, because I do not want my partners to truly not care about me. My desire is not to be a victim of abuse. But what I do want, is for your touch to show not even the slightest sign of worship. I want you to grab and grope me as your trophy and not as a precious gift. I want you to use me for your pleasure and disregard mine. I want you to demand sacrifices of me and make no concessions for my sake.

Only then, will I yield under your touch. Only then, will I relax into submission. And only then, will I feel truly recognised and appreciated for who I am. 

An object. A possession. A toy.

Lessons on shame, objectification and humiliation in rope from Soptik and Door

Recently, I've been a model for an amazing workshop by Soptik on objectification and humiliation in rope. He asked me to be his partner because, as he says, I'm a 'perfect object'. I guess that what he means by that is that I let people do anything to me without fighting back. And I enjoy it. It was very interesting to be able to show and share with people the states in which I love to be, but also in which I am at my most vulnerable. 

I think that teaching objectification and humiliation is a difficult undertaking. Much more difficult than teaching techniques how to tie. It's all about playing the emotions of your model, and having a command of human emotions is so much more complicated than having a command of rope.

It was the first time that I've given a workshop like that and since it was emotionally very intense, it was quite hard for me to formulate my thoughts on the topics that we’ve taught real-time. I did my best, but still many interesting thoughts emerged in my head only when processing it later. So many that I will probably spend more than one writing on them. But here is a start. 

On objectification 

Objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing. - Wikipedia

In theory, it's the most severe form of lowering someone's status. In practice though, it can be much easier to take than humiliation or degradation. That is because it can put you in this state of 'not being' in which you can detach from your feelings and experiences. When someone objectifies you, you can truly become an object in your mind as well and your ego doesn't get in the way anymore. You go to this quiet place where you just exist, and let things happen to you but without affecting you. 

This was also the experience of most of the models, which I find truly fascinating. Despite being so different we basically all went to the same place in our heads. 

Suffering as an object is suffering alone

The first exercise that we performed was tying the models into household objects. I was turned into a chair and left like that while the rest of the participants started tying, having someone occasionally sitting on me.

After a while, the position got really challenging and I began truly suffering. The experience though was very different from the typical suffering in semenawa ties. The traditional suffering in kinbaku is done for the rigger while he is there, witnessing you in it. And it makes things very different and in some ways easier (but in others not).

When your rigger is with you, you're staying more on the edge, I think. You are more aware of what is happening to you and you hope that he will put you out of your misery soon. He is seeing you and therefore you also see yourself through his eyes and are more aware of your suffering. At the same time, his presence makes it easier to go through the hardship because you know that you are doing it for him and you are being appreciated. 

Here, I was all alone with my suffering. It was a byproduct and not the aim. There was nobody who cared about what was happening to me (at least that is how I felt like, in reality, my partner was having me in his sight most of the time). In a way, my suffering was pointless. That made it harder to go through on one hand as I didn't have the energy of rigger's appreciation to lift me up. On the other hand, being left alone with it made it easier to accept and easier to surrender. There was no hope for me. I was a mere object and all that was left for me was to accept my faith. 

There are not many things that are more hurtful than not being seen

There are many ways to objectify someone, which was exactly what Soptik was trying to teach. We did exercises on turning people into actual usable objects, on sexual objectification and on turning models into living sculptures and objects of admiration. Those different states were also eliciting different reactions in different models. Some caused arousal, some sadness, some going quiet and some desperation.

In general, I love to be objectified. I love to be used for someone’s pleasure, in any capacity they see fit. It gives me a lot of satisfaction and at the same time frees me from worrying whether my actions are according to the other person's wishes. I have no initiative of my own, therefore no way of making mistakes. But there is one experience in the realm of objectification that can leave me truly shattered. And that is being looked at but not seen. Especially, when it's done by someone by whom I desperately want to be seen. 

In one of the exercises, Soptik was teaching the riggers how to look at your model as a mere object. We were standing in one place and the riggers were walking around us and observing each detail of our body like we were at an auction and they were about to buy us. This kind of look makes you embarrassed at first. The sheer fact that someone dares to look at you that way, and that you allow them to do that, makes you question your worth. As long as they don’t look into your face though, it is not painful. It makes you uncomfortable and slightly anxious, but not hurt. Everything changes when they look straight into your eyes, but don’t see you. 

The moment when they turn their look at your face, you become hopeful. You start wishing that they will finally look into your eyes and see the person that you are. That they will stop assessing you like a piece of meat and really look at you, your inside and not your outside. You can't help but expect and anticipate it in a glimpse of a second and when you meet their cold stare, your heart is shattered. 

It hurts so much to be denied something as fundamental as being looked into the eyes and be seen. Somehow, at that moment it is not possible to switch off the feeling mode and become only a body. Being so close, and yet so far away, from meeting someone’s sight makes you extremely aware of that little person inside you yearning to be elevated back to the status of a human being. And when it is not happening, it hurts. A lot.  

As a sucker for emotional pain, I can’t say how much I appreciate the ability of someone to treat me like that. I can imagine that it is not easy to look at someone this way, but the amount of suffering that such a simple skill can generate is truly remarkable, so it's worth practising. 

There is no shame in being an object

In one of the exercises, the task was to sexually objectify your model. The riggers had to tie us in a position that makes us as sexually available as possible, at the same time giving us the feeling of being objectified. I was basically turned into a sex doll with my arms in a TK, thighs tied together behind my back, legs spread as wide as possible and a fabric over my head on which Soptik drew a new face for me. He also cut a hole in the fabric for my mouth and put a ring gag in it so that it stayed open. Finally, he tied my breasts, so that they became prominent and swollen. Real sex doll. 

The interesting thing was that even though I was so exposed and in a way humiliated (at least to me being so explicitly sexual and ready for use is usually humiliating), I didn't feel that way. That is because I didn't feel like a person, I felt like a doll. And a doll is not ashamed of being looked at or used. That is what it is for. 

At the end of the exercise, everyone was untied and sharing their experiences and I was still sitting there with my wide-open mouth and a doll face on which Soptik drew tears. Those tears truly reflected how I felt, like an abandoned doll, sad that nobody is paying attention to it. But even though I was exposed in front of everyone and unable to speak, I didn't feel ashamed. 

Usually, I feel a lot of shame when being publicly exposed, especially with my breasts tied like that. But now it wasn't me who was in that position. By losing my face to a piece of fabric, I also lost my shame and dignity. It was my body they could see, but not me. There is no point in feeling shame when nobody expects you to act with decency when you have no agency. 

Shame can only be born out of situations that you have some influence over, when you feel personally responsible for it and when your dignity is at stake. You are doing something indecent, but at least you are ashamed of it. It saves your face in a way. Here, I didn't have a face to save.

On shame and humiliation 

Humiliation is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission. It is an emotion felt by a person whose social status, either by force or willingly, has just decreased. - Wikipedia

Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self, withdrawal motivations, and feelings of distress, exposure, mistrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. - Wikipedia

There is a thin line between shame and humiliation. What for some people is only shameful, for others might already be humiliating or even degrading. What shame and humiliation have in common is that they require an act from a position of someone being a person, in contrast to being an object. They also might be much more mentally impactful in the long term than objectification. 

I think that it's because while it's easy to contain the experience of being objectified within the scene and detach from it afterwards because of it being so far from how you usually feel about yourself, it's much more difficult to detach from what you've experienced in a humiliation scene. The reason for that is that humiliation play uses the image that you have of yourself as a person against you. Therefore, it's something that is much more personal and that you need to be much more cautious about. 

Humiliation play needs good negotiations, aftercare and sometimes even ‘precare’

We've spent a long time at the beginning of the second day of the workshop, discussing all kinds of precautions that you need to take before you get into a scene involving shaming, and even more so humiliation. As a top, you need to get a good understanding of where the feeling of self-worth of the bottom comes from and which parts of it can and can't be toyed with. If you as a bottom have any triggers or deep anxieties that you know shouldn't be messed with, this is the time to talk about it. 

You also need to make sure that you will have time and space for good aftercare and that it's clear for both of you what would such aftercare entail. While for some scenes it's ok to just hug and part your ways, here it's really important to make sure that you both leave the scene the way you started it, not feeling bad about yourself (both in case of tops as well as bottoms).

Finally, I mentioned before that there are certain things that are better not toyed with and sensitive topics are better left out of this kind play. But… Some people (like me) like to be kicked exactly in places where it hurts the most. And that's ok as long as both you and your partner are aware of the risks that you are taking. In such case it might also be a good idea to do some ‘precare’, to ensure the other person beforehand that their insecurities that are going to be dissected soon have no grounding in reality and to make ground for the aftercare that will come later. As a top, say some good things that you can come back to after the scene. This is what we did with Soptik for example, when we played with my intelligence (or lack thereof) which is one of the things that I can be insecure about and it worked great in restoring my feeling of self-worth after the scene.

Little things make all the difference

Bringing humiliation or shame (or objectification for that matter) into your tying is about small gestures. It's not about what you do, but how you do it. 

We started and ended the day with ties that were very similar in terms of the position of my body (partial suspension exposing my crotch), but which gave me very different experiences, because of small details. 

The first one was in a way more 'light'. I was tied with one leg up and open and one on the floor with a lot of possibilities for movement. It gave me a constant feeling that I could almost hide the parts of my body (crotch) that I didn't want to be exposed. I was on the verge of feeling decent, getting in and out of it, depending on whether I thought that my foot can hide my crotch or not. Soptik kept the mood of the scene playful. He toyed with my embarrassment. I felt like he put me in this shameful position to entertain him, but also so that I have fun myself, and not to put me down. I didn't feel humiliated at all, but I did feel embarrassed and ashamed about what people could see. Still, I felt ashamed about the position that I am in, but not of myself.

The mood of the second scene was very different, even though the tie itself was similar. From the start Soptik was constantly putting my head down, not letting me look at him. Apparently, putting someone’s head lower than their heart puts them almost automatically in a state of submission. It was the case for me. I immediately felt subdued to him and because of that less prone to try and change the position, even if it was leaving me exposed. At the same time, I felt like the fact that I wasn’t fighting him was depriving me of even more dignity. 

Also, the way he was interacting with me was different, he wasn’t playful anymore. He was intentionally showing me that I am less of a human than he is. That he can do to me what he wants, ridicule me in front of all the workshop participants and there is nothing I can do about it. The tie was also more and more constricting my movements, not only leaving me feeling humiliated, but also helpless. Like there is no escape for me from that state. 

I think that making someone feel helpless really helps with humiliation. Not necessarily physically helpless, but more so mentally. Making them feel less of themselves because they are not preventing what is happening to them, but at the same time overpowering them so much that they won’t. 

And the switch in the intention in order to do that is really not that big. It is in small details of how you treat the other person and not necessarily in tying different things. 

You can't humiliate an object 

The thing about humiliation is that it undermines one’s sense of worth. The concept of self-worth is only there if the person you play with feels like a person. If they went into the mental space of being an object, they won’t feel humiliated anymore.

It was very tangible for me when we did an exercise with tying face rope in a deforming way. Having your face deformed, being made ugly, is a very humiliating experience for most people. However, there is a very subtle difference between deforming one’s face, which is humiliating and taking away one’s face, which is more objectifying. 

For example, if you tie a lot of rope around somebody’s head, covering it entirely, you make them lose their face completely and become more like a puppet. Especially if you tie their eyes as well, it is very easy for them to go into an ‘object’ headspace. On the other hand, if you tie the rope in such a way that the attributes of the face, eyes, nose, mouth, are still present but distorted, it gives much more humiliating experience. They still have a face, but it is made ugly. What intensifies the feeling is being made aware of it over and over again, for example by being presented with one’s reflection or being touched where the rope is so that they can feel how distorted they are. 

So if you want to stay in the realm of humiliation, you need to stay focused on your partner and observe whether they are not hiding in ‘safe space’ of being an object. You have to keep reminding them that they are a human, but a lesser one.

It is all happening in the head of the model

Humiliation, shame, embarrassment are all highly personal and context-dependent feelings. To be able to control them, you need to be able to get into the head of the model. To observe him/her and learn what makes them tick. 

I also think that, contrary to objectification, tools for inducing which are quite objective, humiliation and shame are very subjective and dependent on the 'willingness' of the model to go with their mind where the rigger is suggesting them to go. Possibly there are certain things that are objectively humiliating. Usually, though, they are rather on the intense side which brings them more into the degradation realm, the next stage after humiliation. 

In general, a lot of what is happening during a shame or humiliation scene depends on a story that the model is telling herself/himself in their head. The actions of the rigger are only a catalyst for it. Therefore, the more the rigger knows the model, the better, as they can approximate more accurately what is happening in their heads. 

At the same time, the model also has quite a lot of power over whether they want to go the route of humiliation or shame or not. Do they believe that what is currently done to them is shameful or humiliating? Or can they talk themselves out of it? The more context of the model's story the rigger knows, the easier it is to make them believe. 

The rigger is also part of the context. For example, while I might not be ashamed of getting aroused when playing with my sexual partner (I basically always am, though), getting aroused during a scene with a stranger might be very shameful. So even observing the model playing with others might not provide you with the necessary information. 

Humiliation is one of those things where it's really about an intimate interaction between the two people and getting to know each other's darkest secrets. It might take time to build tools to execute it, but if it's your thing, it's definitely worth the effort.

I guess that from the length of this writing (and it is still not all) you can figure out how dear the topic of humiliation and objectification is to my heart and how amazing it was to be able to show it to other people together with Soptik (who definitely is an artist in the realm of inducing it on people). It is so personal that it was hard to define for myself what could be interesting to contribute as a model in such a workshop. There is still much more to tell on the subject, but I hope that we were able to show at least part of what it means to us and that I conveyed some of it here.

I just think that I should be used

Some people might call me a slut, but I don't think that I am one. As far as I understand, being a slut is about enjoying sex and having as much of it as possible because you have pleasure from it. I don't care about my pleasure. I just think that I should be used. Other people should have pleasure from my body. That's their right.

My threshold for physical closeness is very low. As soon as I kind of like you, I will probably let you fuck me. If you realise that it is a possibility and how easy it is to get, I won't say no, because I'll think that you deserve it, just because you’ve requested it. Whether I want it is out of the question.

I think that it comes from the notion that I acquired as a teenager, that I need to repay people for physical closeness. And that payment should come in their ability to access my body. My need for physical touch and closeness is huge. Not necessarily sexual, just hugging, being caressed, kissed. Just feeling someone close to me. Being intimate.

In my youth, I thought that I can't just get it from someone without giving something in return. Somehow, I didn't feel like being close to me might be of any value to other people. So I needed to give them something more of myself to deserve the closeness. And sex was an easy and obvious currency.

So I learned to treat my body as an object and to use it to get an illusion of being close to someone. An illusion, not because they didn't want to be close to me, but because I couldn't really be close to them. Usually, because they weren't the people who I truly wanted to be close with. And those with whom I did, I was too terrified of rejection to ask.

I became a master of my way of seducing people by giving them all my attention. If I decided that I want someone to like me, I would do anything to please them. I still do it and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is no pretending in there, they do really have all my attention at that time. The problem is that it's not sustainable and when it ends, it hurts. You can't be so focused on the other person 24/7 and not lose them and/or yourself. You should never forget about yourself in your quest to please.

Or shouldn't you? Getting to know more and more about BDSM and especially about D/s, I begin to realise that all these imprints that I have and that I used to see as negative, and which are negative in a normal world with ‘normal’ norms, are perfect for creating a successful D/s dynamic. With the right partner, my inability to be something else than a sexual object, my need to please and my hyper-focused attention on the other, are assets. As long as we both know what we are exploring and what we're both giving up and we agree to it, there is nothing negative about it.

Because can’t my unwillingness to explore my own sexual needs, and the desire to be a sexual object, be a need on its own? Why is it considered unhealthy to get pleasure not from my own physical pleasure, but from pleasing the other? Why isn’t it ok to suppress my own personal expression as a price of moulding myself to the image that someone else might have designed for me?

In today's western society all the above are definitely not valued and understood. We strive to develop the individual self, to express ourselves fully and to be emotionally independent of other people as much as possible. This kind of attitude is often portrayed as an ideal that we should all be striving for. But what if my individual expression is a lack thereof? What if I prefer to please other people than to please myself? What if I prefer to focus on other people than to focus on myself?

And don’t get me wrong, I am not an altruistic mother Teresa. I do have a lot of individual self-expression in my daily life. I do have goals, strong opinions about things and I like some people and strongly dislike others. But in sex, I just want to be used. I just want my partners to enjoy me and I want to please them as much as I can. I want to be their perfect toy. My only need is for them not to care about my needs.

It seems great at first sight, but actually it is a lot to ask. It is easy to get from someone who truly doesn’t care about you, but when they start to like you (or even worse, love you), they usually start to care about what you want. And that becomes very problematic for me.

Before I discovered kink, I had a lot of random sex with people who didn't care about me, because it was very easy to be objectified by them. But when I would start to be intimate with someone, having sex with them would become more and more difficult. They would begin to ask me too many questions about what I want. It was becoming too much about me. And when I started to think about it, I wasn't even sure if I want sex at all. I begin to wonder what should I want. What would they want me to want? Why don't I have needs on my own? What's wrong with me?

There is definitely something wrong with me (maybe 'wrong' is not the right world, out of the ordinary is better), but I don't necessarily want to change it. I found a place where the weird notions in my head can be a source of pleasure without guilt. I finally understand and accept that I enjoy the feeling that being used gives me, proxying my own pleasure using the pleasure of the other, the attention that I am getting from my user and how natural they become with me when they realise that they can just do whatever they want with me and they don't need to care about my needs. My whole life I've been working towards becoming a perfect toy (and I still am) without even realising it, and finally, I am starting to see value in my predisposition instead of considering myself a freak.

Because I just think that I should be used. Is that too much to ask for?

Sometimes I wonder where the borders of my submission are?

“Tonight I want you to kneel next to my bed the entire night, while I am sleeping. You will be suffering in silence for me. Without my attention. Without recognition. Hurting and wearing yourself off, while I am getting my rest, because I told you to do so.”

You didn’t make me do it, but the look into my eyes told you that I would. And it is true, I would.

Sometimes I wonder what are the things that I wouldn’t do for you? So far, it seems like I would do anything that is physically possible in order to please you. I find it weirdly exciting and empowering. It is strange how my attitude towards submission is changing. Not long ago I would see it as a weakness. Being so subdued, so obedient. Right now I see it as a sign of power.

It makes me feel powerful because I know that I do these things because I want to. You have total control over me because I gave it to you. And I gave it to you not because I want someone to take this burden of being in control of me. I am perfectly fine with being in control of myself and my own life. In fact, I love the feeling of being in control of my faith. Of living my life the way I want it to be, of achieving my own goals, of thinking where I want to go next and then going there.

Recently, I have been getting to know and appreciate myself more and more. I can recognize much better my own thoughts and emotions. I can see better where my worries are justified and where are they being misplaced. But most importantly, I can see the value in who I am and not just in who I might become if I put enough work in improving myself. I feel lately like I am finally discovering myself. Discovering all the depth and beauty that has been inside me all this time and that others had seen long time ago, while for me it was hidden behind a thick fog of self-criticism and comparison with others. The fog is finally diminishing.

And with all that, I can see how much I am giving up when I hand it over to you to play with. I can see how brave I am to let go so much when I have a choice not to.

The choice that I am talking about is not a choice that I would be making every time we play and you ask something difficult of me. It is not a choice whether to go with it or not, whether to safeword or not. I am past that. It is a choice that I made at some point, I am not sure when. The choice to give all the control over myself to you, to let you decide what is and isn’t too much, to let you peek into my soul deeper than anyone else.

And looking at the fact that I’ve made that decision and that I stand by it, that I let it develop despite the vulnerability that it triggers and despite the enormous hurt that I know it might cause if it ends, makes me proud and in awe with myself.

In line with the popular belief, I used to see the traits of being in control and of dominance and signs of power, while letting go and submission as a weakness. I used to be ashamed when other people would see me being submissive towards someone.

It took some time, but I don’t anymore.

I don’t, because how much strength does it take to go against the current and show it to the world that you let yourself be open and vulnerable towards someone? To not be ashamed to show that someone else has so much control over you while being independent and in control are one of the most desirable and admirable traits in our society? To me, it takes a lot.

It takes a lot because I am a proud and ambitious person. I always want to be the best. I want attention and I want other people to admire me. I want them to see me as strong and smart and interesting. And being submissive does not fulfil any of these needs for me. Being openly submissive to someone is like the opposite of what I thought I always wanted to be.

Not anymore though. Not anymore because I stopped trying to be someone that I am not. And it is not to say that I am not dominant or not in control. I often am. But I don’t have to be any more in order to feel good about myself. I don’t have to prove to anyone that I am this amazing person that I want them to think I am. I am an amazing person. Everyone is an amazing person. And the most rewarding thing that you can do with your life is to keep discovering all the ways in which you are.

Being so brave to let someone else rule my life so much, to be so open and vulnerable towards them, to give up all of my own needs and desires for them, to let them do the most humiliating and degrading things to me and keep coming back, to be willing to explore the darkest corners of my soul and the edges of my sanity are some of the amazing things that I can do.

I don’t know where the borders of my submission are, but it is not because I don’t have an awareness of how much I am willing to give, but because I know that I can give really a lot. And finally, I am truly proud of it.

I have a thing for rejection

The moments when he points my head away from him, denying me his sight, when he reaches out to touch my face but in the last moment he slaps me instead. The moments when he pushes my body away with his foot like it's something disgusting that doesn't deserve to be touched with hands...

... are the moments that I am waiting for.

I so long to be rejected... In fact, almost everything I do in play is asking “Please, push me away.” I make myself so vulnerable, so eager, so subjugated, so needy that it is almost inevitable that I will be rejected. Who would want a despicable half-human like that? Who would give such a creature what it wants, when it clearly has no power to claim it? Why should one be kind to it, when one can be mean with no repercussions? I try to make it as easy as possible for others to stop seeing me as a human, in hope that it will make their threshold for cruelty lower.

I have just written, “Why should I give it what it wants?” meaning, "Why should I give it a kind touch?" while a minute earlier I mentioned that what I actually want is rejection. Confusing, huh? Am I playing my dominants? Am I trying to trick them into thinking that I want kindness, while what I really want is to be rejected? Am I topping from the bottom? Am I?!

On some level I do, I think. But it is not deliberate and not fully conscious. In the moment of play, I experience a personality split of sorts. There is a soft part of me that really only wants to be touched gently and simply loved. This needy part is not staged. I really feel that way at the moment it takes over.

There is another part of me, though. This one lets the vulnerable one appear on the surface during play while it's hiding beneath. This is the part of me that longs for rejection. This is me that feeds on the emotional pain of the needy one. This is the cruel me. And in order for the cruel one to be satisfied, the needy one needs to be truly hurt. And it is truly hurt when it’s being rejected.

Because kindness and a soft touch really are all that the needy one wants. It wants the pain to be over, it wants to feel loved. There is no deceit in the needy one. It is like a child. Any emotion that it feels is immediately expressed. It is so vulnerable that the only thing that it can do is to express its needs and hope that the person that it expresses it towards will meet them.

Of course, this is not what the cruel one hopes for. And it is the cruel one who screens the partners that the needy one is going to interact with. She chooses for the ones that she hopes are as cruel as she is. She also interacts with them before the scene, hinting at all the terrible things that she would like to be done to her. And then she hides in the corner to watch.

Recently, I’ve seen someone at a party engaging in a humiliating act, and he was smiling and visibly enjoying it. I don’t think that I ever look like that when I am being humiliated. And it is because the conscious side of me that is experiencing it, is not taking any pleasure in it happening. It will do what you tell it to because it needs you. And it loves you. You are its only hope for receiving what it needs, for feeling loved and nourished. So it will go as low as it gets to get it. Because there is no other way. Because it is too weak to get it by itself. It needs it to be granted to her.

So when you reject me and humiliate me, it is not that I pretend that I don’t want it, while I secretly do. The part that is being rejected really doesn’t want it. It truly is suffering and its heart is truly being broken. There is no pleasure experienced by it.

Who is taking pleasure is the cruel one and it is a kind of ex-post pleasure. During the scene she is just watching and only after that she devours all the pain and suffering that the needy one experienced, tasting and appreciating the craft of the dom who carried out the act.

This is why I think that it takes real cruelty to hurt me. At least to hurt me to the level that I want to be hurt. Because I won’t show you that I am enjoying it at any moment. Because I won’t be enjoying it. Because during the scene my entire body will scream, “Please stop and just hold me. Please, love me.”

But what you need to do is to ignore it and go on. And in order to do that you need to enjoy breaking this little heart. You need to enjoy using my vulnerability against me. You need to want to truly hurt. And you should.

Because trust me, the cruel one will thank you hundredfold for it.

And the needy one will heal. It always does.

There is so much sadness in me, it’s almost spilling over the brim

It’s interesting what you can find when you stop doing for a moment and start feeling yourself instead. I’m trying to do it more lately, and one of the things that I’ve found is an enormous sadness. Not depressive, my-life-sucks kind of sadness. I think that I have a pretty good life. More like a calm and appreciative sadness.

I guess that I am strange (who isn’t though?), but I really enjoy being sad and being with that feeling. Whenever I can choose, I'll always choose a sad movie, a sad book, sad music. I love the complexity of negative emotions. There is just so much more to be felt there. When you're happy, you're just happy. It's very simple. Nothing to think about and analyse there. Feeling down is an entirely different story. There are so many shades of pain. So many thoughts and feelings to be experienced.

Maybe I am wrong though. Maybe it's just that I became so familiar with the negative emotions that I can see all the different shades of them, while happiness is so rare and overwhelming for me, that I can’t appreciate its richness. It’s like when you taste something new and you just get hit by the unfamiliar flavour, not able to taste all the nuances. Only once you get familiar with it, you start to taste all the subtle tones and differences. Maybe that’s it, I don’t know. But I don’t think it really matters.

What matters is that I like sadness. It feels familiar and soothing. And in the end, it’s just a feeling. All feelings come and go, some of them are pleasant and others are not. It just so happens that what for me is pleasant, for most of the people is not. Matter of taste.

Since I remember, I’ve been like that. I have never hidden from negative emotions. Whenever something difficult was happening in my life, I would dive headfirst into it and into feeling what it does to me. I guess that I am the opposite of a person who suppresses their emotions. I kind of amplify them and go all in. Of course, it also means that I experience joy very strongly. But it so happens that it’s not something that takes place very often. Or maybe I just don’t focus on it.

I think that it has a lot to do with my tendencies to push myself. I basically live on the border of my comfort zone the entire time, constantly diving outside and exploring what is there. And usually, when you dig deep in your psyche, there are more wounds to be found there than soft spots. I think that there are no people who didn’t experience some emotional pain that scarred them in a way. There are just different ways of dealing with it. My way is to bathe in the wound.

I am not doing it in a picking-on-scabs kind of way though. I am just sitting with it and taking it in, feeling all the emotions that arise and letting them wash through me. Because they are important and beautiful and they also have a place in life. And who said that happy feelings are better than sad? Why is laughter considered better than crying?

I guess that my point is that sadness and negative emotions, in general, are more natural to me than happiness and I don’t think that there is anything wrong with it. More than that, I think that it brought a lot of amazing things into my life, like tango, kink and most importantly rope. Because what drew me to all of them is the melancholy, the darkness, the despair and the suffering that is at their core. Of course, they don’t have to be practised this way. I know many people who find happiness and fun and joy in their play, who dance to embrace and connect with the other person, to share intimacy with them. I also know people who do rope in a fun and relaxed way, to enjoy the sensual experience and the closeness with the other person. I am not one of those people.

That is not to say that I don’t find joy and happiness in my practice. I do. But I only find it and appreciate it when it’s mixed with pain and suffering. And that is also what I am looking for. I am not doing rope or dancing or kink because I want to feel good and have fun. I am doing it because I want to feel hurt. I want the heartache. I want to be immersed in melancholy and sadness. I am putting myself bare out there so that my partners can really touch me. I am fully open and vulnerable because I am not afraid to be hurt. I am not afraid of pain, of rejection, of loneliness. In fact, I am looking for it.

Of course, it’s not like I am searching for my heart to be truly broken. I don’t want to be truly hurt. That is why I love kink so much because it allows me to experience all these negative feelings in an isolated and emotionally safe (more or less) way. But I am not paralyzed by the fact that I might be hurt. And that gives me strength. It gives me the strength to know that I can be with the good and the bad. And it feels good to be comfortable with these yearnings that are so deep in me. To recognize them and appreciate them. To see myself whole.

Because sadness does suit me very well. I am a natural in suffering. And I am pretty when I cry.

There is duality to me that I can’t quite explain

I've been participating in quite a lot of intense scenes lately. Actually, it's hard for me to recall a scene that I took part in and that wasn't intense in some way. Most of the time I am loving it. I love to scream and beg and cry and moan. Especially with a small crowd of spectators around. Only until I don't.

There is this part of me that wants always to be the loudest, the most sexual and the most intense player. And that utterly enjoys being teased and listening to comments of others about it. But there is also this other part that wants it to stop. The part that wants to just blend in and stop drawing attention. The part that wants some quiet space. I'm usually not listening to it because I think it's weak and boring. And I can't accept myself being either. They don't fit into the stories that I tell myself about who I am.

I've recently grown to realize that being a masochist is such an integral part of my personality that it penetrates every aspect of my life. It's funny because a year ago I wasn’t even aware that I enjoy pain so much and right now I identify myself with the masochist label more than any other in kink. Although I embrace it fully, taking pleasure in acting against yourself can sometimes make things difficult. Especially, when you're trying to grow to become a healthy, independent and loving yourself individual.

Like that time when I was my partner playing with someone else the entire evening without giving me any attention. Instead of doing what a healthy loving person would do, communicating about how I felt and finding a solution that would work for us, I decided to silently go on a rampage. Throughout the evening I participated in one intense scene after another, interlaced with emotionally distancing myself from everyone else and telling myself how unloved, unimportant and useless I am to him. Doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? But a part of me was sure as hell enjoying it.

Or when I pack my agenda with work, tying, dancing, dating, meeting friends, travelling, learning and one hundred other activities to the point where I have literally no time for myself. And I continue doing so until I snap and get sick and just need to get rest, because otherwise I will not be able to function efficiently again. A rational and self-caring human being would rest at least one day a week in order to regenerate and take care of their needs. But not me. I enjoy pushing myself to the edge and over it way too much to spoil it with self-care.

There are also situations, when being a masochist helps. It helped me achieve many goals and push myself far out of my comfort zone. When there is something difficult ahead of me, an exam, a job change, moving to another country, going to therapy, I jump right in, because I know that suffering is waiting for me there. It makes challenges easier to endure, not only because of the improvements that they bring me, but also because of the pain that I experience on the way.

I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that the duality that I mentioned earlier is an inevitable part of being a masochist. When you crave pain, you want something that rationally thinking you shouldn't. So you are experiencing simultaneously dual needs of wanting the pain to continue and to stop at the same time. It's similar with the humiliation play, which I see basically as intense emotional masochism. When you are degraded by someone you love, you actually do want him to stop, say that it's all a lie and that he loves you. But you also want him to keep going and make it feel real, to convince you that you're worthless to him, because that's what gives you pleasure. All these contradictory feelings make me question my sanity at times. While in play it's hot and it's exactly what I want. In real life it's often something that I would rather avoid. But I don’t always can.

So I guess what I'm trying to tell myself is that it's OK to be this dual person who wants two opposite things at the same time. Who wants both to be loud and watched and for everyone to turn their heads away and not pay attention. This person who wants to be loved and cared for but also put down and ignored. This person who is unapologetic and free in expressing herself and at the same time takes other people's opinions way too seriously. Because no matter how irrational and impossible it seems, this is me. And if there is one thing I know, is that logic is not something that my feelings have heard of. And I think they should stay that way.