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.

On the pleasure of feeling shame

Disclaimer: I'm writing from a position of a woman because that's the experience that I have. Of course, shame is not only a female experience and I'm not trying to say that is, but that's my personal angle of looking at it.

Shame is a problematic emotion. In principle, it is a negative and not desirable one, of course. Especially for women, shame about our sexuality is deeply ingrained in us culturally, partly as a means of control. If you can control someone's sexuality, you can very easily gain control over other aspects of their lives, as you thwart their self-expression and don't allow them to look for the answers by themselves (yes, I do kind of say that everything, in the end, is about sex).

Since currently, we are in the age of women gaining back the power, being shameless sexually is often seen as a form of a fight against the patriarchy. And in a way it is. By not conforming to social norms, not feeling shame when society tells you to, you show your independence and freedom to live according to your own rules.

But feeling shame doesn't always have to be something negative. Especially in kink. As with many other negative emotions that people normally don't want to experience, kink gives us tools and context to experiment with them without (theoretically) the normal repercussions that would come with it. Context of kink gives you a controlled environment in which you can explore the places to which you normally wouldn't want to go. And that's exactly what I find so appealing about it.

The way I often feel about shame is that it kind of alleviates guilt in me. It allows me to do things that I normally wouldn't do because I would feel that they are not decent (even though I know that deep inside I would enjoy them). But when I'm doing them while feeling ashamed, I feel like part of the blame is gone, because (at least) I am feeling ashamed. Especially when I am ashamed of something that I was 'forced' to do (while secretly enjoying it), like being exposed in rope, for example. I can enjoy the pleasure of being seen and (maybe even) desired, without taking the responsibility for being so openly sexual, keeping a little bit of decency.

Of course, as an independent emancipated young woman of the XXIst century, I could say that I should get rid of these old school ideas of sexuality being something shameful. That I should own my needs and desires and stop hiding away behind a wall of shame. But should I really?

If the (mostly Slavic) culture that I grew up in equipped me with all these notions about what is decent and what not for a woman, allowing me to experience amazing states of misery, why not use it to my advantage? Maybe it is old school to be an innocent damsel in distress when it comes to sex, but how romantic! And have I mentioned that romance is what I live for? So why should I consciously deprive myself of the experiences that I desire in the name of proving something to someone?

I guess that what I am trying to say is that we shouldn't make shame a shameful feeling. Which I feel like it kind of is recently, especially for women in the western European culture (I can't say about other cultures as I haven't been exposed to them long enough). I think that consciously choosing to experience shame, even though it is not something admired in our society is a sign of bravery and not of conforming to stereotypes.

And there is a beauty in shame. In this confusion about breaking the rules, which feels both enjoyable and wrong at the same time. In eating the forbidden fruit. In uncovering something that should stay covered. And also in submitting to the norms of the crowd and feeling the power of the group pressure over you, crushing you under the feeling of inappropriateness. There is a pleasure to be found in allowing yourself to stop fighting against other people trying to dictate your choices and for once let their views take control, while at the same time doing something against what they deem appropriate. It's this perverse feeling of being a 'fallen woman' who lost her status but desperately wants it back.

Rules and norms give one structures and scenarios opening endless possibilities for play. Especially the old school notions are a great tool for that because these archetypes are so deeply ingrained in us that it is very easy to tap into them. Being ashamed of one’s desires, group shaming, shame about being exposed and about one's actions are all situations that we've been surrounded by throughout our lives, even if haven't actively participated in them. I love to play with those notions and use them to my advantage. To let myself live the stories of women who were here before me. To experience their pain and their pleasures.

I wouldn't want to let it go in order to prove how independent and developed I am as a woman. And I don't think that I should have to do that. Sex and play is not a political statement. It's a way of connecting to myself and to my partners in a very pure form. It's a means for exploration of my body and mind. Exploring traditional notions is a very interesting thing to do, even if only as a way of facing them truly and letting them go. Playing with them gives one power over them. It allows one to see them for what they are, states of mind that one gets in and out of, initially unconsciously, but as one grows more aware of them, more and more consciously.

I guess that if I really wanted to, I could stop being so easily ashamed. Only that I don't. Instead, I prefer to take what my upbringing gave me and twist it to the limits. Put my shame in a pressure cooker and see what comes out of it. It is such a fascinating feeling and it brings so much joy to me and my partners. Let's enjoy it while we can. But on our terms.