Trigger warning for extreme sexual abuse
tA question that has guided me through many challenging situations is: “Why am I doing this, and why am I pushing these boundaries if they make me uncomfortable?”
This question extends beyond specific scenarios—I’ve applied it to all areas of my life. For example, why am I with this person if being with them makes me uncomfortable? Why am I staying in this job if it leaves me feeling uneasy?
When it comes to intimacy, it’s worth reflecting on whether the acts in our sex life make us uncomfortable, and if so, asking ourselves why we continue with them. This isn’t something any of us need to answer publicly, and it’s entirely possible we are completely at ease and happy with where we are. For me, the answers have varied greatly depending on the person or situation, but the act of questioning has always helped me find clarity.
Other thoughts... and it's good to explore thoughts because usually most of us have been socialised to not question a single thing that privileges males and centers the male erection, especially from the Lib fem perspective which is lazy and male oriented whilst putting on a show of strength - I saw how some supposedly edgy burlesque shows just turned into a group of men standing silently ogling very young skinny women taking their clothes off and was told it was liberation “because the girls wanted to do it.” But it was just the same old erections, same creepy men, completely empowered by middle class young women centering their penises. Walking past one of these men, I felt a hand where it shouldn't be. I was not part of the act but just a woman in the audience. He couldn't distinguish where the line was.
Ultimately what we are seeing is a thought terminating statement that has stifled our questions or discomfort with "Don't shame my kink"
Something that happens over time as you find out what makes you uncomfortable is that you also start to know what feels safe... unless your perception of safety has been skewed by trauma. And trauma begets more trauma as a person acts out to try and obliterate the guilt/shame/horror/fear/rejection feelings. A hamster wheel of increasingly dangerous encounters.
I remember a ten year deadly cycle a friend went through in her early twenties, she had a highly skilled career, she was from a loving family, she was absolutely stunning, but had found herself in a situation with a man who kept pushing the sex to uncomfortable extremes. She became addicted to his late night calls. I remember her saying to me after about six years of this torture that she didn’t know how to be with anyone “nice” anymore and who would want her anyway after this? The next four years were a string of debasing experiences with men on Tinder as she tried to feel alive. One worse than the next, culminating in her trying to take her life. She was a normal young woman who had been pulled into a set of behaviours that made her not recognise herself. It’s easily done.
Everybody wants to feel wanted, adored, loved, cherished. But the Pavlov's Dog effect of how and who we get that love can warp us into something unrecognisable to ourselves. Of course everyone will have different ideas of what they classify as kink etc etc etc and it's the more extreme things I'm talking about here that could lead to obvious physical danger, as she mentions in the podcast, about how you learn to do those things is by doing those things.
Things that require a safe word.
I know of many women who have said to me that the safe word was ignored, along with the "no", the "please no" and the "I'm scared" and in some cases, the woman herself crying in silence because the man she was with had no empathy.
It's so easy to find yourself pushing boundaries from a sense of disgust with yourself, wanting the kind of security and love you imagine other people having and then finding a way to be disgusted at them at having it "Vanilla! Boring!" Which is when we see the "Other Woman" type of thinking as beautifully played out on this thread earlier although those posts were deleted.
@LaundryFondue it sounds like yourself and your consensual partner are pushing limits between yourselves, there are lots of limits which aren't deadly, so maybe it’s more about picking your poison as it were. I obviously don't know how deadly your kinks are and obviously you don't have to say. (This post isn’t specifically aimed at you, but I’ve been thinking about your thoughtful comments whilst trying to get my thoughts down too)
I know a couple whose fetish involved her undoing his belt buckle with her teeth until one of her front teeth cracked out one day. Another friend used to engage in knife handles being inserted but then she found out he was having sex with an ex, so she left him and the idea of doing that again with anyone else turned her off because she associated it with him. The turn on switched off.
Another friend said she would weep during extreme anal, her partner ignored her tears... and her body tissue tearing.
Several friends have endured cross dressing partners whose pushing of their boundaries have slipped into mimicry, denigration and gaslighting. The lines are wavy. Easily pushed or manipulated. But only we have the ability to step back back from them if we haven't gotten in so deep that we can't see ourselves anymore. The women my age (50’s) have had to manage laddette culture, the pressure of pornified “role models” entering the mainstream (look what carnage poor Pamela Anderson herself has had to deal with) and drug and rave scene. We aren’t virgins, physically or mentally. We’ve seen it all which is why the trans thing is now becoming so tiresome to many of us. Fucking tiring to still having to say no to men. And let’s make no mistakes, as far as men seeing women as invisible at a certain age, this hasn’t happened to me, I still get men following me home, still have to deal with weird messages, still at this age finding myself having to block men I’ve known for years for making inappropriate comments about my appearance. They. Never. Change.
Questioning everything after sleepwalking can feel terrifying, as we are seeing now with the young woman "trans activist allies" who are suddenly seeing how entitled their "assigned male at birth" friends are and start to recognise how quickly the same old dynamics that their "Fuck the Patriarchy T.M." hoodie from Amazon re-emerge and establish themselves in the new world order where now, there are no electric fences, no safeguarding measures, no support system and no one capable of speaking the truth is left to speak for them in their friend group, who were of course socially acceptable and carefully curated to agree with them as the more and more into the scene.
I’m recovering from the wreckage that the men in my life have brought upon me with their inhumane desires. I’m also recovering from the wreckage I brought upon myself by not getting out of certain situations sooner. I’m lucky I physically survived some of the encounters I’ve been foolish enough to allow myself to get into.
So many of us are still here by luck alone.
Any situation which pushes boundaries whereby there is a risk of violent death is not something we should be condoning in Teen Vogue or mainstream conversations.
Strangulation is attempted murder.
Extreme torture is attempted murder.
We’ve just seen a spate of major news stories where women have been raped so savagely including orally they have died.
We have a responsibility to talk about what makes us feel scared and uncomfortable and to be allowed to do that is a gift. How many conversations are not being had in the spaces between the agreed safe words. How do we know what makes us feel safe unless we can talk about what makes us feel unsafe?