No Shame

by Molly Moore
No shame image

On Wednesday I read a post on I Like Chocolate, He likes Vanilla. It was the authors write-up of a punishment fantasy she has and included piss play, humiliation and vomiting, among other things. From reading the authors tweets prior to her posting it I know she was worried that some of the content maybe too edgy or off-putting  for some readers. I think she was fearful that her fantasies would have people responding with… ‘what on earth is wrong with you’. However after some twitter encouragement she posted it, albeit with a warning.

Now as fantasies go, it is slightly edgy but I have read far more extreme and challenging ones and on some blogs I have even read far more extreme and challenging recounts of actual fantasies acted out. Not that I am demeaning Emily’s fantasy or post AT ALL just trying to get it in perspective with what else is out there. I myself have been known to post content that is certainly not to everyone’s taste but I don’t care. My blog is what it is, read it or don’t, that is your call and so I left Emily this comment on her post….

“This is very raw and gritty and I love it. There are parts of it that would not feature in my desires but others that most certainly would.

As far as posting edgy stuff is concerned I would just go for it. Part of writing my blog is about challenging myself and my readers, if they don’t like that is what the red cross at the top right of the browser is for.

Mollyxxx”

My version of “Publish and be damned!” I guess….

In response Emily wrote this….

“Thank you, all of you!

When I write down my fantasies I really just go where they take me and see what happens. Sometimes I surprise myself, as I did with this one. The vomit was a real eye-opener when it happened. It was on my hard limit list, but now it is on the soft limit list.

Posting this online was very difficult for me, as I am still struggling with feelings of shame associated with some of my kinks (they are listed in my last blog post), discovering yet another possible kink didn’t help! My feelings of shame are particularly bad at the moment. Last night hubby spanked my bum and gave me very mild bruises for the first time. He then had bad dreams about doing it, so has gone back to square one.

Your kind words mean a lot right now, even though, as you say some of the story was outside your limits.”

And so in response here is my open letter to Emily….

Dear Emily

I think your feelings of shame are perfectly natural. We are taught from a very young age about society’s norms and acceptable, desirable behaviour but on whose terms? You are not alone in your desires, not by a long chalk, many people have desires like these and ones that are even darker but for the most part people suppress them. The difference with you is that you have started to identify, explore and embrace them. It has led you to face them head on and challenge some of the base beliefs we all have about sex and sexual desires. I hope over time you will come to see that your desires are not shameful or weird or undesirable and that in time you learn to embrace them and love them and in turn yourself. They are part of the complicated and beautiful person that you are.

Many people never even get to the place you are in now, but remain with their desires unexplored and denied. What life is that for a person? You are on the edge of a journey and a deeper discovery of who you are and what makes you tick.

I remember a time when I faced similar challenges you do now in respect of my submission and my desire for pain. Why on earth http://findviagra.com would I want a man to hurt me? There must be something wrong with me? This is not right? I am meant to want gentle seduction and tender lovemaking (which are all very nice now and then) not brutal handling, torn clothes, bruised skin and defilement and yet those things I felt I shouldn’t want, they made my blood boil, my skin prickle and my pussy drip with desire and longing. A wise man once told me to trust my body, to learn to listen and respond to it and he was right because when I put aside my fears and worries I was set free on a most wonderful journey of passionate self discovery.

As for your husband, well in many ways I think you and he find yourself faced with similar issues. I suspect his upbringing and conditioning around the subject of acceptable and desirable sexual behaviour in particular with reference to women and ‘violence’ means that he is struggling with the concept of ‘hurting’ you. I am not a Dom but from the many I have spoken with about this is not an uncommon emotion. The key is for him to realise that he is not ‘hurting’ you, that what he does brings you pleasure and it is something you crave. It is not done against your consent and is never done in anger, violence or aggression. It is controlled, just as he would control himself and his physical strength if he was giving you a massage he does the same when he is giving you a spanking. I know my Dom is physically capable of damaging me in ways that are beyond acceptable to me but I know that he is capable of giving me what I need and want without doing this. The pleasure he brings me through pain is just the same as the pleasure I get from him kissing or licking me… it is controlled and measured to fit my boundaries, needs and desires. It is not abuse it is loving domination.

Whether he can ever overcome these barriers only time will tell but surely it is worth giving it a go.

I would highly recommend that you buy him a couple of books; in particular, The Loving Dominant by John and Libby Warren. I read this when I was in a very similar place you are in now and found my whole view-point shifting and changing as I realised that I was not alone, I was not weird and the type of man I craved actually existed. It is written with the new and exploring male Dom in mind and so I think for your husband it might really help him. Also, The Ultimate Guide to Kink by Tristan Taormino is an excellent read that I think both of you would enjoy and get a lot of benefit from.

I hope you don’t mind me writing this to you. I read your comment and my heart went out to you. I wanted to open a bottle of wine and talk it through with you but seeing as that is not possible this is my alternative offering.

Mollyxxx

I sent this to her in an email asking if she minded if I posted it here on my blog. She said she was happy with that and hoped that maybe it might help others who were also dealing with ‘kink shame’, as she called it. I have not heard it called that before but I have certainly encountered it and so I think in the next few weeks I might write some more about this subject but in the meantime both Emily and I would LOVE to hear from you. Do you have or have you had ‘kink shame’? If so how has it affected you, your relationships, your sex life, your kink journey and what have you done to overcome it?

No shame image

Mollyxxx

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5 comments

Emily October 5, 2012 - 2:49 pm

Molly,

Thank you so very much!

I have told you over email, Twitter, and now here – you and many others have been wonderful. I do hope various people can share their stories, or at least begin some dialogue. It is indeed not discussed anywhere near enough. There is a lot of talk about how subs need support to feel they are worthwhile, but this does seem to be about specific scenes and not the more general feelings many kinksters have.

I even had a look on Fetlife for a group discussing Kink Shame but couldn’t find one. Maybe there isn’t one, but is that because people are scared of admitting they feel shame, or just that they don’t or never have?

It is a difficult topic, that’s for sure.

I have written a more detailed reply to your letter here, it is open so everyone can read it. http://polykinkmonovanilla.blogspot.nl/2012/10/kink-shame.html

Again, thank you!

Emily

Reply
fridayam October 5, 2012 - 3:09 pm

Well said by both of you. This is a worthy dialogue, unlike some in the press! x

Reply
Newt Kai October 5, 2012 - 3:16 pm

This has been on my mind a great deal lately. From telling my first love about my kinky thoughts and having him reject them, to what it has grown to mean to me. To how I will approach it in the future. As I have always said. Kink is unique and different for each person. I have hated the feeling that I was judged as flawed or dysfunctional because I liked or needed external pain. Or that I need to relinquish control at times. I felt shame or that I wasn’t doing it right within the kinky world, when what I needed was less or more. Due to reluctance to wear the yoke of a label, I had difficulty finding a kinky niche for quite some time. It felt like the judges table on one of those dancing shows. with all of the judges holding up a zero card.

Whenever I have said to myself, WOW that’s extreme, when reading through kink posts or pics- I stop and examine what made me feel that way. At the heart of it, if the action was carried out with either love or respect or both, and was fufilling to those parties, isnt that what counts? Not how I, a third party feels?

The shame of wanting what I wanted created a hesitancy in me to go out and explore my kink further. That is a shame really, as I am a big believer that world would be a infinitely happier place if people explored and celebrated their sexuality and preferences. People derive entirely to much satisfaction from judging each other in a attempt to self soothe their own battered self confidence.

As usual Molly, you shine a light on a topic that needs airing and illumination. There should be no room for shame in the pursuit of our respectful and lawful passions.

xxoo Newt

Reply
Mina Lamieux October 5, 2012 - 3:39 pm

I’m sure when I started exploring d/s, that I felt some sort of shame for wanting such violent and taboo things done to me. Especially when you write a blog about it and people do leave you comments shaming you. Today, I feel no shame, but I do get a little nervous about it. Particularly, because if I do get to indulge my d/s fantasies, it is with another man and not my husband. I often wonder if the bruises and marks that I come home with, turns off my husband. He has told me that they do not. He can see how happy I am to have them, that he is happy for me. But still, I wonder how much he actually finds my marks attractive. He did confess to me that when I explored piss play with my ex master, it did not settle with him very well. Of course, he understands we just have different kinks and he certainly didn’t judge me for it, but it’s hard knowing something turned him off.

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Persephone Raya February 13, 2014 - 2:28 pm

This is not something I thought I would ever struggle with, as a tween/teen I knew I was kinky and I embraced it, but as I have got older shame of that side of me has definitely become a big part of who I am.
I actually wrote a post about it today, wondering how I try to combine the two people inside me; one kinky and one straight laced. I hope that by reading posts like yours I will learn to embrace it again and accept who I am.

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