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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

This is a spin off on mistoferin's thread about painsluts, I didn't want to hijack it, but someone else on the thread brought up and issue that I have thought about myself in the past. The question concerns pain tolerance and the label masochist. I have thought about the fact that I have a high pain tolerance. In some ways my pain threshold can be low, and in other ways it can be high... it depends on the day, the dominant, the type of play and the implement used, and the part of the body being tormented. The variables change and my threshold changes.

I have thought that comparing two individuals with two different pain thresholds to determine level of masochism just seems wrongheaded to me. It is the fact that people enjoy pain inflicted on them at all that makes them masochistic. I have wondered what pain tolerance has to do with whether someone is a real "painslut" or if they just have "masochistic tendencies". Someone that lacks nipple sensitivity, for example, isn't going to feel the pain like someone that has sensitive nipples. You can do the same action to both and the one with sensitive nipples is actually taking more pain than the other individual, yet one is a pain slut and the other isn't?

The other thread about the newbie misjudging her pain tolerance is about being a newbie I am sure.. but at the same time someone that has been scening with one dom for years may have had the same problem because of judging pain tolerance. I believe you can be extremely sensitive to pain and still be a masochist, because you enjoy sensations that are painful, it isn't what is inflicted on you, it is what your brain is interpreting as pleasure.. what do you all think?