Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt
If a sub lives for humiliation, degradation, objectification, and debasement, is this *always* the result of poor self esteem?
My opinions on these questions can be summed up fairly easily. First, everyone has issues, since no one gets to have a perfect childhood or lead a perfect life. We all have our baggage.
I don't think people who practice BDSM necessarily have more baggage than the general population. I think this all depends on how you deal with those issues. If you hide behind your issues and never really explore why you are the way you are, than you are going to be a BDSM practitioner who is perhaps dangerous to yourself and others. If you see it as your life's work to resolve your issues (as I do) I think it can enhance your life and aid some of that resolution.
I do think that those who like extreme sadomasochist play, such as breaking bones, or extreme degradation play, like eating scat (sorry) have some stuff they need to deal with. That these acts are consensual does not make them "sane" to me. But that is my opinion.
What's yours?
I've been thinking about these questions recently myself, as I take account of my life and look back on older memories. I think you're correct that we all have baggage of some form or another. I've never really told anyone this before, but for the record, I was abused as a child, mostly by my mother and older brother. My mother was a master manipulator and extremely proficient in verbal abuse. (My brother was just a bully, at least until I got older and surpassed him in height, weight, and fighting ability. Then he started to try to be nice, but it was already too late at that point.) My father was just the opposite. He wasn't abusive at all, more of a kinder, gentler type. My parents divorced when I was 6, but my mother always badmouthed my father as being "weak." So, my father was always a protector, while I saw my mother as more of a nemesis.
I also spent my formative years during the time of "women's lib" and the so-called "sexual revolution," and I was probably exposed to a lot of things that I was not psychologically prepared for as a little kid. My mom was ten years older than the average hippie, but she was still kind of a wannabe just the same. She used to walk around the house nude, curse incessantly, and talked openly about sex in front of us even when we were just little kids. So, it may have had some kind of effect on me.
My father was the polar opposite. (I don't even know how they got together in the first place.) He rarely got angry or raised his voice. He was always very logical and analytical in his approach to things. He never cursed. Talking about sex was absolutely forbidden. He was an arch conservative who never approved of any of that liberal hippie stuff or the "theater crowd" that my mother was hanging out with. Incidentally, my father's parents were similar in that my grandmother was absolutely in charge of the household, while my grandfather just puttered around in the garage and didn't speak out against her. However, he would turn down his hearing aid so he didn't have to listen to her yelling. 
I probably took more after my father, a more mellow and sedate personality. That was another problem, because I looked too much like him, too, so that was another source of mother's attitude towards me. Since my father wasn't around for her to abuse, I became the convenient target. My brother took more after my mother, and sometimes they would work together in cutting me down.
When my father remarried, my step-mother was similar to my mother in that she was very bossy and domineering, although she didn't have the same artful skills in manipulation and verbal abuse as my mother did. But she was very abusive with her own kids, the effects of which lingered for years. One of my step-sisters is anorexic, spending more time in the hospital than at home, and my step-brother died in prison.
I've gone through my paces and resolved a lot of this, at least in terms of understanding from a psychological point of view. We all have baggage, but we find ways of dealing with it. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my submissive proclivities, but I would concede that it's a distinct possibility.
But my experience has taught me that the one thing I will never stand for is any kind of abuse. I have absolutely zero tolerance for that. I've been educated much further on that since I've worked in social services and can recognize it for what it is, both verbal and physical abuse. Child abuse is a double whammy, and I'm outraged that it still goes on in this day and age, even after so much societal attention has been paid to this issue. Even though I'm submissive, I will never tolerate any abuse. While some people can recover from it, a lot of others don't. Some people are ruined for life from child abuse, and there's really no excuse for it either. Abusers are too cowardly to stand up for themselves in the real world, so they take it out on those who are most vulnerable, just because they can. Such behavior is absolutely reprehensible and vile.
I can sort of forgive my brother, since he was a kid and didn't know any better. Also, when we went back to live with our father, my dad put an end to it and kept him in check as best he could. In his household, all kids were of equal rank, no one had any authority over another just because they were older. So, I'm grateful to my dad for keeping my older brother restrained and not taking any shit from him either. My mother never understood this, and was actually quite neglectful and clueless in her responsibilities as a parent. It was an even bigger hoot many years later when I confronted about this, and she didn't remember a thing. It's like whole decades were missing from her memory. She drank and used a lot, so I guess it's not too surprising that she couldn't remember anything other than how much of a saint she was.
Sorry for the long rant, but I guess this topic brings up some old unpleasant memories.
I sometimes wonder if dominants tend to be the older children in their families, while submissives tend to be the younger children. There may be something to that, as I've noticed that in other families. The elder brother or sister might tend to lord it over their hapless younger siblings who are smaller, weaker, and not as intellectually or psychologically developed as their older sibling.
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RE: Is the proclivity for BDSM a result of past trauma? - 
, and as Fry says, SHUT UP AND TAKE MAH MONEY! 
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