shame & shaming

One of the things that will most quickly kill porn for me is shaming. I don’t mean humiliation of a loving kind that recognizes the strength of the humiliated partner (as Bitchy writes about so eloquently), but actual shaming. For instance, the Professor recently suggested a scenario in Maymay’s comments:

Just imagine you find a website and you see one of its free trailers… “tell me your a whore. come on say it ‘i’m a whore (giggling)’. no, say it. your a dirty fucking whore and i like to get fucked hard, i’m a dirty fucking slut and a whore, say it!” this then would be followed by two other actors ripping this person a new one. mostly through really rough anal sex and oral sex with lots of hair pulling, spitting, humiliation, and it all results with cum in the mouth and on the face.

Many people get off on this sort of thing, and I am just not one of them. I especially dislike it being done to women, but I don’t find it enjoyable or erotic when done to men either.

Let’s contrast this with Bitchy-style erotic humiliation, in her own words (from the link above):

But there’s different kinds of humiliation. There’s the oh-so-sexy licking piss off the bathroom floor…

…and turn your head a little so I can see your tongue, darling… god, do it slower… close your eyes….are you still hard?…now stop a moment and kneel up and tell me that you love me…tell me you’ll do *anything*… anything I ask…that you’ll go lower than I would ever have believed…that’s really nice… you look amazing right now…now put your hand in it and lick a little off your fingers then rub it all over your face…

See, what’s different for me there is that she’s not calling him dirty or trying to make him feel bad about himself. She tells him he looks amazing. She’s enjoying him and speaking to him with love and admiration.

I struggle with shame myself, in reality. I am, overall, pretty fond of myself, but I can get sucked into the whole shame spectrum, everything from feeling self-conscious (in the beginning I could hardly ever look Joscelin in the eyes, for instance) to having feelings of actual worthlessness (nobody loves me, I am unlovable, etc.) On the whole, I am kind of a happy and contented person (shut up, Jos!) but shame feelings don’t feel good to me at all.

I am also an irritable person, and I have to be careful not to be snappy, sarcastic, or harsh with Jos when he’s in a very submissive headspace, because that is…wait for it…shaming. On an ordinary day, walking along, if you try to point something out a big flying object to your lover and they won’t look where you’re pointing, you can kind of tease them, asking, “What the hell is wrong with you? The GIANT BALLOON,” but if I act that way with Joscelin when he’s very submissive, it’s cutting. He has no skin during those times and is completely vulnerable to me, and that’s a beautiful thing that I cherish and have an obligation to respect.

So I would never intentionally shame him during a scene. I try to make sure he always knows that I love and value him, so that if he lets me make him weak, it’s safe for him to go there. I’ve teased him about how scared he is of putting his fingers down into the sink, near the garbage disposal, but if I were actually asking him to do that for me, I would take his fears very seriously and not mock them.

If I did shame him, I think it would destroy the trust between us. If it didn’t pull him from his headspace at the time, that would just mean he’d be even angrier when he thought about it later.

I know everyone is different, and this is what some people (both tops and bottoms) get off on. It just isn’t part of it for me, and I don’t think it ever will be, and I am glad that I am also held to this standard by Joscelin.