At the core of the community, I feel like there is an urge to push the envelope in many ways. Perhaps that is why we are often excluded from spaces. Others don’t like to be pushed out of their comfort zones the way we do.

With the rise of the Internet, we’ve been allowed more opportunities to feel “normal.” It’s easier to get enough of us in one place that we don’t have to feel like freaks. Venues like the CSPC, the Velvet Rope and Club Desire give us places to congregate. Websites like Fetlife.com and CollarMe give us online spaces to socialize. Younger kinksters might not realize how special this really is. However -as any elder kinster will tell you- having spaces where we can belong is very special.

A Horror Story That Really Happened

I knew I was kinky since I was a child, but I didn’t know that other people were like me until I saw a flier at an edgy clothing store called The Graffiti Shop. It invited those who got pleasure from pain to come enjoy an evening of community sharing tips and tricks and making friends. I was so excited to go!

The night of the event, I changed my outfit twice. I was too young to have a closet full of leather and vinyl, but I stole some of my mom’s lingerie and paired it with fishnets and heavy Goth makeup. I was certain that I would find a play-partner like I’d read about in Anne Rice’s the Taming of Sleeping Beauty. I’d have settled for someone who would let me play out some of the better brothel scenes from Santaram. (Never having met another kinky person -and growing up before the internet- I only had books to go on for ideas!)

When I arrived, I found a table full of people who looked very much like me. They were all dressed in some way to mark themselves as “freaks.” At the appointed time, someone got up to speak and I expected to be welcomed and given some sort of format for the event.

Instead, what I got was a Mormon preacher shouting at all of us for being disgusting hell-bound sinners.

I turned and ran out of the coffee shop in tears, and I cried all the way home. I’d been so hopeful; and suddenly I was so crushed. It was a trap!

Having spaces in society where we can go to feel normal is everything.

My entire life I have felt out-of-place and even outright shunned for who I am. This seems unfair for a multitude of reasons, but the most striking to me is the fact that we -as kinksters- are some of the most honest and brave people I know.

Avoidance Versus Growth

There are people who live in denial. If anything even slightly unpleasant comes up in conversation, they change the subject. My grandma was like this. I attribute it to her years as a politician. I could tell her about good things happening in my life, but the moment I mentioned a struggle I was facing she would change the subject. My ex-husband was also like this. He was often obviously upset about something, but he would refuse to tell me what. I would say that I could feel his anger and unkind feelings in my direction and I needed to know why so that we could deal with whatever was bothering him, but he would say that he couldn’t talk about it, or later, he would simple get up and leave the room. If I tried to follow he would slam the door in my face.

This is avoidance. It’s the opposite of growth in relationships, and in kink.

There is a clear parallel because -while not all scenes that you play are within a relationship and not all relationships involve kink scenes- in both cases you have to be brave and face The Scary Thing in order to have the best time.

For example: I once dated a guy who had a worship kink. I thought it was sort of amusing so I played along. I could tell it was based on his dad beating him up as a child and then leaving, and his mom only ever saying nasty and critical things to him. I could literally see him healing when I would worship him; feeling that perhaps he did have value after all.

The problem? Once he felt that he did have value, he left me. He’d grown out of the thing he’d asked me for, and so he mistakenly thought he’d grown out of me. Three months later he realized his mistake and was back, telling me how sorry he was and asking to try new kinks instead. We ended up dating for a long time, and I think the biggest reason why was that he was able to see his mistake -thinking he’d outgrown me rather than realizing he’d outgrown the fetish he’d asked me for- and self-correcting. He reacted wrong based on incorrect assumptions, but he realized he was wrong, and he was grown-up enough to apologize. (It was the 90’s, so he apologized with a dozen roses, a CD from one of my favorite bands, and a gift card to Hot Topic).

We worked through a lot of each other’s issues over the years. I think we were together off and on for about 14 years total. In that time, I opened up to him about fetishes I wanted to try and explained why, and he did the same. We both found that we could trust one another to push just a little bit more than what was comfortable. As we grew, we discovered that some fetishes were just part of who we were, while other fetishes stemmed from psychological trauma and would get old once they were played out enough.

For me, one of the core fetishes that never went away was humiliation. Not in the way someone else wants me to be humiliated, but in the ways I want to be humiliated. It stems from being transgender and being kind of a shitbag of a dude. (Only on an instinct level, which I’m careful to rise above. But, it’s still a core part of me.)

I basically just jump into the perspective of the person doing the humiliating; like watching from the outside. Why does it have to be me? Well, it doesn’t. I can do humiliating stuff to other girls. But, I usually feel bad about it after since I respect them as people. If it’s me being humiliated, then I can just put up a wall of cognitive dissonance and objectify myself for the purposes of the scene.

However, I grew out of other fetishes, such as exhibitionism. I can still enjoy it, but I don’t get off on it anymore the way I used to. It doesn’t have the power over me that it did when it was tied to unresolved psychological trauma.

Right now, the only fetish I have tied to trauma motivates me to abuse men. It doesn’t really matter how. If they want to be whipped and spanked, I can do that. If they want to be fucked in the ass, I can do that. If they want to be verbally degraded or forced to lick my boots or something, that’s fine, too. It doesn’t matter as long as I can degrade them. You would be shocked how many men are really, really into this.

The trauma behind that is obviously that my ex-husband was extremely abusive. He was an emotional cripple who refused to ever say what he wanted or needed, belittled me for asking for what I wanted and needed, and in general spent all his energy finding ways to blame me for the fact that he is a fuck up with brain damage. His instincts tell him that he is worthless, but he would not confront those feelings, so instead he tried to make me feel worthless because -I guess- misery loves company. He tried to tear me down whenever I exhibited a shred of self-love because he had none. He attacked me for having feelings because he was not brave enough to express his. He abused me for asking to be treated well because he couldn’t validate his feelings of self-loathing without taking them out on everyone around him.

To be fair, he has good reason to feel as he does. He’s ended up just like his alcoholic father who couldn’t hold a job and was abusive to his mother. His trauma and brain damage are causing him to play out this whole weird script from his childhood that I –as in The Actual Me Who I Am– have no part in.

I don’t fit in his story. You know why? Because I love myself. I love life. I love my friends and my whips and chains and the art on my walls. I am a happy person, so there is no place for the real me in the stories he is playing out, and that is why I had to step out of them (first by leaving, and then by insisting on a divorce).

I work through my issues with kink, but I also work through my trauma by writing. You are watching me grieve my marriage in real time as I blog. However, kink and writing aren’t my only tools. I also see a kink-friendly therapist, talk over things with my friends, and make time to do things that enrich my life. I’ve been to the volcano when it was erupting to see Madam Pele in action. I drive to the beach when I’m stressed. I hike, swim, and go to workshops to learn new things. A life has to be well-rounded.

The part of trauma that kink can heal is the part where you are exposing yourself to a trauma. You want to hurt like you hurt when you were traumatized, but in a situation where you have the control and what you say goes. Getting a do-over where you consent is a powerful tool. Over time, it can absolutely be part of your healing.

Psychologists call it exposure therapy, and it’s actually a recognized treatment for PTSD now. Those of us in the kink community have just been doing it all along.

However, I also recommend finding a therapist, doing fun things to remind yourself what joy feels like, spending time with friends, and taking time to feel awe and remember how small you are. And -if the way you decide to feel awe happens to be confronting Pele in action- stop by and see me on your way to the volcano.

Remember: Avoidance is the opposite of growth and healing.