Not Guilty

While He recovers -- Time for something a little bit substantial.

From some of my reading, I've been fussing about this for the last couple of weeks:

"Feeling guilty, then punished or disciplined, and then subsequently cleansed
and forgiven, is so much a part of the cathartic, transformative experience ...
This cycle of guilt/discipline/forgiveness...separate ... from more deliberately
erotic and sexual forms of pleasure/pain play, and ... closer to the cathartic
ritual pain practiced by many religious movements throughout the ages

No.

There is nothing particularly transformative, spiritual, enlightened, or uplifting about guilt. This is fallacious.

Guilt can serve a purpose. If it is valid, and grounded in some sort of reality. So, certainly, if one deliberately and knowingly and purposefully injures another, or commits crimes, or behaves in heinous ways, then guilt is an appropriate emotional response to such behaviors. Rape, murder, spousal or child abuse, larceny, governmental corruption -- all of these are candidates for guilt. In my experience, people who behave in these ways very seldom experience anything like an emotional response that resembles guilt.

Guilt is not equivalent to remorse. Remorse is what a normal, responsible, appropriately socialized human animal experiences when they fail to perform as is expected within the context of whatever relational setting they find themselves in. So, for example, if a parent arrives late to an important dance recital because all the traffic lights were red and they simply didn't leave enough travel time to "get there," there ought to be real sadness, sorrow, and remorse; not to mention disappointment all the way around. But guilt? Please!

I think that this pattern of thinking is about shame. Guilt is about feeling bad about behavior. Shame is about feeling bad about the self. Where I have trouble with this line of reasoning, applied to BDSM practice, is that there is an underlying shame to it -- a feeling bad about the self, and a need to somehow justify the drive toward this need with "guilt/shame" while dismissing the possibility for the more joyful, healthy, and positively embraced sexual, erotic pleasure/pain "play."

I reject that perspective.

Now, I know that it is polite and socially correct, at this point, to make the disclaimer that not everyone does this the same way, and that not everyone has the same experience, and that we all see things differently, and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm sorry. I just can't go there on this one. Too many people have struggled in the dark with their fear and their shame to come to terms with their own identies with regard to their sadomasochistic selves to have it somehow put back into a guilt/shame box -- even in a back-handed way by anyone. I won't endorse that thinking.

I believe that, when I see that sort of rationale being put forward, that what I am seeing is someone struggling with their own shame. I believe that I am seeing someone who is denying the reality and truth of who they are because to acknowledge that truth is painful to them at this point in their journey. I can understand and sympathize with that pain, but I cannot let it stand as an unchallenged fact.

People do use discipline and punishment within this lifestyle. People do use humiliation and shame. People do use pain for catharsis and transformation. Underneath it all, though, they are people of worth and value and joy. Underneath it all, they understand who they are and what they want and what they need to achieve their own pleasure. They are not "guilty" and they are not ashamed. They are healthy and strong and proud of who and what they are, and who WE are.

swan