Humiliation and Degrading Sex
This topic has been up lately, as we recently got a message from a man who wanted to understand a desire his partner was expressing. Basically, it boiled down to “what’s up with degradation, rough sex, or rape scenarios?” We also had a letter from a woman, who was feeling badly about how turned on she got from degrading sex. First off, science has not yet discovered why certain stimuli, over others, light up the arousal center in the brain. People are turned on by all kinds of things. So we tell our clients that no source of turn-on is shameful. If you can allow yourself to feel the arousal, then you can decide if you want to leave it in the realm of imagination, or act on it. There are a few underlying reasons that are commonly found, but the truth is, it’s just is a part of your make-up, and the more you try to repress it, the more persistent and taboo it becomes.
So taboo is part of the appeal of humiliation and degradation. It feeds a part of us that wants to break rules, rebel, and be “dirty.” Another aspect of the appeal is permission. When I was a teenager, I had a fantasy that someone was kidnapping all these famous rock stars and heart throbs, and then they kidnapped me, and I had to clean the house in a yellow bikini and “service” all the men. In a culture that still shames women for being open about their sexual appetites, forced or rough sex gives them permission to enjoy the act.
Another reason some women may enjoy being forced or degraded, is that the act of submission gives them a break from having to be in charge. It’s important to note that not all submissive individuals want to be degraded. This is a particular type of play, and needs to be negotiated. In both men and women who enjoy submission, it is often the case that they are very dominant in their outside lives. Most Pro-Dommes will tell you that their clients are usually CEO’s, firemen and cops. There is a pleasure and a balance created when the person being bossed around gets to stop taking responsibility. Being submissive in the bedroom provides a balance to how masculine some women feel in their work lives. It is an opportunity to only feel and not think. Being degraded or humiliated adds an extra nuance, that they are actually lowly or invisible. It may sound odd, but there is a lot of self-esteem that can be gotten from surviving an ordeal like degradation.
A third reason we see, is that people are trying to work something out psychologically or seeking catharsis. I had a 
male client who enjoyed degradation and humiliation. He was a Vietnam vet, and that had caused him to be hyper-vigilant and quite disconnected from his emotions. He wanted to be made to cry. He also had an abusive mother. In our therapeutic scenes, he wanted to act out being abused and humiliated by someone who didn’t believe he was worthless, perhaps to rewire the part of him that felt unloved as a child. After such scenes, it was always important to provide affectionate and loving aftercare.
male client who enjoyed degradation and humiliation. He was a Vietnam vet, and that had caused him to be hyper-vigilant and quite disconnected from his emotions. He wanted to be made to cry. He also had an abusive mother. In our therapeutic scenes, he wanted to act out being abused and humiliated by someone who didn’t believe he was worthless, perhaps to rewire the part of him that felt unloved as a child. After such scenes, it was always important to provide affectionate and loving aftercare.The last reason I want to talk about is Belonging. I am not submissive personally. In fact, I am the Dominant in some of my relationships. I do however enjoy rough sex because it makes me feel desired. When a man I trust claims me roughly, it makes me feel like he wants me so badly he can’t control himself. And that is actually a powerful feeling. I am the source of his raging lust. All people want to feel loved and like we belong to someone. Being ravished by a woman is one of the most common fantasies we hear from male clients. Being taken against our will enforces this feeling.
Some people enjoy mutually rough play and we call that being Primal. The rush of adrenaline that accompanies fighting or wrestling as if for our lives, is a powerful aphrodisiac. Fear and arousal share thirteen physiological markers like elevated heart rate, breathing, dilated pupils, decreased digestive activity and others.
How to introduce degradation play?
It’s important to know that this is “Consensual non-consent.” That means it is thoroughly negotiated beforehand as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. Some words may be great, and others will take you right out of the scene. Spanking may be okay, but face slapping is out. In fact, both people need to have a means to stop what they don’t like by using a safeword. This is good for both partners. Many men have a hard time hurting a woman that they love. They are afraid of letting out “the beast” that society has asked them to keep chained up. Knowing that a safeword exists, lets the man know he can let out the animal, within limits.
Questions to be considered. What words will be used? Are there any that are a particular turn-on or turn off? Is there anything the dominant partner needs to be aware of, like an old injury or surgery that could be triggered by rough play? If you want this only in the bedroom, that is part of the negotiation. For example, “outside of sex, we are full equals again, and never call me whore.” We also recommend debriefing afterward, and treating the session like an experiment. Rather than taking it badly if it didn’t go exactly right, ask yourselves, what worked? What didn’t? What do we want to do differently next time? And congratulate yourselves for being willing to try something new.
Curious about more BDSM basics? Register for our webinar on Getting Kinky, taking place live on Thursday 2/9 at 8 pm EST, and available in the archives for sale thereafter.
Wow! Super great info, really clear and useful! Thank you very much!
It’s because a lot of women have been degraded and demeaned under patriarchy for thousands of years and have internalized it like many african americans have and end up killing each other with guns. Patriarchy has twisted all of us and women are it’s main victims across all races. I’m 65 and lived patriarchy and know what it has done and continues to do to women, tho clever ruses like this article and “bdsm” will come quite to another conclusion of course. This may make people uncomfortable but the truth usually does
I actually find that the urge to be degraded cuts across all genders. You get to choose. If this type of relating doesn’t work for you, don’t engage in it. Judging others for their proclivities is neither kind nor uplifting. Actually, your comment is an attempt to degrade me without my consent. Speaking of truth.
I was raised very much a 2nd wave feminist , an avid reader of Woolf , Daly, and several others. Maybe you’re right about you. But you are way off for me. First of all the whole narrative of patriarchy is skewed, I became a professional firefighter. I loved it to the core of my being.
Now I am married and I love it to the core of my being when my husband takes control, which often includes mild degradation which I have been told I’d humiliation, hmmmm
Well I am 60, he’s 42 and he loves adores and treasures me.
I am the one with the ‘kinks’ , but I am starting to understand as a Christian woman that God made sex for us to enjoy and to commune with another. I had to be large and in charge all my life, now I have a man who gets my need to experience not being in charge, and I need that every bit as much, because I am a full spectrum humans. Full range of thoughts and feelings with a large carrying capacity. I am no one’s victim. Goodness, I handled a guy with a loaded gun pointed at my face at 15, the same year I wrestled a friend from a gang of six men, and yeah, I won. I am 5′. 125 to 150 depending..
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My point is you have no idea what a patriarchy really is til you move to Arab emeritus, or maybe Pakistan. I have lived abroad. I am so sick of hearing people hate on whole classes of people. We have met the enemy, and hint: it’s in your head!
“we tell our clients that no source of turn-on is shameful.”
Really? Child rape, Kitten Stomping, Cannibalism, Genital mutilation, Animal rape, are all okay if you just call it a kink?
The turn on by itself is not shameful. The behavior is illegal, and therefore not okay. If you treat a source of arousal with curiosity and acceptance, you can find safe ways to express it, or sometimes even move beyond a desire. Children, animals, drunk people, your employees or students (who are intrinsically deprived of power), and low IQ individuals are not capable of consent and are therefore always off limits.
How can you find a “safe way to express” being aroused by small children, genital mutilation, etc? Are you not just encouraging these illegal behaviors?
Thank you for asking. As I mentioned in the article, consent is all important. I don’t condone ever doing anything to anyone who is not in a position to give consent, including young people, animals, emotionally compromised, or drunk people. What someone is turned on by isn’t the problem, it is the behavior. And it is the shame and repression that drives people to act on their desires. What is a safe way to be attracted to young children? Get an adult who likes to act like a small child to relate with. Allowing people to release just a bit of the judgment and self-loathing that they live with is not the same as encouraging them to act on illegal behaviors.
Perfect answer Rebekah
As you say, consent. And while we think of children the most, lots of people can’t consent including mentally incapacitated. Abuse of those who can’t consent is absolutely abhorrent , nobody is suggesting that those in the BDSM community in any way condone this.
However, equally living in a puritan world due to a lack of maturity around exploring fantasy is extremely unhealthy. Slowing peoples ability to explore their self in the safe, consensual way, it’s extremely dangerous to all of us.
Rebekah, your comment above to another poster was so impactful, you just single-handedly dissolved years of shame and confusion.
I’m a guy who is mostly into women, but for some reason I’m also sexually attracted to dominant old men. No other type of man will even remotely arouse me. I’ve battled with this for years, struggling for identity and to make sense of it. I’ve tried to repress the fact that I am attracted to cock but it’s like being on a carousel of hope and despair.
What you said about being curious of what arouses you is so true. I should see it for what it is with acceptance. I can only choose to move past it if I truly let it be.
Adam, thanks for that feedback.
No, thank you. Really. This is the kind of attitude we should be teaching our kids, not the hurtful, shaming attitude that is so pervasive worldwide.
Domination, submission, kinks, and BDSM appeal to all types of people. Gay male here, who constantly fantasizes about being thoroughly and completely owned by a super dominant, muscular alpha male. Verbal abuse, hair pulling, being roughly spanked/slapped, getting spit/urinated on, and having men ejaculate all over my face and down my throat are unexplainably erotic, and turn me on like nothing else possibly can. So much of this desire, as the article’s author had duly noted, stems from all of us as humans wanting to love and also be loved. A guy who forcefully takes me against my will (even though of course, it’s always consensual between both parties) and does whatever he wants to me sexually is someone who obviously loves exerting power and control over the “helpless victim” (myself). And that is what so much of our sexual fantasies boil down to: power and control. Relinquishing control completely to another guy who lusts for me so much that he’s willing to do anything to fulfill my darkest fantasies is the ultimate sacrifice to make, in terms of trusting a partner. Some just might not realize it, but a mutually consensual BDSM relationship between 2 people who genuinely love one another is one of the most profanely poetic and beautiful things in life.
Thank you for your honest and vulnerable share