Finding
pleasure in pain...
"In the aberration we find delight and pleasure in the most hateful
thing. Every day we descend a pace towards hell, without horror,
through darkness that stinks". (Charles Baudelaire)
Masochism is the sexualexcitation as consequence
from self-sufferance, whether by physical pain, humiliation or mistreatments.
The sexual pleasureobtained by being subjugated
and humiliated is very old. Aristotle begged Filis, a public woman,
to ride him as a horse and strike his rump.
The extreme masochist doesn’t need to accomplish the sexual intercourse
in order to obtain sexual satisfaction;
the practice has much of masturbation, since sexis
replaced by the symbolic manifestation of the somewhat real humiliation.
Sadism is the sexual excitation caused by the fact or the fantasy
in place another or more than one person under physical or psychological
sufferance. The sadist therefore, not only obtains excitation by
inflicting physical pain but also by humiliating, submitting and degrading
someone.
The pleasure by cruelty and the sadism differ by the fact that the
sadism entails the sexual excitation, while cruelty is the mere delight
that some people experiment before other people's agony.
The word sadism derives from the famous French writer Marquis de
Sade, contemporary to the French Revolution. He was the protagonist
of different scandals when denounced by prostitutes who accused him
of drugging and beating them. For that reason, he spent 13 years in
prison, which he dedicated to write down his fantasies as a response
to the love letters that his wife sent. His work was censored for
years. Among his work "Justine" and "The 120 days of Sodom" are remarkable.
There is a certain degree of transgression of rules, of approaching
the forbidden zone, inherent to the sadomasochistic culture.
Different Cultures
There is also residues of sadomasochistic practices in many distant
cultures from the western ones.
The Indians Chocoes, according to Doctor Jose Manuel Reverte Comas,
are sexually stimulated in the marriage by mutual sadomasochistic
actions. She nails the husband’s chin until he bleeds and he inflicts
on her strong and painful pinches on her hips resulting in bruises.
Also the Hindus indicate in some of their writings seven classes
of bites by means of which the sadist obtained pleasure by biting
and the masochist, excitation by being bitten.
It’s an old custom in the Island of Borneo and others of Malaysia
and Indonesia that the man crosses his gland with a metallic rod called
"kalang", ended by two metallic buttons. With the penis like that
he makes love to his partner, which seems to be pleasant for her,
since she gives him some extra "kalang" once in a while.
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These sexual conducts have been called sexual
deviations, aberrations and even defined within the pathologies
as " perversion too much apart from the normal". Nevertheless, the
sexual lackof inhibition has brought to
light the fact that this type of sexual conductcomprises
the sexual lifeof many people who do not
undergo any type of pathology. It is important to mention that the
currency of this kind of practices has come to terms to celebrating
sadomasochistic meetings, like the First Sadomasochistic Event celebrated
in Buenos Aires, in which, along side the display of different elements
of torture and typically sadomasochistic conducts, the Code of Clothing
consisted of articles made of leather, PVC, latex and dark clothes
specified.
In spite of this, the sadomasochism world is surrounded in a halo
of mystery and depravation and it is perhaps difficult to perceive
the line that separates healthful sexual pleasurefrom
sexual deviance if not considered from a sexual perspective.
According to these premises it is not complicated to understand the
reason why the Internet has become a perfect and safe place to satiate
the sadomasochistic appetite of many people. The pages dedicated to
photographs; videos and sale of objects related to the sadomasochism
proliferate.
Some of the sadomasochistic practices and terms:
- Flagellation.
- Spanking: (Buttocks’ flagellation) It is the
act of inflicting pain on the buttocks, with the palms of the hands
or some other object, like a whip, trowel or sandal.
- Bondage: It consists of immobilizing the person
and making different erotic practices above him/her. Fundamentally
characterized by the use of fastenings with ropes, although there
also can be used chains, leather hand-cuffs, metal (for the neck
- waist – fingers, hands, feet -) shackles with extensors to tie
at the wall, embedded or movable traps.
- Anal Childbirth: It is the simulation of childbirth
by the anus. In order to practice it, a cleaning in the area should
be made, stimulating its expansion through prostate massages introducing
a small object and expelling it from the anus. This type of practice
is usually made on a gynecological chair.
- Needles: It consists of the application of needles
in different parts of the body.
- Electric Stimulation: It consists of the sexual
stimulation by means of small electrical discharges on the genital,
anal zone or other non-erogenous parts of the body.
- Slavery: In addition to the domination implied
to this sexual practice, sometimes it gets to the point of trapping
the naked masochist person, while the sadist one masturbates under
his captivity.
- Humiliation: For example, to be forced to crawl
and to bark as a dog or to be submitted to verbal insults or to
defecation over his/her body.
- Fist Fucking: It is the act of introducing the
fist into the vagina or the anal region.
- Golden Shower: It consists of urinating upon
the other person.
- Facesitting: It consists of seating on the face
of a person, obstructing the respiratory routes and, thus, causing
asphyxia.
- Trampling: It is the act of walking all over
another person’s body, which can be made barefoot or with the shoes
on, putting pressure with the heels or the plant of the feet.
- Wax Dripping: It is the application of hot wax
from a candle onto the skin of a partner.
- Cross-Dressing: To get dressed with clothes of
the opposite sex. It can also be used as a humiliation form.
- Hipoxiphilia or Asfixiophilia: It consists of
being deprived of oxygen by means of breast compression, knots,
ties, plastic bags, masks or chemical agents able to cause reduction
of the cerebral oxygenation. But attention, this practice is certainly
dangerous, in fact every year, all around the world; several people
die accidentally by doing it.
- Scratching: To deeply scratch the skin of a partner
during the sexual intercourse.
- Bondage: It consists of tying a person with bows
and ropes and leaving him/her in a darkroom that simulates a prison.
- Coprophilia and Urophilia: It is the suffering
through the "taste". It is about to ingest repugnant or simply non-nutritional
substances. Ingestion of feces and urine is included.
- Cold: The submission to the cold is used to cause
sexual stimulation for the sadistic through the masochist’s suffering
by the torture he’s submitted to.
Is it possible to delimitate scientifically what is and what is not
a perversion?
For many people these sexual practices
may seem pathological and shameful, as well as the ones who practice
might be perverts or mentally ill, nevertheless the number of people
perfectly sane that adopt these practices is considerable. There is
no problem whenever it is clear that the conducts are only role-plays,
sexual games, and both characters embody the erotic role they play
respecting each other’s will. In a sadomasochistic forum, one of
the cyberpunks said: "Through the sadomasochistic practices we don’t
look much for the pleasure of punishing and being punished but the
conscience of the following source of pleasure and its origin: dominance/obedience/submission
".
For some years the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has been
proposing the change of the term paraphylia because with its use "perversion"
has excessively become contemptuous. Since then, sexologists and other
professionals who deal with health have used paraphylia to refer the
classic concept of perversion.
Inevitably we all have paraphilic elements in our sexuality,
sexual pleasure is essentially obtained by playing the game, in which
like a salad, multiple paraphilic aspect combines: voyeur, exhibitionist,
sadist, masochist, etc. As in salad, in different occasions it is
possible for one to enjoy different elements, even though it is common
that each person has major preferences for some of these paraphilic
elements.
The essential key of the clinical diagnosis of paraphylia is connected
to the criterion of exclusiveness in the peculiar way to obtain sexual
stimulation. And for sure, they are more frequent among men than among
women...
Unlikely what one would believe in, the agitation by paraphylia
imposes a tremendous limitation of the possibilities of enjoyment
for the affected one, who has a reduction of his spectrum of possibilities
of sexual stimulation, resulting, according
to the agitation’s severity progress, the restriction of his options
to obtain sexual excitation, limited to
his/her particular paraphylia. Cases of multi-paraphilic persons are
frequent, that is to say they have several paraphilic conducts, such
as: exhibitionist, voyeur and frotteur; or transvestite and fetishist,
etc.
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