So I have received a number of responses. I'll go through all of them, but the first is from an Irish woman. She claims to be in her early 50's with a heavy brogue. She tells me in her message that she works for 2 physicians in N while she lives in B. Her fantasy is based upon humiliation scenes. She wants to be spanked-fully clothed and needs to chastized verbally. She actually leaves 3 messages-most of her time is spent on explaining about her bad grades or her misbehavior in school. She actually creates in the little time allowed detailed scenes and asks if I could fill in her grades and write up her behavior report.

It starts me thinking about humiliation and role playing. The role playing I love. It is after all about theater. I can't help to think however that humiliation is akin to degradation

Could it be that somehere along the line while I was holding on to safe, sane and consensual as the only things that mattered, I let slip self-respect?

Outsiders would find it hard to understand how BDSM can have anything to do with self-respect. The shocking thing (especially where female submission is concerned) for many is the idea that the sub wants to be spanked, flogged, led around on a lead or whatever. Yet, it seems that even within the ‘scene’ a little variation from the typical BDSM activities brings howls of protest. You want to do a ‘rape’ scene – no, you can’t and *it doesn’t even matter if the woman has consented to it (preferably planned it in some detail too)*. The same is now true of humiliation – no, you can’t do it, even if you enjoy being humiliated.

I find that the humiliation debate has a lot in common with the rape debate. Once again, we are dealing with smoke and mirrors. Rape is a horrific crime and bears no relation to the ‘rape’ scenes that go on as part of BDSM. Humiliation in terms of putting someone down and making them hate themselves is bullying and is nothing to do with the consensual humiliation that goes on in a scene. It is back to the same old problem – you expect everyone to accept that hitting your partner with a flogger isn’t domestic violence, but you go crazy if someone wants to call their lover a slut? You negotiated the flogging, why do you assume they have not negotiated the name-calling?

I have had little experience in humiliation. I am ambivalent about it. It took a long time to get into because I was always careful to check where my subs limits were and sometimes she took to it more than other times. I have often worried that BDSM might negatively affect her self-esteem but the combined effect of observing her after BDSM and giving her a great deal of love, care and affection have convinced me that I shouldn’t worry.

However, pick up ‘Screw the Roses’ and you find Molly Devon saying how terrible it is that a man would want to call a woman a slut. Great one Molly, strike one up for tolerance of other people’s tastes! Some people like that – men are supposed to like being insulted more than women but I wonder sometimes if that is a reluctance on the part of women to admit it.

Possibly, like with rape, it is playing with a very sensitive part of the mind.

Some people like humiliation. It is different to the humiliation you see every day in the supermarket or the pub and the key is self-esteem. People who enjoy humiliation find it sexually exciting and therefore build their self-esteem through it (sex is a good thing, right?). There really does need to be a point where instead of turning on the things that other people do that we don’t understand, we start looking at their motives for doing them.

Well, listen up – people play kinky games they are good if they are safe, if they are sane and if they are consensual. If you do these things out of love and self-respect for yourself and your partner then everything else is detail. Chains, ropes, cross-dressing, peeing, flogging, partly-clothed, rough, any orifice used, rape play, humiliation, electric toys … it is all just detail.

What we have in common is the love we have for our partners and ourselves, we all express it differently.