Made-up violence

I cracked a smile over a recent comment from Knight of Wands: "hmmm, I appear to like violence with my sex." He then went on to blame me for this revelation, giving me a sudden flashback to a shower cubicle in University halls in my teens, when a boyfriend pushed my face hard against the cold white tile and held my arm behind my back, fucking me hard. I remember the realisation well. The turning point, the moment when I found that there was something more to sex, that action got my blood and my mind, racing, changing my outlook from occasional interest to active desire. Sex became fun, passionate and exciting. All of the things that it was supposed to be (well, all those things that society had led me to believe it was).

I like violence with my sex. Simple enough statement. And true, although perhaps there are nuances. I like the threat of violence also, fear and I also like the memory of violence. Running hands over bruises and red lines, feeling the secondary sensation that is a memento of skin and bone. I also like depictions of violence, in vanilla or BDSM contexts, films, television or books. I enjoy psychological violence - emotional turmoil and the sense of being pushed down, of being made lesser and helpless.

It is, of course, all "pretend" violence, or is it? I don't enjoy reading about abusive relationships, about cruelty in the real world, about people suffering or anything of that ilk. But the same words, the same actions put into a different context, an actress performing a rape scene, a writer describing the assault upon his imagined protagonist, porn depicting beatings and torture. Those all work for me. Mentally, there is a barrier. A very healthy one, I imagine. My mind enjoys violence that it can contextualise, manipulate and daydream about. Violence that is performative, an action that is not real, but created for the purpose of entertainment and also (in the case of BDSM porn) sexual excitement.

During play, there is a balance between the real and the unreal. The physical aspects of BDSM are "real" in that pain hurts, damage is being done. However the knowledge that at any point I could use a safeword and everything would stop means that in a certain sense the violence is self-inflicted. There is an odd head-space that is required to be in the moment: to fear the violence that is being done to me, to enjoy it and to hate it, to want it to stop, to need it to continue and also to know, deep down, that I am in control at that point where I am revelling in being controlled. Contrary and complex, yet at the same time easy to get into, a mood I slip into naturally, more naturally than attempting to be aroused by vanilla sex.