Girl on the Net

When I write about humiliation or degradation, piss-play or throatfucking or any sex act that could be seen as someone demeaning me, I’ll often get concerned comments from people who don’t understand: who see only the acts themselves, and conclude that I’m doing myself harm. But the concept of being degraded and humiliated is far more complex than just pointing to an embarrassing experience and going ‘boo, that looks bad!’ What makes one person shudder may make another turned on, and this week’s guest blogger is here to talk you through her kink – how she gets off on being treated like shit.

Let me call you stupid (OR: I get off on being treated like shit)

A former partner once told me I liked being humiliated, and I immediately took issue with it. I took issue with a lot of things he said – it was that sort of relationship. I was exploring submission at that point, and the weight of the word seemed too great for a girl whose argumentative response to everything was “I’m submissive but I’m not a submissive and definitely not your submissive” followed by a sassy hair flick.

Ah, the folly of youth.

He turned out to be right, annoyingly. Half a decade on and I am into piss, come, ugly and hateful words and a slap along the way. Laughed at, but in a tender way; thoroughly patronised before a kiss on the forehead and a reminder I’m precious.

I am, like most humans, a delicious contradiction.

There are three levels of humiliation, according to Princess Kali in Her book Enough to Make You Blush!: Exploring Erotic Humiliation

Embarrassment

“To cause / experience a state of self-conscious distress–simple things that might happen to anyone but where attention is called to them. Low-level play.”

I can’t bear to be thought of as stupid, ordinarily. My self-doubt knows no bounds. I’ve got 10 GCSEs, 3 A levels and a 2:1 from a Russell Group University. I am self-sufficient and interested, yet I speak my mind and cringe. I self-flagellate about my failings til the cows come home but oh God how I love it when someone who adore adore adores me the way I adore adore adore them chides me for being a stupid, desperate cum receptacle with their fingers in my cunt, their cock in my mouth. It’s hard to describe how I feel when they hold my face in their hands and call me a dumb little baby. Turned on, but mostly sort of… fizzy. Twirly. Blushy.

Humiliation

“To reduce to a lower position in one’s own eyes or the eyes of others (public, a higher level, very specific thing done to them)”

I have this recurring fantasy where I’m at a party with my partner, and I watch them talk about me as if I’m not there. Swiping through endless photos of me in states of undress and distress. Spread and displayed. Grinning, covered in come. They talk about how filthy I am, how eager to please. Every inch of me comes under scrutiny and I squirm and slicken – desiring escape and release at the same time.

But all I can do is swallow down my drink and listen to them dress me down.

There doesn’t need to be sex. I don’t need to know they’re both going to fuck me. They might make me take off my dress so they can grab and pinch my flesh. They might reach between my thighs and make fun of my arousal. And that’s enough. Denial. Desire. Desperation.

Degradation

“To bring to low esteem–hardcore, when we take them to very low places. The highest intensity.”

Actually, being pissed on feels pretty neutral to me. As long as I don’t get it in my ears. Maybe I’m scared to delve too deeply into my subconscious, because I don’t know what I’ll find there. All I know is after you smear my mascara and fill my cunt … after you drag me to the shower stall and snigger and sigh as my black tears run yellow, I am more at peace, more human. Happier. Serene. The baptism analogy is a bit too on the nose and I don’t want to offend any readers of a religious nature, but I do feel like a new person.

Illustrating this piece there’s a nice Venn diagram. All very accurate, and it would be so simple if I could just stick it on my Tinder profile, but it lacks nuance, doesn’t it? If someone pissed on me at the bus stop, I’d be appalled. I have been called hideous things by strangers on the internet and in broad daylight on the street, and can’t say I enjoyed it, but I’ve still asked to be called those names. There’s been resistance – happy to piss on me but uncomfortable calling me fat. Refusing point blank to call me stupid. And I have had to politely ask still others not to use any of those words because it just didn’t feel right.

Context is everything.

Why do I like getting treated like shit?

I wonder if there’s some intersection here between gay men who enjoy homophobic slurs being used on them during sex, or BIPOC who engage in race play and the reclamation of words with centuries of murder, pain and oppression within them; and a careful application of the word fat making a chubby girl’s cunt wet. Perhaps getting off on being treated like shit is – for a few of us – a kind of therapy for the way we suffer under society’s default white, male gaze, however unknowingly cultivated?

See, I’m not objectively stupid (degree, independent woman, yadda yadda), but I am objectively fat, and we are a long way off describing fat bodies with anything approaching neutrality. If I say I’m fat, there’s someone (usually a man) who wants to gaslight me out of my bodily awareness by telling me that I am not fat, I’m beautiful. I know how big my arse is, thanks all the same, and it doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not I’m beautiful. But they hold more or less equal power over me during sex – my greatest fear and my greatest insecurity – and I still don’t know why hearing those words gets me off. Why I melt when you lovingly call me a worthless cum dumpster, or why being pissed on is better than mindfulness.

I wanted to offer an explanation, some insight into the nature of the degradee: why I enjoy getting treated like shit. But it’s hard to put my finger on, and I’m sorry if I couldn’t do it justice. But in an age where our mental health is at risk, and self care has become shorthand for a bath bomb and a face mask, I’ll take the alternative I genuinely love: someone pissing in my face and calling me their chubby little fuck pig beats the hell out of a trip to fucking Lush.