Christopherscience Posted June 7, 2014 Posted June 7, 2014 Imagine that you're a little boy, and that you have a father who's... a little off... and a mother who is physically and verbally abusive. In this thought experiment, imagine that your father is always outwardly happy, but his wife yells at him, and he hates his job, and he has financial problems, and is under a lot of pressure. He jokes, he kids around, he always has a mouth that smiles with distant eyes. Now you, as this little boy, have grown up in a household that speaks English. You speak English. Your mother's native tongue is violence, however; she uses spanking and yelling, and dragging and pushing - to communicate her desires. And she's a sadist. She happens to be a clean-freak with unrealistic standards of cleanliness and what a little boy's room should look like. She counts to ten, and if your room isn't clean, then she will take off her belt, hold you in her arms and on her lap, and she will beat you - on the ass... as you cry. As you cry your crotch is on her knee while her belt is on your ass. The shock waves vibrate through you, and through your erogenous zones. She will not negotiate and she will not use English, but she will use violence to make you comply with her demands. She will even spray you down with a garden hose in the shade, in the cold of the morning so that you don't track mud into her house. Now back to the father - the husband of this violent woman. He's henpecked. Schizo-affective. "Happy". He never beats his wife. It is exceedingly rare that he raises his voice (especially ever towards his wife)... and you can tell... deep down - he's bubbling with rage. You can see it in his eyes. You can see it in the creases of his face, and the flashes of expressions. His levator labii superiorises flex. You don't know what levator labii superiori are - you're a child; you don't even know what the word "scowl" means, let alone the name of the muscle which causes a man to scowl. You just know. You just know that he shouldn't be happy. And so you poke him. You're curious. You're a little boy, after all. Poke Poke And pretty soon - he snaps. He lets loose. He's 6'4" and you're less than half that, and an fourth as massive. You turn and cower, using your back and shoulders to protect you. He's massive, with forearms like a silverback gorilla. He's cut sheet metal for almost 20 years at this point and he's built like a house - built like the house that he built - the house you're being beaten in. You cry. You beg him to stop. You can feel the concussive force ripple through your lungs as he pounds on you. It doesn't hurt as much as you might have expected, but each strike leaves you sore and more sore. You heard him yelling, though the noises are muffled by your tiny arms which are protecting your head. And after a few seconds that felt like an eternity inside of a turtle's shell... Calm. He says something to the effect of, "I told you to stop poking me, hopefully next time you'll listen." in a voice that almost sounds sweet. He helps you up and tells you to go to your room in a tone that sounds like love. Guilty love. He feels bad. And after you cry your eyes out in your room... he nurtures you, gives you dinner. Your mother is even a bit more reserved, you think. She knows you were beaten. And in your childlike mind you make the connection that love is violent. This is the language that you speak - you've never truly known any other way. But you're a runt - the youngest child... you will be beaten until you get into puberty and start lifting weights and playing sports. But in the meantime, this is what parental love means. Your father NEVER showed anger, he never beat his wife... yet... he beats you on occasion. It's incredibly intimate. You are his release. He doesn't beat your sister, and he doesn't beat your older brother - he beats you, and you alone. His youngest child. They call it "discipline". You don't have words - you assume it is, in fact, discipline. You are incredibly disciplined and ascetic. You are boarder line OCD about your self "discipline". You mutilate yourself when you fail - this is what you were taught. This is what you know. You were already mutilated - you have no foreskin. You take to cutting your penis out of guilt. Why guilt? You have fantasies about teachers tying you down and raping you. And you practice thrusting against your bed - seeing how long you can last; giving yourself a goal of one hour - and you cannot climax a second earlier because, in the fantasy - love is also violent... but the only violence in fantasy is shame. Guilt. Love is guilty - just like your father taught you, when he nurtured you after a beating, and when you could see the relaxation in his face after a release of rage. Love is guilt. Love is sex. Sex is guilt. Sex is violent. Love is violent. When you want to be loved - you seek bondage and a mother to spank you and rub up against. When you want to express your love - you seek a woman to beat and then nurture... All sex is contemptuous. You try to climax to thoughts of gentleness - but the concept is foreign to you - something you see on television, maybe. Compassion is not part of your sexual identity - only part of the refractory period after a father (or mother) has their release... not part of sex or sexual fantasies. The more contempt - the stronger the climax... and the greater the shame is afterwards. You cannot even ejaculate and you feel crushing guilt for your sexuality. It only escalates with the travail of years. From the ages of 5 to 16 you're suicidal, and only late in your 15th year does anyone help you treat you mental illness. It takes another decade, the death of your best friend laying next to you, gargling blood, homelessness, more self mutilation, depression, sexual dysfunction, the death of your father, and numerous failed relationships before you can even to fully begin to unlearn the language of violence and the rage of over two decades worth of memories. ... After years of self mutilation and regrettable sex; after college; after the death of your father; you realize that violence is evil... fortunately, though, you never visited violence upon children, and you never raped, nor broke consent... It was philosophy - the philosophy of nonviolence - and the moral philosophy of another abused boy (who got out)... that finally sets you free. But the scars remain. And you cannot un-know what it is to speak your family's native tongue. Your mother is still alive. She is still a sadist, but now she is frail and a wolf in sheep's clothing... you must remind yourself that she beat children, and that there's a special place in a living-hell for her awaiting her and her growing infirmity. She was free to beat you and and she is free to reap the consequences of her violence. You cannot un-know what it was like to think that violence was connected to love. You can unlearn the behavior, but you cannot unlearn the mental scars or the sick arousal. ... This is what it takes to deal with these issues. I originally had to dissociate slightly. And I'm in the process of disassociating with my old sexual identity. I don't want to be a Dominant. I want to be a good man, as I choose to define it, and on my own terms. I don't want to have a slave or be a slave. I no longer want to tie people up and beat them or humiliate them. I simply want to start over, and build my sexuality up from the ground and the rubble.
cherapple Posted June 10, 2014 Posted June 10, 2014 It's horrifying what your parents did to you. I'm so sorry. You can't unknow the language of violence, but you can know it more. You can work to understand it fully, and what it did to you. You write about it beautifully. There's the terrible place of violence, and there's the terrible place of dissociation -- the limbo between knowing and unknowing. You were in the first terrible place as a child. You were in the second terrible place when you were re-enacting what your parents did to you. Now you're in the place of knowing. Congratulations on taking the huge step toward truth and understanding. Knowing may feel like another terrible place at first (at least it did for me for a long time), but it's where you find the power to stop the repetition and make conscious choices based upon your own real desires and preferences. Thank you for writing what must have been so difficult to share.
jester7707 Posted June 10, 2014 Posted June 10, 2014 I imagine that was not an easy thing to share and it was very courageous. You are an incredible writer and the picture you painted was very real for me as I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I can't offer much in terms of advice but, I just wanted to say that I am so sorry you had to endure that. :'(
RyanT Posted June 10, 2014 Posted June 10, 2014 Wow that was bone chilling, so sorry you were put through that by the people who were supposed to care for you. After my thread which he posted me and Thomas had a good discussion on the topic and a few things really stuck in my mind. That contempt you talk about was definitely an underlying factor with me and the girl I was engaging in BDSM with. On one hand I wanted this healthy, loving, gentle relationship based on respect and empathy yet whenever she came along telling me how much she craved punishment, humiliation and domination I just couldn't find the strength to resist. I really resented that and felt a lot of contempt towards her for her 'dragging me into it'. Which I'm pretty sure was exactly how she felt too. Certainly after that last row I was really hurt, angry and upset that she could think I was such a monster, just praying on her and carelessly using her for my own gratification but the truth is there was a fair amount of that going on in both directions. So in a pretty similar boat myself at the minute. Total up-most respect to you for sharing these experiences here and for taking ownership and striving to be a good man in-spite of it all.
Recommended Posts