Sadism

A reader asks me if I am a sadist. She met a man, fortunately in a public space, who disturbed her by his evident need to see women afraid of the prospect of pain. It was clear, she said, that he had a dogged desire to inflict pain, no matter what her own feelings might have been. Being a sensible girl, and nobody’s doormat, she beat a hasty retreat. Such men are dysfunctional, and quite possibly dangerous. They fit my definition of a sadist, which is someone whose desire to inflict pain is not conditional upon the desire of his chosen subject to have it inflicted.

If you want to know what a true sadist is, go back to the works of the man who lent his name to the term. Justine, and still more so The 120 Days of Sodom, by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) are truly terrifying works, detailing such extremes of violence and torture against the helpless victims of a gang of heartless libertines as to convince the reader that they could only have been written by a madman.

So, in that sense, no, I’m not a sadist. I don’t even come close. I’ve never laid a hand on a woman without her consent, I’ve never done her harm, and I’ve never done anything which she didn’t want me to do. It might be that she didn’t initially know that she wanted me to do exactly what I did, or perhaps she thought initially that she didn’t want quite so much of it. Often, she didn’t know quite what it was that she wanted, except that whatever it was, I should really, really want to do it to her.

More than one woman has recounted to me an episode in which her husband, vanilla in himself but seeking to understand the nature of her sexual need, and trying to be helpful, being after all a nice enough guy, offers to give her a spanking. It’s always a failure. The problem is that she doesn’t want to be obliged, she doesn’t want to be humoured, she doesn’t want him to be nice about it; she wants to be overpowered, both physically and mentally.

It’s true that on occasion I too have received requests. ‘Please will you spank me?’ she says prettily. I don’t immediately respond with a lecture on the heinous crime of topping from the bottom. But if I oblige, I make sure to give her more than she bargained for. Girls who ask for a spanking need to be taught a lesson, which is that the duration and intensity of the spanking that is delivered will be decided by he who carries it out, not by she who makes the request. He'll stop when he thinks she's had enough.

What I’m trying to put my finger on here is the paradox that lies at the heart of d/s. She wants to lose control, but she wants to feel safe. She is willing for him to take what he wants, to do as he pleases, but at the same time she wants to want the pain he is causing her. She wants him, perhaps, to be a little bit of a sadist but not too much. But if she is the one who is always deciding how much is too much, then where is the loss of control that she craves? I guess that’s where the dom’s skill is put to the test, being able to hold these contradictions in his head and work with them.

So, I’m not a sadist, but I do enjoy causing pain if I sense that she needs it, and I’ve never yet come across a woman who wanted more pain than I was able to give her. But my understanding of a good d/s relationship is that the dom is always working with the submissive, not against her. He’s trying to give her what she needs, which is not always, perhaps not often, what she says she wants, or what she thinks she wants. He has to work largely by instinct, always sensitive to the signals she gives out, but at the same time insisting that she bend to his will. Of course there will always be hard limits, and when a woman asks, somewhat nervously perhaps, if a man would call himself a sadist, she means in part, would you respect my limits? And of course if he’s a good dom he will. If you fear he might not, be wary. But, and here’s the thing, the good dom knows that hard limits can often prove a challenge that ultimately she is proud, with his encouragement, to surmount. Limits are things to work around and sometimes to push through, if you feel you can carry her with you. She wants you to take control; she wants to feel safe with you. It’s a contradiction, but then so is much else in life, and it’s one that I can live with.