Personal narrative linking abuse to BDSM dynamics without any named powerful actors

in the way that you describe. But I experienced all of those feelings as a child. What you described is precisely what it feels like when an abuser truly lets loose and keeps going until "it" breaks, until there is that moment of catharsis for both the beaten and the person doing the beating. In my experience, those relationships are like playing along the end of the Grand Canyon: people fall in, and they die. Now, I am willing to believe two things: one, it is possible that my mother and other abusers are actually engaged in a form of BDSM rape when they beat the people that they love. Just as sex is the overpowering and taking of something that should be beautiful and intimate, so beating a loved one to catharsis might just be the same sort of thing. Perhaps that is something that abuse experts should look at. Iam also willing to believe that you have an invisible fence as you play along the edge of your own personal Grand Canyon. I am willing to believe that you know how to be there without falling into the abyss. But if that is the case -- that it is safe for you out there, and that I simply need to accept that. Then I will ask you to accept the fact that I will need to go behind the van and toss my lunch. At first I was frustrated by that comment, because all I could see was someone saying "I want to throw up when I read about your sexuality," and I was like: grrr. But now I look at that comment, and I see such important points, points that are utterly crucial to the developing language that distinguishes S&M from abuse. I will say first that I have never personally survived that kind of abuse. But I have received emails from people asking me to write about this, over and over, and I hope that I can help those folks by offering my thoughts. I have also spoken to some abuse experts who tell me that, behind closed doors, they do talk about this: they discuss how the existence of real desire, real catharsis, and real intimacy within an abusive context can look terrifyingly similar to descriptions of S&M encounters. Rape survivors of all genders sometimes experience physical pleasure and even orgasm while being assaulted. A paper about this was published in the 2004 Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, and there are plenty of first-person accounts around the Internet. Here's an explicit and tremendously saddening quotation from one of them: I kept physically fighting him off and telling him that though I respected him as my pastor and as a father figure I wanted him to stop. He pushed me, tore my clothes and raped me. ... [The pain was incredible as they were very rough and forceful. After what seemed like forever I blacked out. I remember the pastor shaking me hard and slapping me across the face. He then shoved down my throat ten or so Excedrin (a medicinal mixture of pain killer and caffeine) so that I would stay awake. One of the most disturbing things that happened that night is that I had an orgasm. Despite years of marriage, it was my first orgasm ever. It really confused me. I thought some part of me must be mentally sick to have experienced the pleasure of an orgasm during this horrific trauma. Here's the thing about consent: orgasm is not consent. Physical pleasure is only the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018661