#he was hypocritical and hurt me badly and i didn’t realize it was unhealthy

[fear-ze-queer]

sometimes i imagine that he’s going to text me again, even though it would be so bad for me

[bunnyhani]

No No Tears No!

Pairing: (Platonic!) Yang Jeongin x Hwang Hyunjin

Genre: Fluff and Angst

Warnings: Talk of anxiety, desciptive scenes of feelings of depression and suicidal thoughts. Cursing. Self-hatred, self-doubt. Unhealthy coping mechanisms!

A/N: Please be careful when reading. Do NOT read, if you get triggered by these topics. Stay safe!💕

Summary: Jeongin hated crying. He always said to his friends and other people important to him, as advice that if they need to cry, they should. In fact, he often encouraged people to cry, as it kind of releases pent up emotion and can ultimately make you feel better. But Jeongin himself couldn't take his own advice: he just hated crying. So he just avoids it. Not a smart choice.

-------------------

Jeongin hated crying. He always said to his friends and other people important to him, as advice that if they need to cry, they should. In fact, he often encouraged people to cry, as it kind of releases pent up emotion and can ultimately make you feel better. But Jeongin himself couldn't take his own advice: he hated crying. Of course everyone hated crying, but his hatred towards it was on another level. So he wasn't surprised when he often found himself pushing the tears back, swallowing his sobs and feeling awful after it. Still. He just couldn't handle the emotional state that happened when you were crying. The feelings it brought. When his friends asked and sometimes even jokingly called him a hypocrite, he always said something about the messiness of it. The snot running from your nose, your eyes becoming red and irritated. How you're running out of breath, and there was also a danger of getting an eyelash in your eye. How dumb the sobs sounded.

While all this was true, there was another reason too. Another one, that he wasn't particularly fond of sharing. To him, crying felt like the peak of sadness. It felt like everything in chest was getting squeezed and crushed into nothing. All the emotions that had been trapped inside, went through, escaping when he sobbed his heart out. They hurt even worse than they originally did. It just hurted, ached so badly that he thought he was going to break. The maximum point of sadness. To him... It felt like losing. Failure. Failure of trying to keep everything together and composed.

But for some reason, lately he has been crying more than he would like. He doesn't really know what to do with himself. So he doesn't do anything.

It started a few weeks ago. It started with sleeping troubles and self-esteem issues. He couldn't fall asleep easily and when he did, he would wake up a few hours later and would have trouble falling asleep again. Jeongin never had a good self-esteem to begin with, he didn't like looking at himself in the mirror. While he mostly didn't say he was the most awful looking human being on earth, he didn't like himself. He never did. He just didn't think too much. But both his views on himself kept changing as his sleeping schedule kept on getting more and more messed up. It all spiraled into another level of hatred when some spots appeared on his skin. He looked hideous. Although it was only four or three spots, it was awful. He felt ashamed. Usually his skin was clean and smooth looking. Now it wasn't. The weight in his chest just got heavier every day, his appetite disappeared and soon he didn't see any other living soul except his mother's. And that too was only because they lived under the same roof. His weight started dropping and he knew often that he should eat, but he didn't. He ate very little, maybe one meal a day. His weight started dropping. He kept declining his friends' invitations to come outside or other meetups. Jeongin didn't even know why, it wasn't like he did anything important with his time. He felt pathetic. It was the summer break and he was just laying around in his room in the dark, doing nothing else but crying and going through his phone, and making his mom dinner. It didn't take for him to realize that his depression was acting up along with his already active anxiety. And that realization required a bit of a shake for him too...

Jeongin woke up, back aching and he felt like he had been run over with a truck. His chest was heavy, but he didn't pay attention to it because it was a part of his life already. He made the dinner, not eating it yet, deciding to force himself to eat later. Now he just wanted to lie down and sleep more. Jeongin's field of vision started blurring as tears made their way into his eyes. He was snapped out of his thoughts at the familiar stinging sensation that told him about the tears' arrival. He blinked his eyes rapidly, taking deep breaths. Jeongin didn't want to cry. The boy got up from the kitchen chair and walked back to his room, misty eyed. He wanted to cry out of frustration, why would he be crying? He did not want to cry. What part of that very clear statement did his body not understand. He lied on his bed, thoughts running wild, and at one point, he just thought: I don't want to live. And that was all he needed before he was sobbing like a small child. His sobs were raw with emotion and he tried to stop it. He did. The boy couldn't stop it, no matter what, he was there just crying, laying in a fetal position in his bed. He tried to tell himself how sad people close to him would be, how he would never be able to see his favorite band ever again. But to his horror, he didn't care. He couldn't bring himself to care. Nothing mattered.

After his sobs started to quiet down, he felt numb but drained. He was annoyed with himself, that he felt this way. Why was he like this? I guess on the plus side, the crying saved my life. I would have done something stupid if I wasn't busy crying so much that I could barely breathe, let alone move. Jeongin wasn't happy with it. He was so tired that he couldn't even properly think about suicides. That thought alone scared him. If only he would have known that the realization if wanting to die and that his depression was active again, would make his thought world even darker.

For the next few days, Jeongin didn’t get any better. He felt numb to it all, but he also felt like he was close to crying and breaking apart any second now. His friends messaged him, asking if he’s okay. Commenting on his absence, how little he actually responded back to their texts. How dull even his texts were. Honestly Jeongin felt like he wasn’t really there. Like something was missing. Maybe his head wasn’t in the game or he himself was so emotionally drained that he didn’t have anything left. Not enough emotions to actually reply back properly. Write a heartfelt message, apologize for his behviour. When his friends complained about something, the best he could come up with: it will be okay and oof. Which was a big change, since he was usually so composed, always ready to help and give good advice. That was the reason why people even came to him in the first place, because he always had good advice and could provide a new way of looking at things. He felt the need to apologize. To say that this wasn’t him. But that was where the whole thing kind of fell apart. This was him. He was just extremely good at hiding it. Jeongin just shook his head as another text popped up, completely ignoring it. Sorry Seungmin-hyung, he thought and shifted his gaze back onto the wall that he had been staring for a good 30 minutes.

It was 5pm when the doorbell rang, indicating that his mom was home. He felt rage surge inside of him, gritting his teeth, he ran to the door to promptly rip it open. His mom was there smiling and Jeongin had the urge to kick her. Her mother’s smile fell from her lips when she noticed her son’s expression. Jeongin just turned on his heel to go back to his room.

“What’s wrong?” His mom asked, the look of worry on her face.

“You have your own damn house keys, why don’t you use them? Why do you force me to always come and run to open the door for you?” The boy exploded. He bit his lip as he tried to hold himself back from cursing his mother’s whole existense down to Hell. Jeongin didn’t wait for any reply and went back to his room, resisting the urge to slam his door closed like an angry child. He was aware that he was being childish and also knew that this was another symptom. Let’s add: irritation to the list of symptoms, he thought bitterly to himself. He didn’t want to hurt his mother. But now all the emotion was too much to handle and he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.

“Why did you get mad over that?” His mother shouted from the kitchen and Jeongin wanted to cry out of anger.

“Not every fucking day can be a good day!” He screamed back. Oh my God, I’m a fucking child, he scolded himself. Oh no wait, I’m just an edgy teenager. An ungrateful brat, your mom did nothing to deserve that. I have no right to act this way, I have no reason to feel “depressed”. I have no right to feel this, no reason at all. Someone has it worse than me… He was disgusted with himself. Again, he started crying. Then he fell asleep.

The next time he woke up, was to his phone ringing. It scared him so badly that he banged his head against the wall behind him. Jeongin hastily reached for his phone, heart beating wildly in his chest. Hyunjin was calling. He huffed and put his phone down again, letting it ring, not wanting nor daring to pick it up. But what if Hyunjin was in trouble? The ringing made his anxiety make it’s presence known. Hyunjin deserves that I at least answer to him, he guilted himself and grabbed the phone, just about to press answer when the call ended. He stared at the phone, eyes wide. Part of him felt smug, but a part of him was terrified. He just rested his head back against the mattress with a blank face. Well, if Hyunjin had any urgent business, he would text him. And when Jeongin had gathered enough energy, he would reply back to the tall dancer. But right now, that goal was just a hazy dream in his mind, as he was drained after the sudden adrenaline he got from being scared by his phone.

It was maybe about 10pm when Jeongin was somewhat alive enough to grab his phone again to reply to Hyunjin (who had been messaging throughout the day, not spamming, but just dropping a few messages here and there). He read through them and he felt kind of sorry. He took a deep breath and sent a text saying:

DesertFoxie: Hi hyung. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up when you called. I’ve been super busy, you know, doing my summer reading and all that shit. Honestly it took a lot out of me so I kinda may or may not have slept for like 4 hours. What did you want to talk about? Why did you call?

Sent,10:03pm

Waiting for an answer was nerve-wracking, especially when he saw that Hyunjn pretty much went online as his message went through. He swallowed thickly as the older started typing an answer to him. Should he wait for the answer? Or should he ignore it? Or just go offline and watch the window of the text then, so he could read through it without marking it straight away as read. It would give him time to ponder carefully what to answer. Despite his curiousness of his hyung’s reasoning, he did put his phone down and just stared at the oh so interesting wall again, just waiting for Hyunjin’s reply.

Hyunjin-hyungie: Hi. I was just wondering that how have you been doing recently. I’m really worried of you, Innie. It’s been awhile that you’ve been this distant to any of us… Please just know that I’m here. Tell me how are you.

Sent, 10:05pm

Ok, his hyung was the best person ever, Jeongin decided. He weighed his options for a moment, finger drumming against his thigh. Should he be honest or say that he was fine? He was so lonely. And he wanted to talk in a way, but at the same time not. He sent a message asking Hyunjin that did he want an honest answer. Of course, Hyunjin said yes. Jeongin nibbled on his lip and threw his head back in frustration. What to choose.

He decided to say fuck depression and anxiety, pushing himself to reply back and tell the truth, like Hyunjin had requested.

DesertFoxie: You know… The usual depressing bullshit. Actually no. You don't know, because I haven't said anything. I've been hating myself for a few weeks now consistently. Idk why, I just find myself disgusting. So I've been eating less and then I've eaten more and foods that aren't very good for you. But mainly not eaten a lot. Mainly because I don't have an appetite. Like I can't bring myself to care that I'm eating very sugary and chocolaty ice cream, not good for my skin since I'm trying to clear it up. But later, I will be like lol that's your fault, shouldn't have eaten u ugly ass, etc.

DesertFoxie: Oh and I've been isolating myself a lot more than usual. Hence why I'm hard to reach.

DesertFoxie: Aanndd my insomnia is acting up. And apparently, so is my depression.

DesertFoxie: I feel awful because my emotional state is so dumbly depressed and numb that I can't even put a proper thank you text together for you know… Checking on me and listening to me right now… Anyways, that's why all my advice (when people ask) has always sucked and been like oh yeah it will get better, drink water, sleep... I get why people would get frustrated with me.. I usually give good advice and support them (I do but fkalfkd) I just.. then give that bullshit that anyone can say ir figure out by themselves…

DesertFoxie: Like.. I can't.. just give you advice? Something just isn't there. Maybe it's my head. Maybe my emotions.. I don’t know.

DesertFoxie: And it's getting hard to pretend to be fine to my mom. Que me being in my room and avoiding all humans once and for all. We can add to the list of symptoms: irritability… I don't want to snap at mom. Because no. 1. She will most likely get mad at me. 2. Yeah just no that’s a bad idea.

DesertFoxie: It kinda makes your head feel heavy too? You feel so sluggish… I hate depression... It kind of feels like crying. Everything hurts and aches, everything gets squeezed in your chest so badly to the peak of heaviness and sadness and goes away and the next thing you know, you don't feel anything for a week. You hate everything. Nothing matters. I wrote a whole paragraph of how depression feels, yet I feel like that's not nearly enough. Like there is so much more, something so unexplainable. And you just want to sleep…

DesertFoxie: I just want to keep saying this isn't me but it is. I'm just good at hiding it.

Sent, 10:25pm

Jeongin held his breath after writing all that. He started regretting the choice after a minute already. Was that too much? Shit I’m too much, he thought and closed his phone. His heart was hammering in his chest and the familiar stinging of tears returned again.

“Fuck my fucking life, tears, just go away!” He screamed into his pillow. He was so so tired and done with the seemingly endless tears, actually he was done with living overall. If only he could just not exist, living would be so much easier. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that, so he just settled for waiting Hyunjin’s reply, heart in his throat. The sudden ping from his phone scared him yet again. He glanced over and the text he saw, made his heart stop.

Hyunjin-hyungie: I’m coming over.

Sent, 10:22pm

Jeongin was pacing back and forth his room, biting his finger. Was Hyunjin mad? Was he not? Holy shit, he had probably angered his hyung. He didn’t need to inform his mom about Hyunjin’s arrival, since she had gone to a very long walk. Now he was extremely grateful for his mom’s obsession with long hikes and walks. He could trust that his mom wouldn’t be home, when Hyunjin and him would most likely talk. A lot. This time, Jeongin wasn’t looking forward to talking with him. This time the whole conversation would resolve around him, and honestly he wasn’t quite ready for that, but he knew he owed that much to Hyunjin. Fun. Then he heard the front door open and someone frantically kicking their shoes off and before he had time to move, the hurried steps got close to his room and his room’s door was opened. And there stood Hyunjin. The older boy was a bit sweaty and panting from probably running the apartment complex’s staircase up.

“Jeongin”, he breathed out and took maybe two or three long steps so that he could wrap his arms around the younger. Hyunjin hugged like he was afraid Jeongin was going to disappear from his arms.

“Hyung?” Jeongin asked tentatively, bringing his skinny arms around the tall boy.

“I’m here, hyungie is here. You’re not alone”, Hyunjin whispered.

The two boys sat one the floor, side by side, holding hands. Jeongin wasn’t quite on board with just draping himself over Hyunjin, although he was sure that the older boy wouldn’t mind at all. They had talked. A lot. And now it was silent, it had been for the last 8 minutes. Then Hyunjin broke the silence and asked a question that he had been thinking about since he saw the metaphor in the text messages.

“Why did you compare the feeling of depression with crying?” Hyunjin asked. Jeongin sighed.

“Well… Uhh… I don’t like crying. It feels like… Crying feels like the peak of sadness and it makes it feel like everything in your chest gets crushed. Well.. more like your heart… Like crying sucks.. Your eyes hurt, you get eyelashes in your eyes, your nose is running and your like running out of breath and it just hurts. It feels like the sadness is just squeezing into the maximum level”, he explained with a quiet voice, fiddling with Hyunjin’s long fingers.

“Is that why you always avoid crying?” Hyunjin asked. Jeongin just nodded.

“I guess we have to work on that then”, Hyunjin concluded. Jeongin lifted his gaze to his hyung in confusion.

“We?” he asked, confused.

“Yes we. It’s not like I’m going to let you deal with all this alone, I’m your hyung, you know. I’m here. And I will gladly help.” Jeongin just lowered his eyes to the ground and squeezed Hyunjin’s hand tighter. Perhaps the both boys knew that Jeongin cried silently next to his strong hyung, but they didn’t say anything about it.

Yes, Jeongin hated crying with passion. But now he wasn’t alone with everything, he had Hyunjin by his side.

[richmeganews]

Why I Decided to Start Kink Shaming Myself

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I have been a masochist for as long as I can remember. As young as six years old, watching a CBBC drama with a fey, bookish protagonist being tormented by older boys, I would feel an excitement I can only explain as the beginning of desire. More of a Walter the Softie myself, I was nonetheless drawn to the chaotic, masculine energy of Dennis the Menace.

Later, my sexual awakening occurred at the precise moment I began to be bullied for being gay. I was bullied, like most people, by the popular boys—the most handsome and arrogant and swaggering. The first people I desired were the same ones who treated me with contempt or violence: It doesn’t seem too much of a reach to suggest that violence and desire became conflated. I have been a masochist my whole life—but now, for the first time, I no longer want to be.

Last year, I was seeing a man called Thomas. Almost immediately, he fell into the habit of giving instructions and I fell into the habit of obeying them—apologizing and asking his permission. It was all very ribald and light-hearted, until one night I finished work late and he invited me over to his apartment. When I arrived, he made a Greek salad and I hugged him from behind, kissing his neck as he chopped up the cucumbers. Afterward, he sat down on the sofa, while I lay with my head in his lap, looking up at him, and told him how much I had enjoyed everything he’d done to me the last time we met. He looked down on me with a smirk and, without saying anything, slapped me hard on the ear. It hurt, badly, and my ear began to ring, but to tell him off felt like a breach of contract—so I said nothing. After all, I’d previously told him that he could do anything. Moments later, he hit me again in the same place and my ear rang even louder. Against waves of pain, I tried to smile as he ran his hands through my hair and tugged on a patch of gray.

“You have so much gray hair,” he said. “You’re old.” Still frozen in a smile, at that moment I began to feel humiliated in a way that wasn’t enjoyable. I was furious. I wanted to show him that my submission had always been conditional and could be snatched away at any moment. Who the fuck did he think he was talking to? I stood up, shoved my feet into my shoes without bothering to slide them in properly, and hobbled toward the door.

When I reached it, he said “wait…” and when I turned around he was holding out my bag. He looked confused, maybe even slightly hurt. I snatched it from him.

“Where are you going?”

I said, “I’m not into this,” slammed the door and left.

Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People features a similar scene: Marianne, one of the main characters, is tied up in the apartment of a man with whom she’s involved in a sadomasochistic relationship. When she experiences a sudden wave of disgust, both for the situation and for him, she demands he untie her and storms out of his apartment. As she leaves, she wonders, “Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence?” I had read the novel only two weeks earlier and find it hard to believe I wasn’t, in a sense, ripping it off. The scene marks a turning point in Marianne’s character arc, signaling a rejection of self-abasement. That night, listening to Cardi B on the bus ride home, I thought I’d made an equally powerful act of renunciation, that I would never see Thomas or allow myself to be treated that way again. This proved short-lived: The next day, I texted him to apologize for my behavior and asked if he wanted to go to the movies.

Thomas remembers the incident differently and insists that I asked him to hit me. It’s not my recollection, but I’m not ruling it out: I was drunk, he was sober, and it would hardly be out of character. I’m not sure it matters either way because my intention isn’t to depict him as an abuser. Whether or not I asked him to, he hit me because I’d told him it was the kind of thing I liked. The last time we met I’d consented to it explicitly, so how was he to judge when that consent expired? It must be disconcerting when someone tells you “you can do anything to me” and then storms out your door the minute you exercise the power they’ve given you.

I know a number of gay men and women who sleep with men who have had similar experiences. In order to consider how the dynamics of rough sex might differ in a heterosexual setting, along with the commonalities, I spoke with Sarah, a feminist academic based in Glasgow who has been vocally critical of the normalization of violent sex.

I suggest to Sarah that, by engaging in rough sex, gay men and straight women might be fetishizing their own oppression, be that homophobia or misogyny. “I would agree,” she says. “I think the key factor is the fetishizing of male domination. But with heterosexual rough sex [where men are dom tops], that’s not at all subversive. By degrading women, men are just playing a hyper-realized version of the position they actually occupy.”

I ask Sarah what she makes of the fact that so many people actively consent to and enjoy violent sex. “It’s hard to make sweeping judgments on this, and I don’t want to shame anyone for internalizing an oppression. We need to be wary of moralistic sex negativity—the issue is not that it’s bad because it’s distasteful, but that it’s bad because it’s harmful. There can be tons of factors that influence why people consent. It’s not always an autonomous decision. You can be coerced at a societal level.” I think this is true. Understandably, most of the discourse around harm in relation to sex centers around consent. This is necessary but insufficient: After all, it’s possible to enthusiastically consent to something that harms you.

What is the nature of the harm violent sex might pose? “It can perpetuate cycles of abuse and warp your perspective about what’s acceptable from a partner,” Sarah says. “It can lead you to think, If I let them do this to me in bed, it’s hypocritical of me to be pissed off at them if they do it elsewhere. If sex only existed in a vacuum in some utopian world, this would be fine, but it doesn’t and never will. The minute you sexually degrade or objectify a woman, that memory is always there.”

Although I’m a man and the power relations are different, this chimes with my own experiences. When you create a dynamic of violence and subjugation, it’s hard to seal that off in the bedroom. Eventually, it seeps out. Someone ordering you to suck them off might be fun. What’s less fun is them telling you to go to the store to buy cigarettes because it’s raining and they can’t be bothered to going outside.

When Thomas entered into a relationship with someone else, we made the terrible, inexplicable decision to continue seeing each other as friends. One night in the pub, he claimed the private school he’d attended had “an anti-conservative ethos,” and I started ranting about how stupid that was, talking loudly enough for the people around us to hear. The whole time, as I waved my arms and shouted about inherited privilege, feeling myself to be on blistering form, there was the sense that I was only doing this to get a reaction. I was goading him and he understood this. I wanted him to grab me by the throat and tell me to shut the fuck up. Had he done this, I would have gone quiet. I would have said sorry. I would have conceded that, yes, his private school did actually sound pretty radical. At one point, he asked me to change the subject and I said, ‘What are you gonna do?” He raised his hand then dropped it and said “nothing.” There’s an old joke that goes: “Hit me,” said the masochist, “No,” said the sadist.

Eventually, he delivered the definitive rejection I thought I’d wanted and I found myself drinking alone, wondering what was wrong with me. Did I make myself impossible to respect by being too submissive? Did he think I was damaged? It occurred to me that slapping and insulting someone from the first time you sleep together might make it hard to develop feelings of affection. I felt like he wanted to dominate me but disdained me for allowing him to do so: Maybe because I enjoyed it too much?

Throughout the months following, sexual masochism bled into the emotional kind. I was drawn to coldness; men who left me on read for days at a time, men who made me apologize for myself. There was the guy who, when I gently made fun of him, told me he “didn’t like to be intellectually challenged.” There was the man who told me he’d probably given me gonorrhoea, then ignored me for a week before getting back in touch with an enthusiastic message about the new man he’d met and an invitation to join his book club (I declined). I wasn’t attracted to these men despite the awful way they treated me, but because of their aloofness, rather than being a flaw, was central to their appeal. Kindness or enthusiasm, on the other hand, I considered to be “begging it”—nothing was less erotic than being treated with basic human courtesy.

I had been in an abusive relationship before, prior to this period, and it goes without saying that it wasn’t sexy or fun. For all the drama, for all the violence and threats, it was tedious. The last thing I wanted was to replicate that experience, but still I found myself romanticizing unhealthy power dynamics, usually while listening to Lana del Rey. Red flags were my biggest fetish. Given my history, this was insane. I would have run head-first into an abusive relationship with any of the men I dated last year—the only thing that saved me was the fact that none of them wanted to.

As well as feeling that rough sex was harming me, I worried that I was causing harm. The direction of power in sex is rarely linear. You can be submissive and still be bossy: sentences beginning “make me…” are still instructions. In Normal People, Marianne says, “You’re hardly a submissive if you only submit to things you want to do.” By this metric, I’m hardly a submissive. The sex I enjoy often amounts to: “Force me to do the things I already find most gratifying.” There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s important to recognize that submissives can be, in their own way, just as domineering. Leopold Sacher-Masoch (the author of Venus in Furs, from whom masochism derives its name) would pressure his wife into sleeping with other men so he could experience the pleasurable humiliation of being cuckolded. Who’s really being degraded there?

In the case of two gay men, if the sexual dynamic is based around “I am weak and you are strong,” often expressed as “I am feminine and you are masculine,” then both partners are playing to the same insecurities—they’re just coming at it from different angles. I worried that, by validating the masculinity of someone dominating me, I was stoking their internalized homophobia. It seems plausible to suggest that making someone feel, temporarily, like a “real man” might perpetuate the anxiety that they’re not.

For all these reasons, I have made the decision to stop having this kind of sex, even if only for a while. It was damaging my relationships, making me feel worse about myself, and, perhaps, in the end, harming other people too. I want to transcend the idea that sexual compatibility is the most important thing. One friend assures me that “desire is surprisingly malleable” and, if I was skeptical at first, I’m beginning to understand how this could be true. I’ve dated a couple of men since who weren’t at all domineering or violent. It’s been a pleasant surprise to discover that sex can still be exciting without being degrading, although at times it’s taken effort not to find it boring.

At the end of Normal People, rather than rejecting her instincts toward masochism, Marianne finds a healthier context in which to express them. Her boyfriend dominates her lovingly and with respect, understanding “it wasn’t necessary to hurt her: he could let her submit willingly, without violence.” Maybe such an accommodation is the best I can hope for.

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Why I Decided to Start Kink Shaming Myself

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I have been a masochist for as long as I can remember. As young as six years old, watching a CBBC drama with a fey, bookish protagonist being tormented by older boys, I would feel an excitement I can only explain as the beginning of desire. More of a Walter the Softie myself, I was nonetheless drawn to the chaotic, masculine energy of Dennis the Menace.

Later, my sexual awakening occurred at the precise moment I began to be bullied for being gay. I was bullied, like most people, by the popular boys—the most handsome and arrogant and swaggering. The first people I desired were the same ones who treated me with contempt or violence: It doesn’t seem too much of a reach to suggest that violence and desire became conflated. I have been a masochist my whole life—but now, for the first time, I no longer want to be.

Last year, I was seeing a man called Thomas. Almost immediately, he fell into the habit of giving instructions and I fell into the habit of obeying them—apologizing and asking his permission. It was all very ribald and light-hearted, until one night I finished work late and he invited me over to his apartment. When I arrived, he made a Greek salad and I hugged him from behind, kissing his neck as he chopped up the cucumbers. Afterward, he sat down on the sofa, while I lay with my head in his lap, looking up at him, and told him how much I had enjoyed everything he’d done to me the last time we met. He looked down on me with a smirk and, without saying anything, slapped me hard on the ear. It hurt, badly, and my ear began to ring, but to tell him off felt like a breach of contract—so I said nothing. After all, I’d previously told him that he could do anything. Moments later, he hit me again in the same place and my ear rang even louder. Against waves of pain, I tried to smile as he ran his hands through my hair and tugged on a patch of gray.

“You have so much gray hair,” he said. “You’re old.” Still frozen in a smile, at that moment I began to feel humiliated in a way that wasn’t enjoyable. I was furious. I wanted to show him that my submission had always been conditional and could be snatched away at any moment. Who the fuck did he think he was talking to? I stood up, shoved my feet into my shoes without bothering to slide them in properly, and hobbled toward the door.

When I reached it, he said “wait…” and when I turned around he was holding out my bag. He looked confused, maybe even slightly hurt. I snatched it from him.

“Where are you going?”

I said, “I’m not into this,” slammed the door and left.

Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People features a similar scene: Marianne, one of the main characters, is tied up in the apartment of a man with whom she’s involved in a sadomasochistic relationship. When she experiences a sudden wave of disgust, both for the situation and for him, she demands he untie her and storms out of his apartment. As she leaves, she wonders, “Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence?” I had read the novel only two weeks earlier and find it hard to believe I wasn’t, in a sense, ripping it off. The scene marks a turning point in Marianne’s character arc, signaling a rejection of self-abasement. That night, listening to Cardi B on the bus ride home, I thought I’d made an equally powerful act of renunciation, that I would never see Thomas or allow myself to be treated that way again. This proved short-lived: The next day, I texted him to apologize for my behavior and asked if he wanted to go to the movies.

Thomas remembers the incident differently and insists that I asked him to hit me. It’s not my recollection, but I’m not ruling it out: I was drunk, he was sober, and it would hardly be out of character. I’m not sure it matters either way because my intention isn’t to depict him as an abuser. Whether or not I asked him to, he hit me because I’d told him it was the kind of thing I liked. The last time we met I’d consented to it explicitly, so how was he to judge when that consent expired? It must be disconcerting when someone tells you “you can do anything to me” and then storms out your door the minute you exercise the power they’ve given you.

I know a number of gay men and women who sleep with men who have had similar experiences. In order to consider how the dynamics of rough sex might differ in a heterosexual setting, along with the commonalities, I spoke with Sarah, a feminist academic based in Glasgow who has been vocally critical of the normalization of violent sex.

I suggest to Sarah that, by engaging in rough sex, gay men and straight women might be fetishizing their own oppression, be that homophobia or misogyny. “I would agree,” she says. “I think the key factor is the fetishizing of male domination. But with heterosexual rough sex [where men are dom tops], that’s not at all subversive. By degrading women, men are just playing a hyper-realized version of the position they actually occupy.”

I ask Sarah what she makes of the fact that so many people actively consent to and enjoy violent sex. “It’s hard to make sweeping judgments on this, and I don’t want to shame anyone for internalizing an oppression. We need to be wary of moralistic sex negativity—the issue is not that it’s bad because it’s distasteful, but that it’s bad because it’s harmful. There can be tons of factors that influence why people consent. It’s not always an autonomous decision. You can be coerced at a societal level.” I think this is true. Understandably, most of the discourse around harm in relation to sex centers around consent. This is necessary but insufficient: After all, it’s possible to enthusiastically consent to something that harms you.

What is the nature of the harm violent sex might pose? “It can perpetuate cycles of abuse and warp your perspective about what’s acceptable from a partner,” Sarah says. “It can lead you to think, If I let them do this to me in bed, it’s hypocritical of me to be pissed off at them if they do it elsewhere. If sex only existed in a vacuum in some utopian world, this would be fine, but it doesn’t and never will. The minute you sexually degrade or objectify a woman, that memory is always there.”

Although I’m a man and the power relations are different, this chimes with my own experiences. When you create a dynamic of violence and subjugation, it’s hard to seal that off in the bedroom. Eventually, it seeps out. Someone ordering you to suck them off might be fun. What’s less fun is them telling you to go to the store to buy cigarettes because it’s raining and they can’t be bothered to going outside.

When Thomas entered into a relationship with someone else, we made the terrible, inexplicable decision to continue seeing each other as friends. One night in the pub, he claimed the private school he’d attended had “an anti-conservative ethos,” and I started ranting about how stupid that was, talking loudly enough for the people around us to hear. The whole time, as I waved my arms and shouted about inherited privilege, feeling myself to be on blistering form, there was the sense that I was only doing this to get a reaction. I was goading him and he understood this. I wanted him to grab me by the throat and tell me to shut the fuck up. Had he done this, I would have gone quiet. I would have said sorry. I would have conceded that, yes, his private school did actually sound pretty radical. At one point, he asked me to change the subject and I said, ‘What are you gonna do?” He raised his hand then dropped it and said “nothing.” There’s an old joke that goes: “Hit me,” said the masochist, “No,” said the sadist.

Eventually, he delivered the definitive rejection I thought I’d wanted and I found myself drinking alone, wondering what was wrong with me. Did I make myself impossible to respect by being too submissive? Did he think I was damaged? It occurred to me that slapping and insulting someone from the first time you sleep together might make it hard to develop feelings of affection. I felt like he wanted to dominate me but disdained me for allowing him to do so: Maybe because I enjoyed it too much?

Throughout the months following, sexual masochism bled into the emotional kind. I was drawn to coldness; men who left me on read for days at a time, men who made me apologize for myself. There was the guy who, when I gently made fun of him, told me he “didn’t like to be intellectually challenged.” There was the man who told me he’d probably given me gonorrhoea, then ignored me for a week before getting back in touch with an enthusiastic message about the new man he’d met and an invitation to join his book club (I declined). I wasn’t attracted to these men despite the awful way they treated me, but because of their aloofness, rather than being a flaw, was central to their appeal. Kindness or enthusiasm, on the other hand, I considered to be “begging it”—nothing was less erotic than being treated with basic human courtesy.

I had been in an abusive relationship before, prior to this period, and it goes without saying that it wasn’t sexy or fun. For all the drama, for all the violence and threats, it was tedious. The last thing I wanted was to replicate that experience, but still I found myself romanticizing unhealthy power dynamics, usually while listening to Lana del Rey. Red flags were my biggest fetish. Given my history, this was insane. I would have run head-first into an abusive relationship with any of the men I dated last year—the only thing that saved me was the fact that none of them wanted to.

As well as feeling that rough sex was harming me, I worried that I was causing harm. The direction of power in sex is rarely linear. You can be submissive and still be bossy: sentences beginning “make me…” are still instructions. In Normal People, Marianne says, “You’re hardly a submissive if you only submit to things you want to do.” By this metric, I’m hardly a submissive. The sex I enjoy often amounts to: “Force me to do the things I already find most gratifying.” There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s important to recognize that submissives can be, in their own way, just as domineering. Leopold Sacher-Masoch (the author of Venus in Furs, from whom masochism derives its name) would pressure his wife into sleeping with other men so he could experience the pleasurable humiliation of being cuckolded. Who’s really being degraded there?

In the case of two gay men, if the sexual dynamic is based around “I am weak and you are strong,” often expressed as “I am feminine and you are masculine,” then both partners are playing to the same insecurities—they’re just coming at it from different angles. I worried that, by validating the masculinity of someone dominating me, I was stoking their internalized homophobia. It seems plausible to suggest that making someone feel, temporarily, like a “real man” might perpetuate the anxiety that they’re not.

For all these reasons, I have made the decision to stop having this kind of sex, even if only for a while. It was damaging my relationships, making me feel worse about myself, and, perhaps, in the end, harming other people too. I want to transcend the idea that sexual compatibility is the most important thing. One friend assures me that “desire is surprisingly malleable” and, if I was skeptical at first, I’m beginning to understand how this could be true. I’ve dated a couple of men since who weren’t at all domineering or violent. It’s been a pleasant surprise to discover that sex can still be exciting without being degrading, although at times it’s taken effort not to find it boring.

At the end of Normal People, rather than rejecting her instincts toward masochism, Marianne finds a healthier context in which to express them. Her boyfriend dominates her lovingly and with respect, understanding “it wasn’t necessary to hurt her: he could let her submit willingly, without violence.” Maybe such an accommodation is the best I can hope for.

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Posted by richmeganews on 2019-03-22 20:16:26

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