this is actually a true story, but we are going to avoid using names, because although it’s a matter of public record, the woman it is about has spent years trying to escape it. so why even tell it?
it is worth understanding. that is why.
we hope she is happy and safe and that she never reads this. we hope you read this, though.
the story is worth separating from its victim: you could probably find names after a google, if only to verify the truth of it, but that isn’t the point.
in the early days of the internet bodymod/fetish community – this is over 20 years ago now – we came across an american blogger who was an extreme lifestyle sub. married to her master, she was collared, shaved her head and had various body mods, some extreme even by the standards of the community. she blogged about the beauty of living and loving as a full-time slave, about the beauty of humiliation, about the perfection of her abasement. she was, needless to say, an important part of the community and inspired many fetishists to think seriously about this as a lifestyle choice, and to envy it.
one day, in writing about the everyday minutiae of her life, she blogged about how master had bought a new gun and how he was looking forward to trying it out. and then that night she took the gun and she shot him dead.
she was acquitted of murder. about ten years later, she came back and briefly blogged about what really happened under her real name. in fact, it turned out, her erotic slavery was just slavery, and the sadism wasn’t for play. she had been manipulated, coerced and tortured by her husband, who emotionally and physically abused her and, we inferred, consequently inflicted misery on her whole family. she had never even written the blog posts. that was him. the happy 24/7 sub was a fiction, and the blog’s existence was just another avenue of torture for an abused woman. she went through this for years. no one should blame her for breaking. she wrote a handful of posts about her experience – we read them, they were honest and agonisingly painful – and then deleted the blog. our heart broke for her. what must she have gone through? what must it have been like seeing those pictures of her degradation posted online as if she had consented, and her voice stolen, lying about her inner self?
we were reminded of this because we have been keeping an eye on the Instagram feed of a 24/7 lifestyle sub – shaven headed, heavily modded, tattooed over most of her body and face, a bit like sian. this one is queer and disabled – she is blind in fact – but is pictured engaging in bdsm activities of various kinds. she is often nude. she sleeps in a cage. she obviously isn’t the one taking the pictures or writing the captions – although the account, interestingly, takes the time to put detailed alt text of the pictures’ contents in the captions. we presume it’s her domme doing this but we hope that the sub has a part in the project and that she first and foremost has access. we hope that she is leading this. we hope that this is her idea. we hope that it’s true.
and this is why it’s useful to talk about this. power exchange is a difficult thing to negotiate, and the public presentation of that is equally difficult. these lifestyles can be healthy, they can be happy and they can be affirming and loving. but how can you tell? we only have the words on the screen to go on.
(featured clothing jambee pvc harness top / twosided “milk” bulge strap panties / chariot cyborg fashion earrings (long long oop) / the forge kera arms; kera boots)
