In response to our previous post, Sian’s reader, beloved friend, regular philosophical sparring partner, and better blogger than Sian Portia Capelo wrote, in response to the idea that we’re not doing it for realsies:
“It is real that you are playing someone with a hole in her head. Does one have to have an actual physical hole for it to be real? Isn’t it possible that this play could transform you psychologically?“
Sian had to stop and have a think about that, and maybe formulate an answer. And Sian felt she should write that here. Partly because Portia’s almost certainly the only person who reads this, and partly because Sian wants to keep the answer.
Of course the answer is yes.
Yes, all right.
Yes.
Of course it changes us psychologically.
How can it not? Look, if you have a kink, the chances are that you’ve learned to be ashamed of it. Part of the process of growing into the kink scene is finding places to express that without shame in spaces where it is safe. You grow from being someone who thinks it is not OK and perhaps wanting it anyway to being someone who feels it is OK in its context.
Any sexual desire at all can, in certain circumstances, be a subject for shame and revulsion. This can, if your context is conservative, or ruled by purity culture, include perfectly normal and vanilla things like masturbation, consensual extramarital sex, or even positions other than missionary with your heterosexual spouse. Hell, in some contexts, it’s even shameful to think sex is fun.
Some people never even get past that.
But everything connected to secuality, all erotic fantasies, all kinks and fetishes have that barrier of shame. Sian spent years being terrified, and indeed horrified by her fetishes.
Part of that was related to how she tied her fetishes to the confusion and doubts she had with her gender. She was horrified by them. She’d indulge them for a bit and then she’d feel tremendous shame, and try to be “good.” It never kept. Part of the reason she burned three main accounts and abandoned a fourth before finally settling on this one and making it an honest expression of her aesthetics, mental health struggles, neurodivergences and fetishes, is because she became honest about her gender.
There is an assumption among the more conservative parts of our culture that simply being other than heterosexual and cisgendered is shameful, “adult” content.
Footnote: Part of the reason that Sian’s old blog was so difficult to read is that she talked openly about being trans, for which Google automatically put it behind a wall. You had to be OK with being tracked before they’d let you read it. This blog doesn’t do that, thankfully.
But being trans is the SFW part of who Sian is. Moving that aspect of her self, in her head, to the SFW realm, meant that she could untangle her sexuality from her gender and, well, unkink her kinks from the tangle of shame and values which tied them up (and not in the fun way).
And so she got locked, and she got increasingly restricted, and she got her own subs. Meanwhile she came out IRL, and since, she’s indulged in latex play, hypno play, and D/S in real life, and got a lot out of it.
In SecondLife, Sian and her friends engage in what amounts to horror play. Bodies are penetrated, identities warped. Impossible technologies serve as a symbolic mediator, but really they might as well be transformed by magic. The things Sian and her friends get up to in SecondLife will never be possible outside of fantastical roleplay, because bodies and minds simply don’t work that way.
Footnote: One domme Sian knows in SL presents as a rotting zombie with festering holes in her flesh through which you can see motes of magic light and uncovered bones, wreathed in shreds of decayed flesh. Aside from having an amazing looking avatar, if you like that sort of thing, she’s a very good erotic roleplayer, and people are legit into her. Sian in fact said to her while in the middle of writing this that she doesn’t know anyone else outside of her circle who so fully understands what Sian does. And really, what’s the difference between the zombified creature with the extra orifices, or the actual zombie? They’re both just as disturbing, and just as alluring.
So the things Sian and her friends do in Secondlife are frightening, but they are literally impossible. Even if you could do them, you wouldn’t because they’re awful, but that awfulness, that play-acting at psychopathy is part of the frisson. It’s part of what is so alluring.
Does it desensitise us to psychopathy?
This is an argument that’s been used in the past about Dungeons & Dragons and Grand Theft Auto, hip-hop and slasher horror. And look, does getting used to a form of media or a mode of play make us change morally? No. Not really. Our moral centre remains the same. if we are compassionate and empathic, we remain compassionate and empathic. Does it alter us? Yes.
We’re less ashamed of who we are. We are able to have the release of talking about what we dream of with others. We don’t become monsters.
We do wonder sometimes if there is a line.
We won’t allow any kinkshaming, but sometimes you do have to engage in a bit of kinkaskingquestions.
Fantasies about having one’s consent taken away, whether realistic or fantastical, about perhaps even being subject to violence are always going to be problematic, and they’re always going to be niche. Can they harm us? Do they damage us?
But we don’t want to have these things done to us. That’s the point. We engage in erotic play centred on these violations because these violations scare us. It’s the same as watching a slasher movie and having an enjoyable frisson from all the kills. Do we want to be chopped up by Freddy/Michael/Jason/Pinhead/Art? No. Is it cathartic? Surely.
(And by the way, go see Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma if you can, for a visual representation of what we’re talking about here.)
Or is that disingenuous?
RL!Sian used to be close to a woman who had a fetish for being humiliated and degraded. She was straight, and she found a succession of men who had their fun degrading and humiliating women. Her experience was traumatic. Her mental health spiralled. Sian lost touch with her some years ago. She hopes she is all right.
But that’s clearly an unhealthy dynamic. This is why the kink scene has rules about aftercare and being safe, sane and consensual. And to be honest, this is why Sian’s group is so laser-focussed on a sort of equalised hierarchy, where Sian is the Acéphale, who is herself subject to an Acéphale of her own. Sian and her subs obey a strict set of formalities, and call and response statements that don’t just add to the thrill, they protect everyone.
Limits matter. Sian has never played with anyone who doesn’t use a safeword. She refuses outright to engage in any kind of play with anyone who lacks one.
Having a safeword — and knowing you have the freedom to use it — isn’t the buzzkill that some people think it is. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Even if we’ve never used them — none of Sian’s dolls have used them, although Sian has used hers with Core — it means that we know that we’re trusted to go as far and to be as weird as we like, knowing that if we go too far, it stops with a word.
Everything is permissible, because not everything is permissible.
That doesn’t answer the question about where the line is though.
There’s some play that you just can’t engage in; there are some fantasies that you can’t ever indulge. For example, take the play that might involve imagining oneself to be a person or creature who doesn’t have a choice about whether they can consent; or, worse, to imagine oneself doing things to such a being. You know what we’re talking about. This is the stuff that’s so beyond the pale that even being an adult pretending to do it with other adults gets you banned from SecondLife and possibly investigated by the police in several countries. When even pretending is beyond the pale, you know it’s something you don’t do.
Is that hypocrisy?
Well, it’s not like a sliding scale. We’re getting our eroticism from things that are horrible, inexcusable, perhaps even sickening. Never mind that they’re impossible.
The intersection of these things with shame is impossible to avoid tackling.
Featured (both Sian and Calypso):
Avec Toi Yui boots; Rin dress; Rin nipple covers; Iris Jewellery
Eventyra Gnarly Neon nail gloss
Contraption SK3LE2 cybernetic arm
Azoury Talalay robotic ears
eBody Reborn bodies (Calypso wears Waifus)
Also seen:
Zeroichi Power Circle backdrop
SAPA poses