It’s complex, thinking about this. Not about Emily here,we hasten to add: how we feel about her isn’t at all complicated. Emily is one of the central nodes of Sian’s polycule, and Sian loves her fiercely.
No, we’re talking about niche kinks again. We’re talking about the forbidden.
What does it mean to adopt the form of a family as a means of erotic kink? Emily calls Sian “Mother” and there is a conceptual (as in, imaginary) incest in their interactions now. They are Mother and Daughter, where Mother places padlocks on Daughter’s wrists, where Mother mandates, and restricts, and moulds, and disciplines, and yes, hypnotises.
Does Mother really know best, though? Isn’t playing at incest an act of violence? Aren’t we cosplaying abuse? Isn’t it, well, a bit sadistic?
Angela Carter had some things to say about sadism.
The annihilation of the self and the resurrection of the body, to die in pain and to painfully return from death, is the sacred drama of the Sadeian orgasm. In this drama, flesh is used instrumentally, to provoke these spasmodic visitations of dreadful pleasure. In this flesh, nothing human remains; it aspires to the condition of the sacramental meal. It is never the instrument of love.
— Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman (1979), 150.
And she’s right, isn’t she? Sade’s libertines are all powerful men who use that power to brutalise and abuse the people in their power. True sadism is actually incompatible with masochism, because part of what the sadist gets off on is the powerlessness and pain of the victim.
There is an argument in some circles that everything we do is violence.
We’ve talked about Acéphale a bit before. In short it was the sex-and-death-and-philosophy cult founded by Georges Bataille, the cult of the headless one (Acéphale is French for “headless one”), where everyone’s a ritual sacrifice, and no one holds the knife. It’s transgressive, the use of ritual violence as a vehicle of erotic fulfilment.
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| André Masson’s image of the Acéphale, on the cover of Acéphale No.2, January 1937, which was dedicated to taking the work of Nietzsche back from the Fascists, in case you’re wondering what that cover text is about. |
But the problem that Bataille and the idea of the Acéphale consistently raises is that it was fundamentally about cishet men, and it can never really transgress against a system it upholds. It’s a sort of cosplay in its own right, the agents of conformity pretending not to, and never risking consequences from it.
But what if it wasn’t? Consider:
…If heteromasculinity is removed from the erotic model entirely, a potential site for radical transgression appears. Sex between bodies for whom the construct of gender oppresses into serving a heteromasculine model of desire is definitively transgressive… taking the heteromasculine position as that of “the head” (in more ways than one), this argument can then be extended to destabilise representational hierarchies… by embracing headlessness. Bataille’s acéphalic vision, filtered through Masson’s illustration of the Acéphale, lends itself quite literally to the rejection of hierarchy, but also patriarchy and maleness.
— Erin K. Stapleton, “Headless Sex: Acéphalic Anatomy as Queer Eroticism,” in Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley eds., Acéphale & Autobiographical Philosophy in the 21st Century (London; Schism Press, 2021), 105-6.
Because look at this guy. Aside from no head, he has star shaped stripper pasties and a skull where his package should be. That is not a straight thing.
So maybe there’s legs in this. But, you know, not a head.
When considered as separate systems, masochism is an expression of transgression, resistance to rule and to sedition, while sadism is an expression of adherence… The sadist applies a rule without variation (and therefore without the possibility of transgression), while a dominant articulates and applies the boundaries of a rule in service to the masochist’s submissive desire, accessed through transgression. …The truly transgressive is only that which is not socially sanctioned, and the only position through which the experience of eroticism becomes possible.
— Stapleton (2021), 120.
Oof, that’s all a bit dense.
OK, let’s unpack that a bit. The idea here is that by the simple fact of who we are, we’re outside of the exercise of patriarchal power. Sian is as locked down as Emily is. We’re transgressing because we’re people who can’t do a conventional nuclear family cosplaying a deconstructed, messed up, funny and hot version of a nuclear family, and using it as an avenue of erotic desire. It’s like that bit in the movie Benedetta where the lesbian nuns carve one end of a statuette of the Virgin into a dildo.
And it saves us. We express love through sacrilege, because the fact of our existence is, to the structures that rule us, sacrilege. Everything we are is forbidden — hell, even the fact that you have to click through an adults only filter to get to this blog because of all the trans content is proof of that. We are forbidden beings, and so we find an avenue of erotic fulfilment in leaning into our forbidden nature and exploring in a space that exists in a permanent tension between safety and risk, between anonymity and self-revelation.
Sian: And of course [there is] the hypno, brainwashing, mind control, lobotomy stuff, the literal hole in your head that would be undeniably evil, permanently damaging, maybe even fatal, and we can play it and fuck with it and be agents of evil, and find love and healing in it.
Emily: Fantasy bad ends can be good ends.
— Private conversation (Discord), 1st July 2025
Sian:
alaskametro “Desert Planet” eyeshadow (variant 02)
ABYSSAL ANAIS bodysuit; THELMA tight high boots; VIVIAN tights
AVEC TOI Mrs Harmon Latex Glove (Left)
ContraptioN SK3LE2 Prosthetic Arm (L)
SSD Ophelia Skin – Frost
Jack Spoon. Cheeks for Days [contour2_100%]
.MILA. BOM Contour Set
S H I M M Eyes Applier / CCCXCI BONUS [ B O M ] 1
ItGirls/Velour Picasso Babe skin (FROST)
Emily:
AVEC TOI Mrs Harmon catsuit; Bailey Boots
KDC 13mm10Ga nose ring; Isolation Headphones (nose); Vergilius Cuffs; Vergilius collar; Classic Leather Belt
[CW] Kemono Hand Mittens
barberyumyum S23 hair (style2)
Velour Louise face skin (Icy)
REVERIE Imperfections Set
Izzie’s Demon Eyes
