OK, now the post I meant to write.
When I was with my ex, I sometimes had the strongest desire to fight with him, physically, to fight with all my strength. I wanted to kick and punch and bite him, as hard as I could. I didn’t, because he didn’t like it. He’d occasionally let me bite him a little, but gently. When we kissed, I always wanted to bite his tongue. He hated that, understandably, but once or twice the urge overcame me and I did it anyway.
Because I didn’t ‘really’ want to hurt him – at that point the idea was inconceivable – I used to long for a guy who was really good at fighting, so that I could fight as hard as I wanted and not damage him – so that he could contain my aggression in a safe space.
When I was tiny, my dad and I used to have ‘rough and tumble’ sessions. I fought him as hard as I could, but of course I was tiny, I could never hurt him, so he could happily let me throw all my might against him. One of my few memories of early childhood is the day I asked him for a rough and tumble, and he told me I was too big for that now. I felt bereft. I never had a great relationship with my dad. Those sessions are the only memories I have of connecting with him at all.
I really don’t know why it never occurred to me before now that those memories might be related to my desire to beat up the men I’m attracted to. Gah. Daddy issues. How pedestrian. I’m disgusted with myself.
Is it really daddy issues? Or were those sessions not a cause, but a symptom of my love of a good scrap?
I want to be able to punch my lover. To backhand him, and see him stagger a little. To kick him, as hard as I can – but not damage him. And I want to take men by the throat, and see a little fear in their eyes. Maybe even to squeeze, just a little.
I’m only starting to appreciate that this doesn’t necessarily make me a bad person, but I’m still not sure about that. I worry that alongside the ‘benign dictator’ there is a real bully in me. I have an urge, sometimes, to play the psychotic. In U2’s Vertigo, halfway through, Bono breathes, ‘Just give me what I want and noone gets hurt’. It thrills me. The menace of a loaded gun or a sharp knife, the threat, the holding hostage. Your power. Their vulnerability.
I honestly don’t know whether I’m kinky or just fucked up and mental.
And now a comment that will probably be as long as your post…
About a year before I came out to myself as dominant and sadistic in the kinky way, I came out to myself as sadistic, I thought in the bad-horrible-psychotic way. I’ve been having d/s and s/m daydreams since I was four, and after a few stumbles around the age of six, I learned to keep them locked away in the maximum security portions of my brain. But then it finally broke over me, that I tortured men in my head almost every single day, and there had to be something horribly, terribly wrong with that. And I also finally admitted, with complete surety, that I was the way I was because of my father’s domineering attitude, his obsession with micro-management and control, and his verbal and emotional abuse. I was just lying there, staring up at my ceiling, crying, asking him in my head, ‘What have you made me?’
Since I had finally admitted I was sexually aroused by my fantasies, this made a link between my father and my arousal, which scared the hell out of me. I was like, “Oh. God. Daddy-issues,” and I was similarly disgusted with myself.
I still have major issues with my father, which I have absolutely no clue how to address directly, but I did come to realize that though my father –and patriarchal oppression in general– had a big part in making me who I am as a dominant sadist, I am not sexually attracted to my father. Definitively.
But because of him, I want to beat up men. I want to beat the living tar out of someone, but I don’t want to break any bones, tear any ligaments or tendons, dislocate any joints, or rupture any organs. I want to wale on someone with everything I’ve got and let there only be bruises. (Incidentally, I’ve discovered martial arts classes, those that include grappling and sparring, are a great venue for this).
So, at its most basic, my kink is derived from my issues with my father. With admitting my kink to myself, also came the realization that my father is almost definitely dominant, and has not the slightest clue how to express it in a healthy way. And I refuse to be like that. Good or bad, I am dominant and I am a sadist, and if I am those things then I will express them in the healthiest, most satisfying, and most ethical way I can.
So if your kink is derived from father-issues, I don’t think it makes you fucked up and mental, I think it just *is.* And now you get to choose how you want to express that part of you.
Thank you so much for this. It really helps. This is exactly what I mean when I say blogging is like group therapy! You get to talk about your shit, you get to find out you’re not alone, and you get to learn from other people’s hard-won insights.
I also am not remotely attracted to my father! He’s everything I *don’t* want in a man. But it makes me not-happy to realise that his attitude may have shaped this part of me. Still, as you say, however it was formed, now it’s *mine*, and I can do what I want with it. And unlike him, I have the self-insight to ues my powers for good.
I feel sorry for him, really. He’s profoundly insecure, afraid, and shame-ridden, and always will be. I do at least now understand that he (my mother, too) behaved the way he did because of his own pain and weakness, and it was nothing to do with me or my sister.
Actually, we get on ok now, now that he has absolutely no power over me and I have absolutely no fear of him.
Still, I still have to find the way to separate in my head the stuff I want to do from my condemnation of my father’s behaviour. The slightest feeling that I might be doing something remotely comparable to what he did would be enough to totally squick me. I seem to be making progress with this, though, thanks to the blogosphere. The different bits of my brain seem to be talking to each other at last. I think also the roleplaying head space will help me a lot – I’m very used to stepping into a role, taking on an archetype as play, without mistaking it for reality.
*lurks head through door* That the group therapy session for daddy issues? Sorry, I’m a bit late! Yes, I too am a branded child! I used to think that I wanted to beat up guys because I hated my dad so so very much at some point. That I was unable to have “normal” sex with guys because all I felt was disgust for them and the great urge to destroy them.
I still don’t get on well with my dad, unfortunately, but I now refuse to make that connection between what happened at home and what I do in bed. Like you two say, it’s happened but it doesn’t determine who I am now.
And why always go looking for bad reasons to have caused our kink? Why always condemn all aggression as bad? Nobody questions little boys beating each other up, but if a girl likes to do that there’s something wrong with her?
Heh, clearly I’m in good company!
“Why always condemn all aggression as bad? Nobody questions little boys beating each other up, but if a girl likes to do that there’s something wrong with her?”
This is a really good point.
I remember when I was little it used to bug the crap out of me that boys wouldn’t scrap with me. Once time I tried to pick a fight with my cousin – not the smartest target, he was older and bigger than me – and he just wouldn’t engage, obviously, but I kept at him so long that in the end he dragged me off and tied me to a tree in the garden. I was so mad!
In fact, I’m convinced this discrepancy is also the main reason why submission is seen as wimpy for men. It’s not submission per se – history and legend is full of that – it’s submission *to a woman* that’s taboo. Hm, I feel a post coming on…
I think a symptom of the patriarchy is going to be daddy-issues for several generations of women yet. When your male parent is the expression of oppression in your life, you’re going to have issues with him. What’s even more fucked up is that “daddy-issues” have been stereotyped and parodied to such an extent (thank you Freud) that they are treated as pitiful and baseless, rather than a clear warning sign of a culture of abuse. So women who are emotionally/physically/verbally/sexually abused by their fathers are told that they have nothing to complain about, that they are just being neurotic, and are treated as fodder for cruel jokes on sitcoms.
As for fighting with boys– I had slightly fewer problems with this since there were only boys in my neighborhood, but eventually, “Don’t hit girls” (a maxim I think should be modified to “don’t hit anyone– unless they ask you to”) caught up. But again, martial arts classes! I got some of my best grappling/biting/nerve pinching in with guys from my tae kwon doe classes.
“[...] it’s submission *to a woman* that’s taboo.”
Indeed, I agree this has a lot to do with the “wimpy submissive man” stereotype. If woman<man, then a man who *purposefully* alters the dynamic to man<woman *must* be a spineless, weak, indecisive, unattractive puddle of goo. Obviously.
*shriek*
Hm, you’re quite right. Labelling these things ‘daddy issues’ does trivialise them – it suggests they’re a silly problem that silly little girls have. Naturally, noone ever tells boys they have daddy issues.
‘a maxim I think should be modified to “don’t hit anyone– unless they ask you to”’
Absolutely.