Personal narrative on family S&M experiences and feminist views

to go into therapy, but I wanted a Kink Aware therapist who wouldn't shame me for my S&M preferences. The specific therapist I preferred was out-of-network for my health insurance, which meant I needed help paying for it. My dad was cool with it, but he didn't say much. My mother paused when I told her... and then she explained that S&M is part of her sexuality, too. I was shocked. I was also incredibly relieved. If my brilliant, independent mother was into S&M, then suddenly I felt much more okay about being into it myself. It turned out that she had explored S&M late in life -- and she went through the same anxiety about feminism and S&M that I'd felt. "You're not giving up your liberation,” she told me. Mom also acknowledged the stereotype that S&M arises from abusive experiences. "I once worried that being raped made me into S&M," she said. "But I remember having S&M feelings in my childhood and early teens, long before I was raped. I was like this all along." When she said that, I caught my breath in recognition. This is another topic I often repeat myself about, but that's because it's important. As it happens, the biggest and best-designed study on S&M found that there is no correlation between abusive experiences and being into S&M. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence within the S&M community that a lot of S&Mers, though not all, feel our S&M identities to be innate (sometimes described as an "orientation"). This is not to say that there's anything wrong with understanding or processing abuse through consensual S&M. The psychologist Peggy Kleinplatz once published a scholarly article called "Learning From Extraordinary Lovers: Lessons From The Edge," which discusses how therapists can help their clients by studying alternative sexualities. Kleinplatz included a case study of a couple whose S&M experiences helped them process their histories of abuse. However, abusive experiences should not be seen as the usual "creator" of S&M desires. (For more on this, check out my article on S&M and the psychiatric establishment.) The stereotype that S&M "comes from" abuse is another reason I worried about writing this article. Basically, this is a prettily-wrapped gift to Internet commentators who enjoy writing posts or hate mail about how fucked up I am, or about how dysfunctional S&M is. I guess there's no help for that. KK Ok "I'm fascinated that you've adopted feminism so thoroughly," my mother told me once. "I never felt like I was into feminism like you are." "What?" I said. "Are you serious?” "Well, feminism shaped my life,” she said. "I really had my consciousness raised by some of my experiences. Not just being raped, but by other things, like seeing the anger and resentment among my mother and her sisters. Feminism helped me understand how women compete and put each other down because we're put in that position by men who have power over us. Sometimes, we're like animals who have been starved into fighting for scraps. "But," my mother continued, "I've never been sure about calling myself a feminist. There have always been a lot of feminist areas I didn't feel welcome. Your dad was a card- HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018679