Personal BDSM Narrative and Commentary on Reporter’s PTSD Article

more receptive to sexual energy. It's not that BDSM is exactly a sexual turn-on in itself; sometimes it is, but that's actually surprisingly rare. Yet BDSM often... gets my blood flowing?... and seems to "open the floodgates,” so sexual hormones can storm through my body. And just in case this wasn't complex enough for you... on the other hand, I've had BDSM encounters where my partner tried to take it sexual, and I wasn't interested. It's almost like there's a BDSM cycle that I often get into, and once the cycle is sufficiently advanced, I can't easily shift out of it. Sometimes, when I'm near the "peak" of the BDSM cycle, then being interrupted for any reason -- sex, or anything else -- is absolutely horrible. I'd rather be left on the edge of orgasm, burning with sexual desire, than be hurt until I almost cry. The emotion becomes a stubborn lump in my throat; becomes balled up in my chest. At times like that, it almost feels hard to breathe. A while back, a reporter named Mac McClelland who worked in Haiti made a splash by writing an article about how she used "violent sex" to ease her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I briefly reported on the article for Feministe, but at the time, I didn't share many of my thoughts about what she wrote. One thing I did say was that the reporter didn't use any BDSM terminology -- at least not that I spotted. She didn't seem to conceptualize her desire for "violent sex" as a BDSM thing at all. Interestingly, a Feministe commenter named Jadey, who has experience with kink, also didn't conceptualize the reporter's article that way. Jadey wrote: I don't think she's bad or wrong, and I don't think her method of coping with her PTSD is bad or wrong.... [Yet] I've got a kink/BDSM background, but that's not what she's describing here. She's talking about something far different, and I can't understand the experience she describes with Isaac. It is... incomprehensible. I want to stress here that I, Clarisse Thorn, have never been diagnosed with Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder. (And I've undergone plenty of analysis, so I'm sure that if I had PTSD, someone would have noticed by now.) And just in case it needs to be said again, I'll also stress that I have no intention of telling anyone else how to define their own experiences. And just in case it needs to be said again, there is a big difference between consenting BDSM and abuse. But unlike Jadey, when I read the original "violent sex" article, the reporter's description of her encounter sounded a lot like some of my preferences... indeed, it sounded like some of the BDSM encounters I've had. For example, the reporter writes: "Okay," my partner said. "I love you, okay?" I said, I know, okay. And with that he was on me, forcing my arms to my sides, then pinning them over my head, sliding a hand up under my shirt when I couldn't stop him. The control I'd lost made my torso scream with anxiety; I cried out desperately as I kicked myself free.... When I got out from under him and started to scramble away, he simply caught me by a leg or an upper arm or my hair and dragged me back. By the time he pinned me by my neck with one forearm so I was forced to use both hands to free up space between his elbow and my windpipe, I'd largely exhausted myself. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018541