You can never go home

In a couple of days I’ll take the long flight back home
But there is no home there anymore
Only the empty place that death has left in its wake
The delicate strand that used to join me to the flow of life
Has been cut
I will never be able to find my way back to the womb
The only path is forward
Let go of the past
Face the future
The places I used to know are now unfamiliar and lonely
Memories fade away in the fog
Full of ghosts
Full of faded smiles
All hope is, in the end, futile
And therein lies the ultimate freedom

The Feminist Umbrella

(A letter to my daughter on the occasion of her 14th birthday)

 

by Valentina Solenzol

Feminism is a term that most men and women believe they understand…until you ask them to articulate its meaning.  Like Obscenity or “The Situation In Israel/Palestine”, it’s a moving target with unexpected layers of subtlety and nuance that tends to spark overpowering emotions and impassioned controversy.  General explanations that try to be objective are, by definition, desperately oversimplified.  There are entire libraries and Ph.D. programs on the subject.  This letter is intended to give you a starting point, a framework with some vocabulary and the most basic history, for you to build on.

It starts with patriarchy, which is any society (including ours) that gives men most of the power and privilege in law, politics, property rights, sex, religion and so on.  Feminism is a set of ideas, developed and supported by women and men who believe in equality of all people, designed to transform the patriarchal system into an egalitarian society. 

I see feminism as a big umbrella with two ideas printed across it:
1.    Our society systematically oppresses and disempowers women.
2.    Something Ought To Be Done About It.

Under the umbrella, there is a kaleidoscope of competing, cross-pollinating, sometimes mutually exclusive ideas, opinions, philosophies, and agendas. 

In a feeble attempt to tame an overwhelming topic, I’ll limit myself to the US in the last 150 years or so.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, suffragettes marched, protested and lobbied to get women the right to vote.  Additionally, they fought for other basic women’s rights, such as owning property getting an education; entering “male” professions such as medicine and law; having equal legal claims over their children, and much more.  In retrospect, we call this period First Wave Feminism.

Some people/topics you may like to look up: Susan B Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman

The suffragettes and their political descendants are Liberal Feminists who are focused on women gaining equal rights under the law and within the current system.

The World Wars slowed advances in women’s rights activism.  But with the civil rights movement, the Pill and post-WWII affluence, Second Wave Feminism had its day.  This generation of feminists took on inequalities in the workplace and home, reproductive rights such as birth control and abortion, women’s sexuality, and a wide variety of other issues.

Second Wave Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, National Organization for Women (NOW), Ms Magazine

The ERA, or Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution was supposed to be the jewel in the crown of these activists.  It reads: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” It would have taken approval, or ratification, by 38 states to be added to the US Constitution, but it missed the mark by 3 states.

During these decades, feminism flourished and grew in multiple directions. Some activists became increasingly militant in their thoughts and actions.  These Radical Feminists, in contrast to their Liberal Feminist compatriots, believe that it is virtually impossible to overthrow patriarchy from within a patriarchal system.  They see the need for a dramatic transformation of society’s basic assumptions.

While Radical feminism vs Liberal feminism is often presented as the main feminist dichotomy, feminism actually comes in many other flavors. For example, Radical feminists, comprise (among others) Separatist and Lesbian feminists; Marxist, Anarchist, Socialist and Libertarian feminists; Black or Womanist feminists; Chicana, Asian American and Native American feminists. Third World Feminism deals with ethnic issues and racism, since the oppression the American woman experiences is a world away from what women may face in other parts of the world, from routine genital mutilation to denial of education to death by stoning. And that’s just scratching the surface of feminist consortia.

Some Radical Feminists saw violent oppression in the way men relate to women sexually.  In their view, pornography, sadomasochism and prostitution were central to explaining women’s second-class position in society.  Accordingly, they were labeled Anti-Pornography Feminists. A few had a exceedingly antagonistic attitude towards heterosexual men.  Their extreme ideas caught the imagination of the general public, creating the impression that this iconoclastic school of thought was widespread among feminists.  Because of this, many people rejected feminism altogether.

Anti-Porn Feminists: Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon

In the 1980s, others under the metaphorical Umbrella of Feminism took exception to the anti-porn approach to sexuality. Positing that sexual freedom among consenting adults is key to women’s liberation, they became known as Sex-Positive Feminists.  They clashed intensely with the anti-porn feminists in an ideological conflict colorfully nicknamed The Sex Wars.  There is still an Anti-Porn/Sex-Positive rift pervading feminism today.

Sex-Positive Feminists: Susie Bright, Carol Queen

Third Wave Feminism is difficult to discuss, because we are still in the middle of it. The children and grandchildren of second-wave feminists have been bringing women’s rights into the 21st century.  They point out that queer people and non-white women have not been well represented in previous iterations of feminism.  They challenge male-female duality, suggesting that gender is much more fluid than previously envisioned.  Many in this generation even reject the label “feminism” entirely, though they agree with the writing on the umbrella.

Most third-wave feminists fall in the sex-positive category.  High on their list of concerns are biases based on race, social class and sexuality, workplace issues (equal pay, glass ceiling, etc), rape and gender violence, reclaiming derogatory terms (i.e. “slut”), and reproductive rights. 

The Vagina Monologues, SlutWalks, Pussy Riot, Riot Grrls

How Third Wave Feminism will develop, and what comes next, is up to you. I know you will make me proud.

With love,

Mama

The seven elements of submission

Although much has been written about the different techniques used in bondage and sadomasochism, less effort has been put into systematizing the dynamics of a Dominance/submission (D/s) relationship. D/s is much more complex than the Dominant simply ordering the submissive around.  It begins when the Dominant and the submissive agree that they want to pursue D/s, but that is only the first step of a long journey. D/s develops slowly over an extended period of time in which both parties actively work to open up and gain each other’s trust.

Here I will refer to the Dominant as a man and the submissive as a woman for the sake of simplicity, and because this is my personal preference; however, all this can be applied to any gender assignation of these roles. Some of the things I say may seem extreme, even brutal. We have to keep in mind that a D/s relationship is a sharp departure from the principles that guide a normal relationship, such as equality, personal autonomy, independence and respect. These values are still present in a D/s relationship, but changed into different shapes by the fact that the submissive surrenders a great deal of power to the Dominant, so the relationship becomes inherently unequal.  The sub loses personal autonomy; and the use of pain, restraint and humiliation looks a lot like lack of respect. Of course, all of this needs to happen under the constraints of  “safe, sane and consensual”. Sanity is a particular concern in D/s, because these practices can easily lapse into psychological abuse. We need to be watchful for anything that harms the self-esteem and the core dignity of the submissive, or that creates psychological dependence. I will address these problems in another article. 

I propose here that a D/s relationship involves seven distinct elements: obedience, surrender, service, discipline, punishment, demeanor and mind-fucking.

1 - Obedience

Obedience is, quite simply, following the orders of the Dominant. This is the most obvious part of a D/s relationship: one commands and the other must obey. A good Dominant chooses very carefully which orders to give, taking into account the needs of the submissive and the development of the relationship. The submissive is a fully-developed adult living a complex life, so a poorly conceived order can wreak havoc in her life. On the other hand, if a submissive finds that she cannot follow an order, or that she must argue against it or use her safeword, her confidence in the Dominant can be undermined. A good strategy is to delimit an area of the submissive’s life that will be under the control of the Dominant; the obvious one being her sexuality. On the other hand, her professional life should be considered off limits for the Dominant. Also, the Dominant should not try to control existing relationships of the sub with other people if for no other reason that this will bring into the D/s dynamic a person who has not given his or her consent.

2 - Surrender

Surrender means that the submissive must be open physically and mentally to the Dom. A good place to start is for the Dom to assert his right to touch the sub intimately whenever and wherever he wants - her navel, her nostrils, her asshole, anywhere. The body of the sub is at his disposal to enjoy and to stimulate with pleasure or pain at his discretion. This physical surrender is accompanied by a mental openness in which the sub gradually reveals her secret fantasies, fears and desires. Again, sex is a good place to start, but this will naturally extend to other areas of her life. From his side, the Dominant should refrain as much as possible from judgment, because placing shame or guilt on the submissive would be a betrayal of her trust. She has made herself enormously vulnerable, and if she feels that her confidences are being used against her, her natural reaction will be to withdraw and put up barriers.

The ultimate surrender takes place during sexual intercourse. Here we must abandon all scruples: we are not having vanilla sex. The sub is not going to be made love to; she is not even going to have sex. She is going to be fucked, with all the overpowering and humiliating connotations that this entails. She may be rudely taken from behind, being denied the view of the face of the Dom. She may be tied up in a humiliating, exposed position in which she cannot deny access to the Dom, or even move to seek her own pleasure. She may be forced to view her degradation in a mirror. She may enjoy the fucking or she may dislike it, or both at the same time, at the will of the Dom. And, of course, she will cum only with his permission.   

3 - Service

Service means that the submissive works to please and satisfy the desires of the Dominant. While surrender is mostly passive, service is pro-active. Service also goes beyond mere obedience, because the sub needs to anticipate the desires of the Dom. From his side, he must be mindful not to inhibit her creativity by being over-controlling. Of course, the submissive needs to ask permission before performing the service, or should meekly suggest a course of action. Having a submissive well trained in service will allow the Dominant to relax and enjoy the D/s relationship without having to be continuously on alert to decide what to do next.

4 - Discipline

Discipline comprises a series of exercises by which the Dominant fully asserts his control over the body and the mind of the submissive. The most obvious way to do this is in a scene in which he puts the submissive through various stages of pain and pleasure until she becomes fully pliable to his will. Here is where D/s interacts with sadomasochism. Pain and pleasure both have the property of salience, which means that they impose themselves on our consciousness, forcing us to pay attention. Therefore, they provide the perfect gateway for the Dom to invade the mind of the submissive, unrelentingly asserting his power.

Yet discipline goes well beyond pain and pleasure, beyond scene time. The Dom will give his submissive a series of tasks and exercises that she must do in and out of his presence to train her submission. These can include, for example, sexual exercises like Kegel pulls or wearing a butt-plug; other forms of physical training; reading assignments; fixed sleep and wake up times; modifications in her diet; writing in a diary; working a certain amount of time with undivided attention, etc. For male submissives, chastity and control of erections and ejaculations are widely practiced forms of discipline. Although some discipline exercises can be unpleasant, they are not done for punishment but to train the submissive and develop her submission.

5 - Punishment

Punishment occurs because the submissive has to face the consequences of wrong-doing in the D/s relationship or in her life. The Dom may chastise her verbally, impose physical pain, or require the performance of an unpleasant task. This is a delicate subject because we live in a tremendously punishing society that from infancy exposes us to the guilt and shame associated with failure and disobedience. For this reason, the meaning of punishment has to be carefully defined from the start, emphasizing its healing value as catharsis and atonement. Many D/s-minded people find punishing or being punished erotic. This should be encouraged and developed. Indeed, in the context of a D/s interaction, punishment has profoundly fulfilling aspects. For one thing, it is a powerful way to assert the power of the Dom, which may fill the mind of the sub with awe. The other thing is the healing aspect that I mentioned before. With the help of the Dom, the submissive brings to the surface the guilt and shame elicited not only by recent misbehavior but also by wrongful deeds of her earlier life. The humiliation and the pain of the punishment erode those negative emotions, polishing and purifying the ego. It is critical for this healing process that the punishment ends with a time of aftercare, in which the forgiveness of the Dom encourages the sub to forgive herself. Any misdeed has been paid for and can be safely left in the past. The submissive can move forward in her life feeling clean, purified and free from guilt. She has accepted her weaknesses and witnessed the power of her Dom over her, and has become stronger as a person and better as a submissive. Paradoxically, by surrendering to the Dom, she can free herself from her inner demons.

6 - Demeanor

Demeanor means that he submissive learns to carry herself and behave in a way that expresses a submissive mental state. Not all submissives have the same demeanor; each one expresses in a different way what submission means to her and to her Dominant. Some submissives are meek and subservient, while others may be proud and bratty. The Dominant decides which behaviors are acceptable and which are not, according to the nature of their relationship. The appropriate demeanor emerges from the personality of the sub and is polished through training to produce a poise that conveys to the trained eye the depth and beauty of the D/s relationship. For example, one type of submissive looks down in the presence of the Dom, walks behind him and speaks only when asked. Another type of submissive may proudly lift her chin, challenge the Dom, stare at him defiantly and freely speak her mind. Different demeanors are equally valid; they simply represent different styles of surrender, service and discipline.

7 - Mind-fucking

Mind-fucking consists of mind games that the Dominant plays with the submissive to bring her to a state of defeat and surrender. It doesn’t need to be something complicated; gentle teasing is already a form of mind-fuck. However, the most intense D/s scenes use mind-fucking to bring the bottom into profound sub-space. This represents the culmination of the training into all the six other elements of submission. Mind-fucking requires creativity on the part of the Dom; it is here where he shows his skill. There are no recipes for mind-fucking. It needs to be tailored to the personality of the submissive, to her state of mind in that precise moment. A good strategy is to find her points of resistance, her inner conflicts, and then bring her face to face with them. To be successful, the Dom needs to give the sub his full attention, focusing completely on reading her. However, without the sub’s willful collaboration, the process will fail . Mind-fucking is not so much something that the Dom does to the sub as something that they create together. No matter how skillful the Dominant, it is impossible for him to mind-fuck the submissive if she doesn’t surrender to him or if she lacks the appropriate discipline to follow him in the process. For example, one of form of mind-fucking consists in making the sub choose between two unpleasant choices. If she is in a rebellious state of mind she may refuse the false dichotomy, sabotaging the process. Since mind-fucking brings out her resistances, inner conflicts and unresolved problems, it can entail a spark of self-discovery, a step in a process of self-transformation.

To develop the elements of submission takes time and effort. The Dominant has to gain the trust of the sub and carefully guide her through steps to develop each one. Accordingly, a D/s relationship is best conceived as training. The whole process should be very enjoyable and produce profound personal satisfaction in both participants. As often happens in life, what matters is the journey and not the destination…because, in fact, there may be no destination at all.

The physiology of BDSM (part 1)

We need to rescue the word “sadist”. In the vanilla world it is often taken as a synonym of “cruel”, but in the BDSM culture we know this is not true. We are not cruel, we don’t like to cause suffering, just as masochists do not like to suffer. It is only that we sadomasochists like pain. Not any kind of pain, but a special type of pain. Pain that is felt in erogenous zones: the butt, the thighs, the feet, the back. Besides, the pain that we like also has a special quality: it warms and reddens the skin, awakening its sensibility. I like to call that kind of pain “erotic pain”.

However, in BDSM pain fulfils many other functions besides being a pleasant sensation in itself. It a DS relationship pain is used as punishment. Many people have a “punishment fetish”: they like the idea of being punished or punishing somebody. The dynamic of punishment is one of the clearest forms of power exchange. We give power to another person to decide if what we do is right or wrong, and to make us pay for the consequences of our mistakes by inflicting pain on us or by making us do unpleasant tasks.

Another role of pain in BDSM is to induce altered states of consciousness, variously called sub-space, Top-space, adrenaline high or endorphin rush. BDSM sites and organizations are full of articles and talks on the purported neurochemical bases of these altered states of consciousness. Unfortunately, much of this is pseudoscience, a collection of myths that are not supported by any real scientific evidence. At best, they are just extrapolations to the BDSM scene of what we know about the neurophysiology of pain. Since there are practically no scientific studies done directly on sadomasochists, this is the only thing we can do at the moment. The bad news is that we simply do not have the scientific information to came up with an explanation for the altered states of consciousness that happen in the scene. The good news is that at least we can rule out some of the pseudoscientific myths that are being circulated. In this article I want to provide a summary of the most basic facts about pain transmission and processing, to provide a solid base of knowledge for our discussions.

The ability of the BDSM scene in general, and pain in particular, to produce altered states of consciousness is extremely important. It should not be taken with the frivolous attitude of someone taking a drug. Indeed, if what we want is a “high”, drugs can be a much simpler way to achieve it - although not one that I would recommend. The altered states of consciousness produced in the scene are valuable because they happen in a humane and emotional environment that can give them a profound meaning. The scene thus becomes a process of self-discovery and self-transformation. But not all that happens in a BDSM scene is automatically good, there are many potential problems, drawbacks and dangers. For example, a lot of people are concerned about the sub-drop, that state of unhappiness and depression that can take place in the hours or days following an intense scene. There are other concerns, though. Can certain practices undermine the autonomy or the self-esteem of the submissive? Can habituation to pain lead us to dangerous behavior? Can the pain high become addictive? The health of the Top should also be taken into consideration. Could he become accustomed to inflicting pain? Will he objectify the submissive, turning her or him into a mere puppet to satisfy a compulsion? These are objections that we find in the vanilla world, which we know from our own experience that are not true. However, wouldn’t it be nice if we have some solid evidence to refute them? And there is always the possibility that some particular behavior may in fact be unhealthy for the Bottom or the Top.

Pain pathways: from the skin to the spinal cord

The physical harm produced by canes, ridding crops, paddles or whips is taken up by the C fibers and sent from the skin to the spinal cord as pain signals. C fibers are the axons of a particular type of nerve cells, or neurons, whose bodies are located in the dorsal root ganglia nested between each pair of vertebrae at the sides of the spinal cord. There is another type of fiber, the A fibers, which transmit normal touch sensation. The A fibers are thicker than the C fibers and, unlike them, are enveloped in a sheath of fatty tissue called myelin. The sensory nerves are bundles of millions of C and A fibers joined together by connective tissue. Most C fibers specialize in transmitting pain signals coming from the skin and, to a lesser extent, from muscles, joints, bones and inner organs. Because the skin forms the barrier between the body and the outside world, there are a lot of pain receptors posted there as sentinels against harm. For that reason, the skin tends to overreact sending out a lot of pain for relatively little harm. With pain signals coming from the inside of the body (bones, joints and viscera) the issue is the opposite: a little pain can mean a serious problems. For us BDSMers, this means that “skin pain” is generally OK, but we should stay away from things that cause deep pain, like bondage that hurts the joints or impact play with heavy objects that can hurt muscles and bones.

C fibers do other things besides sending pain signals to the spinal cord. Signals can travel in them the other way: from the spinal cord to the skin. There they release substances that produce swelling and increase blood flow. This inflammation is what causes the redness in the submissive’s butt after a good paddling, or those beautiful parallel lines of the cane marks. Inflammation of the skin is generally OK; it may even serve to stimulate and revitalize it with all that increased blood flow. Bruising, on the other hand, happens when capillaries are broken inside the skin. It heals, but it means a higher level of harm.

Pain signals traveling in the C fibers reach the spinal cord at the part that is further to the back, called the dorsal horn. A fibers in the same sensory nerves also send tactile signals to the dorsal horn. There pain gets altered in some curious ways. For example, when a pain signal combines with a tactile signal form the same area of the skin, the tactile signal decreases the pain. Therefore, a Top can erase the pain caused by a heavy stroke of a cane by caressing the bruise shortly afterwards. This is also the reason why we rub a part of the body that is aching. What happens is that there are neurons in the dorsal horn able to increase or decrease the pain signal before sending it to the brain. Apart from touch sensations carried by the A fibers, pain can also be decreased by signals descending from the brain through particular nerve pathways, which I will describe later. The dorsal horn also processes other sensations coming from the skin, like itch, heat, warmth and cold, as well as sensations coming from the inside of the body.

Pain pathways: from the spinal cord to the brain

From the dorsal horn, pain signals cross two relay stations before reaching the brain cortex. One is the brain stem and the other the thalamus. At the brain stem, the pain signal interacts with the descending pain modulation pathways to decrease (or sometimes increase) future pain signals. The thalamus is a large area in the middle of the brain that acts as a central processor of all sensory sensations, not just pain and touch, but also hearing and seeing. From there, the pain sensation reaches its final destination, three regions of the brain cortex: the somatosensory cortex, the anterior cingulated cortex and the insula.

Pain in the brain

Please, do not let all those unfamiliar names put you off. If you stay with me you’ll see how understanding the function of those brain areas is the key to understand the physiology of sadomasochism. The somatosensory cortex is a stripe that crosses the brain on its sides, from top to bottom, like a hairband. Its function is localize the part of the body where the pain is coming from… is it the butt, the thigh or the nipple? But is not there where pain hurts, where it becomes such a disagreeable (or pleasurable) sensation. That’s the job of the insula. That name means “island” in Latin, because the insula is like an island of grey matter at the bottom of a deep fold of the cortex in the side of the brain. As I said, the insula is where we become aware of how much it hurts. It is also the origin of another interesting property of pain called “salience”. It means that pain has the ability of imposing itself on our conscious experience: if we are in pain, we don’t have the choice of not paying attention to it. That is why pain is so important to dominate somebody. If we give pain to a submissive, she cannot avoid giving us her undivided attention. By the way, there is another sensation that has salience: pleasure. Indeed, the insula controls all the emotions associated with pain, positive or negative, as well as emotions associated to pleasure: sexual excitement and orgasm. The insula also plays a role in a variety of emotions: sadness, joy, anger, disgust, indignation, empathy and even love. Therefore, in that tiny area of the brain pain meets pleasure, and together they interact with all kind of emotions. In fact, scientists consider pain and pleasure more as emotions than as sensations. What this means in the context of BDSM is that pain occurs in intimate connection with all the other emotions that take place in the scene, influencing and being influenced by them. Moreover, pain and pleasure are not opposites, as usually thought. They can take place at the same time, even reinforce each other.

The third brain area involved in pain is the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC). Anatomically, the cingulated cortex is the part of the cortex located in the surface where the two cerebral hemispheres touch each other. It forms a ring around the corpus callosum, which is the bundle of fibers that connect the two cerebral hemispheres. The ACC is the frontal part of the cingulated cortex. It has similar functions to the insula but, while the insula is all about emotions, the ACC links emotions to knowledge. Its other functions are detecting errors, solving conflicts, and maintaining attention and motivation. It probably also mediates awareness, so we could say that the ACC is where we become conscious of feeling pain and get motivated to do something about it… Even if it is just to endure it or enjoy it. It is here where pain can affect our conscious state.
In the second part of this article I will write about the nerve descending pathways that decrease pain and the “pleasure pathway” that releases dopamine and may contribute to the altered states of consciousness of the BDSM scene.

References

1. Cervero F. Spinal cord hyperexcitability and its role in pain and hyperalgesia. Exp Brain Res 196: 129-37 (2009).
2. Craig AD. How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nat.Rev.Neurosci 3: 655-666 (2002).
3. Craig AD. Human feelings: why are some more aware than others? Trends Cogn Sci. 8: 239-241 (2004).
4. Craig AD. Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 13: 500-505 (2003).
5. Craig AD. A new view of pain as a homeostatic emotion. Trends Neurosci 26: 303-307 (2003).
6. Craig AD. Pain mechanisms: labeled lines versus convergence in central processing. Annu.Rev.Neurosci 26: 1-30 (2003).
7. Craig AD, Chen K, Bandy D, Reiman EM. Thermosensory activation of insular cortex. Nat.Neurosci 3: 184-190 (2000).
8. Craig AD, Zhang ET. Retrograde analyses of spinothalamic projections in the macaque monkey: input to posterolateral thalamus. J Comp Neurol 499: 953-64 (2006).
9. Hucho T, Levine JD. Signaling pathways in sensitization: toward a nociceptor cell biology. Neuron 55: 365-76 (2007).
10. Hunt SP, Mantyh PW. The molecular dynamics of pain control. Nat Rev Neurosci 2: 83-91 (2001).
11. Mogil JS. Animal models of pain: progress and challenges. Nat Rev Neurosci 10: 283-94 (2009).
12. Sandkuhler J. Models and mechanisms of hyperalgesia and allodynia. Physiol Rev 89: 707-58 (2009).
13. Tsunozaki M, Bautista DM. Mammalian somatosensory mechanotransduction. Curr Opin Neurobiol 19: 362-9 (2009).
14. Woolf CJ, Ma Q. Nociceptors--noxious stimulus detectors. Neuron 55: 353-64 (2007).

Hurt

Today is Erin's birthday. She would have been 50 years old today if she hadn't decided to kill herself last November. She was kind of scared of being 50... She often thought of herself as an old maid. In fact, she was beautiful and sexy. There was always something of a teenager in her.

She had this ritual of calling her best friends on their birthdays and play "Happy Birthday" by Altered Images. Just the song, no comments, then she would hang up. Last year she did it to me on my birthday, then I did the same to her on her birthday. March first, like today.

I won't play Happy Birthday by Altered Images today. It's not a Happy Birthday. Maybe it's not a birthday at all. Instead, I'm posting this video of the song Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, which I think is what she would have liked me to post. Erin was big on getting me to like the music that she liked. She made me a CD of her favorite songs and was kind of disappointed when I didn't play it often enough when we were together. She didn't understand, I didn't explain well enough, that I'm slow to take to music. I was taking my time. I thought that we had time. She didn't explain that we did not, in fact, had that much time. She didn't say that she planned to leave so soon.

Anyway, I like Hurt now. It explains perfectly well how she felt, how she hurt, why she had to go. With it, she warned me that she would let me down, in the end. That she'd made me hurt. I hear her talking in every single word of those lyrics. What have you become, my sweetest friend? You left me your empire of dust... all of it. What am I do to with it?

This is Erin speaking. This is her Hurt. She sent me this e-mail on April 30 last year.

Oh.....Jesus, Mary and Joseph!  - forgive me!  - but I am so sick and tired of spending two and a half hours on the phone talking with some guy who is SO into his wife or some other chick - and helping him to feel better about his relationship!  OH DOG!  FUCK ME RAW AND KILL ME BEFORE I EVER FEEL THE NEED TO DO THIS AGAIN!   It used to, but no longer instills "hope" in me!  I am just wanting so bad for this life shit to be over with asap!  i am SO done with all of this bullshit!  I just wanna sleep - to trip the light fantastic - for good!  - and, again, I am not suicidal, trust me, I am not!  I am just so very done with all of this crap!   There is nothing that is good or wonderful about my life!  I want to expedite the process of my death to the best of my ability.  Perhaps I should take up doing crack cocaine or something.....I don't know.  I just know that I want to get this all over with so bad!  I am so done!  I am so sad.  I hope you can try to begin to understand this Hermes.   It is not about you in any way - at all!  it is about ME! 

I just want you, and your wife, and my mom and my friend Tina, and everyone I love and care about to just hurry up and die!  So that I can get the fuck - out of here!  I hate my life!  I want it to be over!  I used to care about leaving a mark on the world.  - something meaningful and helpful to others - but I am out of "life" and I just don't even care anymore.  - Something inside me has died.   I just want to sleep.  I used to want to help other people to have an easier life and find happiness....but, I am sorry, I just don't care about me, or anyone else anymore. 

peace OUT!
 
May you trip the light fantastic, Erin!

The simple beauty of being lovers

Being lovers is a relationship based on sex, friendship, love… and nothing else.  

In contrast, marriage has the complexity a business contract. True, most spouses start up as lovers, but they get immediately caught up in the complicated tangle of an arrangement designed to wipe out every last residue of individual autonomy. Yes, marriage sacrifices individual freedom in the altar of love, but love as an ideal so elevated that most fail to live up to it. A shared bed, shared shopping, shared finances, quickly followed by a shared mortgage and a shared commitment to raise the children. Little surprise if lust and passion get lost in the middle of all that. Marriage is the true power exchange: I get power over you and you get power over me, and we both lose our freedom in the process.

I’m not saying that marriage is necessarily a bad thing. These days, gays fight for the right of getting married, and they know full well what they are doing. Marriage is an enormous source of privilege. The shared finances, the distribution of labor, the security if being able to count on two incomes, are big advantages over single people. Add to that a socio-political system geared up to encourage “family values” with all kind of incentives. Nevertheless, when we get married we should not fool ourselves by thinking that we are entering a state in which we are going to live together ever after in romantic, passionate bliss. This is really a business transaction in which we give up freedom in exchange for security, both emotional and financial.

This is why I think that there is a beauty in being lovers that often get overlooked. Lovers love without giving up their personal autonomy. They date: get together for a limited time to share sex, conversation and friendship. Not having to agree about the best way to manage money, the values by which to educate their children and whether the house should have carpet or wooden floors make relationships much, much easier.

Another thing that adds beauty to being lovers is that there is always an element of transgression in it. After all, love outside marriage – adultery – is a serious crime in many countries, in some places even punished by death. Lovers flip the bird to political and religious power, making a statement that nobody has the right to impose the “right” relationship between two free individuals.

Freedom and lack of security go hand in hand. In contrast to the “till death do us part” of marriage, lovers know that their relationship is fragile. It has to be nurtured with passion and compassion, generosity and mutual respect. Early in their relationship, lovers set up rules that apply only to them: “never discuss religion / politics / sports”, “we meet every Sunday afternoon”, “for me you are always submissive, pretend that you don’t top other men”, etc. The rules may evolve with time, as does the relationship, as we gain more knowledge of the other person and learn to appreciate their complexity in all the dimensions or their being.

Sadly, few people appreciate being lovers as a relationship in itself. It is often seen as a transitory state in the progression from occasional sex, to dating, to living together, to getting married. By failing to recognize that perhaps being “just” lovers is the destination and not a step along the way, we push too far and doom a perfectly good relationship to failure.

All this is particularly true for BDSM relationships. Kinky relationships flourish between lovers and wilt in the narrow confines of marriage. It is extremely difficult to superimpose the power exchange of dominance and submission with the power exchange of marriage. Believe me: many have tried and few have succeeded.

So, what are your expectations? Are you looking for a lover? For a husband / wife? Or just occasional kinky sex?

Endorphins and adrenaline - What science really says

The following is in response to this article
https://fetlife.com/users/2529856/posts/1968359

Which apparently was first posted here
http://friskybusinessboutique.com/news/blog/the-endorphin-levels-in-bdsm-a-short-primer-on-sending-a-submissive-into-hyperspace

Basically, the article claims that endorphins are released in discrete “loads” and that it takes the body about 10 min to replenish the load before it can release it again. Then it proposes a method in which the bottom is beaten hard at 10 min intervals to taken him or her to increasingly high endorphin “levels” until a state of stupefied bliss is achieved. It also makes some claims on how adrenaline release balances the endorphin release, and gives instructions on how to minimize adrenaline release and maximize endorphin release (which is supposed to be the goal).

There are two different issues with that article. The first one is that it claims that all this is based on science. The second issue is whether the states that it describes really can happen to a bottom during a SM scene. I will address here the first issue only. Concerning the second, there are abundant testimonies of altered states of consciousness occurring in bottoms during SM scenes. However, the physiological basis of those states of consciousness, their value and the best ways to achieve them are highly debatable.

PET images showing the areas of the brain where endorphins are released by pain: the prefrontal cortex (PFCTX), the anterior thalamus (A TH), the right anterior insula (INS), the hypothalamus (HYPO) and the amygdala (AMY). From Zubieta et al. (2001), Science 293: 311.

I am a neuroscientist who has been doing research on pain for several decades. In particular, I have been investigating endorphin release in rats. Based on my knowledge, I am going to argue that the article cited above has no scientific basis whatsoever. The issue of endorphin release is enormously complicated, so I am going to summarize here the points most relevant for this discussion.

The first thing I need to explain is the blood-brain barrier. Blood is highly toxic to neurons, so there is a barrier between the capillaries that supply the brain with oxygen and nutrients and the nervous tissue. Most substances cannot cross the blood brain barrier without the “permission” of the gate keepers cells that form it. In particular, endorphins, adrenaline and other hormones secreted into the blood do not cross the blood-brain barrier, which means that the amounts of endorphins and adrenaline in the blood have no effect whatsoever on the mind. These substances need to be released inside the brain to do anything to your mood or your consciousness.

Second, you may imagine the endorphins as forming a sort of soup that bathes the brain all over. That is completely wrong. Endorphins are released by very specific neural pathways and affect only very small brain areas. This means that the effect of the endorphins depend on where in the brain they are released. For example, endorphin release in a small area of the brain stem called the nucleus raphe magnus inhibits pain; their release in the nucleus accumbens produces a state of bliss mediated by dopamine; their release in the insula produce positive emotions, and so far and so forth.

Third, what I have been calling until now “endorphins” are really a collection of about 40 different peptides encoded by three different genes and classified into three different families: endorphins, enkephalins and dynorphins. The endorphins and enkephalins bind to mu opioid receptors and delta opioid receptors, whereas dynorphins bind to kappa opioid receptors. All three receptors produce analgesia (meaning “a decrease in pain”), but only mu and delta receptors produce euphoria (a sense of pleasure and well-being). Kappa receptors, on the contrary, produce dysphoria, a profoundly unpleasant sensation of being sick and unhappy. Therefore, not all “endorphin” release will lead to a state of bliss. Like endorphins and enkephalins, dynorphins are released by pain, particularly when is accompanied by distress. This can happen, for example, in an adverse social environment or in unpleasant situations over which we have no control.

Images showing where in the human brain endorphins decrease the unpleasantness of pain: the anterior cingulate cortex (A CING), the thalamus (THA) and the nucleus accumbens (N ACC). From Zubieta et al. (2001), Science 293: 311.

Now, going back to that post, it is not true that endorphins are released in “loads” and that it takes the body 10 min to replete the load once is released. From what I have said above you can deduct that this is an enormously naïve and simplistic view of what in reality is a tremendously complex system. The final effect on our state of consciousness and on our mood would depend on whether endorphins, enkephalins or dynorphins are released, and most important, where in the brain they are released. Since the levels of endorphins in the blood do not affect the brain, to study endorphin release we need to have a technique that would allow to detect them inside a living brain. As incredible as this may seem, it was actually done by a scientist named Jon-Kar Zubieta. Using positron emission tomography (PET), he is able to measure the binding of an opioid drug, carfentanil, to the mu opioid receptors. He published a number of papers using this technique (I list some of them at the end) that show where in the brain endorphins are released (actually, where they bind to the mu opioid receptor, displacing carfentanil) during pain or in some particular emotional states. Unfortunately, he did not study masochists being beaten into a pulp in a SM scene. There is no indication whatsoever in his studies that endorphins are released in “loads”, or that the loads need to be replenished every 10 min. This also does not agree with what we know about the mechanisms by which endorphins are synthesized and released.

What about adrenaline? Actually, the brain uses a similar compound instead, nor-adrenaline (often called nor-epinephrine or simply NE). NE does a lot of things in the brain - again, depending where it is released an which of its many receptors are activated. It is true, however, that NE released into the spinal cord inhibits pain. This is driven by a neuronal pathway that originates in several parts of the brain stem (the nuclei called A5, A7 and nucleus coeruleus) and then travels down the spinal cord. The A5, A7 and coeruleus nuclei are activated by stress in the fight/flight response, which is well-known to produce analgesia. So adrenaline can complement endorphins to reduce pain during an SM scene.

How all this applies to an SM scene is anybody’s guess. I don’t know of any scientific studies done on sadomasochists, although it would be fascinating to do them. But in view of the complexities of these systems, how much they vary from person to person and how strongly they are influenced by social interactions and the ambient, we can guess that there is no simple formula to induce the release of endorphins or adrenaline in a person. The top has to fly by the seat of his pants, read the bottom very carefully and stay on the safe side when inducing altered mind states on the bottom. We are playing with fire here, and even though things may seem to fine during a scene, nobody knows what unforeseen consequences it may have in the future.

References:
Zubieta, J. K., Y. R. Smith, et al. (2001). Regional mu opioid receptor regulation of sensory and affective dimensions of pain. Science 293(5528): 311-315.

Mason P (1999) Central mechanisms of pain modulation. Curr Opin Neurobiol 9:436-441.

Hunt SP, Mantyh PW (2001) The molecular dynamics of pain control. Nat Rev Neurosci 2:83-91.

Zubieta JK, Smith YR, Bueller JA, Xu Y, Kilbourn MR, Jewett DM, Meyer CR, Koeppe RA, Stohler CS (2002) mu-opioid receptor-mediated antinociceptive responses differ in men and women. J Neurosci 22:5100-5107.

Zubieta JK, Ketter TA, Bueller JA, Xu Y, Kilbourn MR, Young EA, Koeppe RA (2003) Regulation of human affective responses by anterior cingulate and limbic mu-opioid neurotransmission. Arch Gen Psychiatry 60:1145-1153.

Apkarian AV, Bushnell MC, Treede RD, Zubieta JK (2005) Human brain mechanisms of pain perception and regulation in health and disease. Eur J Pain 9:463-484.

Ribeiro SC, Kennedy SE, Smith YR, Stohler CS, Zubieta JK (2005) Interface of physical and emotional stress regulation through the endogenous opioid system and mu-opioid receptors. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 29:1264-1280.

Wager TD, Scott DJ, Zubieta JK (2007) Placebo effects on human mu-opioid activity during pain. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104:11056-11061.