Cognitive dissonance and BDSM

It took four and a half days. Finally, someone was brave enough to leave the comment I had been expecting from the moment I finished writing the post I called Ouch. Screwed up again.

This morning, goodgirl wrote:

Hello
For reasons I can not even explain nor understand myself your last sentence, "a man has the right to beat his slave" prickled me to my very core. To each his/her own; freedom of speech and choice I believe but reading those words felt offensive and is just one of the many reasons why I feel conflict with the exchange of Dominance/submission; Sadism/masochism; Master/slave.

You appear very happy in your relationship and that is truly all that matters for you and the exchange you have.

For me though, this entry just fills me with sadness. 

The full quote, the last two lines of my post, is this:

Whether for punishment or pleasure,
a man has the right to beat his slave.

Here, an admission.
I felt extremely uncomfortable as I wrote it.
And I left it in as a challenge.
A challenge as much to myself as to my readers.

Because that is a horrible thing to say.
As a concept, as a tenet, it is absolutely inexcusable.
And yet.
I thought it.
I felt it.
At that time.
In that context.
As I wrote.
But if I let myself truly think about it, my stomach clenches.

So I tried not to think about it.

An exquisite example of cognitive dissonance.

As I write about it now, I'm suddenly reminded of something very different. Or maybe not so different as a psychological experience.

I was raised an atheist. A third-generation left-wing Jewish atheist. While my parents gave us a strong sense of Jewish identity, they were very clear on the non-existence of God. Religion was something that distracted people from improving the lot of the masses and making the world a better place. (Knowing very little about Judaism, they didn't know that tikkun olam, healing the world, is precisely the job we were given, but that's another discussion entirely.)

Eventually, I was drawn - felt compelled - to learn more about the religion of my ancestors. I talked with a rabbi, I read, I went to services, I found things I could relate to. But largely I preferred services that were mostly in Hebrew. Despite the fact that I didn't know what I was saying.

In fact - precisely because I wouldn't know what I was saying.

Because otherwise the highly rational part of me would push past the part that found meaning and fulfillment in ritual, the part that sensed the existence of something else, and while poking at my stomach would say: "How can you say this stuff?!?"

I rarely ascribe things to "God." Notice that above, when I spoke of tikkun olam, I didn't say it was the job that God gave us. That makes me extremely uncomfortable. And yet, I really have, on a few widely disparate occasions, become disconcertingly aware of something else.

I do not like talking about those occasions.
They make me extremely uncomfortable.
And yet they were very real.

Cognitive dissonance makes us very uncomfortable.

There is another psychological state that walks hand-in-hand with cognitive dissonance. And that is suspension of disbelief. A very deliberate suspension of disbelief.

Yes, I am very happy in my relationship. But I am admittedly uncomfortable enough about a few of its aspects that I don't reveal it to friends who are not part of this world. They would worry about me. And really, rationally, how could I blame them? Aside from everything else, I should be out looking for someone who will commit to looking after me as I grow older. Who could take care of me, financially and otherwise. Instead I have made a commitment to a man who... well, you know. Or some of it at least. You've read it here.

In order to write what I do, not to mention do what I do, I push away my thoughts of real slavery. Of real abuse, sexual and otherwise. Of forced prostitution, of children who are sold, of children whose real daddies do things to them that no child should have to endure. Things that no daddy should even think of doing. These are real horrors in the world - realities we should not close our eyes to, realities we should not close our minds to, realities we must acknowledge even as we do things that some of us, at least - perhaps precisely because our awareness is so keen - feel we must keep from those who care about us.

So I write from another place.
That place from which I can say
a man has the right to beat his slave.
For pleasure or punishment.

But there was no way I could go deeply enough into that place to enable me to write that line without cognitive dissonance standing on my shoulder, like an angel of good intent, whispering into my ear the true horror of the words I left for you to read.

So thank you, goodgirl, for being honest enough to admit what you felt.
Because if we didn't have those feelings,
at least sometimes,
we would have to seriously question our own humanity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A reassurance, for my new readers and for those who may have forgotten.  None of us, in any relationship, can truly say that our safety is assured, whether physical or emotional. The old hit-by-a-bus possibility. But I can say this. This man I write about - this sadist - is aware of the potential dangers and works very hard to protect me. And it is that level of consciousness that feels like the greatest protection of all.