Content warning: general discussion of child abuse, assault. No specific instances, cases or details, but please pass by if this might be upsetting.
Every so often on FetLife, someone enters a conversation and drops kinky caltrops all over the road. Let’s say there’s a photo of a woman in a schoolgirl outfit being caned. There’ll be a lively back-and-forth in the comments section underneath, with good-natured chat, mischievous teasing, compliments on the girl’s body etc.
Enter Captain Buzzkill. This poster comes in and begins to talk fondly about actual schoolgirls being actually caned. They share links to true-life stories of real children being beaten by real adults. They talk fondly of punitive adult figures who were known for their abusive habits.
Suddenly playtime is over for the OP and the commenters below. The school roleplay has lost its appeal altogether. By introducing the reality of nonconsensual child abuse, this person has taken away the fun in playing with taboos among consenting adults, and has shunted trauma and violence into its place instead.
I’ve discussed the possible motivations behind such comments with HH. There’s the straight-up paedophile who fantasises about harming actual kids and has wrongly assumed FetLife is a sympathetic space in which to wax lyrical about atrocities with like-minded individuals. There’s the socially tone-deaf poster, who draws on historical/actual CP to inform and inspire their (consenting adult) roleplays – as many schoolies do – but has misread the room in sharing this information in its raw form. Then there’s a subset of kinky folk who shame ageplayers and schoolies for quote-unquote promoting paedophilia, one of whom might have tried to draw out the latent paedos among the commenters with such a post, only to find themselves rebuffed.
[Fun fact: In the photo in my About Me section, taken on my 38th birthday this year, HH spanked me in front of a cake. One commenter was appalled and claimed we were promoting child abuse. When questioned, they pointed out that the cake only had 12 candles on it. HH responded that it was a tiny cake and we couldn’t fit any more on, but answer came there none. Perhaps we should have just gone with one candle, but that might have made it even worse.]
Whatever the motivation behind such unwelcome comments, it underlines how delicate our headspace is when playing with taboo topics. We know logically that child abuse of any kind is entirely unrelated to our kinks, and is something we find abhorrent. We seek out enthusiastic adults with whom to roleplay abusive scenarios, because it’s delightfully wrong, and because it allows us to temporarily shuck off social mores in a safe space. But it only takes someone pouring salt into our mental cup of tea to make it undrinkable.
It was HH who uttered the title quote, when we were discussing historical corporal punishment in schools. What was done then was very wrong, but CP enthusiasts have abstracted the ideas, settings, dynamics and tools to play with these dark events in an erotic way. There’s a reason schoolie types head toward old-fashioned scenes, as opposed to present-day Singapore, say, where school CP still takes place, or even parts of the US.
I have a huge kink for edge-play humiliation, but only with someone I like and trust, in a private or controlled setting, when I know it’s going to end in warm cuddles. In the real world, being even subtly patronised or controlled, or witnessing it happening unjustly to someone else, is terrifically stressful. It’s something I’ve seen again and again in various front-facing service roles, and it raises intense feelings of anger and fear, surges of cortisol and a panic-inducing helplessness that’s more frightening than erotic. I have no say and no agency in designing the humiliation, and no way out when I want it to stop.
When the #MeToo movement began to gather steam, it seemed like stories of assault, control and abuse were everywhere on my Twitter feed, along with intensely emotional responses. They were important stories, and they needed to be shared in all their raw outrage. For a while, though, I had to step away from nonconsent play altogether, as I associated it too closely with this very real abuse. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough when reality was repeatedly puncturing it. Although I’ve been fortunate enough not to have experienced serious sexual assault, my mind would wander mid-scene to all the minor instances of bodily invasion I had experienced from strange men – the grabbed arse in the club queue, the uncomfortable squeeze-past or shouted threat, the casual ‘steering’ businessmen do in crowded stations, where, instead of saying ‘Excuse me’, they move you by the waist or shoulders like a box that’s in their way. Recalling this, there were times I hardly wanted to be touched at all, even by a loving partner.
Thankfully, these intrusive thoughts fade each time, but it only takes a grim news story to make edge-play unappealing. No hardship compared to the subject on the news, but nonetheless disorienting. For me, emotional dysregulation (common in ADHD) means the smallest triggers can have disproportionately seismic impacts. Over-identifying with a real-life victim means details of their story will jam themselves in my brain, wedge in some misplaced guilt, and kill the mood. This is understandably frustrating for HH, who is very empathic but much better at compartmentalising.
Despite the inconvenience, it’s a good thing that we are thrown off-kink-course by these doses of reality. It serves as a safety cut-out for those who risk wading (for whatever reason) beyond harmless smutty fun into darker, more exploitative waters. The revulsion, fear, anger and upset we feel when confronted with real-world trauma should help us calibrate our kinks. If our instinctive response to actual bullies and abusers is negative, uncomfortable, intolerant and even avoidant, we can find our way back to enjoying play-abuse with our consciences and kinks intact.