Rediscovering Kink as a Survivor of Sexual Abuse

When I was very young, maybe 9 or 10, there was this game I would play by myself. I did not have siblings, and even as a child, I knew it was too disturbing a game to play with my friends.

Since Maa used to be lost in her afternoon siesta, I could do anything. For three hours. On most of those afternoons, I chose to be a swimmer or a singer who had a very strict coach/teacher. 

Strict but caring.

The game would go like this — I would mess up, maybe I wouldn't practice enough, maybe I would just be having a bad day, and I would be punished for it, usually more than I deserved, so much that it would devastate me, break me even. And then, the person who had hurt me, would comfort me, take care of me, make me whole again, in a way.

This was not the only game I played. All my stories would have a recurring theme of being hurt, punished, humiliated, often in front of others.

None of these stories were sexual in nature. I was too young to understand what sex and sexuality meant. But I was not too young to understand that there was something wrong with these fantasies, that for some reason they had to be secrets I had to guard, secrets that I could not share even with my closest friends.

At the same time, I was also being sexually abused by an elder cousin. He lived a thousand miles away, but every time we met, he would find ways to touch my body in a way that I did not know was wrong, but it also did not quite feel right. This experience did not alter my fantasies, not until much later, when I finally realised what he had done to me. And that realisation was accompanied by a lot of guilt and shame, as it often is.

I first found out about sex when I was in sixth grade. I was stuck at home with chicken pox, and I had recently been gifted a copy of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. I started reading it, and ended up finding out everything that a dictionary could tell me about sex.

For the first time in my life, I had unsupervised access to the internet. I was a curious child, I found myself spending hours trying to acquire all the knowledge about sex.

I soon discovered erotica, and by the time I was 13, I knew that I was a 'submissive'. I did not know what submitting entails, but I knew that I wanted to be told what to do, I needed someone to take control of me. And I started exploring my body with the curiosity that comes with adolescence.

Those were the happy days.

They did not last very long. When I was fifteen, I was blackmailed and sexually abused by someone much older than me, someone in a position of power. The abuse went on for 6 months.

It was extremely difficult to deal with because I had no one I could confide in. I struggled. But what made it worse was the fact that even during those 6 months, the fantasies did not stop.

The things that my abuser was doing to me, the things that made me feel so violated, I fantasised about others doing the same things to me, and I felt aroused. It made me feel like a monster.

It made me feel like I enjoyed being abused (even though I did not, I was extremely depressed and helpless, had no support system), and hence, deserved to be abused.

When I finally entered adulthood, and started exploring kink in a safe, consensual manner, I would often break down while playing with a partner.

I felt so guilty for wanting them to hurt me. I felt like I was a monster.

I did not know how to come to terms with the things I fantasised about, which led to me to distance myself from kink, trying to have only vanilla sex during which I felt almost no pleasure at all.

All because of the guilt.

I told myself that if I only derived pleasure from situations which so closely resembled the situations I had been in as a teenager, albeit against my will, maybe I did not deserve any pleasure at all.

I had no one tell me that it was okay to want the things that I wanted. I desperately longed for guidance when I was younger.

It was a difficult time in my life.

Even though I knew, thanks to the internet, that there were other people in the world who wanted similar things & I wholeheartedly believed that there was nothing wrong with them, I just could not feel the same way about myself. 

I did not want to desire being held down, touched, beaten up, used, and derive pleasure from it, because I had been held down against my will, touched, used for someone else's pleasure, and it was the most horrible experience of my life.

It took me a long time to realise that this time was different, because my partner would have my consent.

I would not be forced into doing something that I did not want to do, that they would be there for me afterwards to hold me, and rub my back, and tell me that I was amazing. This time I would be safe, and in control. This time, it would be like everything I had fantasised about since I was much younger, and not like the experiences that had been forced upon me by others.

I still struggle a lot with accepting my own wants and desires, but I am slowly getting there. This change has only been possible because I have met and interacted with fellow kinksters who have been kind, understanding & considerate, both inside and outside the bedroom.

But finding the right people was not easy. Kink is still very much a taboo in India. I still cannot speak about my involvement with kink openly, because it might affect my professional life. And this is despite the fact that I am one of the more privileged people.

So how do you find people who are not abusers masquerading as practitioners of safe, sane, consensual kink?

Fetlife — a sort of social network designed for kinksters to interact with each other — has helped. It's not perfect, because its users are ordinary people like us, and we as humans can never be perfect.

As a woman on the internet, I find myself being constantly approached by people in a manner that enrages and terrifies me at the same time. I have learnt that as unfair as it is, we have to constantly be careful, if we do not want to get hurt. And even then, there is no guarantee.

However, the more we talk, the more we explore, the more we grow. We find our people. We have more to give to our partners, and a larger capacity to receive more from them. We find friends to tell us who is safe to interact with, and who is not.

Kink will probably always be a taboo, discussed only in hushed whispers behind closed doors. Changing this would be a long, daunting process, and there's a very big chance we still may not make a difference.

But, if we have to whisper, let's do it as often as possible, to make sure someday people don't feel like freaks and monsters, like they have to hide their desires from their lovers. 

If I have learnt something during the years I have spent exploring kink, it is that I am not the only one who has felt the shame and the guilt that come with wanting things that we have always been told were wrong.

Let's look out for each other, and remind ourselves and others that we are not freaks, that our desires do not make us outsiders. Let's remind ourselves that we are not alone, and we deserve safe spaces, we deserve pleasure. We deserve all the pleasure that we want.