In a thread about S&M and abuse, Victoria said:

>>> Here's the inherent, if unspoken, assumption I usually hear someone making when they ask such a question: since sexual abuse is a horrible thing, people who were sexually abused who are involved in S/M must be compensating for or repeating their abuse--ergo, S/M must be a horrible thing, too. Maybe some of us ARE compensating--but since when is compensatory behavior always pathological or destructive? <<<

Interesting thoughts, Victoria, and ones I happen to agree with . One of the things I find most interesting about S&M and abuse is the way S&M activities have of bringing out abuse memories in people. (Kind of like those therapists discussed in that _New York Times Book Review_ cover article, right? No! Not at all, just couldn't resist making mention of that excellent article, which, btw, includes a fascinating discussion of False Memory Syndrome.)

Anyway, I doubt if any top or dominant goes into S&M scenes solely to wring abuse memories out of their sub-bottoms, and likewise subs don't scene in order to chuck up undigested bits of their past, but yet it happens, over and over. It used to happen to me a lot during the first few years of my relationship with Donald: you're in the middle of being whipped, having a wonderful time, and then oh god, you're three or four or five and something awful is happening to you and you start sobbing your brains out. I wonder sometimes if it is because these flashbacks so frequently occur that people come to believe there is a causal connection between childhood abuse and S&M. Like some other posters to this thread, I think we're probably a representative cross-section of the rest of the population, at least in terms of the frequency of abuse. But the rest of the population, in its sex play, does not have the kinds of experiences that seem to work as catalysts for abuse memories.

Do you find, in the people that you play with, that many of them have these sorts of childhood memory flashbacks? And how do you deal with that, when they flash on you?

>>> So--for those who would like an opinion from a sadomasochist who has been sexually abused...S/M offered a lot of healing and reconciliation for me as opposed to an opportunity to continue to act out or perpetrate my abuse--and I appreciate having the opportunity to say so. <<<

Amen! I second, third, fourth, fifth, six, seventh, and eighth that!