Erotic humiliation: Encyclopedia II - Erotic humiliation - Psychology of humiliation

Erotic humiliation - Psychology of humiliation

Humiliation in general touches strong emotional buttons, the more so when it becomes sexualized. Because of this, consent and paradoxically a high degree of awareness is needed, to ensure that the result is desirable rather than abusive. For example, a submissive may enjoy being insulted in some ways, but genuinely crushed and devastated if humiliated or insulted in other ways, especially by an insensitive top.

Humiliation play is also connected to sexual fetishism, in that non-sexual activities may become sexualized by association with arousal, and also may be associated with exhibitionism in the sense of wanting others to witness (or being aroused by others witnessing) ones sexual degradation.

For some people, activities such as name-calling are a way of achieving ego reduction or getting over sexual inhibitions. For example, between gay people, terms usually associated with homophobia may be used, such as "faggot".

As with all sexual activities, some people have sexual fantasies about humiliation, and others actually undertake it as a lifestyle or in a scene. Sexual fantasies of humiliation are very common, but for most people remain a fantasy - they would have strong reservations about it being public, or engaged in with a partner for real, however erotic the idea may be. Others do explore humiliation with partners, and many people use online humiliation (where the humiliator and others are involved via the internet using chat, email, websites etc) as a compromize between exhibitionism and reality on the one hand, and safety and anonymity on the other.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Psychology of humiliation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki