sexual uncertainty,kallmann, kinks and past emotional abuse

[oekibala]

Hi there,
lets start with some disclaimers:
first off i'm a first time poster so i hope i'm doing this right.
secondly this subject matter is complicated and entangled and i'm having a hard time keeping my thoughts focused enough to get them down coherently but i will do my best to do so anyway. in other words: this will be a long post.
I'm not even entirely sure what i'm expecting to get out of posting this here but I've been meaning to do so for almost a week now so here goes!

I'm 21, male,from west Europe, kinky and questioning.
I'm not attracted to other men so for the most part of my life i just sort of fell under the straight banner however as a open minded and well informed individual my philosophy has always been "i'll like who and what i'll like and as long as that's (save, sane and) consensual i'm okay with that" i just always thought that was nothing more then hypothetical.
Recently though I've started identifying as questioning (to myself at least) as there are two things that i'm looking to figure out:
#1 it's became clear to me that while i'm attracted (in a way) to women that doesn't necessarily only limited to CIS women and i'm fine with that but it does bring up the question of what that means for my sexual/romantic identity.
#2 (and this is the big one) I'm trying to figure out where i fall on the spectrum from sexual to asexual.
I don't think I've ever had a crush on anyone.
however i do have a strong sex drive, a strong and clear idea of what(who) i find attractive at least on an aesthetic level and a strong urge for intimacy (sexual as well as romantic (cuddling while i read her a book that sort of thing)).
To make this even more complicated: I was diagnosed with kallmann syndrome when i was 16.
the short explanation of that is that i was born with an under developed olfactory nerve which means i don't have a sense of smell and my body doesn't create testosterone on its own.
This in turn meant that i didn't start my puberty until i was 18.
I've wondered about asexuality but keep ending up with the feeling that it doesn't fit me

In the 21 years of my life i have been bullied(a lot), beaten up a couple of times, temporarily homeless together with my dad at age 8, burned out, threatened with knives and that's just the summarized version of it all.
you could write a novel about all the things I've experienced (and i intend to at some point).
Since moving out though I've started a process of realization that my father is emotionally manipulative and abusive (and has been so for my entire life).
my father raised me for almost my entire life (my mother did her best to be involved but i lived with him since i was 3).
Now i have a wonderful team of therapists that i'm working with to deal with a lot of these things and i'm doing well (especially with all things considered).
I also tried to start seeing a sexologist however that was a bust, i felt like she didn't see me at all as a person with valid questions and at the end of a 3 appointment long intake process she simply told me i was to scared and socially inapt to commit to any relationships and that i could come back in 10 years if things where still the same then.
I quite frankly felt completely dehumanized.
so that left me discussing these things with my regular therapists which is going well but i'm noticing i'm sometimes having a hard time with coming right out and saying certain things most of the times i talk around it for a while until she get's what i'm trying to say or asks a question that allows me to say it.
Last week though we came upon something that i felt was really important but really could put into words she noticed i was struggling and backed off which i'm grateful for but is also making it harder for me to now discuss it anyway.
The thing is discussing it means coming out as kinky, specifically as submissive.
And what i'm trying to discuss is basically the relation between my submissiveness and my past with emotional abuse.
I can't even really remember what we where talking about but it brought up questions in me such as " Am i submissive because i just am or because that's what i was trained to be?" "How do i handle being attracted to more dominant character traits without finding myself in an(other) abusive relationship?" "How do i handle being submissive (and just plain shy/insecure) in finding a partner in a culture that still expects men to make the first move?"
While i'm perfectly fine with and really enjoy my kinks in my own privacy but i'm having a hard time coming out for them to other people.
Obviously i had meant to discuss these types of subject matters with a trained sexologist but now what?
I will add to this that i believe my therapist would not treat me any different due to my kinks but that's only making ever so slightly easier.
Making it especially hard is that it will be up to me now to initiate the conversation about all this.

holly cat whiskers ! this turned out really long !
Thank you in advance, I know this is a lot so all the more gratitude to those of you who get trough it and have something to contribute!

[Sunshine]

Hey there!

Glad to hear you have therapist you can work with! That sounds fantastic.

If you really want to talk to her about being kinky and the main problem right now is that you find it hard to initiate that conversation, I have an idea:

You express yourself very well in writing and seem to have no trouble putting your thoughts down on paper. Could you maybe write the questions you mentioned in your post down for her? You could bring the paper with you to your next session and say: "These are things I would like to talk about. Please help me with this conversation, I find it very hard." Or, if you can't say that, maybe you could write it over the questions as a title?

[oekibala]

that sounds super scary to be honest, knowing that this message board is sex positive in advance as well as the anonymity provided by internet made this a lot easier, but we do focus on writing as therapeutic medium so i guess it's a good way to go, i'm just slightly worried that i'll be able to write it down but not to hand it over to her.

[Heather]

Welcome to the boards.

I'm unfortunately down for the count today with illness, but I really like working with complex issues like you're bringing here, so just leaving a note to let you know my intention to weigh in today or tomorrow.

I would say, though, that if you don't feel able to trust your therapist yet with this stuff, that you just go ahead and take more time to build that trust with them. It's okay to take that time. You can also ask them some general questions to get a better sense of how able they feel to be sex-positive, and to try and feel out if this may, in time, be one right person for you to discuss these things with. No need to rush in when you're just feeling too vulnerable.

[Sunshine]

Okay, I can imagine that would feel scary. Sorry.

Um... still assuming that you really do want to have a conversation with your therapist about these things, could you just tell her, or write down for her, that there is something you would like to talk to her about but haven't been able to mention so far? Maybe she could help you approach the matter step by step through asking you questions?

Also, what exactly are you afraid would happen if you let your therapist know you have these questions? I'm just asking that because sometimes, when I am afraid of something (and I am afraid of an awful lot of things), it helps me to specify my fears. But everyone is different, of course. Also, sorry if you've already tried this. I hope I'm not suggesting a ton of stuff you already tried but didn't work for you - I hate it when people do that to me, it makes me think "yeah, if it was that easy, I'd have figured it out myself long ago - how dumb do you think I am?"

Anyway. If for now, you only want to talk about being kinky and how that might or might not be related to past abuse in an anonymous setting online, that's always an option, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I know very little about either abuse or BDSM. But I am pretty sure other people around here do and will be able to give you more helpful insights. My gut feeling is that there's a huge difference between power you give voluntarily and gladly to a trusted partner (sexual or otherwise) and power somebody else just takes and uses to harm you.

I am really glad that you found a space where you feel comfortable enough to talk about these things at all!

Life is tough for us shy people. I am very shy (I couldn't even go into a bakery to buy bread until I was eighteen), but I am a woman, so I guess it is easier for me than it would be for a guy. It's really unfair that these different expectations still exist for men and women. But I do think things are changing for the better in that respect, at least in our part of the world.

[Sunshine]

Whooops, seems I posted simultaneously with Heather. Get well soon, Heather!

[oekibala]

thank you both for the quick and kind replies!
@heather thanks! i hope you get back on your feet soon and i look forward to your further input.

@Sunshine no need for apologies your suggestions and questions are useful and appreciated.
what i'm scared of? rejection mostly i suppose.
Rejection in the shape of ridicule or maybe just in well meant but ill informed opinions.
though rationally i know i have very little to fear (we've been talking on a weekly basis for a few months now and she's always very kind and respectful and we get along swimmingly) on that front but try telling my anxiety/insecurity that.

i don't know how that quoting mechanic works so here goes copy paste instead
/"My gut feeling is that there's a huge difference between power you give voluntarily and gladly to a trusted partner (sexual or otherwise) and power somebody else just takes and uses to harm you."/
This is very true!
what i'm mostly worried about is recognizing,communicating and defending my boundaries, my boundaries have been crossed so often that i've learned to just accept it as reality. Especially my father could turn everything around on me and protesting made things ten times worse (i remember a fight where he was upset that he had forgotten his password for something and got angry at me for not knowing it (i had helped him set up the account ages before that) and when i reminded him it was his password and his responsibility i had an hour long shouting monologue on my hands).
So even if my hypothetical partner means well there is a risk of me not recognizing my limits and allowing them to push past them and that's when they mean well what if they don't ?
The one advantage that i do have is that i am well aware how BDSM works (save sane consensual, save words , yes-no-maybe lists, boundary negotiations, after care and all that) i'm a massive human genders and sexuality geek so i make it my point to be well informed.
But that's in theory i'm worried i won't have the awareness of mind or self esteem to bring it in practice especially against someone who doesn't mean well.

i can't tell if i'm over thinking it anymore.
one of the hall marks (*to my knowledge) of emotional abuse is that the victim is made to always second guess themselves, i've been second guessing myself for so long that i'm having a hard time recognizing when i have a valid point or if i'm second guessing hell sometimes i start second guessing my second guessing. it's really tiring.
mind you this isn't my 24/7 reality but this sort of thinking can just rear it's ugly head whenever and once it's there it's really hard to get rid of (with rational or otherwise)

[Sam W]

Hi oekibala,

Hope you don't mind my chiming in. I have a thought that might help with your worries around limits and being possibly pushed past them (either accidentally or intentionally). The solution to that might be to go very, very slowly at first. Like, baby steps if you need to, so that you're airing on the side of caution. That way, you minimize the chances of something happening where you go "oh, crap, there was a limit there I wasn't quite aware of." Going slow, and making it clear to a partner that this is your pace will also cue you in to your partner and some possible red flags. If they respect that need for easing in, and immediately dial back or stop when asked (or if a limit gets tripped), then that's an indicator that they're a safe partner. If they push you, or try to convince you that it's not really kinky unless you're doing X,Y, or Z is an indicator that they are not a safe as a partner.

I feel you on the overthinking. It can be so, so tiring. I will say that while it's exhausting, and if you can find a therapist you can trust is definitely something to work on, it's a logical adaptation to an abusive situation. It's not ridiculous for your brain to be trying to protect you from the same kind of stuff now. But it will take some time to learn how to gauge when second guessing is helpful and when it isnt

[oekibala]

Quick update:
I had another session today and I mentioned to her that there was something I was dealing with that I wasn't quite ready to discuss with her. She was very nice about it and made sure to let me know that I could take my time and that there's no pressure.
Having taken this step now I do feel closer to being able to talk to her about it, maybe next Friday who knows?
Input from here continues to be much appreciated.

[Heather]

That's great!

So, I just want to first cover a couple quickies to get them sorted:

1) Transgender women are women. So, people attracted to women are people attracted to women. The fact that your gonads and brain, as a heterosexual person (if I'm getting right that that's how you ID) recognize that when other people can't even in the most academic way doesn't suggest you aren't a heterosexual person, just that, it seems, your gonads are smarter than some people's brains.

2) I'm not sure if there was a specific reason you brought up the Kallmans, but in case you did around some of these sexual issues, I want to toss a couple facts at you to be sure you have them. For sure, testosterone is one of the big chemical drivers when it comes to reproduction, as well as sexuality. However, it's not the only one (in fact, a bunch of recent study suggests that estrogen, in people of all sexes and genders, may play just as big a role), and sexuality is also waaaaaaay more than merely chemical. You know that from your own person experience: you have a desire for sex you feel as strong, so clearly, the Kallmans and what it does per testosterone isn't an impediment for you!

3) Generally, people who identify as asexual do because either a) they don't feel any sexual attraction to other people, or b) do, but feel no desire to put those feelings into action with others. You get to identify however you like, but based on what you've posted here, that doesn't sound like you to me.

That was the easy stuff, now for something much harder. You know, in my almost two decades now of working in this field, including with a lot of survivors of all kinds of abuse, and my own personal experience of sexuality and a sexual life as a survivor, what's been made very clear to me is that more times than not, we just are not going to be able to know how much or how little our abuse has formed or influenced our sexualities. We can have some things that we know, from a clear sense of knowing, have to do with our abuse, but more times than not, we're not going to be able to separate out one influence like that.

The bigger thing I came to a long time ago is that it doesn't really matter. I'm not trying to tell you what to care about or not. What I'm saying is that, let's say there IS some part of our sexuality that IS about our abuse. So? That's not, I don't think, me being dismissive, it's more about the fact that if it is, that's still a part of us and who we have turned out to be, and so long as, in our sexual choices, we're not choosing to do anything that harms us or anyone else, or that we don't enjoy, it's all good.

Think about it this way: I know that I am actually really good at boundaries expressly because my life experience has involved so many relationships and situations -- including where I was abused -- where people were terrible at boundaries. To me, there's nothing bad about my getting this from that. By all means, it would have been much better not to have had that experience, but I did, and this came out of it, and that doesn't change the value of that takeaway, nor somehow taint it. Know what I mean?

You've got some other practical questions in here I'm also happy to talk with you about if you like -- or you can with someone else here, and some of those conversations have already started -- but one thing that popped out at me were your questions about being a submissive guy when it comes to masculinity constructs. What I'd encourage you to do there, just as a start, is to go do some searches for discussion areas online amoung other submissive men. These are the kinds of conversations many submissive men have, and the beauty of the internet is that it's going to be pretty easy to connect with others like you online to talk with about this. You're also certainly welcome to make a separate thread here at our boards asking these kinds of questions, either of other guys, or of anyone.

(I'm taking a couple days off, just swung through here this morning to honor my stated intention to you the other day. I'll be back Sunday!)

[oekibala]

@sam W
of course you're welcome to chime in, baby steps definitely sounds like a good idea.

@heather
Yay! For intelligent gonads !

While the science nerd in me would love to have an intelligent and friendly discussion about whether or not our experiences as humans is anything but chemical interactions i do absolutely get what you're saying.
I suppose the reason why i brought up kallmann is because of the massive effect it has had on my self confidence and my life in general.
I have been asking medical professionals questions around these sort of subjects for years and not one of them has had a clear answer for me (that bit about estrogen is complete news to me) and that leads to a whole lot of uncertainty.
Especially hitting puberty that late made me feel like i was late to the game and the manual had been written in chinese.

The more i'm thinking about it the more i'm coming to the same conclusion that ultimately it doesn't really matter why i like what i like just that i like it and that i should just focus on enjoying it safely.

Google isn't being very cooperative in finding a good message board where submissive men can discuss these kinds of things would you by chance have some suggestions for me ?
Making a new thread about that here does also sound like a good idea, i probably will.
what sub forum would you suggest i'd start such a thread ? it feels like it has a lot of overlap with a lot of the sub forums (relationships , sex and sexualety,sex culture and politics, help eachother and abuse and assault all seem related to stated questions and the conversations surrounding them in one way or another)

Have a good weekend!

Another quick update:
talking about good weekends i'm spending mine at my mom.
We are very close and tend to have good talks about a lot of things such as how my therapy is going, my father and sometimes also sexualety.
so yesterday we spend the entire evening talking about the subjects at the heart of this thread.
I'm very happy to say that she was nothing but loving and accepting about all of it.

[Heather]

How great you have such a wonderful relationship with your parent!

I'm around again today, so if there's anything I mentioned you'd like to talk more about with me, give a shout!

(Though not a "we are only chemicals and function chemically" discussion, please. For sure, our hormones have a lot to do with our human life, but essentialism around that has been as debunked as the inverse suggestion, that our chemicals don't have jack to do with anything. )

[oekibala]

I'll keep that science nerd on a leash then
I did have a few practical questions in my response to your previous post.
Besides that though i think i'm all good, though obviously anyone who still has something to add to this conversation is more then welcome to do so.
Thank you all so much for all the kindness!

[Heather]

So sorry! Middle age has given me a mind like a sieve. I just put out some feelers with some sub dudes in my own social circles to see if they have any favorites to suggest.

Alternately, or in addition, I would be happy to ask if any of them would come into this thread to chat with you.

[ThomasMMillar]

So I'm one of those people in Heather's social orbit who can speak from experience on some of these things. I am a cis man, I identify as het, I'm over forty and married, and while in practice as a kinkster I switch, I identify as a bottom with submissive traits and when I'm submissive that's a deeper and more meaningful experience to me than topping.

Nobody has an answer to the connection between your trauma and your kinks. Empirically, research has found no such link in a population -- not causal and not even correlation. However, there are people I know who are very certain that for them, their kinks are reactions to trauma. There are people who are kinky, and who are abuse survivors, but who can locate their kinky traits earlier in their lives than the trauma that might be hypothesized as its source. And there are people who are kinky who can't identify any trauma that one would hypothesize as a causal factor. You can interpret your own experience however you feel is correct, but there isn't any science to give you external answers on this, and if anyone tells you that they "know" that your kinks are caused by a or b or c, they're making stuff up with no evidentiary foundation.

I'll tell you what I think, based on observations and conversations with other kinksters for twenty five years or so, though I can't demonstrate it scientifically: our kinks are often in the areas where, emotionally, we have unfinished business. That doesn't mean we necessarily replicate traumas, or that we necessarily compensate for or reverse them, but that the ways things resonate with us are in the fault lines of powerful emotional tectonic plates, as it were. That's just TMM on kink. And that's nothing to be ashamed of.

Your question about how to be submissive and look for a female partner in a culture where women expect men to make the first move is a good one. One thing that comes up a lot when het sub guys talk is the paucity of women who publicly identify as dommes or tops -- and this does, actually, bear out in social science work on the public scene. There are many hypotheses for why, none of them adequately tested. I'll again give you my working hypothesis: taking a dominant role requires a certain swagger, bravado, cockiness ... in a culture where women are discouraged from that. The performative aspect of selfishness (which is quite different from actually being selfish) is hard to do for women who are raised to make a show of caretaking for others. It's just a tough role, and only the most motivated of women are going to just go out there and put in on for themselves, with few people around to model it for them. They exist, but they are not as common as the men who want them as partners.

But fear not! My experience has been that lots of women will never be comfortable in that role, but lots of women find that they are comfortable being dominant, if they, too, can manage their internalized gender rules. How this manifests in your life depends on a lot of things, especially if we're talking about relationships or pickup play, but in either case, if there are not dominant women around that you want to play with and who want to play with you, my thinking is that you can look to find someone with kinks, and who you like, and who you want to play with, who can find their way to the role you need them to take. And in a way, that means making the first move, because the women you'll end up playing with may have just as hard a time breaking out of those gendered scripts as you do. And that, in turn, will help break down another construct which may be harmful to you. By reaching out and actively trying to find someone to submit to, you'll show them and yourself that submission isn't passive. Submission is active. It is one pole of a dipolar energy exchange. You actively invest your trust and give your reins to someone.

So you may meet someone online or at a munch or club or kink space and want to play with her. Unless she's using something with a literal symbolic meaning like hanky codes, you can't necessarily tell about her role orientation or her sexual orientation or even her pronouns, which means that to get to "do you like to dominate men", you'll have to talk to her. You'll have to sell yourself as an appealing partner. You'll have to talk about what you like, what you're looking for.

You've said that you're shy and it's hard for you to put this out there. I acknowledge that, and that's difficult and I don't have any magic solution to that. But I want to dispel a few myths that tend to make it even harder for sub guys to get what they want. I think you probably don't as least consciously believe these things, but I also believe it's useful to expressly reject them anyway.
(1) Dominant partners don't want worthless subs. Some people specifically kink on humiliation and like words like "worthless" or "pathetic", but actually, good, fulfilling dominant-submissive dynamics depend on both people getting something out of it, and that in turn depends on both people having something to offer.
(2) Submissives are not inherently needy or broken. Both the dominant and submissive partner have needs, they just express them and get them met in different ways. Using powerful physical and emotional responses as a tool to create intimacy isn't weird at all, once we strip away the social messaging around it.
(3) Submissives have needs and limits, and dominants have needs and limits. Media about kink and kinky porn sometimes positions subs as being self-negating to extreme degrees, existing in monastic denial of their own wants. That's not real life. We do dominant/submissive play that meets our needs, TO meet our needs, and if our needs are not getting met, we will get unsatisfied and resentful and our needs will come out in other ways. Being dominant involves being responsible for meeting someone's needs, sometimes in ways they don't fully understand or can't articulate, and it can be exhausting -- planning, worrying, reading another person's reactions. So dominants have needs and limits. Submitting means riding a rollercoaster where someone else has custom-built the tracks for you. It's intense and hopefully just enough of the unexpected, but if the tracks really just go in the shape the dominant partner likes, it won't be a very good ride, or it will be too intense.

So start from the proposition that the women you want to play with have something very important in common with you: they're kinky. Start from that big, general common interest and see if you can work your way to a specific common interest in play. If not, it's at least practice at verbalizing and negotiating desires, and you could make a friend if you don't make a play partner.

Finally, about the gendering of dominance and submission, I recommend a post by Bitchy Jones on a now-inactive blog of the same name. The post is called My Hero, and in it, she takes the position that all heroes in popular culture are submissive, that their stories are their struggle with physical or emotional suffering that they take on for an important reason, and that these tableaus of masculine submission are right in front of our faces, but our culture just doesn't call them submissive. Thinking of historical archetypes who are pledged to serve and suffer -- think feudal warriors like knights and samurai -- can help free our ideas of submission from gendered constructs that link submission with femininity.

I hope that's useful to you.

[ThomasMMillar]

I want to add that, as someone who grew up with messed up parental relationships, I've managed to have a very fulfilling marriage with a kinky partner for more than a decade. It is entirely possible to have healthy boundaries in your kinky life even if you have not been able to maintain them in your childhood.

[Heather]

(Thanks so much, Thomas, you're the bomb, as ever! )

[oekibala]

thanks for the great input !
I can feel a lot of it sinking in slowly so i'll give it some time to do so.
I feel I've already known/believed (even passionately so) those things however i still need to realize that they do, in fact, also apply to me.
Sometimes it's too easy for me to believe something ("everyone's experience is valid" for instance) but somehow feel like that doesn't apply to me, and again this is something i'm working on and making progress with but it's still a struggle at times.
even now my brain is trying to make me feel like an hypocrite telling me that if it where someone i cared about (or even a stranger) asking these questions i would have all the advice for them and i would shower them with caring kindness.
It's almost like i'm running around on fire telling other people, also on fire, to stop drop and roll.
So thank you for reminding me to stop drop and roll there where i struggle to do so myself.

Thanks for the recommendation on that article, i'll read it tomorrow when i'm a little more awake but already i find the premise of what you described work to shift my perspective.

I find myself thanking you beautiful people *heavy metal guitar riff* once again for the no small amount of kindness i'm finding here, it is making this process (though still hard, confusing and complicated) a lot easier!

[Heather]

Thomas is pretty awesome, isn't he? I'm lucky to know him.

So glad that was so useful for you, and that you're feeling so supported here. Hooray!

[oekibala]

sssssooooooooo............... i just spend a good hour and a half writing an update and stuff but when i went to post it the site prompted me to log in again and it was all lost !

* o thank god !!! i managed to get it all back !

[oekibala]

Well it's Friday, time for an update:
I decided to have the conversation today so to make life easier on me i send my therapist an email yesterday basically saying "I want to talk about it tomorrow, you can make it easier by actively leading the conversation. And this is what it's about:" followed by the relevant paragraph from my original post here.
Her response was mostly very positive.
However she did admit that she doesn't know a lot about the subject mater so i had to explain (she initially had connected the term submissive wit S&M, so i tried to explain that that didn't apply to me and what the difference and relationship between BDSM and D/s is).
she did get a little stuck on the idea that taking a submissive role in a relationship would be recreating past patterns (and trauma).
personally i agree with Thomas:

our kinks are often in the areas where, emotionally, we have unfinished business. That doesn't mean we necessarily replicate traumas, or that we necessarily compensate for or reverse them, but that the ways things resonate with us are in the fault lines of powerful emotional tectonic plates, as it were. That's just TMM on kink. And that's nothing to be ashamed of.

I feel that it would only be a recreation of past trauma if the new situation also ends up being abusive, which i'm looking to prevent by learning to navigate my submissiveness in such a way that my boundaries are well communicated, negotiated and safeguard instead of learning how not to be submissive.
She did acknowledge her short comings in this and suggested that perhaps my other therapist (who is an actual psychologist but who is on holiday for 2 more weeks) would be better equipped to tackle these subjects.

that's the update out of the way here's some more thoughts:

But fear not! My experience has been that lots of women will never be comfortable in that role, but lots of women find that they are comfortable being dominant, if they, too, can manage their internalized gender rules. How this manifests in your life depends on a lot of things, especially if we're talking about relationships or pickup play, but in either case, if there are not dominant women around that you want to play with and who want to play with you, my thinking is that you can look to find someone with kinks, and who you like, and who you want to play with, who can find their way to the role you need them to take.

For what we're talking about, for now i would like to get the major firsts (first crush, first successful date, first kiss, first relationship and so on) out of the way.
Ideally with someone who can take the lead, guiding me, a little.
And then hopefully we could work towards exploring our collective kinks with healthy communication and negotiation.
That's the dream, though honestly for now a vanilla relationship would be just as great.

also thanks again for the bitchy jones article!
She makes some good points.

okidoki of to bed with me.

[Heather]

Kudos on bringing this to your therapist!

By all means, this is an area -- both BDSM and addressing sexuality and sexual choices, of any kind, for survivors of abuse -- that I'd say a lot of people, if not most, aren't particularly educated in. It's pretty specialized stuff, after all.

But I think one of the biggies with this is bearing in mind that abuse isn't something we negotiate. It's also not something where someone dominating through abuse is considering the feelings of everyone involved, or making sure the other person is cared for: quite the opposite. Consensual, informed and negotiated BDSM isn't really about domination, even though that word is what's most commonly used. Because domination, ultimately (I'm a word-geek, so this kind of thing always makes me bonkers), like abuse, is about controlling someone to get or take all the power, or, at least as much as possible. It's synonym is supremacy, which is not what ANY kind of consensual sex is. Power exchange is more what we're talking about here, and that's not, at all, what abuse is. It sounds like you already get this, but I just wanted to validate it some more for you.

Of course, too, I think it helps to bear in mind that even in "vanilla" (I put that in quotes because one person's kink is another person's vanilla, and goodness knows that a lot of people's sex lives they don't consider kinky involve topping and bottoming even though they're not calling it that) sex, power dynamics are often, if not always, at play in one way or another, and with a lot less awareness than they tend to be between people carefully negotiating BDSM play. And it's not like there aren't survivors who ARE going about their sexual lives in a way that is re-enacting abuse and involves no BDSM whatsoever. In other words, doing that is something people can potentially do, and do do, with ANY kind of sex or intimacy, not just one kind. Make sense?