Self-Masochism vs Self-Mutilation

This has always been something that I've been concerned about. Masochism is a great kink and there's a great number of ways to do this, many I enjoy which are not limited to Cock, ball, and tit torture, but sometimes you've got to take a step back and curious "why am I into someone hurting my genitals?" Is it actually because I'm into it, or is there something else going on.

I ask this as I came across a gruesome picture of someone stabbing themselves near the groin with a knife. At first my kneejerk reaction was "Yikes!" as the seemingly kitchen knife looking object was causing a lot of blood and it pierced the skin, went deep and came out of the guy. I couldn't look at it for more than five seconds. I'm the type of guy that wants to desensitize himself from a kneejerk reaction of "Gross!" when it comes to someone's kinks, so I kept looking back at it. The guy is semiflaccid in the picture, and it's obvious it's been in the skin for long enough for him to take a pic and the blood to seep out (I'm sparing y'all the picture for your own sake), so he's not instantly getting hard in the sensation. I looked down the page with comments and noticed my friend had responded saying they knew this person.

Well, I asked my friend. He's not sure if this person ever really got over being gay, and has never really had a relation besides someone beating his genitalia.

You have to ask yourself, is this punishment for being gay? Is this person mutilating their genitalia and groin region for not acting straight? So, sometimes I feel you have to ask about each of your kinks, is this healthy? Am I doing this because it legitimately turns me on or is it because I have an issue? The answer should be always be "because it legitimately turns me on." I'm not saying that your history cannot influence the kinks becoming what they are today. I am just saying you need to make sure that everything about your kink is healthy, and that you are in the right frame of mind, instead of a cyclone of self-destruction.

I'm not going to say kink doesn't have therapeutic qualities. It definitely does. I have heard of cases where a woman has been stabbed once and knifeplay got her over the post-traumatic chronic fear of being stabbed and got her through her coping. This happens; however, one needs to be careful and make sure it's working well and actually helping.

When I was a young kinkling and hadn't really experienced any kink, I went to a "Facilitating Public Health in the Kink Community" workshop at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change conference 2008 in Detroit, MI. It really focused on one thing, how to find abuse in the kink community, and all the same reasons are there. Well, all the same mental reasons that are the pinpointed things about an abusive relationship in the vanilla community are there as keys in the kink community. So, to think that we're a special case when it comes to abuse in a relationship, it happens just as well with us, except our physical bruises aren't a good clue. You have to look inside, in your heart, and see whether or not you're trapped, you're walking on eggshells everyday, you're scared of who you think you love.

Use kink as a vehicle for happiness and self-confidence, not a way to stay in a rut of self-pity/hate. Even a humiliation fetish can get someone happier, you just have to have the right outlook.

I am just tired of hearing self-mutilation stories ending with people in the hospital. Let's take care of ourselves as a community, kinksters.

-Bo

PS It's late and I'm sleep deprived, so give me a pass when any of this is poorly worded. I blame MascDudeWriter for getting me on such a shitty sleep schedule.