Do Whores Have Souls Too?

My ex and I had a dynamic built entirely on me not having the right to say no. Clutch your pearls tighter, unbunch your panties, get over yourself and yes, that's what it was. We can make it prettier and call it Consensual Non-Consent (CNC) so fine, let's call it that. It was consensual non-consent. I know *now* that there are a few ways to do CNC but when we first got together, I knew only his way. Some people they don't want you to have the right to say no but will not test that often; only when the moment naturally leads there. Other people, like my ex, didn't want you to have the right to say no because they intended to use that power, and often. 

The question is though, is that okay? How do you find the circumstances in which that is okay?  I mean, sure, even with CNC there are limits that are established but there are some limits that are unestablishable. You cannot predict the specific course of a relationship. Abuse needs more than a dynamic to occur, it needs a relationship. A d/s dynamic makes it easier for abuse to occur, should there be intent, the same way any other relationship with a skewed power dynamic would. 

So we're careful. I mean we are all careful right? We know so much. We read so much. We're intelligent and aware. We negotiate and make all the necessary arrangements and that puts a strong onus on women to know better no matter what. You're a smart, independent, strong woman they ask, "**How could this happen to you?**" 

It's a question people ask easily and the same people wouldn't know where to begin answering it. I'll tell you how it happened with me and my ex. We had an established relationship. A relationship that was "hardcore" and incorporated a lot of physical pain and other kinds of fetishism. I am not a stupid girl, if he'd started just beating me the fuck up one day in the middle of the fight, I'd know he was abusing me. But that's not how it happened. You may have heard people say, abuse is an escalation and it is. The reason "smart, strong" women put up with it is: We're comparing what's happening today, to what happened yesterday and comparatively the behavior we're subject to doesn't look *so bad*. We're boiling to death in a slowly heating bathtub. And instead of thinking of ourselves, we keep trying to save the bathtub. 

It seems hard sometimes to differentiate between the d/s and abuse. One day my ex and I were having an argument in public and he told me to get down on my knees and kiss his feet. I was shook, at the timing, but the act he requested seemed as normal as any he'd request at another time and that's another thing, abuse ties seamlessly to end of BDSM, especially if you are one with predatory leanings. It wasn't until years after I'd left him that I was able to distinguish what was kink and what was abuse. In the moment, one led seamlessly to the other. That it had a profound emotional impact on me was presented to me as *what happens in power exchange* and indeed the emotional impact of abuse ties seamlessly at the end of BDSM too. Pleasure, euphoria, boundary, trauma. It's so easy to slip from one to the other. 

So how are CNC and abuse any different then? Are they even? 

Having experienced it in two very different situations, I'd say the difference is clear, vast and very easy to spot. The difference is environment and timing. My ex used his power (and my lack of it) with malice to teach me a lesson about being unworthy. The intention was always to make it known that I wasn't good enough. Not a good enough slave, person, lover, woman and him beating, abusing, throwing me out in the streets was about making me better. The emotional environment of our relationship consisted of anger and fear. I lived in *constant* terror of displeasing him. It's one thing to be scared of displeasing your partner because he'll be upset, punish you, scold you etc. It's another to be terrified because he'll make sure you're unhappy if you displease him. It's about goals. If his goal is to teach you something, great. If the goal is to ensure you are miserable and feel terrible about yourself, it's perhaps wise to wonder. 

But we don't. 

We don't because there's another thing that people in this uniquely strange situation are held back by. We don't just take the blame along with the responsibility but we start to worry about putting our abusive partners through the trouble of abusing us. It alters fundamentally how we view ourselves. The unfortunate reason why victim shaming is so effective at silencing victims is that most victims are mostly blaming themselves anyway. 

One night, at my ex's home, I was talking to him about how his anger and constant criticism of me was having a terrible effect on our relationship, and he responded by getting angry. He beat me as he dragged me to the door and told me I was lucky there was a man who loved me *despite my history* as he threw me out of the house. I sat outside in my pajamas for a few hours, I had no money and nothing else on me, and when he finally let me back in hours later I apologised to him. 

**I apologized to him.** 

Why? 

Because I realized he was probably right. Who else would love me given who I am? Who would even support me in any allegations I made towards him when I couldn't even convince myself that I was being abused? I started to see myself as he saw me. 

And that's really at the heart of it. 

It took me many years to be able to even say it was abuse. Many more years to be able to say it as a statement instead of a question. Partly because I couldn't believe it myself and partly because anyone I confided this in ensured that I knew I was a *bad victim*. Many people will support you through abuse but a fair few of them are only willing to do so if you qualify as a "good victim". 

A good victim is someone who is appropriately pathetic and small. Someone you feel sorry for. Someone who has a completely clean slate and hasn't made a single mistake. Someone who is chaste and virtuous. Someone who merits being believed because their character isn't tainted. Being a victim is a strange social experience, the veracity of your claims depends on how you fare in the trial of your character. 

And obviously, 

If you are a bad, wild girl, you deserve to be abused. 

If everyone told you he was bad for you but you loved him anyway, you deserve to abused. 

If you are a masochist, you deserve to be abused. 

If you are a slut who jumped in bed with him "too soon", you deserve to he abused. 

If you missed the warning signs, you deserve to he abused. 

If you did something stupid, you deserve to be abused. 

If you refuse to report him, you deserve to be abused. 

If you made your own mistakes in that relationship, cheated or instigated, you deserve to be abused. 

If you got into a CNC dymanic willingly, you deserve to he abused. 

If you're a pervert, you deserve to be abused. 

We like our victims untained by filth. That's the only way their stories are believable. If they've never made any mistakes. Otherwise we might have to take our gods off their pedestals and that's so much harder than believing sluts and whores have souls too.