Last week I started to write about dehumanisation, as a possible path that can lead to submission and what the different ins and outs that are associated with this variant of play, or perhaps variant of living is. However I soon figured I had perhaps bitten off much more then I can chew in one blog post over one night. At least not unless I was planning to do a face-plant on keyboard in the middle of my writing and then waking up in the morning with keys stamped all over my face and not a single letter published. Plus I reached a natural ending at that point and having started up another subject would have meant that I would have to cut it off in the middle of writing.
To quickly recap last week, I dealt in the first place with the definitions as I am known to do so that everyone knows what I am talking about. Dehumanisation can be described as: “depriving an individual of human qualities, rights, and privileges“, where depersonalisation is “characterised by the loss of identity and feelings of unreality and strangeness about one’s own behaviour” and lastly objectification which is “treating a person merely as an instrument for the sake of one owns pleasure without regard for personality, dignity or capabilities.”
So this week i am going to see again how far I am going to get and if time and words again prove to be the limiting factor, then I may actually post a third blog, finishing with the last of my ideas on this topic. This week I will however start with writing about why dehumanisation and depersonalisation are so popular in bdsm and what some of the techniques and tools are that can be used or are used
And with that let’s us dive headlong in the topic.
To start with the biggest question. Why is depersonalisation and dehumanisation such an attractive option for many submissives and of course also for many dominants as a control and play structure, as well as perhaps ultimately a lifestyle choice. What makes this sometimes considered extreme form of play and as we have seen last week with several negative concatenations in the normal or vanilla world.
I think to determine this, one has to look at the various factors. Not perhaps as we have done up till now from either a mental or a semantic point of view but from a more practical angle. I would say there are at least four identifying areas that deal with this. These are control/bondage, humiliation, and freedom.
The most common factor is control, with perhaps a subset of bondage in some circumstances. Control is perhaps the obvious factor in this all, since after all dehumanisation/depersonalisation are in effect tools to control another human being, to the point of removing, or restricting and limiting that what makes them human.
Naturally, it comes to no-ones surprise that submissives desire control in their lives and for those interesting in this subject such control is even more desirable. The upside of this, is that it makes easier for the submissive to be dehumanised/depersonalised. Active and willing participation is of course key and not just from a consent point of view.
Now I mentioned bondage along the same lines of control. Mostly because one, not all bondage is physical but there is a discipline known as mental bondage. Both however are and have their place when it comes to establishing control. And as we will see further on, bondage in the physical sense certainly has its place just as well, especially in certain areas of dehumanisation play.
Humiliation seems to be the other common factor. Yes a surprisingly lot of people like erotic humiliation and erotic embarrassment. Again an activity that is met with a lot of misunderstanding and apprehension in the normal vanilla world, not in least thanks to the wonderful power of media that tends to show humiliation standard in two ways. Either a dominatrix berating a male submissive telling them how worthless they are, etc, or perhaps a male dominant/female submissive scenario where the scene consist of the standard variety of name calling.
However humiliation is not, or perhaps better does not have to be about that in its entirely. As I have remarked before, humiliation is a mental art that depends very much on the person that you are playing with and does not need to cover an pro-aggressive style but could be indeed very gentle. A lot depends in this case on the submissive, and where or rather in which areas of their psyche their trigger points are that make them feel embarrassed.
But many do find the idea of being reduced to an object, to something akin to being less human an concept that is both exhilarating as it is embarrassing. Perhaps because it goes entirely against what we are believed to be and raised to be. Social conditioning in circumstances like this becomes just as much a tool, that can be used for either to hold a mirror up to us as well as something to use against us.
And the last, perhaps the most surprising of all is freedom. Many people would not attribute freedom as a factor of why dehumanisation and depersonalisation are so attractive to many people. Especially given the previous two notions of both control and humiliation. But think of it this way. In this day and age we are constantly bombarded with all kinds of communicative information, whether we want it or.
Being unable to communicate all but the simplest needs frees us from that, not having to bother with decisions, or perhaps more pointedly not being able to make decisions, nor to be expected to gives us a chance to revel ourselves completely into surrendering into living in the moment without a single worry. And that, exactly that is what is so freeing about it. Not just freeing, but also to a certain extend addicting I would hazard to guess. Something that would make us desire and want to return to that state as often as possible.
As you can see of the above there are several practical reasons, or better perhaps pragmatic reasons why depersonalisation is or can be quite popular. Of course as with everything there are different levels of which people dabble in this. From say full on hard core rubber dolls, to perhaps submissive who speak in the third person and pretty much everything in between.
In the following part of this blog we are going to take better look at the various techniques and tools that I can think off and that can be used to aid a dominant who wants to explore this kind of activity with their submissive. I am well aware that I probably miss several techniques or tools that are just so effective or people may have their own opinion and totally not agree with what I am writing. But alas it is my blog and while I am open to discussion I never claimed to be infallible. So let’s keep that in mind.
There are two main areas, that I can think off, or rather perhaps a main divide between two areas. The first one is the physical and the other would be the mental. In the physical area, we see things such as appearance, and restraints. Over on the mental area we see techniques dealing with speech, manners, hypnosis and mantras to name a few.
Appearance, can be so many things. I have written about this, and the effect that clothes can have in my blog “Clothes makes the girl“. And as such even simple changes in a wardrobe can make people approach people differently. From very short, tight clothes to a style more common in the fifties while people don’t directly change themselves they do change how they are perceived and initially reacted towards and as the saying goes, one does not get a second chance for a first impression.
But control of physical does not have to be limited with regards to this. A lot of dehumanisation enthusiast are part of the rubber scene as well as the pet play scene. The former is much dedicated to latex dolls and dollification with an eye on restriction and control and turning the submissive in a rubber sex doll, reduced to a object for the dominant pleasure.
As for pet play, it leans more to equipping the submissive with ears and tails and paws to make them look and feel the part. Added bonus for some of the paws can be that it makes it a lot harder for the submissive to us their hands and thus reinforcing the mindset that they are no longer entirely human.
Then there is of course the third part, and I have not really mentioned it before, mostly because I do consider it an entirely separate discipline. But in pony play, girls are dressed as ponies to an extend, and act like ponies, without speech and often restricted to a certain extend. So it does fit in the category.
In one of the previous paragraphs I also mentioned that bondage was playing a role, or rather could play a role in (re-)enforcing the mental state of the submissive. Part of bondage is making the submissive feel helpless, and once that state of helplessness is achieved, and the submissive has come to accept it, you have become closer to making her feel less perhaps than a human being and more like a latex doll.
But there is also the side of mental bondage, and thus we are moving slightly more into the terrain of mental control. Think of telling a submissive to stay and training her not to move, to hold a position or to move exactly in a way you want her to from point a to b on command. The latter does happen a lot in say pony dressage.
I mentioned in the last paragraph that speech as a restriction is a very effective tool in dehumanisation. Not just in denying speech where possible but also re-training the submissive in which way she can speak. A good example of this is third person speech. While it requires a lot of training, you can eventually make the submissive feel more at home with third person speech then normal. Of course this is in an ideal situation and reality as always is greatly depending on circumstances. On a personal note, speech training and speech restriction have always been a favourite of mine to begin with.
Along with speech restriction, part of the process could be enhanced by the inclusion of manners. While they are by and large not an effective set on their own, they can help to enhance the feelings within the submissive. Examples of such could be the submissive not being allowed to sit on furniture, eating out of a bowl on the ground instead of at the table. Standing at the table while the dominant eats, crawling where possible instead of walking, these are all manners that help to subtly reinforce the status of the submissive.
And finally, there is one area which I am a bit dubious to mention but I think it deserves some inclusion and that is the re-enforcement of mental control trough either mantras, yes-sets and possibly hypnosis, the latter something about which I could and have written and in the near future may again write another blog
Mantras, help to reinforce thoughts and especially specific patterns. There are some clever mantras out there that in a way, linguistically loop back on themselves, and thus making it easier for the submissive to remember. Mantras can both reinforce believes or help erode believes that the dominant want to get away with and help establish new patterns that will form the basis of submissive new states of mind.
There is a technique in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), that is called a yes-set. It is based on getting the submissive to say yes and agree with you lots of time. This usually could be established with positive body feedback, such as smiling and nodding enthusiastically. While this may in the beginning seem fake, habits in humans are quickly formed (On average it will take about twenty-eight days to form a new habit). Now add this with positive feedback such as large amounts of of positive, approving language. Say “good“, “good girl“, or “that’s right“, or some such after every positive answer; this not only strengthens the yes set, but used correctly (for some values of the word correctly, but more about that next week) it can set an anchor to give you feelings of approval, something nearly everyone craves, any-time you accept one of the dominants suggestions, which in turn helps anchor the positive feelings to the suggestions, which overpotentiates them and makes them much more attractive choices for your subconscious.
Then there is hypnosis. Hypnosis as we all know is an altered mental state. The power is not necessarily in hypnosis but in the strength and reinforcement of post-hypnotic suggestions. And while the common accepted theory is that you can not do anything that would go against a persons ethics and moral beliefs, do remember that we are dealing here, in hypnotic terms, with a subject that already has a predisposed positive reaction to reducing of her humanity. This gives the hypnotist more freedom to work with and with reinforced post hypnotic suggestions, you could create a whole world of fun and control possibilities.
As you can see from the above pages, there are plenty of techniques that can be applied to help the submissive reach that point of where they feel disassociated from themselves and the world and enter the head-space of a less than human, well altered being.
However, there are always pros and cons to every thing a dominant can do, and there should be adequate care taken that play is done with the right amount of research, reparation and knowledge.
Which brings to the end of tonight’s long blog. Next week there will be part III, as alluded to at the start of this blog and I will go deeper into the dangers and the ethics involved with this.
For now…
Stay safe, have fun
lexi
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