Your Pain: A Small Price for My Pleasure

scarsPolice in Salinas, California conducted a home welfare check after three children, ages 8, 5, and 3, didn’t arrive for an unspecified appointment. What they found was gruesome. The isolated children, who were ostensibly being homeschooled, were malnourished and bruised.

But the eight-year-old girl seems to have gotten it worse than her brothers. She was periodically locked in a closet or chained to a wall, 4 feet off the ground. She was sometimes shackled by the ankle, and other times by a collar around her small neck. And starving, she resembled a concentration camp victim.  

It appears that the little girl, who was adopted by female domestic partners, Eraca Dawn Craig and Christian Jessica Deanda, had been tortured for their pleasure.

The traumatized little girl was hospitalized for five days. Monterey County Sheriff, Scott Miller, says that when children are rescued from such terrors, they are not, “jumping up and down in joy. They may have forgotten what joy is like.”

I worry about living in a world where abuse is eroticized. I worry, regardless of whether the victim is unwilling or has come to crave her own abuse. Pain exists to warn us to stop doing something that is harmful, after all.

And I worry about people who, seeking unlimited pleasure, expect their partners to undergo pain – if on a much lesser scale than the little eight-year-old’s trauma.

Some men have commented on my blog, insisting women should undergo various ordeals they find uncomfortable or torturous, just so that these guys may know no bounds to their pleasure. I also know a guy who put his wife through emotional turmoil in pursuit of his own unrestrained gratification.

I don’t get it. If I wanted to do something that I knew someone else was hating, I couldn’t possibly enjoy it.

Perhaps the lure arises from sexual objectification. If you see someone as a thing that exists to sexually serve you, then you needn’t worry about her feelings. And if she is in pain, that might just add a little spice.

Surely partners can find things to do that they both enjoy. And hopefully we can connect with our own humanity to feel the humanity in others.

Related Posts on BroadBlogs
Shades of Making Sexism Sexy
Deep Throat. Porn Star? Or Victim?
Should Women Give Men The Porn-Star Experience?

 

About BroadBlogs

I have a Ph.D. from UCLA in sociology (emphasis: gender, social psych). I currently teach sociology and women's studies at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA. I have also lectured at San Jose State. And I have blogged for Feminispire, Ms. Magazine, The Good Men Project and Daily Kos. Also been picked up by The Alternet.

Posted on March 28, 2014, in feminism, objectification, psychology, sexism, violence against women, women and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 28 Comments.

  1. When it comes to women undergoing various ordeals they find uncomfortable or torturous, for the singular pleasure of males. This sort of one sided is the kind of thing that breaks relationships. While I do understand the idea to wade through uncharted waters and try new things even if it may seem uncomfortable, if things go to the point of being torturous I cannot understand this. I personally feel like the last two comments and connecting with humanity are typically associated with rape as oppose to various ordeals that are uncomfortable or torturous. However, if something is truly torture to the degree that this girl went through, it probably is not consensual.

  2. An act of potraying yourself as a animal. (Or else worst than that!) . How could some one think of doing such things. I pity those children. Thanks for sharing the article Georgia.

  3. Horrible! I see in their actions a distortion of pleasure and power. Pleasure and power when coming from an authentic and healed place looks nothing like what these people seem to think it is.

  4. “And it’s not scapegoating patriarchy. You don’t find cruelty like this, erotic or not, in other cultures. Peace-loving cultures tend not to be patriarchal.”

    Very few cultures are matriarchal and most cultures are patriarchal. So you have such a tiny sample size of non-patriarchal societies and most of them are tribes and small populations.

    “They may have just gained pleasure from the cruelty.”

    That’s exactly what I’m saying and pointing to, Not patriarchy, but simply women can be cruel like men and focus that.

    “You don’t find cruelty like this, erotic or not, in other cultures.”

    You sure? Because some cultures might have less abuse and rape, etc, which can be due to cultures that promote violence and sexual ojectification.

    I’m not saying I like patriarchy, but I don’t like how every subject that sometimes should be focused on the event itself or person somehow always gets pointed or something to do with patriarchy. Especially for something that should be about women or how women can be bad inherently, but then of course it’s not women, its patriarchy behind it all. Meanwhile, no such excuse for men.

  5. You make it seem like torture and harm and cruelty is erotic0-based. Some is, perhaps from culture and S/M, but, you know there are some people who simply are just sadistic. They are twisted in the head and simply enjoy hurting others and torturing, not because of erotic enjoyment, but just enjoy being cruel. Some serial killers had fantasies based on torture and murder, but there are people like I said who torture and kill and harm pets. And it’s not erotic based, but anger, sadistic, and find hurting animals fun, but I doubt there’s sexual enjoyment from hurting animals, unless they are into beastiality. There always had to be read more into it. Everyone has weird quircks that arent all society based, but individual, mental disorder based.

    I take it from a culture that celebrates violence more so than erotic reasons. I think we need to focus on the bad done by people and a person, not always scapegoating patriarchy, because some people are cruel individuals. You can focus the bad on these women you know without always blaming, society run by men or male oriented (patriarchy). I know there are problems with male run society as talked about before, but I feel sometimes everything is about patriarchy here, instead of the actual person or events themselves individually thar are to focus on or to blame. I’m waiting for a hurricane that wrecks havoc on florida and for there to be a blog about the terrible storm, but not on the people hurt and terrible storm, but the article to veer off and talk about how Patriarchy is behind the hurricane’s devastation of course.

    • I realize that it’s not always based on eroticism. I’m not even sure that what these women did was erotic-based. They may have just gained pleasure from the cruelty. That’s just how I was more interested in applying it when I expand out the idea in this post.

      And it’s not scapegoating patriarchy. You don’t find cruelty like this, erotic or not, in other cultures. Peace-loving cultures tend not to be patriarchal.

      And why do you like patriarchy anyway?

  6. They won’t be penalized like a man would doing the same thing though. Men aren’t bad, but patriarchy is a male-run society. Lets look at it from the perspective of there being terrible people on this earth doing cruel things. I take this more so from how violence is glamorized in society than sexual objectification. And how parents neglect their children or don’t discipline them or set the right examples and kids have terrible upbringings or their mental disorders they already have go untreated when they become adults and you see the violence from there.

    And like the book, “A child called It” about a son’s torment from his mother, if objectification is the reason for such stuff then the mom’s wouldn’t have or this mom wouldn’t have abused or tormented her son, as sexual objectificaiton is towards women and not men or more so toward women. You do know animals are constantly tortured and starved. Dogs, cats, tortured and starved for enjoyment. I hight doubt it’s because of sexual objectification, Beastiality is not celebrated as far as I can tell and it’s simply the fact that there are sick, twisted, cruel people who get enjoyment out of harming and torturing another person or living being.

  7. Okay, so you singled this out to trash both homeschoolers and lesbians both?

  8. Oh god those women make me sick, lock them up and throw away the key. As for the second part, sex should be a joy for everyone involved. Unfortunately if your pleasure depends on someone else pain then there is, or should be, a limit to your pleasure. No one should do something sexual that makes them feel bad because it makes another person feel good.

  9. I don’t think any punishment those women get will be severe enough.

  10. How about instead of sexual ojectification and man ruled society being guilty again. It’s two lesbian women who are fucked in in the head and cruel, doing terrible things to the children. The girl was abused, but the boys were left starving too. Women can be just as evil and cruel as men simply. Just goes to show, it doesn’t matter straight, gay, lesbian, evil doesn’t discriminate and can lie in the individual no matter their race, orientation,status, etc. It’s disgusting and the few times I believe death penalty is suitable. And there are plenty of stories I’ve heard of mothers beating their sons, and sexually abusing them, etc. There’s a book, a popular one called, A child called It or something like that. And it’s a really sad book I’ve heard. I think the mis justice sometimes is when people the legal system does a slap on the wrist to women even though their crime is horrible like this, but because they are women, it’s lenient. And people are shocked when something not simply is done that is bad but because it’s from a woman or women. Yes, we all know how most crime is from men, but jeez, women aren’t angels either or not black and white like people perceive and society can portray things.

    • I’d be amazed if they only got a slap on the wrist.

      These things don’t happen in cultures where violence isn’t eroticized and people objectified, like American Indian pre contact w Europeans.

      Men aren’t bad. Patriarchy, which we ALL learn, is. I’ll be writing more about this soon.

  11. I think it’s a give and take. I don’t see how you can love someone if your are hurting them, but I don’t have any problem with people who enjoy BDSM. It all comes down to consent for me.

    • When it comes to BDSM, for me it depends on whether you are causing harm. When people come to crave something that is harming them, then I do think it’s a problem and I worry about a culture that teaches/encourages anyone to do that.

      On the one hand, we have hot lines and shelters for women who are being abused. But then you can get around that by getting women to crave abuse, and harm themselves that way. I’ve written more about that in this post, if anyone cares to read it:

      Fifty Shades of Pro-Orgasm
      https://broadblogs.com/2013/07/29/fifty-shades-of-pro-o/

  12. Because some men and women have no empathy or decency.

  13. The above is soooo sad….

    Personally, I just don’t understand how a person can find joy in another’s suffering…

  14. Oh, Georgia. I read articles like this one and worry for our humanity.

Thoughts? (Comments will appear after moderation)

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: