Sadomasochism Quotes

“Millions of couples out there practiced the art of sadomasochism every day, without even realizing it. They went to work, came back, complained about everything, insulted their wife or were insulted by her, felt wretched, but were, nonetheless, tightly bound to their own unhappiness, not realizing that all it would take was a single gesture, a final goodbye, to free them from that oppression.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“You really want to go out to dinner?" Gabriel shot Rase a skeptical look out of the corner of his eye.
"As opposed to what?"
"Getting on your knees and begging me to beat you." There was no inflection in Gabriel's voice, no heat, and no emotion at all. He wasn't even looking at Rase.
... "I don't want one more than the other," he answered, fully aware that he was being challenged. "They're not interchangeable. I want them both."
Rase took a breath to calm the pounding in his chest and continued, even though Gabriel wouldn't look at him. "I want to go out to dinner with you, anywhere you want, on a date. And then I want to go back to your place or my place and I want you to beat me until I bleed.”
― Anah Crow, Uneven

“He drank in her misery like fine wine, savoring every drop, letting it soothe his mind, his tension flowing out the fingertips that held the paddle.”
― Verity Ant

“Frequently, and not only in the popular usage, sadomasochism is confounded with love. Masochistic phenomena, especially, are looked upon as expressions of love. An attitude of complete self-denial for the sake of another person and the surrender of one's own rights and claims to another person have been praised as examples of "great love". It seems that there is no better proof for "love" than sacrifice and the readiness to give oneself up for the sake of the beloved person. Actually, in these cases, "love" is essentially a masochistic yearning and rooted in the symbiotic need of the person involved.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Masochism is the art of turning punishments into rewards.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It's interesting how pain can change a person, eh? How it makes a man abandon his pride and forsake himself.”
― Kichiku Neko

“I think gender can take a lesson from sadomasochism (S/M): gender needs to be safe, sane, and consensual.

Gender is not safe.
If i change my gender, I'm at risk of homocide, suicide or a life devoid of half my responsibilities.
If I'm born with a body that gives mixed gender signals, I'm at risk of being butchered - fixed, mutilated.
Gender is not safe.

And gender is not sane.
It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.
It's not sane to demand we fit into one or the other only.
It's not sane that we classify people in order to oppress them as women or glorify them as men.
Gender is not sane.

And gender is not consensual.
We're born: a doctor assigns us a gender. It's documented by the state, enforced by the legal profession, sanctified by the church, and it's bought and sold in the media.
We have no say in our gender - we're not allowed to question it, play with it, work it out with our friends, lovers or family.
Gender is not consensual.

Safe gender is being who and what we want to be when we want to be that, with no threat censure or violence.
Safe gender is going as far in an direction as we wish with not threats to our health, or to anyone else's.
Safe gender is not being pressured into passing, not having to lie, not having to hide.

Sane gender is asking questions about gender - talking to people who do gender and opening up about our gender histories and our gender desires.
Sane gender is probably very, very funny.

Consensual gender is respecting each others definitions of gender , and respecting the intentions of others to be inclusive in their own time.
Consensual gender is non violent in that it doesn't force its way in on anyone.
Consensual gender opens its arms and welcomes all people as gender outcasts - whoever is willing to admit to it.

Gender has a lot to learn from S/M.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Master, I love how you make me feel. I love how you hurt me." She gasped again at a hard tug. "I'm here for you, Sir, to please you.”
― Verity Ant

“The worst part of this obscenity, this shameless visibility, is the forced participation, this automatic complicity of the spectator who has been blackmailed into participating. And it is this which is the clearest objective of the operation: the servitude of the victims, but a voluntary servitude, one in which the victims rejoice from the pain and shame which they are made to suffer. The complete participation of a society in its fundamental mechanism: interactive exclusion - it doesn’t get better than that! Decided all together and consumed with enthusiasm.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Telemorphosis

“In authoritarian philosophy the concept of equality does not exist. The authoritarian character may sometimes use the word equality either conventionally or because it suits his purposes. But it has no real meaning or weight for him, since it concerns something outside the reach of his emotional experience. For him the world is composed of people with power and those without it, of superior ones and inferior ones. On the basis of his sado-masochistic strivings, he experiences only domination or submission, but never solidarity. Differences, whether of sex or race, to him are necessarily signs of superiority or inferiority. A difference which does not have this connotation is unthinkable to him.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“In this sense, we can render the false meaning of catharsis which occurs in pornography with a different meaning than the catharsis we associate with Aristotle's definition of tragedy. For in the tragedy, we weep, grieve and feel pity. We are brought to feeling, we experience both meaning and sensation at the same time, tremble in our bodies and our souls. Thus we weep over the death of Iphigenia, of Tristan and Iseult, of Madame Bovary. In experiencing these feelings, we have tapped a part of ourselves which had perhaps been quiet for some time. Which indeed, in this stillness, we were not certain was even there. Or had even forgotten. And thus, when we weep at this tragic playing out before our eyes of a drama which touches our hearts, a part of ourselves we had left in shadow comes back to us and is named and is lived. But pornographic catharsis moves from altogether different needs. For, we know, one does not weep over the death of Justine. One does not feel at all. Rather, one experiences only sensation and mastery. If there is a vulnerable part of oneself that would weep, this vulnerability is projected onto the body of a woman who is punished, and is destroyed there. And so we cease, in this projection, to recognize this vulnerability as a part of ourselves. Rather than reclaim a feeling, or own a part of ourselves once more, we disown ourselves. What pornography calls "catharsis" leads to denial and not to knowledge.”
― Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature

“You cannot really hurt a masochist.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Tolerance does explain an escalating pattern of sexual addiction. Tolerance occurs in either fantasy or behavior. For example, an addict using benign fantasies to become sexually aroused may progress to needing sadomasochistic fantasies. Or the addict may switch from fantasies to behavior when the addict reaches a level of tolerance to fantasies alone.”
― Kenneth M. Adams, Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners : Understanding Covert Incest

“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner (how long will it be before someone starts a society for the protection of battered and maltreated objects?). Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another - from cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects. This is actually the only strong symbolic chain, the one through which a victim of the whim of a superior power passes it on to an inferior species, the whole process ending with someone taking it out on a powerless simulacrum, like a toy - and beginning no doubt with an all-powerful simulacrum, like the masked divinities which men themselves invent to justify this wretched chain.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“Treat other sadomasochists as you would treat yourself.”
― Brian Spellman, We have our difference in common 2.

“The Surly Caller by Stewart Stafford

Pain - stalker at my door;
Resigned admission inside,
Drags a chair, fills teary ducts,
Drapes tingling spider's webs.

Grey vista of a dreaded visit,
Common or garden victim by force,
Pain is the barb to candied joy;
Twin-horned teasing tormentor.

In rapid eye movement, we dream,
It sleepwalks in my creaking room,
I hear stumbling footsteps stir,
Claws retract in numbing slumber.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Manhandling of Gilbert Gripes by Stewart Stafford

Scrummage in a birch wood,
Pyrrhic rut for an oval prize,
Grinning studs rake my face,
A flayed Garryowen as sport.

Cauliflower ears throb with fear,
Thunderous hooves charging,
Poleaxed by a car crash tackle,
Nosebleed kiss tickles my lips.

The rite of passage staggers on,
A butcher's initiation of brothers,
Cutthroat razors kindly supplied,
Wealthy primates whoop in safety.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford