Is Being a Dominant an Illness?

You’ve probably seen it before, the old argument that says “If you are kinky, then that is a product of some sort of trauma”. You’ve probably also seen that being a masochist is an expression of a self destructive behaviour.

Do you recognise yourself, can you see yourself as a product of a trauma – Is the reason for your sexuality just a psychological disturbance?

Let’s face it, people are always looking for reasons, it is the reasons that gives them an understanding of who they are and where they come from – Reasons simply reconnect their understanding of themselves with external events and their own intellect.

It’s funny how people sometimes forget how the human brain works, they forget that it is a big sorting machine that more than often makes us jump to conclusions based on very few facts or an incomplete picture.

The brain sometimes tricks us into drawing simplistic conclusions based on a cause and effect perspective.

If you combine this with our drive to look for reasons which helps us to understand our own behaviour, and the behaviour of others, in certain situations then you probably understand that we tend to look for simple reasons behind our way of being. We tend to grab the closest thing that pops into our mind, but if you think about; If our behaviours could be explained by finding simple reasons, would we need shrinks then?

The other thing is that if being kinky, Dominant or submissive is an effect of an experienced trauma, then that implies some sort of norm, then the next question is; What makes your norm into a perfectly valid baseline which everything else should be judged from? I would argue that there is nothing in society that could be seen as “normal” because each normality is based on a specific context and when you bring that normality into another context then it’s not normal anymore. Normality is negotiated from time to time as well and my kink is probably normal among my kinky friends, but quite outside the norm among my work colleagues.

So there is no general “being normal” in society.

Added to this is the fact that a lot of countries have removed BDSM related behaviours and practices from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The old DSM was one of the main reasons why BDSM practitioners weren’t considered to be normal, which also led to all sorts of investigative efforts to find the reasons behind such a destructive behaviour.

Today we know a lot more about human sexuality than we did 50 years ago, we might not know all the reasons to why our sexuality is expressed in a specific way, but does it matter? Isn’t enough that I enjoy being a Dominant, isn’t enough that you enjoy being a submissive or a sadist?

To me it becomes a contradiction when people claim that my sexuality is the product of an unresolved trauma because I really like my sexuality and I enjoy what it brings me and that is totally the opposite of the feelings that I’ve had when I’ve experienced some sort of trauma in my life.

There is no simplistic reason to why I am the way I am, I am just wired that way – I was simply created this way.