Humiliation

Does the idea of being playfully made fun of turn you on? Do you like the idea of "never quite being enough" during sex? Do you want to be called a "bad girl" or "bad boy" and spanked during sex for being unable to complete a task correctly? Well, you might be someone who's into humiliation!

Humiliation is one of those "core" kinks - that runs deep into a lot of other kinks. Emotional sadism and small penis humiliation are essentially entirely focused on humiliation. Almost every other kink, like diaper wearing, chastity, cuckolding, spanking, ___________ can easily have humiliation aspects to it.

In fact, some people enjoy various kinks just because they feel humiliated by participating in it. Especially for taboo kinks like toilet play or watersports, the sole reason for participating may be just to up the ante on humiliation.

What is humiliation?

Engaging in BDSM humiliation is, simply, any act that makes the receiver feel humiliated. Humiliation is one of those cool kinks where it's extremely personalized to the receiver. What's "humiliating" for one person is just "an average Thursday" for another.

Take, for example, wearing panties. If someone wears panties on a daily basis, it's not likely going to be a particularly "humiliating" experience to make them wear them out in public - unless the style of the underwear is particularly different than their usual pairs. For someone who never wears panties, though, this can be an entirely humiliating experience.

A lot of humiliation is also about context - especially if the end-goal is sexual humiliation. Splitting your pants in the middle of a work conference, for most people, will not be particularly sexual. Now, splitting your pants in the middle of a party of kinky friends who playfully rib you about it the rest of the evening or make desired lewd advances? That could be sexual.

Humiliation is one of those feelings that can make you feel "less than" - and in the context of power exchange dynamics, that can definitely be a desired feeling that fits into your play!

What's the difference between humiliation and abuse?

Like all things BDSM, everything boils down to consent, and that's no different for humiliation scenes.

However, another big factor for humiliation scenes - which may not appear in other types of kink scenes - is the need for security. Because of the deeply personal things that humiliation scenes can touch on, you need to have a deep understanding that it isn't how your partner "really" feels - and all of this humiliation is just for a fun, play experience.

So, consenting to humiliation play isn't the only factor. The person receiving humiliation also needs to have the stability and trust that the topics touched on during play aren't genuine reflections of themselves. The receiver needs to be able to set clear boundaries between self-esteem and play acting. Especially for those with low self-esteem, this can be extremely, extremely difficult, and any type of humiliation can destroy self-esteem further.

Context is also important. Even if there's a long-standing agreement of consent for humiliation play, both partners need to understand that this is a time where humiliation is intentionally being played upon in that moment.

A phrase like "God, you're a fucking moron" can feel very different depending on the circumstances. If you're fumbling to get off your clothes mid-humiliation scene because your partner has intentionally flustered you so badly, that phrase can feel hot as hell - and make you even-more-flustered.

On the other hand, that same phrase, uttered right before intercourse, absent of any other humiliation, when that same person is having difficulties getting themselves hard enough to have sex, has a very, very different effect. Now, the context isn't clear, and this can quickly destroy someone's self-esteem and drive the "humiliation" into abusive territory.

So, as long as there's consent, context, and stability, you're looking good for keeping humiliation well outside of "abuse" territory.

How to Practice Humiliation Safely

As you could probably guess, then, there are a lot of mental potholes that kinksters can fall into when they're playing with humiliation. While a lot of the potential dangers of rope bondage might be physical, it's completely opposite with humiliation play: a lot of the dangers are very-much in your head.

To help alleviate that, I'd recommend:

Only Do Humiliation With Trusted Partners: If you know someone, you better have an idea about their pain points in a way that strangers or casual acquaintances really don't.

For example, if my partner was going to try to humiliate me, they've been around me for enough years (and diets) to know that humiliation based around my weight would be a gigantic turn-off. They don't need to ask or negotiate that; it's just something they're aware of by having been close to me for years.

There are lots of small, little things that long-term partners (romantic, platonic, or otherwise!) know like that. While I always recommend some negotiation when doing a new activity (like this humiliation!) regardless of relationship length, someone with a basic understanding of your likes and dislikes starts off with an advantage.

If Doing Casual, Negotiate Heavily: Maybe you don't have a regular play partner - or maybe the idea of doing humiliation with new people really, really is getting you going. If that's the case, you might consider it worth the risk to play with humiliation with people you aren't particularly close to.

If that's the case, use negotiation to its fullest potential. Think about what words, phrases, and topics will be triggering (and no fun!) for you to hear. Think about the areas where you think you'd really, really like to be humiliated. Communicate all of those areas with your partner and make sure they understand.

For a lot of us, we have aspects of ourselves that we'd be a-okay being humiliated about - and other things that we're genuinely self-conscious about and anything that picks on those will go straight into "not-sexual" territory. Make your scene better for the two of you by ensuring that you clearly communicate those aspects about yourself before the scene.

Have a Set "Start" and "End" To Your Scene: It makes it a lot easier for your brain to compartmentalize your humiliation - and know that it isn't a real reflection on "you" - if it knows that it all was part of your playtime.

You can help your brain out by compartmentalizing everything that happens during humiliation. Similar to a roleplay (when you're done roleplaying, you're very clearly aware that you're not actually a teacher and student), having a set beginning and ending lets you know that all of that hot, teasing humiliation that happened mid-scene wasn't actually a reflection on you as a person.

Have Good Aftercare - and Speak Honestly: Like most kink play, aftercare is highly recommended. Not only does it give you both some time to luxuriate in all of those kinky feelings that bring you closer together, but it also gives you time to come back to the "real world" - and enjoy the final moments of your intense kink activities.

During aftercare, don't be afraid to honestly communicate what you need after humiliation play. For tops, they might feel better if their bottoms reassured them that they knew this was all roleplay - and that enjoying humiliation doesn't make you a bad person.

For bottoms, this might include asking the top to reiterate how they really feel about the bottom - and reassure the bottom that those humiliating phrases aren't really how the top feels about the bottom.

Easy Ways to Get Started with Humiliation

As we've been covering, there are a whole lot of ways to get into trouble with humiliation. Since it's something that's primarily mental, when things go wrong, it's something that can take weeks to work through. Instead of jumping in head first to the world of humiliation, give these simple ideas a try:

Agree to Intentionally Do Something Wrong: This can be a great way to get started with humiliation. Before your scene, agree for the sub to do something wrong. Whatever the "something" is it up to you. Now you both can explore the world of humiliation through the lens of a failed activity - that was planned that way. The top can focus the humiliation on how poorly the activity was performed and leave any personal aspects out of the humiliation. The bottom knows that the activity was supposed to be failed, so it gives them a safe buffer to "accept" the humiliation while keeping it succinctly within "playspace" time.

Become a Piece of Furniture: Turning the bottom into a piece of "furniture" makes it easy to objectify someone while leaving all of their behavior, physical traits, and mental traits alone. Instead, make them hold a lampshade and turn them into your latest lamp. Now you can remark about how well they're doing as a lamp, talk about the lamp like it isn't there, and otherwise focus on their job as a lamp - instead of everything about them as a human partner.

Write Out Humiliating Phrases: If you both want to play it on the safe side for your first couple play sessions, consider having the bottom write out, ahead of time, phrases that would be humiliating and would get their engine revving. This way, the top already knows what to say - and there's no chance of toppling into dangerous territory. As you both get more comfortable with this, you can experiment with adding new phrases or branching out into different types of humiliation.