“[incest, bdsm] All the theorists of incest trauma speak about the tendency for survivors to dissociate, deny, and fragment their subjectivities […]. If integration is the goal of recovery, it would seem to me that the survivor who brings together these various aspects of her self, and performs them in a sexual space in which they can all be present at once, has achieved a level of integration that is the purported goal - the moment from survivor status to ‘recovery’. What, after all, is [Dorothy] Allison to do with that “man who walked across her life?” Forget him? Deny him? Repress or sublimate him? When the incest survivor “does it for/with daddy,” she acknowledges that this is part of her history, part of her. And she can replace the original “him” with someone who can follow her through the labyrinthine journey of her past and remain with her in the present in a relationship that requires an ultimate test of trust. It is not a utopian playing space. It is a risky practice that can and does fail. but it also more, I think, than a “cognitive adaptation.” It is an attempt to break the frame, to achieve that moment of vividness, that startling quality that Laub and Jameson speak of, a breakdown in temporality, an event in its own right. Like the testimonial, s/m sexual practices are metonymic, not metaphorical. They are not merely substitutions or repetitions of the subject’s historical past. And despite the fact that s/m rhetoric is saturated with theatrical terminology, it is not theater.”

like there are so many fun medieval hair and headgear options, it's so boring just seeing loose beachy waves meant to appeal to 21st century beauty standards

One Art