notes to a younger me 15: humiliation

The other night Mistress A took me on a walk along the ridge, the dirt path that winds around the top of our small mountain. She put me on a leash and made me naked.

The ridge path can be seen from the back yards of some houses, but at some distance. In deep dusk it was unlikely people would see my bouncy flesh at the end of a tether. The ridge path itself is rarely used by people in the neighborhood, the homeowners that back up to it not being inclined to hiking.

Yet even though I was fairly sure I wouldn’t be seen as she walked me up on the ridge, I felt humiliation.

In the slave life, it seems we are humiliated not only by being seen enslaved in public, but in our own knowing of what we are and what we do as that which is different and debasing.

For example, you may in your slave life be taken by your master and pulled across his lap. He perhaps will lift your skirt and spank you harshly across your bare bottom. Imagine this just between you and him, in the privacy of a house. Even so, I’m quite sure you will blush afterward and feel deeply humiliated. Why, when no one was watching?

I think it’s because we have a sense — as all human beings do — of “normal,” of what is proper and what is not. This is an awareness of social propriety and public norms. We imagine ourselves being seen and judged even when we’re not. I was humiliated by my nude walk along the ridge path even though I’m quite sure no one saw me. I knew how people would think of me if they had.

Being an adult woman spanked by a man will feel demeaning and shaming because you know it is beyond what is accepted by the culture. You know how you’d be perceived if people had been there watching.

Much could be said about the culture of “normals” being judgmental and moralistic, how it shouldn’t be so, and how our lives in slavery should be accepted as a matter of course. But the truth is we as submissives don’t want that — we don’t want a normalization of our submissive lifestyle. Our submission experience depends on our being humiliated in various ways. We crave the very debasing treatment of the slave life that others judge. Our humiliations may be hard to endure sometimes, yet they satisfy us deeply.

Humiliation is a necessary part of this life, to different degrees and in different layers. We hate it even as we need it. It may be public or private — but even if private, we have an inner sense of “normal” and “proper,” and we are humiliated even so.

Ultimately our humiliation is about what’s within. Living the lower life is what we are.

So I was a slave walked on a leash, sexually displayed. In a way it was all the more humiliating because this was not a public sex show and not just an exercise or kinky practice for my training. This is actually what I am.