Dear Dan: This is going to sound like bragging, but my appearance is intrinsic to my kink. I’m a gay male gymnast. Most of the guys on my college team are annoyed by the kind of objectification we routinely come in for. (We actually don’t want to be auctioned off at yet another sorority fundraiser, thanks.) But I’ve always been turned on by the thought of being a piece of meat. I’ve masturbated for years about dehumanization. Being in bondage, hooded and gagged — not a person anymore, faceless, nude, on display, completely helpless. (Just typing that sentence made me hard.) It finally happened. I found a guy on Recon.com (which I discovered on your podcast, so thank you). He is into BDSM, which isn’t the goal for me, and he wanted to do some of “his stuff ” to me while I was dehumanized and helpless. We had a long talk about what I was okay with (gentle tit clamps, some butt play, very light spanking) and what I wasn’t okay with. I didn’t want to be marked. He asked what I meant by that, and I said, “No bruises, no welts, no red marks.” He didn’t bruise me, but he did something that it didn’t occur to me to rule out: He shaved off all my body hair — pits, pubes, legs, ass, chest. I’m angry, but at the same time, I’m seriously turned on by the thought of seeing this guy again. I also have a boyfriend. I thought going in that this would be a one-time thing, that I would get this out of my system and never tell my boyfriend about it, but I don’t think I can do that now. (Maybe I should’ve figured out that something I’ve been jacking off about since age 13 isn’t something I could do just once.) What do I say to my boyfriend about being suddenly hairless and about my kink? And what do I say to the guy? I want to go back and continue to explore being an object, but I don’t feel like I can trust him.
— Desire Erased Humanity Until My Aching Nuts Explode
Dear DEHUMANE: You could tell your boyfriend the partial truth, DEHUMANE, or you could tell your boyfriend the whole truth.
The partial truth would go something like this: “Guess what, honey? I shaved off all my body hair all by myself just for fun. Do you like it? And, hey, we’ve been dating for a while, so I should probably lay all my kink cards on the table.” Then you tell him about these fantasies — to be dehumanized, to be an object, to be help less
— and you do it with a smile on your face and a bone in your jock. Remember: You’re not sharing a tragic cancer diagnosis with him. You’re sharing something fun, interesting and exciting about your sexuality. Don’t panic — and don’t hold it against him — if he reacts negatively at first. This is the start of a conversation, not the end of it, and it’s a conversation about his desires, too, DEHUMANE, not just yours.
If it turns out that dehumanization/ objectification isn’t something he can do, and it’s not something he could allow you to do with others, then you’re not right for each other. End the relationship and date kinksters you meet on Recon, and disclose your kinks earlier to any presumed-to-be-vanilla guys you date. (You never know: You could disclose your kink to a presumed-to-be-vanilla boyfriend and discover that he’s as kinky as or kinkier than you are.)
The full truth would go something like this: Hand him this column.
DEHUMANE’s boyfriend, if you’re reading this, please know that the mistake your boyfriend made — doing this behind your back in the hopes that one experience would satisfy his curiosity forever — is a common one. A lot of people, kinky and not, believe that kinky desires don’t work the same way vanilla desires do, i.e., unlike “normal” sexual desires (fucking, sucking, rimming), kinky desires (pissing, spanking, binding) only have to be acted on once. Do it once, get the kink out of your system, enjoy vanilla sex — and only vanilla sex — for the rest of your life. But kinks don’t work that way. In the same way that “normal” people don’t wanna fuck just once in their lives, a person with your boyfriend’s kinks isn’t going to wanna be objectified and dehumanized just once in his life. Your boyfriend didn’t know that before he did it the first time, but he knows it now. If you can find it in your heart to forgive him, you could wind up with a very hot and very grateful guy.
Back to you, DEHUMANE: Put Recon Guy on hold until after you full or partial the boyfriend. If you do want to play with him again — because you’re single or because your boyfriend approves — have an out-of-roles conversation with him about what happened last time. He didn’t hurt you, he tricked you, and you’re understandably wary of playing with him again.
If you do play with him again — a big if — this time anything you haven’t ruled in is automatically ruled out. No tricks. With any luck, your boyfriend, if he feels like he can trust you again, will be there to keep an eye on him and to enjoy the sight of your helpless, faceless body.
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