I am 44 years old and very well read, but I just got around to reading Venus In Furs a month ago. It was an absolute crap translation and only on the Kindle. The best translation for English is allegedly the Penguin Classics edition...so I tried to order that, and instead got the 1921 translation...complained to the seller, but that didn't stop me from diving into it for the purpose of a deep literary analysis (i.e. lots of highlights, margin notes, critical examination, etc). Next, I started to track down the memoirs Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's wife, Wanda published in 1907. I found a copy (again on kindle) and devoured it as well. I have tracked down a hard copy of the book, and that should be arriving sometime this week. I'll reread it, in the same vein as I did with Venus in Furs. I have a deep interest in all this and my intent is to conclude the book I'm wrapping up with a deep dive analysis of the dynamics and juxtapositions of those two accounts. Since I'm not an academic, I don't give a fuck about the formalism of the Ivory Tower - so I'll be throwing in other sources as well...for example the David Ives play Venus In Furs and things like Clive Barker's Hellbound Heart. Here's the "ask" ... to start off, take into account a recent description my wife gave of me when I was talking about being a switch, "You're not actually a switch. You're a violent masochist with no boundaries. You can be a bottom or a psychopath, but never a top." I share this only to try to establish my credibility - I am the real deal, and my knowledge into this subject matter is by living many of the dynamics (including the toxicity of attempts to top from the bottom....although not on the level of brutality / extortion which Leopold used on Wanda). So...is anyone in this community familiar with these books and the dynamic and would you like to have a serious discussion about the topics? Because, from my point of view, the Keyholder and the kinky dynamics of this lifestyle are all in keeping with the pursuit of The Venus In Furs....and I think the counter dynamic of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch is swirling around amidst it all, as well. Last disclaimer - thankfully, I have finally recognized my own poisonous behaviors and I'm going out of my way to rewire my brain so that I don't treat the woman I absolutely love like Leopold treated Wanda (and others as well). Who's game? This could be some interesting and insightful discussion.
When I tell Tasher about what I'm reading in the Confessions of Wanda, I caricature animatedly and laugh through my descriptive summaries. I do this because I want to tell her about it, and it's the way I have to communicate it. Like a hilarious theater of the absurd...instead of telling it as a story of maximum cruelties when someone must betray their inner nature through the deep submission to a binding marriage to a violent masochist with no boundaries who lifestyle tops his wife from the bottom and unrelentingly utilizes merciless deepest-level subspace-psychopathic shadowlands on her to make her be his Dominatrix. Topping from the bottom by scripting the play per his leveled up "The Venus In Furs" obsessions. Have you ever worn thick furs when you don't need to? You cook inside the skins of a winter-pelted animal hide that weighs a ton and you're swallowed inside. Horrific uncomfortable hobbling. Continually having to advertise herself to fuck other men to cuckhold him. Continually playing the role as the most hardcore femdom wife ever, who owns the originator-designation of the term Masochism. Good times, right? Nope. Note when these things are not the desires of the wife, things that are outside the inner nature of her true and authentic self. She doesn't want this, but she's extorted into doing it from her legal husband and the father of her 3 children, including the first one who died shortly after birth. Heavy-trauma-shit, poured down on her. Ignoring HER hard limits as a top, with no safeword for her. Violation. It's a two way street, and there must be respect both ways. Brutal fucked-up criminal evil darkness. What if it were me? Shoving my level of fantasies down the throat of Tasher, after she's made it clear that my level of deep subspace shit is not for her? That shit is FUCKED UP! So, yeah, when I talk to Tasher about Wanda's Confessions, I'm trying to let her know what I'm learning about because my brain is fucking exploding beneath the avalanche of information that's shredding files filled with faulty opinions on what my wife's life has sometimes been like -- under my own obsessions. That's what I'm really doing right now...although it was never my intent to completely destroy the toxic The-Venus-In-Furs behavior toward my own wife, the awareness of that dynamic has only recently come to light for me. I cannot allow it to continue. Since I'm a conceptual thinker, the way to kill it is to utterly destroy the previous concepts of who I am in relation to my wife and how I behave as her husband. That's a big deal to me, and I have two sides to the story for the first time in my life and they're renovating my mind.
change should always be welcomed, despite the discomfort. Sadism and masochism always come together. In that vein the masochist often inflicts more pain than the sadist, Wanda is a perfect example
From 48 pages deep into Chapter 7 of the book I'm writing - Imagine your life is a journal. One giant stream of consciousness. Now imagine your life is 2 different journals with two different stream of consciousness contents. Dual separate lives. That's the road ahead of me, if it's the road I choose. Journal #1 = My life with Tasher Journal #2 = My life hunting Venus In Furs Is that the road I'll choose? It is a choice. I control the choice. I am not powerless. Yet, I am struggling to see if I even have the option to choose, because it feels like the choice was made a long time before I even met Tasher. And I don't want apologetics for the destined outcome of my choices. There are no fates or destinies or pre-written biographies. I must understand this. I must own my choices as I am making my choices. I must see my options as unbounded. Nothing is pre-determined. I refuse the premise. I am not an animatron. I am a free human mind. My choices are all mine, and mine alone. There is always a choice. Okay - what rules for making the choice? The choices must be doable within the existing constraints. It's a continuous streaming living churn of practicability-fractal-displays full of options. When the constraints are applied, the non-applicable pinpoints in the fractal go dark. The remaining options glow. All manner of colors. A twinkling iridium fountain continuously having pinpoints flickering in and out as the information of the choices available appear and disappear. So - fuck the lie of the static equation. I am CHURN.
@boo I would have replied via email, but I can't log in from this computer...therefore, here's a chunk of what I was able explore on my side (it's not all inclusive or the full breadth of what was generated...but I figured I'd share)...also @boo - I found your document valuable, thought provoking, relevant, and am grateful to have been able to read it. Where does my desire for pain come from? Pain has been my companion my entire life. Physical and mental. All the classic profile examples are there. Well, not all of them, unless you include what I did to myself. I had a very active role in my history. Framing it all, spelling it out, writing it all down...what's the purpose? Is there a credible goal in mind? Am I going to make peace with it and then move past it? Have I not already made peace with it? Is there any credence to "moving past" anything? Am I fettered to it? Is it the Ancient Mariner's albatross? The premise here is the presence of something wrong which can be corrected. Made right. But wrong (the term's meaning) is a social construct. What may seem wrong to another person may not seem wrong to me. What about getting rid of the bounds of seeing it as wrong, and instead seeing it as right? What if it's not viewed as damage? What if it's not viewed as toxic? What if I am afforded the right to deviate from the norm? To be deviant. What if the things to fix within myself have to do with how I pursue my deviancy, instead of the elimination of it? I can choose nonconformity as a valid option. I can also choose to not deconstruct my motives for nonconformity with the intent of finding tenable conformity. I can also accept the term addiction as an accurate enough description, without the implied epithets of the need to free myself from them. And I can also accept these statements are typical enough of addicts to sound like cliches, while also acknowledging things can be valid, even if they sound like a cliche. And I know I could keep this paragraph flowing in circles like a carrousel merry-go-round with all the mirrors, blinking colored lights, brassy music, and the forever rising/falling of pole mounted mythical glittered and saddled painted-dragons. In looking back over my recent description of my Venus In Furs - it occurs to me it's all about intensity. [note - I should probably think about sharing that] The masochism, the BDSM, and everything else is only a vehicle to get there. The destination is intensity. Therefore, if instead of pain, it was pleasure, then let's do that. The mindfucks are the result of intensity. All the tangent fantasies with torture, humiliation, human toilet, and everything else - the intent of those is not to capture or communicate the actions. Those are all attempts to communicate the intensity. The more over-the-top, the more intense. Over-the-top in terms of the extremest examples I can imagine. All of that is about intensity - all actions are interchangeable. The tie-in with BDSM can be specified without the use of the term BDSM: Access to higher levels of intensity require going beyond my personal self-control. My own self-control causes me to stop, or reduce stimulation, because it forms a barrier I can't get around. At least not alone. Even with another person, self-control is a means of accessing the higher levels of intensity. Thus, if I am not allowed to self-gratify, then the option must be eliminated beyond my ability to circumvent it - via both a physical barrier and via the psychological dynamic. Also, to eliminate the squirming evasions, physical restraint I cannot self-extricate from should be employed. The intensity should be at a level where it would exceed what could be applied within the constraint of self-control. For the stimulus of the intensity itself, there are no criteria for how it must be transmitted. There are a great number of options.