
I started off my marathon with Secretary, which is a movie I saw for the first time when I was 18 and I vividly remember it as the beginning of myself admitting that this is what I’m into. Watching it the second time though… Oh gads no. Don’t get me wrong, Maggie Gyllenhaal doing chores while shackled in arm restraints will forever be one of my most fapped to mental images. There’s some pleasantly dirty stuff going on in it and that’s awesome. What really irked me though was the portrayal of masochism.
Sure, there’s lots of instances of self-harmers later in life understanding that what they were doing was just misguided sadomasochism; I get that. But in a world where sadomasochism is still listed in the DSM as a paraphilia, this gets touchy.
The freaky, awesome shit I do in my bedroom with consenting partners shouldn’t get me put under a psych evaluation, but this movie completely reinforces the idea that there is an element of abuse to D/s type play.