As for me, I try to make friends with all the parts in me, even the sadistic evil bitch (harder for me to tap in to than other parts of me), or the slave owner. Why? Because I don’t want any part of myself to be hidden from me. I’m Jewish, and Nazi scenes, per se, don’t do much, but I do like military scenarios, complete with visored hats and Dhener boots. My sweetie knew two Jewish lesbians who would play in full Nazi regalia and, when questioned about it, said, “What would piss Hitler off more than what we do? We’re Jewish and we’re gay and we’re alive. Fuck him.” I liked that attitude, though I still won’t wear a swastika.

The same goes for interracial mistress/slave scenarios. My family has been fighting racial injustice in this country since the Scotsboro Boys case. My grandfather, an Alabama Jew, almost lost his life from being beaten for being a “Jewish, pinko, n-lover,” so this is also a topic that hits close to home. Then I was in a scene with a black couple and it had been established that he was both dominant and a mosochist (LOTS of tats on him already). So there he was, fucking her brains out in the missionary position and I hesitated to flog his back. My mind was saying, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re about to beat a black man!” Then I got over myself. He had expressed a clear interest in it and, from the first strike, it turned into one of the five hottest play moments of my life. I beat him in time to the music that was playng and it was hot and sweet. He was thrilled and thanked me for one of the best orgasms he’d had in a while.

But I really liked your empathy with the men who don’t want to spank their partners. Tops have the right of refusal, too, and they do get to say “no” to things that skeeve them out, something that bottoms don’t often seem to understand.

Anyway, we were talking about kink and BDSM as we do sometimes. And we were having one of those conversations that is so… intense isn’t exactly the word… memorable? yeah… anyway, it was so memorable that what I was seeing at the time is burned into my memory. It was late at night and we were taking the bus back from Seattle back to the Redmond/Bellevue area where he lives and I can remember seeing the bus stop in the dark and looking at where the mountains are when we crossed the highway and crossing the street and it being so dark and so black in the sky beyond the yellow of the sodium lights. Anyway.

I think we were talking about touchy scenes like African Americans doing or wanting to do slave/master scenes. I was explaining the nuances of it… how some won’t do it, how some want to do it to reclaim power, how some black people want to be the bottom in it but can’t find a white top that will do it with them, etc. I got quiet for a moment, thinking. I asked him “I’m just curious… and you don’t have to answer this, and I really don’t want to offend you, and there’s no such thing as a wrong answer… but do you think you could ever do a Nazi scene?” Now he’s Jewish, but all of his family moved to America in the early 1900’s, so he doesn’t have quite the personal history with the Holocaust that some of my other Jewish friends do. He thought about it for a moment and said quite simply and plainly with no horror or panic or fear in his voice, just in this calm and thoughtful manner, “no, I don’t think I could”.

I don’t know if I could, either. I have too many Jewish friends and Judaism is part of my spiritual path. Also, I’ve thought about “what would have happened to me if I was in Germany, etc. at that time”. I’m “Aryan” enough that that part of it wouldn’t have made a difference, but I probably would have gotten in trouble for political dissent, for my disability (ADHD), and for being bisexual (I probably wouldn’t have realized that at the time, though) and using birth control.

However, there is this tiny little part of me that’s tittilated by the thought of a scene like that. But it probably is titilliation at the strictness and the regimented style. Everything’s clean and neat, morality is black and white and I have a part of me that craves that desperately. (I had it growing up with Catholicism and it was very hard for me to let go of it.)

I thought you brought up interesting ideas about the whole spanking thing, but I don’t understand why those men have to try to get over it while you don’t expect yourself to try to get over it. Yes, Nazi play is much stronger and deeper taboo than spanking, but maybe for them, the domination and subjugation of and brutality towards women is a very strong and deep thing to them. Maybe it’s as horrifying for them to do that as it would be for you to don a swastika laden outfit or to have to wear a black triangle. I’m not saying you should do Nazi play, I’m just trying to see how it’s REALLY that different. Feelings are feelings to people… some are stronger than others. People have different triggers and who are we to decide where someone else’s limits should be? (Personally, for me, being spanked is almost a hard limit for me. In fact, for most people I might be playing with, it IS a hard limit. Rarely will I asked to be spanked, and then I have to be in complete control of how many spankings, where, how hard the spanking is, etc. It’s a hard limit because I was spanked as a child and found it utterly painful and humiliating in the most horrible and scarring way. [I’m particularly susceptible to humiliation.] Most people think that when I tell them I’m into kink that it means I like spankings… but I don’t, and I hate it when a random person would spank me on the ass playfully but with a bit of pain in passing or something. So, yeah, everyone has different triggers.)

I think another issue here that wasn’t addressed is: WHO are you doing this to? For the men that you described, you said it was their wives or girlfriends. It might be extremely hard for them to hurt them not so much because they’re women, but because it’s the person they LOVE. If it was any other woman asking them, they might be a bit more comfortable with it, but because it’s the person they care about, and because they might have been taught when they were young to be “gentlemen” and to “treat ladies with respect”, it might be extremely hard for them.

There was a study published a few years back that looked at power exchange play with sexual abuse survivors. While for some, it trigger bad memories, for others it allows them to reclaim parts of their sexuality with someone whom they trust.