Degradation

In kink, degradation is when someone gets pleasure from being judged and treated with disrespect - or treating their partner that way (with their consent, of course!). Degradation goes into the external judgement of a person, as well as breaking them down. Many people in the BDSM community dabbles in this kind of psychological play to some degree. But those with a degradation kink take it a lot further. For them, the degradation isn’t just part of the package - it’s a key goal of their play. Degradation can also be a fetish. What does it mean to degrade someone? That depends on the person! With a degradation kink, the degradation can be physical or emotional, but it is always psychological in nature. It can include verbal, psychological, or physical abuse. Other forms of psychological play that often occur in combination with degradation are shame and humiliation. These all touch on the same elements, but in their own ways. Degradation would be considered the more extreme one. ### Historical Background/Cultural Significance Degradation and erotic humiliation have long played a role in BDSM practices and imagery. Impact play and submissive acts may carry these elements. For some, this is part of the fun. As the leather culture emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, it embraced BDSM and elements including consensual humiliation. ### Why Are People Into It? Imagine a Dominant, towering over their submissive, hurling insults and other forms of abuse, making the submissive do things that are humiliating, demeaning, or taboo. If you’re into it, it’s hot. It positions the Dom as the controlling force, and the submissive as small, insignificant - maybe even subhuman. Degradation turns people on for a lot of reasons. Some people love the enhanced power dynamic, whether that means being the degrader, or ceding control as the degradee. Plus, for some of us, our brains are just wired to get hot and bothered by something that feels “wrong.” For the degrader, they get off on making someone feel small, reducing them to nothing (and seeing them get pleasure from that.) For the degradee, they often want to feel like someone’s toy, their plaything, a non-human. The total loss of self can be liberating. For some, it’s even healing or cathartic. ### Differentiating Degradation from Humiliation and Shame Some examples to clarify the subtle differences between shame, humiliation and degradation. Shame: Internalized Judgement Humiliation: Externalized Judgement by Others Degradation: Externalized Judgement and Devaluation by Others While the line between humiliation and degradation can be a fine one, they aren’t exactly the same thing. While humiliation aims to make someone feel shame and embarrassment, degradation takes that one step further. It aims to make the recipient feel dirty, wrong, even less than human. Even so, degradation play tends to involve a lot of elements of humiliation as part of the process. ### Types of Degradation Play There are a few (lots!) of ways you can play with degradation play, whether you’re the dirty slut or the Dom doing the degradation. Here are a few ideas: - Small penis humiliation: “You call that little peanut there a … penis?” Small penis humiliation is a form of degradation focused on the submissive’s penis. It can be verbal or involve sexual acts. It emphasizes on that the small penis also makes the person worth less, pushing it into degradation territory. - Sissification: A gender role reversal in which a submissive male takes on a feminine role. For men who strongly identify with traditional gender roles, this can bring in more of that taboo element, where they play with doing something “wrong” or taboo. - Human furniture: What’s more degrading than becoming a footstool or a side table? This type of play often finds people playing at being less than human. Here, a Dom may use bondage (whether actual or predicament) to keep the sub in place. This can also go into the real of objectification - Pet play: Being someone’s pup isn’t always a form of degradation, but it can be played that way. Think being made to pee on a newspaper or sleeping on a dog bed. - Human toilet: As one of the more extreme forms of degradation play, most people would find being a toilet (or in other variations an ashtray) pretty humiliating. You are dumped on. A place for waste. - Servitude: Submission often involves acts of service, but these can be humiliating too. You could serve your Master by licking their boots, for example, or being required to do other embarrassing things. ### Safety & Consent Because degradation is psychological, playing safely means looking out for a person’s psychological safety. Here are a few tips: - Talk First: Before playing, it’s best to talk first, and get an understanding of your partner's likes, hard limits, and triggers. This is also a time to negotiate boundaries, decide what play will entail, and discuss how the scene will go down. You can also discuss what participants need in terms of aftercare. - Get Consent: At this point, every participant in the scene should understand what will happen and what they’re agreeing to. - Use Safe Words: Decide on language to slow down or stop play entirely. These should be words that you wouldn’t typically use. (“Pineapple” is a common one!) - Practice Aftercare: When a scene is over it’s aftercare time! As you might imagine, the aftercare game tends to be pretty strong in degradation play. Because this kink can be intense (for both partners!), following up, debriefing, and nurturing the sub as they emerge from subspace are key.