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To quote wikipedia Masochism involves receiving of pleasure—often sexual—from acts involving the .. reception of pain or humiliation.

  • How would a masochist experience rape?
  • Would they find it any less traumatic than a person who was not a masochist?
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My very limited understanding of sadomasochistic relationships is that they are built on a high degree of trust and consent. Thus, the masochist consents to a certain experience and power relationship.

Rape by definition occurs without consent, and therefore would be outside any such consensual relationship. People all vary in how they experience traumatic events. Nonetheless, I would not expect someone who engages in consensual masochistic behaviour to find non-consensual rape any less traumatic than someone who is not masochistic.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks what about the pain, don't masochistic people love pain $\endgroup$
    – cameron
    Dec 16, 2013 at 11:44
  • $\begingroup$ @cameron - Your question in your comment is a separate question to what you originally asked. As answered here, and speaking from the fact that I work in the field of rape and sexual assault, rape by definition (socially and in law) is non-consensual whereas anything experienced in S&M is done with trust and consent. Pre-agreed methods of safety are involved and any time something goes beyond consent, it is non-consensual and not in the realms of anything folowed by anyone into S&M, plus S&M is not a defense in law. $\endgroup$ Mar 7, 2017 at 15:12
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Rape is physical assault. So the question might be posed "how does a masochist experience physical assault". This phrasing I suggest makes construct weaknesses in the question becomes more apparent. What is a masochist, how is masochism experienced; are all masochists the same; is masochism a valid construct? It might also be posed that there is a difference between fantasies of sexual domination, or abasement, and life-style, behaviour or personality systems that seek to live out abasement, domination or pain (i.e. the difference between thinking about something and seeking to actually do it). I'm afraid I can't attest to any structured research on the question, but I would guess that there is a major investigative problem in defining characteristics of masochism, then finding people with those characteristics who have been raped, and then getting them to speak of this in a way that would yield anything other than idiosyncratic data. And that is before the ethical question of whthter such investigation could ever be done in a non invasive way, were it possible to find a research population.

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