Understanding Subterranean Sexuality

By Shellee-Kim


I’ve spent much energy in my adult lifetime being madly attracted to understanding society’s taboos. With the most taboo arena being that which is judged as the dysfunctional or deviant expressions of human sexuality.

In order to do this I’ve gone ‘underground’ to explore. As that’s where most of this stuff lives and breeds. Pushed far enough away and out of sight from mainstream, bourgeois society’s sensibilities to not ruffle too many feathers all at once. But clearly not out of mind.

In many an instance I’ve put on my journo hat and managed to get to grips with quite a few of these taboos. The human condition and the myriad of paths taken on the earth walk has always fascinated me. And the journey to understanding and accepting myself more fully is also naturally to understand and accept others more fully, along with their choices – without judgement. That’s always been my primary motive.

So I’ve sought to experience as many of these taboos as is humanly possible without endangering myself or my commitment to my own spiritual path and unfoldment, in the process. Even if it’s just been a toe in the water or a half-baked experience. I always know my Loony (Higher Self) will pull me back when I’m getting in too deep and serious danger lurks. But yes, there have been more than a few brushes with danger en route.

Plunging myself into the extremities of life conditions/choices and sub-cultural taboos, I’ve quite deliberately sought the friendship of a prostitute to understand what led her there, challenging myself and my own preconceived notions in the process. She had been one who had been empIoyed as a personal assistant/secretary, but found she could make a lot more money being a pro. When she had sex with a client, she told me, she had found a way to leave her body temporarily. That, she said, made the entire experience much more bearable. Her greatest fear was that her immediate family would discover her 'real' work at the time. But it was her choice and she wasn't unhappy with it, although competition was extremely tough, she said.

I’ve also been acquainted and neighbours with a couple of ‘rent boys’ who serviced men in the main, but who were ‘straight’. They literally worked the streets as independents and without pimps.
Then there was my brief friendship with my bar/club transvestite buddy. He worked for his mother who had a clothing factory and was Charl by day; Chantal by night. He had attempted suicide numerous times at the point we met. Living the double life was an increasingly-overwhelming experience for this sensitive soul, who’s greatest ambition was to live in a female body.

Exploring the world of suburban swinging couples and parties was another eye-opener for me. And after attending numerous swing parties – one of them with my ex girlfriend and mostly as a bystander – I realised that many couples were into the swinging scene due to one of the couple being more attracted to it than the other, who was basically compromising/sacrificing on whatever their own personal feelings on the subject were in order to ‘save/spice up’ the marriage or partnership. And, in my experience it was mostly the women doing this for their men, who needed the requisite titillation of a new woman or to experience being with a man. Less often was it a case of both couples being equally into swinging together. But when they were, the women were often looking for a same-sex experience too.
Just to be clear: none of these expressions mentioned above are linked to lifestyle or birth choices to be lesbian, gay or bisexual. Although, I’ve noticed swing parties, for instance, are often used by women as a stepping stone or ‘coming out’ process to becoming bisexual or even fully lesbian later.

Then there’s the world of the BDSM sub-culture. That’s the acronym for bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism for those who aren’t aware.
Exploring this when I worked on a regional weekend newspaper, I was fortunate enough to find and interview a serious dominatrix Madam. She was a most intelligent, insightful and articulate woman who worked but for a few hours a day, made a fortune and lived a sumptious material life. She was also a person of exceptional integrity as a soul. Because of this, the ex real estate agent and marketing fundi was excellent at the services she offered and was at the top of her ‘game’. She genuinely loved playing the dominatrix role, having her clients write out a scenario and acting out the assigned role for her international business men, CEO’s and politicians that were part of her clientele.
High-powered by day in their respective leadership roles, after hours they were needing someone to delegate to them-sexually. And not just that: what they really wanted and needed was to be teased or tormented physically or/and verbally or emotionally abused in order to become sexually aroused. This was mostly achieved by the dominatrix using one of her ‘tools’ of the trade on them – ranging from light to heavy duty items such as nipple and penis clamps to horse whips, handcuffs and neck chains, amongst many others.

Although invited to quite a few, I never got as far as to attend a BDSM sub-culture party. The BDSM community refer to ‘tops’ and ‘bottoms’. A ‘top’ would be the dominating masculine one in the couple, while the ‘bottom’ would be the submissive, feminine one. Although this is practised as much by same-sex as by opposite-sex couples. And sometimes they interact in groups. In many ways, I felt twinges of sadness over this expression. Mainly because these folk actually needed to feel sometimes violent pain in order to become sexually aroused. With most referring to regular non BDSM-type encounters as too ‘vanilla’ for them.
Interestingly, a woman I met years ago had been a long-time practitioner of BDSM as a ‘bottom’. After years of therapy she reached a turning point and suddenly no longer needed BDSM as she had eventually healed the cause.

I bet a lot of you reading at this point are asking what all these ‘deviant’ sexual expressions have to do with spiritual evolution and personal development.
Absolutely everything - as these are aspects of the most ‘shameful’ expressions of humanity, pushed underground and out of sight. But, just like those shadowy, shameful aspects of ourselves individually, they will still continue to surface in distorted ways until we’ve openly explored them and understood why we’ve needed them.
In just the same way as we need to explore the violent sexual crimes in order to transmute those that are overtly harmful to humanity such as paedophilia, rape, incest and bestiality, to mention a few, and not consensual, such as these above. But that’s for a different article.

Perhaps the extra shame and guilt induced in these alternative sexual practices reflects back to people our own guilt, shame and dark feelings we have about ourselves as sexual beings, in general. Particularly as so many more of us than we know have experienced a sexual violation of one type or another in our lives.
And the idea of having to deal with personal muddy waters dredged up from our pasts is just too much. So we reject that and cannot cope with objective discussion on such sexual taboos as it just presses too many personal and unhealed buttons within.

We’re currently on the brink of entering an entirely new playing field societally with very shifted goalposts and with different dynamics and points of references at play.
More than ever, therefore, do we need to understand what’s behind these taboos and why they are thriving now more than ever before as they’ll not be disappearing overnight, as some may think.

The mass of humanity’s sinking consciousness is spiraling ever-downwards until a kind of zero point is reached at game over time, after which there will be a resetting of humanity. Yet, in the interim, so much still remains hidden as humanity, in the main, continues to hide behind facades of ‘normalcy’ on the surface.
With the effects of the Wave being released in ever-increasing increments on the planet and the earth’s rise in frequency, the result is a growing schism in consciousness for many. Which has, in part, I believe, created an even greater demand for these sexual practices.

But the search for wholeness, at some level, has always been man’s quest on this planet ever since the first fall in consciousness occurred. As the frequencies rise, the unhealed parts within scream increasingly for attention. So we pacify and comfort ourselves with addictive sexual practices or ones that ‘manifest sideways’, as one psychologist put it.

Another important point to mention here is that anything that is imbalanced in the extreme is unhealthy and an unwanted diversion from one’s inner core and spiritual drive also. Which in turn opens doorways to unwanted dark etheric mechanisms/entities to take hold. And this can just as easily apply to the incessant playing of cell phone games, obsessive TV watching or addictive eating or internet surfing, for that matter.

If we are serious about changing our global society, then it follows we need to be serious about tackling the most uncomfortable subject matter as we are passionate and comfortable about tackling the ones that make us feel good.
In fact, feeling that discomfort is clear direction from our soul selves as to where we need to go next, individually and societally for our collective healing.

For mainstream religious adherents, these taboos are usually perceived as abominations. Which seems to give them official permission to (figuratively) hurl the contents of their ‘official’ and respective books of God at the perceived offenders.
I’ve also noticed members of the New Age brigade who have taken it upon themselves to demonstrate ‘tolerance’ publicly, will often remain silent on the subject. Unless they perceive their comments as New Age acceptable – where you speak of sex as something to transmute and associate it with a practice such as Tantra or share about it only in the celebratory context. Yet, there are many shades of grey to this important human expression which remains ignored.

Literally suppressed throughout the ages, delving into these aspects of sexual expression is ultimately about understanding and accepting ourselves and our fellow human better. Think of it as a necessary starting point to pulling out the weeds in our individual and collective path before we can begin rebuilding healthier psyches, along with our new world to be.
And there is much we can learn from one another’s life stories.