I thought of calling this essay, "Why I am a masochist." But, so help me Dr. Freud, I don't know the answer. However, I've pondered that question over a number of years and have-if not answers-some interesting ideas on the subject. For one thing masochism and sadism are "overdetermined." That is, they have no single cause but a number of causes. Some causes may be more important for one man than for another. Each has a different "recipe."
First of all, our elders and betters do not find giving and getting pain objectionable. After all, Mother Teresa said that "suffering is the gift of God." (Thank you, mother. I didn't know.) What makes them turn up their noses in shocked disbelief is that we associate pain with _s_e_x_. It's like the Puritans who objected to bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. And let me remind you, dear reader, that most Americans believe in capital punishment which cannot ever be labelled as non painful. Infant circumcision is justified by the belief that although it is demonstrably painful to the child, he will not remember the pain and (to some people) fulfills the decree of the Almighty.
Being able to accept pain with a "stiff upper lip," has always been prized as a particularly masculine virtue. Sports writers, those venerable upholders of the laws of true macho behavior, fill their columns with awesome praise for the fighters or other athletes who can "take a lot of punishment." Football players regularly acquire bruises and broken ribs, skiers come back from the slopes to proudly display their broken bones. I remember a song from a _d_i_c_k_ Powell movie where the chorus of Coast Guard sailors sang "If you have to take a licking, carry on and quit your kicking..." ("don't give up the ship.")
According to a TV program that I recently watched on the History Channel, Greek and Roman boxing matches were fought with the opponents wearing brass knuckles and the contest went on until one of the men gave up or was killed. Most men preferred death to the dishonor of surrender. Among American Indians the endurance of pain was considered the highest expression of masculinity and a man tied to the stake and being prodded with burning brands was expected to endure it without a murmer. Among the Mandan Indians of the plains, the Okipa ritual involved intense and prolonged pain and was considered a great spiritual act. In Sparta, young men were flogged until they dropped in honor of the Goddess, Artemis/Diana All this is to say that masochism has its roots in what seems to be a universal belief that "taking punishment" is particularly honorable in a male, although in most cultures women share this belief to a limited extent.
I can speculate as to why this should be so-but it's only speculation. The ability to endure pain probably goes back to the time when men were primarily hunters. If a man during a hunt, got hurt, he could not start yelling and disrupt the hunt and put his hunting companions in danger. Men still want to demonstrate to all and sundry that they "Can take it." S&M is tied up with the idea of masculinity. The more pain I can endure the more masculine I am. The more I can dominate others, the more masculine I am. It is-undoubedly- more complicated than that, but that seems to be the basic process.
I think a second element-and maybe a more important one-is that men, human beings generally, seek stimulation and excitement and are willing to put themselves into a great deal of danger to achieve it. They shoot the rapids, bunji jump, sky dive, go on safari etc. etc. etc. Boys regularly explore forbidden territory and get killed on train trestles, swimming in unsupervised waters and have bruising and painful fights with each other. Psychologists talk about the "leadership hierarchy" in boys' groups, where the boys fight vigorously for their place in the pecking order. The fact is that some men seem to have a greater need for physical excitement than others. And sadism and masochism fill this need very nicely. It is for this reason that we S&M'ers contemptuously refer to the non S&M variety as "vanilla _s_e_x_."
How does all this get tied up with _s_e_x_? Beats me! But a thought or two on the subject. Triumph over one's enemies usually has a _s_e_x_ual element. Men have been known to get a hard-on when they win a card game. Rape seems to be a component of any conquering army. It is prevented among the armies of "civilized" nations by the fear of fairly harsh penalties. Nor has rape in wartime been confined to women. Pearl Buck tells us (in Dragon Seed) that the Japanese conquerers of China did not disdain to molest the boys as well as the girls. And they were not the only ones. In ancient times in the near East, men who were defeated in battle were regularly raped by their victorious enemy-said to be an explanation of why the Israelites-who lost a lot of battles-were so against homo_s_e_x_uality.
This practice was euphemistically called "Going under the yoke." Since most people cannot deal with abstracts or metaphors, the picture in my Latin book showed defeated men passing under an actual yoke. And my Latin teachers were remarkably limited as scholars or historians. When a Roman army conquered an opposing army, every tenth man in that army was flogged to death. So that triumph, _s_e_x_ and giving pain to the conquered were then, if not now, all tied together in the masculine psyche.
But we don't have to go back to ancient times to view the traditional mixture of Sadism, Masochism and Machismo. Just think of college initiations which are a throwback to the initiations in primitive societies welcoming a boy into the male club. Primitive initiations, like college initiations, invariably involve pain, and often enough circumcision. In some cultures, the young men involved may find themselves living apart from the rest of the tribe for several months and putting out regularly for the older men.
I realize that the need for intimacy also enters into the picture--but that requires some thought on my part before I can discuss it.
So in conclusion, maybe Sadism and Masochism are part of our collective unconscious. Maybe, indeed, directing our need for aggression and submission, our need for demonstrating "how much we can take," into sane-_s_e_x_ S&M ways is a sensible and desireable way of dealing with these drives.