KittenDiotima on DeviantArthttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/https://www.deviantart.com/kittendiotima/art/Inner-Children-of-the-Emotional-Dungeon-527866027KittenDiotima

Deviation Actions

KittenDiotima's avatar

Inner Children of the Emotional Dungeon

Published:
3.2K Views

Description

This photomanipulation was made using the photos of: 
:iconcjheery: 
The following photos were used with her kind permission (they are not stock)
Abandoned Mental Asylum, Creepy Doll  
Abandoned School - 4
Wood
Plus this photo, which is stock:  Lorton Prison - Jail Cell

THE DUNGEON: PART TWO
This work is the second part of my ruminations on how we are taught to put our feelings into emotional dungeons by society and family, and to wear on a false facade, whether we're trans or cis; altho for trans people this also means putting your essential Self into a dungeon and wearing a false gender presentation.  Then again, if your brain and thoughts are an essential part of your Self, then so are you're feelings and emotions, therefore, if you're only allowing your Self to express some emotions, while bottling away others, you are also destroying an essential part of your Self. 

This society, it tricks you, it fools you – you think your thinking is “new,” it’s  “New Age” to be only “positive,” that if you think only positive thoughts only positive things will happen to you.  Right living will equal a right life – that it is thru forgiveness, turning the other cheek, that we will gain the kingdom of heaven. These are old ideas, they are the foundation of the European Christian Empire, countries that almost never in their existences have turned the other cheek if they had the armed might to fight back.  These are old ideas, that were used to colonize continents filled with beautiful human beings who understood that the world is both light and dark, in balance.  But in they came, with their light, and their forgiveness, and their positive thinking – manifest destiny – we are taking over your land, we will forgive you for being non-monagamous and allowing homosexuality and transsexuals to live amongst you - once we’ve fed your transsexuals to our dogs – we will forgive you these negative cultural ways, and you will come with us into the Light, or we will whip you, daily.  Do you accept the Light of our values, religion and culture?  No?  I’m sorry, but for your own good, we’re going to have to beat you with a bullwhip.

Now, we’ve replaced bullwhips with new age philosophies, positivity and forgiveness trainings, self-help books, aphoristic memes and bumperstickers.  Come with us into the all-encompassing light; nothing, I have found, is more unforgiving than constant, unrelenting, positivity and light.  No one, i have found, are more unforgiving to everyday people, than those who preach unconditional forgiveness for abusers.

We are taught, by this culture, to shove all of our improper thoughts and feelings away in a dungeon of darkness.  They are “bad” and must be locked away.  As a society, we are progressing - but still, there are those who feel that being trans, or gay, is “dark” and must be shoved into a dungeon.  And there are those who think that being angry is “bad” and that certain emotions should be shoved into a dungeon.

Because, as people say, we’ve all been abused as children, we all fear that physical reprisal when we’ve been “bad,” we all are expecting perfection from ourselves, and when we aren’t perfect, we all react - much like children - in ways that will allow us to avoid blame.  This is why punishment based discipline for children creates adults who avoid responsibility - it doesn’t matter if that punishment is beatings, screaming, time outs, or whatever.  Discipline, should be about education, education should be a positive experience in the end.  That way, when someone tries to educate another person, rather than reacting in ways to avoid punishment - from within one’s Self, not necessarily without, for our own, authoritative voice within us is far more brutal than any punishment we might receive from friends and acquaintances - the person will open their minds to the information, and learn something new, in a positive way.

Most people don’t know their own feelings, because our patriarchal society has taught us there are certain feelings it is proper to have, and certain feelings that aren’t.  Men, who’d rather sit in their cozy chairs, with a can of beer and soda, watching the game, then have a conversation about feelings, or work on their relationships, have decided, therefore, that talking about feelings is “drama,” while ignoring your feelings by plunging yourself into television or some other avoidance method, is preferable.  

We are taught by this patriarchal society that there is a proper time and place for feelings, and an improper time. 

Women, we are told, are too emotional, because we actually talk about our feelings, while men, who stuff their feelings away, are somehow superior.  Yet, who are the ones causing the most violence in our society? whose filling up our jails? who are committing the most rapes? who are forgiving the rapists and letting them graduate college or escape jail? 

I’m well aware that there are gentle, non-violent men, just as i’m aware that there are violent women gangsters.  I don’t mean to talk in absolutes - i mean to point out that stuffing your feelings doesn’t make them go away, they come out in all sorts of terrible ways.  

I had a friend, whose family was catholic - with an upstanding, catholic patriarch at it’s head, and a self-sacrificing, hardworking catholic housewife at his side.  They had eight children - five daughters, and three sons.  On the outside they were a typical, normal family.  He was an average, tight lipped, anglo man - he was brilliant, as well as physically strong - he was an engineer, he was manly in that American frontiersman sorta way.  He sexually assaulted four of his daughters.  We only know this because his older daughter had the courage to out him, in front of the entire family, as some holiday get-together.  One of his daughters backed the oldest up completely.  One of his daughters simply denied anything like that had happened.  One tried to remain neutral, being neither accusatory, nor living in a denial fantasy.  But the dad - he was never the same, he went from being this powerful, overbearing figure, this all powerful, intimidating patriarch, to a broken, failed, shamed, flawed, pathetic figure.    

Why did he rape four of his daughters - and furthermore, why did he never go to jail?  

His sexual appetite could not be contained in a conservative, christian, catholic dungeon, that only allows people to have sex with one person for their entire lives, and only in order to have children, and that men are not to masturbate.  His sexuality leaked out, because, perhaps, he had fantasies that were beyond the so called norm.  

It amazes me how our society can continually and unabashedly shove this romantic “norm” down our throats, that everyone has a “soulmate,” that monogamous love is the only true love, that you can only be happy when you’re having sex and loving just one person - totally blind to the fact that there are entire societies and cultures that have allowed polygamy and polyamory, that forced monogamy has failed in Euro-Am culture for centuries, that people cheat on their spouses all the time and have thruout history, that divorce, eternal singlehood, people living in secret polyamorous or polygamous arrangement, and cheating are the norms, not “marriage forever.”  Monogamy may be right for some people, but for others, it forces them to shove their desires into a dungeon.  And when desires like that break out of a dungeon, it isn’t always in health ways.

Oh, and the child molestor’s wife - she who sacrificed, she who was held blameless, she, in fact, who was named long-suffering, an angel of mercy, the downtrodden housewife who did all the work of keeping a household of nine kids fed, washed, cleaned, insured, stocked with food, etc etc etc; while her husband put in his eight hours, came home, sat himself in front of the TV and yelled for his beer, then spent his nights in the bedrooms of his daughters - she knew he was sexually assaulting her daughters.  She knew and did nothing.  She didn’t go to the priest at the Church to ask for help, she didn’t seek out a therapist, she didn’t go to the police.  She listened to him raping her daughters, and did nothing.  What dark, secret, sexual yearnings of her’s were satisfied, i wonder, by witnessing such terrible things while doing nothing.  

I've heard many excuses for her - she was a powerless woman in a patriarchal family, even tho she lived thru the feminist revolution, she was still born at a time when women were to love, honor, and obey.  She is the saint, the blameless, sacrificing, catholic mother, the cinderella who worked like a slave for her husband and family.   But how blameless can you be when your husband is doing such evil while you lay in bed - for nearly two decades to four of your daughters - and do nothing to stop it!  

I have a friend who is a phone sex operator - she specializes in bdsm, feminization, and particularly edge play.  We had this conversation once, right after a particularly fractious presidential election that resulted in a democratic win.  She said business had been slow, and that she wasn’t doing so well.  I asked why? and she said “politics aren’t sexy.”  I replied the election was over, so wouldn’t democrats be wanting to celebrate.  She said “that isn’t who calls.”  Of course, this could be for different reasons - not just that Republican men are the most repressed members of our society.  It could be that Republicans tend to have more money, so they can more easily afford phone sex - it could be that Democrats tend to be more guilt ridden about the porn industry, while Republicans are content to think these women are selling goods at a certain price and helping our economy.  It could be that the Democrats have looser ideas about what was acceptable sexually with their partners, but stricter ideas about what was acceptable outside their relationships.  It seems to me, in circles of wealthy, conservative men, paying for the service of sex workers, and downright cheating on your wife, is a nudge nudge, wink wink, normality.  

Once while surfing online i found, to my horror a website (one of those old fashioned bulletin boards) devoted to corporeal punishment for children.  All these parents were gathered together, having discussions about beating their kids, and how it was the right way to parent.  I read one thread about a certain kind of whip that was sold by a company that made bdsm toys.  The whip, therefore, was actually made with the idea that it would be used by two consenting adults.  This father had bought this whip, a thin whip, designed so you could get into some very painful parts of a person’s backside - like the sensitive area where behind and thigh meet.  This man was very happy with this whip, he said his children called it “the rat tail,” and he reported with unabashed glee how much they hated it, particularly his older daughter - and i am not making this up - he used the words “it’s fun.”  He actually said it was fun to use this terrible whip on his daughter because she hated it so much.

Once, in a facebook group devoted to kink, i made a comment about the difference between discipline between consenting adults, and child abuse.  This father said that he enjoyed faceslapping as a kink, but saw nothing wrong with slapping his children.  He then described this punishment ritual he did with his children, which sounds like something you’d read from an adult reporting on a kinky sex scene - he said that when his children were to be punished, they were supposed to come up before him, stand in front of him, their wrong doing was described, then he would slap their face for punishment.  I’ve been an educator, i have friends who are educators and therapists, none of them have heard of anybody slapping a child in this ritualistic manner.

You cannot shove your feelings away in dungeons and expect them to go away - they won’t.  And, even when letting them out feelings that our culture simply pretends don’t exist, or our culture feels should be locked away in the dungeon forever, and that people who indulge in those feelings are “weird” or “perverted, we have no cultural map for how to deal with those feelings.  Within the kink community, there are people trying to develop cultural maps - but still, people within the kink community have trouble discerning between healthy ways to indulge in their sexuality, and unhealthy ways.  

 People in our culture have a hard time discerning between proper discipline for children, and abuse - and just because you were born kinky, and you’ve managed to break your sexuality out of the dungeon our culture has put it in, doesn’t mean now know how to express your sexuality in healthy ways.  That takes work.  

But the point is - these men that you see around you - who are so calm, and unemotional, who don’t want “drama” in their lives - they have some dark sides to them.  They have secrets, locked away in dungeons.  They are living incredible dramas in those dark dungeons, in they’re private closets.  They are calling PSO’s, they are surfing porn online, they are attacking women in the dark, they are visiting their daughters in their bedrooms at night, they are slapping their spouses or girlfriends in moments of anger, they are going to bars and getting into fights, they are dressing in their wives clothing behind her back, they are “spanking” their children instead of living out their bdsm fantasies.  They are not so unemotional as they would have you believe.  They’re emotions are there, hidden, but there.  They come out, too, and not always in such healthy ways.  

Let me state, in the safety of my loneliness – feelings have no more to do with propriety than your arm and leg.  Your emotions are not separate things – how could they be?  They are a part of who you are, and your feelings are with you where ever you go, and they are neither bad nor good, they just are there – it is how you respond to your feelings that matters, and our patriarchal society teaches us to respond to our feelings by choosing the proper ones out from the improper ones, and to stuff the improper ones away in a box.  

It is how you express your feelings that matters.  If you express sadness by crying, that is healthy.  If you express sadness by stuffing it down, and spending your night in front of the television eating fattening food, that is unhealthy.  If you express your anger by talking to your partner about what’s bother you, that’s healthy, if you express anger by going to the bar and getting drunk and fighting with your pals, that’s unhealthy.  If you express your frustrations at work - your feelings of being powerless in a system where your boss has far more say than you - by talking about them, that’s healthy, if you express them by beating your children to “teach them a lesson” or raping your daughter so that you will have a feeling of power and control over someone else, that’s obviously unhealthy.  Yes, these things should be obvious, but we still don’t live by these ideals, instead we are taught to shut up and forgive, smile and be happy, don’t dream do, don’t feel, think.  And that is the worst dungeon of all.

PART ONE:                                   MORE WORK ON THIS THEME:                       
Lost Girl In The Dungeon by KittenDiotima       Dada Transgender Self Mutilations by KittenDiotima    Don't Be Negative by KittenDiotima




  Dark Princess
DARK PRINCESS
Prologue:
I was born a sensitive, fragile, shy, feminine girl, who was hammered into the shape of a boy.  I was given all sorts of fun privileges, like being called on before the cis girls when I raised my hand in class, having this feeling of power imbued in me from a young age that I could do and be anything
except the very thing I wanted most in all the world to be.  
It was beaten into my head – sometimes literally – that being sensitive, shy and fragile was wrong, bad
counter to this great power that was being shoved unmercifully down my throat.
I could never fully utilize this power, because it got in the way of my true, real, little girl self.  That poor lil girl was so thoroughly despised by my parents and society, she was whipped, tortured, and pushed, down, deep into a dungeon.  Her skin became hard from the beatings, she sucked her thumb in despair.  
But she never stopped scheming ways out of The Dungeo
         Illicit Feelings In A Lonely Mean World
If you think this is about you, it isn't, cause no one whose written about in this piece is on deviantArt.  No one IRL looks at my dA profile. It's like my artist self is a ghost, a shadow in that world.  
I have these feelings, these emotions, that i feel are illicit.  I mean, that other people think it’s not okay that i have these feelings.  Cause they’re not “happy” or “joy” or “excited” or “content.”  Those are the legal emotions, it simply is unallowed to feel sad, depressed, angry, betrayed, jealous.  These are illegal emotions, and if you feel them, or more to the point, if you EXPRESS them, then you will be censured, you will be turned away from. You. Will. Be. Shunned.
Here they are.  I see the serious moonlight, and i rage at the full moon, just yelling, on my bike, in the night, years ago when i was homeless with a four year old, riding my bike to school, with her on the back, drop
    I Know Something...
I know something you can’t know.  Knowing it separates me from you, and i melt into colors, casting purple shadows, and i don’t know why.  I feel like a misfit, even amongst misfits, because i know things they can’t know, i feel things they won’t feel, i think things they don’t think.  Oddly enuff I was born this way, I'm sure of this coz I fought my true Self as hard as I could for so many wasted years, but I could never change my essential sense of Self, and I never felt comfortable in my own skin until I accepted my truth.  Why this is true, why I was born this way, i could never tell you, coz it’s something we can’t know, only the Creatrix knows, and She’s not saying.  I glow with this knowledge of Self only I can know, and wonder, if Goddess is everywhere and is everything, then perhaps she creates all these plants and animals and stars and plan




Image size
882x907px 1.71 MB
Comments5
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Wolfberry-J's avatar
Striking use of color and texture!