Seeing your abasement, I overflow with Love

Humiliation involves the physical process: fluids, solids, organs, cavities, orifices, outpourings, ingestions, excrescences, spillages. Humiliation demands a soiling. Even if the ordeal is merely mental, the body itself gets dragged into the mess.

Some seek humiliation as a form of reparation, of sexual stimulation, and of psychological book-keeping. Humiliation, within the masochistic economy, cancels a prior debt. The pursuit of humiliation - a sport, as mental hygiene - is a slow, regular practice; we do it again and again, our technique improving with every rehearsal, every audition.

Humiliation has its rewards. Among them: the privilege of being seen as exemplary. The pleasure of being a spectacle. The perk of visibility, of becoming legible. Madam Emilia

Ref: KOESTENBAUM, W., Humiliation. 1st ed. New York. Picador, 2011.