jesse_the_k | (Reply)

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The kink examples that are coming to my mind are all personal communications, or from old Usenet newsgroups. The non-kink parallels screaming in my head are based on music and/or homosexuality.

The music business is ferociously competitive and emotionally intimate, at the same time. Consider a big name conductor who works with promising young violinists, tells one of them what potential they have, grooms them with duets, and invites them into bed. A year later, the young violinist thinks, "this guy is a demanding bully, and half the time I hate him, or hate myself for sleeping with him. Still...I'm sleeping with him because he's charming and because I love playing with him (those duets!) and it's worth putting up with his bad temper sometimes. I'm not sleeping with them for the sake of my career, because that would make me some kind of whore." The young musician thinks of themselves as responsible for any abuse, because the relationship started from their own crush on their mentor. And they fear that disclosing the relationship will damage the reputation of the orchestra they love, as well as their own career, while fueling either homophobia or sexism.

See other aspects of the theater business. See Shlomo Carlebach (well, not him. You've probably never heard of him.)

A generation ago, there was a popular fiction among lesbians that domestic violence was part of the patriarchy and thus could not exist in a relationship without men. (Do I need to reiterate that this is not true? It's not true.) So somebody who was scared and miserable in her relationship didn't want to think of herself as being abused. That popular fiction helped people feel safe, and it was emotionally easier to cling to it.