Is Masochism Everywhere?
I am autistic, and I have a variety of Very Shitty Sensory Problems. When I was a child, a number of foodstuffs were almost unimaginably repulsive to me: ranch dressing, most meats, very sweet things, steamed vegetables—it was really a very long list. And I had trouble with loud noises. Until pretty recently, concerts and ball games seemed like torture to me.
Thankfully, these problems have abated somewhat. I have purposefully trained myself out of them: I've done sound therapy for hyperacusis, I've gradually exposed myself to foods I used to hate. And this has been a categorically good thing. I get along better with people, my quality of life is far better.
But it's also given me a sense that pleasure and pain are somewhat arbitrary. Our brains judge some stimuli desirable and others repulsive, but these judgements are malleable—probably not infinitely malleable, but mallebale still. They can be bent and broken, and sometimes they should be.
I didn't consciously realize this until recently, when a friend mentioned finding masochism horrifying and incomprehensible. Though I've never had any interest in BDSM, I have never had this reaction, and I think to proceeding paragraphs make clear why. If people can enjoy concerts, why couldn't they enjoy being whipped?
For awhile, I thought this was a bizarre idiosyncracy of mine. Maybe normal people never learn to tolerate something horrible, so they can't empathize with masochists. But, the more I thought about it, the more I found that masochism is everywhere. It's just only called that when it's racy.
People like bitter beer and bitter coffee, we acclimate to the burn of distilled spirits and the tanic astringency of a dry cider. We learn to tolerate horror movies and sad music. We huff down spicy foods. Perhaps some of these things arose as cultural toughness-signalling—the way men prove their manliness by making their lives harder. But, this really isn't my experience? I once found coffee and curry to be unpleasant. But, now, I've come to genuinely love them, in a way that isn't performative at all. What was once painful is now lovely, and that's just fine.