Humiliation is one of the more difficult fetishes to pin down because the experience and eroticisation of it is so very unique to each person. One person's offensive insult can be another person's joke and still another person's trigger into a world or blushing, stammering and deep, deep arousal. Humiliation can play a vital role in power play, domination/submission and in a range of other fetishes including tickling, infantilism/age play, WAM (wet and messy), socio-political role play, domestication and many more. The actions inflicted upon the bottom in any of these fetishes can be humiliating in themselves, or the humiliation can come from extras such as words spoken during the scene and the tone in which they're spoken, or in being watched or videotaped in the act.

Let's take the example of a man being forced onto hands and knees and made to worship a woman's feet. Several aspects of this one act can be humiliating to the man, or not, depending on his attitudes, previous experiences, cultural and social baggage and other factors. He could feel embarrassed by the physical position he's placed in, the fact that it's a woman he is to worship, the attractiveness (or unattractiveness) of the woman's feet, the woman taunting him or maintaining a disdainful silence, a webcam set up to record, one of his macho friends in the room, or endless other factors in the scenario.

For me, with a single word whispered in my ear my face goes red, my eyes go down, and I feel myself very much in the power of the speaker because they have disrupted the order of my mind and they know it. What's more, they delight in it. I know that nothing pleases them more than seeing a simple word or phrase (often something that most people would find completely innocent and respectful) reduce me to a ball of shame. And I'm even more ashamed and discomposed when they bring up the threat of telling other people about my reactions - by teasing me about my own reactions, they magnify those reactions, those evil Dominants! Imagine my disgrace if, for example, all my work colleagues knew that being called a certain term of endearment in a certain tone of voice gets me all tongue-tied and weak in the knees. That threat can work very well on its own or as a motivator to get me to beg, perform sex acts, let myself be tied up, submit to a beating, etc.

Similarly, as a Dominant, forcing a Submissive to beg me to stop and have mercy or, better still, to beg me to continue, calling them by a special pet name, making them wear something revealing or taking them outside their comfort zone in some other way can add so much to the rush of power and the heady joy of knowing that someone is trusting you with their mental and emotional state as well as their physical well-being and pleasure. An added thrill for me is making someone who is normally quite a dominant personality in everyday life moan and whimper in aroused humiliation because of a carefully inserted comment, action or object I've placed in a scene.

As with BDSM and all forms of erotic power exchange, it must be stated that erotic humiliation is NOT abuse. Tapping into someone's insecurities and fears is something that participants enter into with great care and great amounts of discussion and negotiation beforehand. Edgeplay in particular, where a person's phobias and traumas are incorporated into a scene and eroticised, can leave long-lasting emotional scars if something goes wrong, and even in the lightest and most successful of scenes involving humiliation the Dominant needs to regularly monitor the mood and reactions of the Submissive for signs of distress. Edgeplay is NOT recommended unless the participants know each other VERY well and have discussed limits extensively. And in all humiliation scenes, aftercare is essential, with plenty of hugs, stroking, praise and reassuring words, as the Submissive may be very emotional during and after an intense scene. With a bit of preparation, though, humiliation can be incorporated seamlessly into many scenarios, and the humiliation inherent in scenes can be exploited easily and with fantastic results.

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