About

Author, journalist, devout Catholic, bisexual, Domme.

Rituals of self-sacrifice and submission are as old as mankind, but they reach an apotheosis in Christianity, and especially in Roman Catholicism, where the colour and pageantry of earlier Christian practices are better preserved. As a little girl, my favourite ceremony was the Via Crusis, the Stations of the Cross, a progressive recollection of Christ’s passion and death enacted during Easter week. I found (and still find) it breathtaking to contemplate Christ’s sacrifice and dwell on each detail of his humiliation and agony — both transformed into sublime beauty by his disposition of self-giving love and transcendent purpose.

I’ve always loved religious practice, yet I’m equally devoted to the D/s lifestyle. What transformed a pious Irish altar girl into a Domme capable of taking the skin off her lover’s back with a whip and reaching orgasm from that alone, without even touching herself? One thing is clear: it was either this or the convent. And throughout much of my early life, the convent looked inevitable.

Is BDSM a substitute for the now-unfashionable religious experience of self-sacrifice, which over the centuries has been steadily de-corporealised in Christian traditions, although less so among Roman Catholics, many of whom still fast, and some of whom still practice mortification of the flesh?

Is it not ironic that we now find extreme sex less embarrassing than extreme religion? Are we in fact less afraid of so-called deviant sex than we are of intense religious practice? What does that say about us?

As I recall my experiences, I’ll be asking many questions: Is it possible to be genuinely pious and sexually hyperactive at once? Is it possible to look at my life with both secular rigour and theological rigour, without allowing one bias to triumph over the other?

And why, exactly, do I find sex to be so sacramental, and religious practice so damn erotic?

Finally, I’ll examine the way online social networking, IM, IRC, and MMORPGs like Second Life contribute to D/s relationships.

destinywelles (at) yahoo (dot) co.uk