What Power Looks Like When It’s Held With Care
There’s a difference between consensual sadism and what we’re watching unfold on the world stage.
In kink, sadists don’t just cause pain. They hold it. They honor the impact. They check in. They stop when told. They understand that power without containment isn’t power, it’s abuse. And they know that without consent, it’s not kink, it’s violence.
Control Disguised as Justice
What we’re seeing in the world right now is abuse.
Across the globe, people in power are using cruelty as a means to more power and control. It’s being used to maximize profit at the expense of those they have been called to safeguard. They justify the violence using language like “this is for protection, security, or advantage.” But it is really just about stacking the chips in their favor. It is about putting themselves in a position of invincibility. They are the kid with the magnifying glass burning the ants working to build safety and security in a world where the overloards are cruel and capricious.
No Consent. No Containment. No Care.
In kink, consent is the foundation. Without it, there is no scene. Without it, what happens is assault. In global systems, consent isn’t real. People do not agree to be watched, displaced, manipulated, lied to, occupied, bombed, starved, silenced, or erased. And yet the harm continues, often with the covert (or overt) approval of other world leaders using the same tactics to subjugate resistance. I mean of course right? There’s no negotiation. There’s no repair. There’s no care. Because they dont give a damn, despite the propoganda being pushed.
And that’s the difference. In kink, the pain serves a purpose. It is an agreed upon dance of sensation and edge walking where the one on the receiving in can opt out when they choose. What we are experiencing globally doesn’t feel like an informed, enthusiastic choice.
Cruelty Is Not Strength
We live in a world where cruelty masquerades as strength, and control cosplays as leadership. Where harm is normalized, trauma porn is the norm, and those who lean into love, pain and pleasure as purpose, and liberation as the antidote are dismissed as weak, naive, ineffective, and maybe even dangerous! How ironic…
But in kink, we know what it is. We learn that power without care is dangerous. That domination, when unchecked, becomes abusive. Experience has not always been cute or kind. The community has scars. Wounded by authority figures with reputations and status that used their position to proliferate predatory behavior. We know what cruely and power without empathy can create. It looks a lot like what we see playing out in real time across the globe. It looks like pain devoid of compassion.
“Hurt People Hurt People”
A lack of compassion is often a byproduct of unaddressed trauma. There are people who walk through life like open wounds, causing pain wherever they go because they never addressed their own. When those people gain power, whether in politics, policing, religion, media, or military, that wound is often weaponized. The once downtrodden, disrespected, and/or belittled gets a kick out of being the boot on someone else’s neck.
This is why kink matters. This is why kink literacy is about pleasure, sensation, identity, and also how we understand power. It’s about how we stay awake to the difference between authority and abuse. It’s about how we recognize when we are being manipulated, coerced, gaslit, or controlled, and whether we’re consenting or surviving.
When Watching Becomes Complicity
And while all of this plays out, there’s the voyeur. The one who watches and says nothing. Who shares the footage but not the outrage. Who calls harm complicated while people bleed. In kink, a voyeur might be a participant. In real life, passive watching without intervention becomes complicity. When cruelty becomes content, numbness becomes the norm. And cruelty thrives when people stop feeling.
When pain becomes your default, people learn to call normal. When oppression is dressed up as protection, people learn to call it safety.
But make no mistake. The more we normalize harm without reflection or consequences, the more we empower sadists who have no ethics, no empathy, and no care for anyone but themselves.
And if we don’t interrupt it, it spreads.
This is the work
The systems we’re living under right now are crumbling under the weight of their own violence. What’s being exposed on a global scale is the cost of power without reflection. The impact of harm that is never accounted for. The aftermath of control that neglects the need of the people and operates without consent.
Therapeutic BDSM™ and Self-Reconciliation Therapy exist because we need new ways to understand power. We need new frameworks that center agency, choice, containment, and care. We need language for what it means to hold intensity without using it to dominate or destroy.
Because we are all being impacted by the misuse of power, whether it’s in our most intimate relationships or on the global stage. And if we don’t understand the difference between domination and development, between control and creative expansion, we will keep repeating cycles that were never meant to free us.
This work is about breaking those cycles. Not just for ourselves, but for whatever comes next.
If you’re ready to explore what that can look like, personally, professionally, collectively,you know where to find me.
~Doc Yu Roc~
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