I read this thread with utmost interest and would share most of the analysis made and things that have been said. Real abuses in real life offend us all, especially if carried out against children and minors....

As far as my personal experiences are concerned, I did not come across any case of submissive woman with a story of abuses and mistreatments in her past.... on the contrary, my female submissive partners seemed to all come from very caring and loving families and their desires of submission and abuse seemed very a personal matter. On the contrary, I met a few women with a past of abuses and they were not inclined towards submission at all.....

This is just a very scarse statistic and may be non significant at all. On the other hand I do not have a suitable knowledge in psicology to find out a cause-effect relation in the familiar history of my submissive partners and their masochistic inclinations.

Having said all this, I could not avoid considering the events we read in duktig flicka's autobiographical flash also under a different perspective....

Couldn't it be possible that her latent submissive desires and masochistic inclinations have been, at least to a certain extent, the CAUSE and not the consequence of the peculiar way she lived certain events of her life?

The ballet world, for instance ..... certainly a very demanding environment, but is it really such that pupils are willfully constantly abused and that every man in that milieu is a sadist and " every female destroying herself to please them" ?

If this was true, only truly submissive and masochistic females would stand and survive ballet schools and become professional dancers.... (I have to look for a dancer) ....

Personally I also don't believe that an adult, kept prisonner against his will and submitted to non consensual BDSM practises may ever develope a turn on for being jailed and disciplined ...

My 2 cents of wisdom could be so summarized:

If you find SM play enjoyable and you feel it enriches your sexual life, without causing you stress or guilt feelings, just go on practising it (in the usual recommended safe and consensual way)

If you think that your interest for BDSM is connected with your history of past abuses and that you still suffer from psycological wounds connceted with those events, then, do not try to use BDSM as some kind of do-it-yourself treatment. Rather look for professional help to look into yourself and to find a way to overcome those ghost from your past.