Miscellaneous discussions on SM topics
ENTRIES:
A-D E-I J-M N-Q R-T U-Z
CONTRIBUTORS | BOOKLIST | LINKS | HELP
| the deviants' dictionary Sourcesheet Updated 10 June 1997 |
| Ethics
Miscellaneous discussions on SM topics |
| INTRO | FRAMES | INDEX
ENTRIES: A-D E-I J-M N-Q R-T U-Z
CONTRIBUTORS | BOOKLIST | LINKS | HELP |
The SM community is mature enough to have developed its own codes of ethics and conduct, some of which have passed into the orthodoxy. The best known and most widely repeated are undoubtedly those that state SM sex should be Safe, Sane and Consensual and that you can Hurt but not Harm. In the opinion of the editor neither of these is entirely satisfactory and the formulations usually given are open to considerable criticism but they are useful as rules of thumb and pending a further discussion I have reproduced some statements of them below.
Safe(Jacques 1993:3)
All players have taken the necessary precautions to prevent psychological and physical damage to themselves, including the transmission of disease.Sane
All players are in full possession of their mental faculties and are fully aware of the risks involved in the play they intend.Consensual
All players fully understand the potential risks of their intended play and have consented to the activities. This consent can be withdrawn or modified by any player at any time.
For lots of leatherfolk, pain is a goal of their play. We claim the right to decide for ourselves what sexual activities we will partake in, including pain play. As long as no one is harmed, and by that we mean that no damage is done which does not readily and quickly heal, we believe that the government (and everyone else) has no right to proscribe our actions.from Slakker's original ABC of BDSM.However, as with most other democratic freedoms, the rights which we claim come with a heavy load of responsibility. One who is not prepared to accept that responsibility should never pick up a flogger.
We are responsible for the health and safety of our partners and ourselves.
Remember, it is okay to hurt your partner (i.e., cause pain), but you must never harm them.
The consent of all parties involved in an SM scene is normally taken to be what sets SM apart from 'real-life' torture and assault, though some of the activities taking place may appear similar. However, the issue of consent isn't as straightforward as it might at first appear. First, it is hardly a distinguishing feature specifically of SM sex -- 'vanilla' activities require consent too, and anything else is assault or rape. Perhaps the requirement seems more marked in SM because many of the activities involved are seen in real life as undesirable, whereas vanilla sex is usually assumed to be pleasurable.
For consent to be meaningful it has to be informed consent, which means the parties to a scene should have a good knowledge of what they intend to do, its problems and risks and so on. However, people never really know in advance exactly how the scene is going to unfold and how they will react to what happens and to attempt to predesign scenes down to the smallest details can stifle the excitement of improvisation, so consent will often operate dynamically, on a minute-by-minute basis. SMers have adopted various strategies for managing consent, such as safewords and signals and even written agreements; this isn't strictly speaking necessary but open and honest communication before scenes and care and sensitivity during them are of vital importance.
Many SMers play on the basis that anyone can withdraw their consent at any time during a scene, but further complications arise where people consent to having their right of consent removed for a specific time or under certain conditions, as with long-term imprisonment scenes, 'consensual/nonconsensual' play or so-called 24/7 Master/Mistress-Slave relationships. In these cases the partners may agree a system that gives the top license to activities on the bottom that really are not desired at the time they are done, and which the bottom perhaps even actively wants to stop, but that give some other pleasure or satisfaction in retrospect or in the context of a developing relationship. Such an arrangement will give a very real sense that the bottom is not in control, but there will be still almost certainly be limits that the top respects. After all, most tops do have the ultimate aim of mutual pleasure in mind, and will be mindful of their reputations and the possibility of a repeat engagement.
Consent may also not be recognised in law -- in the English Spanner case the judges ruled that the consent of the 'victim' was not sufficient defence against a charge of assault.
Note also that although consent is often seen as of particular importance to bottom in a scene, who is likely to be more physically vulnerable, it also applies to the top, who has just as much right not to be coerced into doing something s/he doesn't want to. Tops, too, have activities that they find little satisfaction in or actively dislike, and a bottom that pressurises a top into doing something that really breaks the bounds of consent is as bad as a top who abuses a bottom against their will.
One of the most important things you can do to maximize a BDSM scene is to master the fine art of scene negotiation. And perhaps the surest way to make a scene go awry is to bypass them entirely.
Negotiating a scene doesn't mean that you approach it as some kind of trade (I'll do this for you if you do that for me!), but rather that you freely and honestly discuss your wants, needs, and expectations with your partner. And it's worth emphasizing that whether you're a dominant top or a submissive bottom, in the context of scene negotiations, you must be equal partners.
There might be a lot of ground to cover, or there might be very little. It all depends on the nature and intensity of the scene. If you're doing a flogging, you'll need to set ground rules as to technique, intensity and duration, and you'll need to establish safewords (or see below). You'll need to know of any physical limitations the subject of the flogging might have, what their past experience is, how much pain is pleasurable for them and at what point it becomes distinctly unpleasurable. You might wish to set an approximate time limit, or a certain number of strokes.
Of course, all of this depends on the experience of the players, how well they know each other, and the intensity of the scene they expect. The more intense the scene is to be, the more carefully the limits should be identified. And the less experienced the players are, the more important it is to speak and question freely.
In BDSM, limits are any kind of boundary or restriction placed on one or both partners. They can be physical (e.g., a bad knee or back might make certain types of bondage unsafe), mental or emotional (e.g., something that triggers a phobia or recalls a past trauma), or experiential (anything that one partner just isn't ready for yet).
Novice players might not fully understand the concept of limits, and they might not yet know where their limits lie. For a truly novice player, one of the goals of your scene must be to carefully and systematically explore your potential and identify where those limits lie. Don't underestimate the power of a first experience! By pushing limits too hard, a novice might be completely turned off to the whole thing, and never experience the joy of a well crafted, mutually fulfilling scene.
For the experienced player who is running a scene with a novice, it's analagous to the care of a child. People very new to the scene are usually completely ignorant -- and I don't mean unintelligent, just uneducated. They don't know what questions to ask you, and they don't know what information to tell you. As the experienced partner, accept responsibility for your partner, and take a little extra time to educate and inform him or her. Novices are almost always nervous, sometimes frightened, and a little TLC goes a long way. Remember how you felt during your first scenes. No matter how long we've been in the Scene, we all had a first time.
For most of us, limits are not set in stone. They tend to change over time, and can vary due to the circumstances of a particular scene as well. You might be willing to go a little farther with a particular individual because you know and trust them well. This is entirely natural, and you should expect it. A shifting Pain Threshold is perhaps the most obvious example of a moving limit.
Limits can be moved by conscious choice, as well. Some of us, particularly those who have been in the scene for a while, become dissatisfied with our limits, and wish to expand them. Let's use a concrete example. Say you've limited your scenes to a certain level of pain, and you decide that you want to try a little more. Maybe you just want to see what it's like to go farther, see if you can take it, see how you react to it. But you are not, voluntarily, able to accept it. When the pain reaches your limits, you safe out not because you want to, but because you have to! Afterward you always wish you had gone a little farther. Bottom line, you want your limits expanded.
Okay, now say you have a regular partner, whom you trust absolutely never to harm you or to violate your limits. Someone who is very experienced and knowledgeable. You decide that you wish to give that person permission to take you beyond your limits. You give him or her express permission to go beyond them. Understand that this is the only situation in which it is morally and ethically acceptable to go beyond limits!
What often happens is that once you've made that step across the limit, the other side is no longer unknown territory. Once it becomes known, it is usually a lot less frightening. And as we learn our limits, we often find that they are based more on fear than on actual physical abilities. As we experience what we fear, the fear diminishes.
Always keep in mind that emotional and mental limits are every bit as real and every bit as valid as any other! Violating limits that are fear-based is just as harmful to the well-being of the bottom as any other, and can be the most harmful of all! In some cases, it can leave emotional scars that may take years to heal, if indeed they ever do. Perhaps it's not quite as deep a wound as that caused by rape, but it can come pretty damn close.
And if your moral compass points South, perhaps this note of warning will sway you. Scene players look out for one another, and if you become known as unsafe to play with, you'll find yourself ostracized faster than you can say 'Apadrayva'.
Safewords and safe signals (sometimes called stopwords and stop signals) are codes agreed by the partners in an SM scene that the bottom can use to ask the top to ease up or to stop the scene. There are various reasons why this could be useful. Most obviously, some scenes are role-played, which constrains the scope for communication during the scene and opens up the possibility of ambiguity when a bottom pleads with a top to stop. Even in non-role-played scenes, bottoms can still end up saying no when they mean yes, and it can be difficult in the heat of the interaction to be able to clearly explain what you are feeling.
In these circumstances, giving a bottom a simple panic-button makes sense for some people for emotional and physical safety reasons, and it will certainly feel more secure for the bottom, especially when playing with a top that they don't know very well. It can sometimes be important in managing consent (see also above), where the bottom is assumed to be consenting so long as the signal has not been given.
The signal can be anything, so long as it is agreed on by the parties, but it should be simple and memorable and also unlikely to come up in the normal course of the scene. Some people use nonsense or unsexy words but they can be difficult to remember and can seem very silly and forced in context. One good choice is to use either the top's first name, if the bottom would not otherwise use it in the scene, or the bottom's own first name, which he or she is not likely to use in the normal course of things and which won't cause any memory problems.
Some people use more than one word, with more shades of meaning available than a simple 'stop'. Karen Johanns (1988:8-9) suggests 'mercy' to mean 'lighten up the physical stuff', 'cruel' or 'you're cruel' to indicate when an emotional or psychological limit is being reached (say in a verbal abuse scene), and the top's first name for 'stop everything now'. In some parts of the scene the words 'yellow' to warn that a limit is being neared and 'red' to demand a stop have some common currency.
When the bottom is gagged or their speech is otherwise restricted, a non-verbal signal is necessary, and is probably essential in very edgy and dangerous games where there is a likelihood of the bottom passing out or injuring themselves. A fingerclick is a good one, unless gloves or other bindings prevent it or the bottom is not easily able to do it. One top who specialises in breathgames gives her bottom a small ball to hold which can either be deliberately dropped or will be dropped as a failsafe should the bottom faint.
Many players absolutely insist on using safewords and can be very critical of those that don't. For example, Slakker writes: 'Some leatherfolk...believe that the ability of the bottom to "safe out" takes something away from the scene. I acknowledge that there are certain situations where such play is appropriate (for example, when I discipline my boy, there is no safe word). However, I can think of NO such situation which does not involve persons who have played before many times, who know each other's limits intimately, and who have built up an enormous amount of trust in each other. Remember that if you agree to play without a safeword, you are putting your safety completely in the hands of another. Ask yourself whether or not you trust that person to that degree. If you do not have absolute trust in your Top, you must, in order to protect yourself, insist on a safeword.'
Personally I feel this view is mistaken. The ability of a bottom to 'safe out' is not a function of the safeword but of the way that the consent in the scene is managed. The security of the safeword is largely illusory: even with an agreed safeword there is nothing to ensure a top will respect it, and in any case it's unwarranted to assume that the top is entitled to do anything they like just because a safeword hasn't been used.
Safewords can be useful for giving an extra subjective feeling of security with those new to SM or with new partners whose responses you may not yet be able to read correctly, and it's obviously sensible to have some form of distress signal in cases where someone's speech and movement are particularly restricted. But they should certainly never be relied upon as the only indicator of what the bottom is feeling: they are no substitute for awareness, sensitivity and genuine communication, which a safeword cannot guarantee and may even distract people from developing.
For myself, I haven't played using safewords for ages, either as a top or a bottom -- I find nothing breaks up the mood of a scene more than having to do something artificial such as say my name or some irrelevant word just to make someone ease up a little, though I will agree to one and respect it if a partner insists. I have had occasion, however, to communicate problems and limits, and have done so by stating them clearly and explicitly in ordinary language. As I sometimes say, my stopword is 'Stop', and I don't use it lightly. If you haven't got the sensitivity to be able to distinguish genuine distress from roleplay, perhaps you shouldn't be playing at all!
Please note that Tom wrote this piece as an address to gay men, and it is worded accordingly, but it is relevant to other BDSMers too.
There are a lot of guys who want to experiment with more intense kinds of SM. Some say that they want to be a slave. Some say they want to be dominated; others say they only need pain. But unfortunately, for some people it doesn't work out because they have not taken the first step -- which is the most important step.
Let us be perfectly clear that in SM situations and even in master-slave situations, we are talking about a power exchange; one party is exercising decision-making power over the other. For that dom/sub relationship to work out, the submissive party must become voluntarily vulnerable. To 'become' that, he must understand what it means to be vulnerable (both physically and psychologically). The voluntary character of that situation is extremely important; I doubt that it can be truly forced -- or enforced. But with proper treatment (including a high dose of mutual respect and caring) it can be re-enforced.
Some of you will disagree, perhaps, that a true 'slave' wants (almost more than anything else) to please his master, but I think that is almost always true. And most bottoms in SM scenes are not really just pain pigs; they want/need to experience what the top has to offer, and to prove to themselves that they are great enough to handle it.
And most masters or tops (at least 'my kind') respect the submissive party for his willingness to please and his willingness to be vulnerable. We want to help the bottom grow and find a great deal of delight in the relationship and especially in the sexual rewards which can accrue. Master and slave (top and bottom) can share pleasure, especially if they both define those terms in essentially the same way, and if they understand the concept of voluntary vulnerability.
It's important to note that this concept of voluntary vulnerability need not be limited to long-term master/slave relationships: it is the core of a lot of other kinds of "power-exchange" trips, some of which can be much shorter than the more committed master/slave relationships; they can even be one- or two-session SM trips, but the first element must be the willingness of the bottom to become voluntarily vulnerable, and for the top to accept that as a gift worthy of reward and respect.
To be voluntarily vulnerable has many dimensions, and I will mention only two of them here.
1. We become vulnerable when we are able to express our needs to someone who can fulfill them. In our society, it is viewed as a weakness to say 'I need...' because it implies that we are not self-sufficient and in control. A bottom who says 'Please, I need...' is expressing both his need and his desire to give up control -- and in so doing is making himself voluntarily vulnerable.But can a top say 'I Need' also? Some tops believe that by simply taking what they need they are not being vulnerable. An alternative to just using the bottom is working with him to explore his fears and anxieties, and explaining what gift from the bottom he wants next. That complex, two-way communication, which is a demonstration of caring and understanding, is asking for further voluntary vulnerability; it is a way for the top to say 'I need'. It doesn't take a very bright person (or a very bright bottom) to see that a top who avoids this communication and just takes what he wants is much weaker than he pretends to be. I argue that for a top to be able to say 'I need' and to have his partner agree to meet that need -- willingly and with joy -- is the essence of being a good top, and it is far from wimpishness. The response, of course, is what makes a good bottom.2. To be vulnerable in any kind of relationship (including one of love and even a good 'marriage') you are placing yourself in the position of being hurt in a most agonizing way. The hurt may be psychological, of course (and such hurts are most painful of all). A bottom may place himself in a position to experience physical pain, and he does so voluntarily -- trusting that the top understands his needs and limits, and that the top will accept the vulnerability as a gift and turn it somehow into an experience of pleasure for both of them. That is no easy task, for either top or bottom!
Most bottoms want their limits to be pushed. They want the top to take them to the edge of their real ability to be vulnerable. But at the same time, they want and need the confidence that they are dealing with a top who really cares about them, a top who wants to make it a good and satisfying trip. It isn't satisfying if the top stops when there is a whimper. And it isn't satisfying if the bottom is taken beyond his real limits or damaged in a way which demonstrates that the top lacks compassion and care. This is far more than having a sense that the top is not a chain-saw murderer; it is a sense that even in the delivery of pain, even in the pressing of the bottom's limits, the top is doing so with affection and care. In willing submission -- accepted with affection and care -- there is joy and intimate connection; absent that affection we have a person merely submitting to abuse.
I had an excellent experience with a guy whose prior experience of SM had been on what we might call the 'lighter' side. We spent a bit more than a week together, during which time he learned about and contemplated the idea of becoming 'voluntarily vulnerable' and submitted to some things he had never experienced before. Near the end of our time together we had a momentarily rough spot, a time when our communication had broken down and I withdrew into myself in temporary unhappiness. 'What do you need?' I finally asked. I was touched by his answer: 'I need (long pause)...to be used. Please.' The fact, of course, was that he did not really want to be 'used'. He wanted to be vulnerable and to participate joyfully; being 'used' is passive and demeaning while being voluntarily vulnerable is the giving of a gift: the gift of one's self, with enthusiasm.
In another setting I had a delightful experience with a guy who was terrified of needles. After we had established some trust (and I must admit it was after doing a very heavy scene with the insertion of sounds into his cock, which both terrified him and sent him into ecstacy which he had not previously imagined), I asked him if he would be vulnerable for some work with needles. We began with very fine needles and worked our way to 18G x 1.5". He was crying, but growing as we learned how much he could take. And as he moved to each new level of his capacity he earned a hug and kiss from me and the renewed promise of a wild orgasm at the end of the scene. Above all, as he grew he learned how much I appreciated the gift he was giving me: his vulnerability. In the end he appreciated the gift I had given him: the triumph over pain, the triumph over his fear of needles, and the certainty that he could manage himself in the face of a serious challenge.
I have played with a very bright and delightful bottom who I met initially on an SM-oriented BBS. As we began our play, he called me 'Sir'. I told him to call me 'Tom' until we had some experience with each other: a top should earn the respect of the bottom. We did some very heavy things, and he ended the scene with 'Thank you, sir.' I assure you that both of us were making ourselves vulnerable, in different ways.
Each of these was a satisfying experience for both top and bottom, both at the physical and the psychological level. But those experiences required the bottom to become voluntarily vulnerable, and the top to accept and thoroughly explore that vulnerability as a gift -- to appreciate it, and to voluntarily try to meet the needs of the bottom.
© Copyright Tom A Gordon 1997. All rights reserved.