RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (Full Version)

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tsatske -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 5:21:11 PM)

She's using a common meaning of a safeword. for most people, the red level safeword (for many the only level they have a safeword for) means 'stop everything immediately. So much so that when I run parties, I insist on having 'green means go' in the safeword line up, so that a couple with a long history together who knows when it's okay to continue again after red, does not scare the tourist by making them think 'red means stop' was ignored. Party rules: Once red is declared, everything stops. If they are not going to completely terminate play, but go again after checking, communicating, whatever, the bottom must declare 'green' audibly before play continues. I am not suggesting this as a new for-everyone one twue way rule, just a rule I've used when I've had parties. I get uncomfortable at the thought that someone watching might be made uncomfortable, if it can be avoided - that's my issue, so I try to do something about it.

If a pair does not have a different understanding of safewording than 'stop everything immediately', then to ignore a safe word is abusive and non-consensual. If a couple negotiated a different way to manage safewording, it might not be.



JeffBC -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 5:40:26 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheLilSquaw
quote:

ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
"edge play" isn't black and white.
The "edge" is different for different people.

This 1000Xs this!

Agreed. I'm sure we've all seen this. We do something that seems pretty normal and ... well... uninteresting and everyone else gets all bug-eyed -- or the reverse of that. Both things happen to me fairly regularly.



ResidentSadist -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 6:16:13 PM)

I’m going back to the OP for moment.

Charles6682 said, “I fully believe in Safe,Sane and Consensual in my fetish life and in my life in general. I know there is also "RACK" Risk-aware consensual kink." Whatever term someone want's to call it, the message is still the same. Safe play.”

I have watched tourists in public dungeons that were so unskilled with a flogger they were hitting the bottom in the kidneys and wrapping so badly they were hitting other unsafe areas with majors veins near the surface. In my world, impact play on major arteries and organs is dangerous. But the dungeon monitor did nothing.

Later when a well known and highly skilled whip artist flicked their bottom’s long hair off their neck with a single tail (it's part of the routine), the dungeon monitor went bat-shit crazy and tried to stop the scene because the Top was “hitting the neck . . . no hitting the neck”. I dragged his ass to the dungeon owner who set him straight about the well known whip artist and that their skill level made it safe.

I bet that tourist, their victim and the dungeon monitor all chant the SSC mantra on a regular basis. My point is that believing and chanting SSC will not keep you safe. Only a skilled Top and educated bottom will keep a scene safe.

Charles6682 said, “What other basic commonsense guideline's are there for people in Fetish? Simple suggestion's when first meeting anyone? I know basic common sense but any extra advice, especially from people in this Lifestyle who have experience, would be appreciated. Thank you.”

In my earlier reply I said I was “lamenting about the good ol' days when BDSM had an edge and you had to earn your chops or work your way into the community.” SimplyMichael eloquently explained that "edge play" isn't black and white . . . . The "edge" is different for different people.” That is also true for a Top’s skill level and a bottom’s education level. If the bottom doesn’t know anything about that type of play, they aren’t informed . . . hence, informed consent is impossible.

With these perspectives, my common sense advice is to educate yourself on your areas of interest. Read up on the subject in books published by respected authors, attend workshops and watch how the experts do it. Then you will be informed, know what your Top is supposed to be doing and you will have the vocabulary to communicate with them effectively.

I think everyone would be better off putting your SSC flags down, picking up a book and attending some workshops.



littlewonder -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 6:21:10 PM)

Do people who do skydiving and extreme skiing and all those other extreme sports, go around chanting "SSC"? I don't know a single one who does. They just admit they will probably die from what they do and they're perfectly fine with it. They don't proclaim to be safe or sane.

So what's the difference? None.



SeekingTrinity -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 6:25:41 PM)

~FRing it~

Wow, this thread has so much in it that I have no clue where to dig in. So I think I'll stick with Charles' OP and just see where it takes me.

When I was a newbie starting out in this nearly 18 years ago, I bought into SSC. But as time has gone on, I've personally grown to detest the whole concept of SSC. First, the reality is that just about everything kink related could be unsafe. It's not like we are all heading to the mall to build teddy bears at Build-A-Bear as our kink. As I've grown more comfortable in my own skin, I actually like to be more on the edge. My male counterpart and I happen to switch with each other. We do not use safe words because neither one of us feels the need to have them. Unsafe? Perhaps to some, but I truly trust this guy with my life and know he trusts me equally. So what some might consider unsafe is something we feel perfectly safe with. So who's standard of safe should we follow? We choose to follow ours.

Lets talk about "sane." We do some crazy shit in the eyes of some, but this seems perfectly sane to us. So who's definition of sanity should we follow? Who is the ultimate authority on what constitutes sane activities?

Ultimately it comes down to my understanding the risks of what I choose to do, educating myself on how to learn how to do things properly to reduce the risks, but keeping in mind that there is no way to eliminate risks entirely.



LafayetteLady -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 6:30:14 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael


quote:

ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady

Well, first anorexia is dangerous at all times, so never. There is a difference between dieting and anorexia. A dominant who like to encourage his sub's natural thinness would not be responsible if she became anorexic as a result, unless he forced anorexic behavior.

It would help to understand what anorexia is before trying to say that there could be a safe form of forced anorexia. Because it is not simply "extreme dieting."


Perhaps I wasn't clear, there is a WIDE grey area betwen VERY safe dieting/weight and CLEARLY unsafe anarexia and that grey area is also going to vary with who you take as experts.


Nice attempt at backpedaling. Anorexia is NEVER a form of dieting. Anorexia is ALWAYS unsafe. I didn't say "forced extreme diets." I said forced anorexia. We have had people come here either with a dominant wanting to do it or a sub wanting to do it. Not safe and not sane. Certainly not intelligent.



evesgrden -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 6:31:24 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: TheLilSquaw


quote:

ORIGINAL: evesgrden


You personally might not want someone scared half to death, but there's a HUGE market for that. Sure there's the bedroom stuff, edge play, mind fucks, resistance play, there's also Stephen King novels, horror movies, rollercoasters, jumping out of airplanes, haunted houses, etc etc. Being scared half to death is big business with kink being the smallest piece.




I am one of the people who LOVE being scared to death.
Although I do enjoy edge play I also enjoy that such outside of fetish play.

Horror movies, horror novels, studying serial killers, roller coasters, haunted houses, bungee jumping, and motorcycles.

Heck two of my dream vacations is going to Vlad's castle and the Jack the Ripper tour.



And it could easily be argued that much of that is neither safe nor sane. Do people really need to be told "don't jump out of a plane till you know wtf you're doing?". And even when you do know, is it really that safe or sane to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?



LafayetteLady -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 6:34:47 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: tsatske

She's using a common meaning of a safeword. for most people, the red level safeword (for many the only level they have a safeword for) means 'stop everything immediately. So much so that when I run parties, I insist on having 'green means go' in the safeword line up, so that a couple with a long history together who knows when it's okay to continue again after red, does not scare the tourist by making them think 'red means stop' was ignored. Party rules: Once red is declared, everything stops. If they are not going to completely terminate play, but go again after checking, communicating, whatever, the bottom must declare 'green' audibly before play continues. I am not suggesting this as a new for-everyone one twue way rule, just a rule I've used when I've had parties. I get uncomfortable at the thought that someone watching might be made uncomfortable, if it can be avoided - that's my issue, so I try to do something about it.

If a pair does not have a different understanding of safewording than 'stop everything immediately', then to ignore a safe word is abusive and non-consensual. If a couple negotiated a different way to manage safewording, it might not be.


Now, most here know I don't attend play parties, but it would seem to me, beyond making a "newbie" uncomfortable, that your policy is really the only appropriate thing to do for someone hosting. As the DM, you are, in a sense, responsible. Anyone can say they have been together, blah blah blah. What they do at home is their business, but at an event, there should be no options of having no safewords, and no "go" words. I would think anyone complaining about a policy at an event where they aren't the host shouldn't be there anyway.



JeffBC -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 6:49:21 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: littlewonder
Do people who do skydiving and extreme skiing and all those other extreme sports, go around chanting "SSC"?

This is the thing which has always struck me. Granted, Carol and I don't do the dangerous physical stuff. But plenty of people have argued that what we do is dangerous emotionally or mentally. Heck, I have my concerns on that point myself. I'd be a fool not to. But you know what? I used to have a really nice SSC marriage. Then we decided to change that ON PURPOSE. Quite predictably things got less safe, less sane, and less consensual. Go figure.

How the hell does CM's token vanilla guy end up on this side of this fence?



MissSarahK -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:06:14 PM)

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/real_abuse_in_bdsm/ The real truth about the BDSM community



LafayetteLady -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:17:16 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: MissSarahK

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/real_abuse_in_bdsm/ The real truth about the BDSM community


That simply is HER truth. It is not THE truth. But how nice of you to try and present it as such. Incidentally, why is your profile hidden?



lizi -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:29:57 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: MissSarahK

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/real_abuse_in_bdsm/ The real truth about the BDSM community



All you managed to show here was that sexual assault happens within the group of people practicing BDSM. It also happens in all other groups of people of any size, for instance, I'm sure local historical societies have had similar things happen, as well as church youth groups. Take any group and you'll find the same traits that exist in society at large.



tazzygirl -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:30:05 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: MissSarahK

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/real_abuse_in_bdsm/ The real truth about the BDSM community


As Stryker wrote last year in an essay for Good Vibrations magazine, ” I have yet to meet a female submissive who hasn’t had some sort of sexual assault happen to her.”

Her truth. I have yet to have a single sexual assault since being in the lifestyle. Its been 15 years since my last vanilla relationship.



SimplyMichael -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:35:00 PM)

That is about San Francisco and I feel very mixed by that. There is a lot of seriously fucked up shit that goes on but to SOME extent it is young girls making bad decisions helped by a community that no longer stands up to wrong doing. Some of the crap that I know about kink.com would make people sick but its an exploitative industry.

What complicates it is that it often isn't black and white. You take a scene that glorifies being "edgy" and "extreme". Mix young newbies with poor judgement, bad boundaries with guys who are always looking for the newest pussy and get laid because they are "edgy" and "extreme" and its a bad mix.

Part of the reason I have distanced myself from the scene is because of fucked up shit I have seen. I used to speak out but its pointless, wagons get circled and they will crush you for speaking out. At the same time, I know many, many people in the scene who have never had a negative experience.

Most scenes are pretty low key, the porn industry pollutes everything it touches and most scenes don't have to deal with that. Just the normal issues of sex and relationships.

I know in my time in the scene, I learned a great deal. I get upset sometimes because it could be much more but is rarely more than mundane meetings of rotary and PTA people.



JeffBC -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:37:10 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: MissSarahK
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/real_abuse_in_bdsm/ The real truth about the BDSM community

What, exactly, are you trying to say? Yes, there are bad people in the BDSM community. This shouldn't be a surprise. But they are not the "truth" of the BDSM community any more than rapists are the "truth" of the vanilla community. That's absurd. If we're going to be picking lone examples, why can't Carol & I be "the truth" of the BDSM community?

And I have to admit, I completely agree with the idea that dangerous is dangerous. Sex, lawlessness, casual disregard for conventional wisdom, working in a half-fantasy, half-real mode... what could possibly go wrong? If we wanted to do safety training that's what we'd be telling newcomers... it isn't safe.



RemoteUser -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:49:10 PM)

When I started, SSC was all the rage. The places I hung out didn't use it as a launching point for arguments about "what is safe, what is sane" and so on; in fact, I've never been openly exposed to that outside of these forums. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, only that my experience with that reaction is limited.

That said, I took it as a set of ideals, which meant it was worth whatever you put into it (like any other ideal).

Subjectivity aside, none of the tops/masters/[insert flavour name of the week for "leader" here] I am aware of here, advocate consciously being unsafe and knowingly putting their playmates in danger. There are probably toybreakers on the site, but I don't see them advertise it in the forums. (The other side is another matter.)

I don't think consent is so bad, either; before you set up that rape scene where no doesn't actually mean no, it would be kinda cool to be on the same page about it.

(I skipped the sanity because I don't elaborate on things I'm entirely unfamiliar with.)

In other words, the ideals are ok as they are, but saying they won't save you if you're stupid any more than baby Jeebus will swoop down and paint your nose green, seems a bit redundant. They're ideals, how you play them out is as personal as any other formative opinion you espouse.

I'm only stating this because words and ideals are hardly half as wrong as the way they are used. I don't give flying donkey dung about SSC or RACK because they are not my ideals.

Edited for a typo. (It wasn't significant, but it was irritating.)



MissSarahK -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:50:33 PM)

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/08/03/thinking-more-clearly-about-bdsm-versus-abuse/ Here is a less biased link.These are all over cyberspace.



RemoteUser -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 7:54:42 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: MissSarahK

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/08/03/thinking-more-clearly-about-bdsm-versus-abuse/ Here is a less biased link.These are all over cyberspace.


So is urban dictionary.

Here you go, in case the link doesn't work for you, lucky #7:

7. BDSM

1. A sexual relationship in which one partner is a controlling doushe and the other is a submissive pussy.



tazzygirl -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 8:00:41 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: MissSarahK

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/08/03/thinking-more-clearly-about-bdsm-versus-abuse/ Here is a less biased link.These are all over cyberspace.


Im still lost at what you are trying to say.

Why dont you just spill it.



njlauren -> RE: Safe,Sane and Consensual (6/8/2013 10:00:24 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael

So, no violet wand above the waist?

So I flip you upside down or bend you over a couch, now most of you is "below the waist"...LOL




Violet wands are static devices, which by definition means there is no current flow......:). As far as my chest being below my waist is I am upside down, well, then the rule would be no playing below the waist:)



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