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Noah -> RE: The use of safe-words (11/8/2006 12:46:33 PM)
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Thanks for responding, Merc.
(I presume based on the ambiguous presentation that it is Merc I'm responding to. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth
Noah,
The perception of those on the other side of the debate being somehow inferior is self inflicted. Just as if your "subtler and richer" comment needing to be included in your response to imply superiority in using safe words.
Some people hate subtle and try to avoid it. Some people prefer bread to cake. Cake is too rich. Some people like things simple and bare-bones and black and white and cut and dried. That's their taste. I'm not calling it inferior. I'm not calling them inferior. That is your (faulty) inference, not my implication. If they can't tell MD20-20 from a decent Merlot and they're happy with that, I'm happy with that. I'm that way myself in regard a a large number of specific things. I'm not calling them inferior for that. I'm pointing out a difference.
Lots of people who lack an appreciation or the capacity to appreciate something can still accept that those who are able to operate on other terms are not less authentic. It is narrow-mindedness and unwillingness to proceed in an intellectually open way that I find inferior.
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It rings hollow to me. So should the inferences of superiority in not using safe words should be hollow to those who have confidence in their approach and rules within their relationship. If they ring too true or too close to home, I image the only response must be attack, because the logic of the opposing side is irrefutable. At the very least you can't formulate a strong contrary argument.
The inference you refer is your inference that I was expressing the belief that safeworders are superior to non-safeworders and I'm glad it rang hollow because I never said nor implied that. In fact I stated explicitly that I don't use safewords myself. Why would I choose for myself the course of action which I (as per your inference) view as inferior?
Confidence is great. But people who lack confidence should also be allowed to explore their urges, as far as I'm concerned. Rules are great too if that's your thing. They are absolutely not required, of course, for a fulfilling BDSM relationship. Two people can interact spontaneously in terms of the power dynamic they share. They can do this with lots of rules or a few or with no rules at all.
The thing that I find superior is the ability to grant that there are plenty of ways to do WIITWD. No one with history here would pretend that they haven't heard the "BDSM with safewords is not Real Bdsm". Surely not you guys.
A different way of stating this theme is: "If hearing yellow, green, plaid, or chartreuse, changes what you are doing, or if you'd stop hearing a safe-word from your submissive, in those instance at least the submissive maintains the control." which of course is elliptical for "... and so this isn't twue submission."
Why is the dom in control when he changes course in response to her widening her eyes that certain way he knows so well, or if she says "Stop. It hurts too much," but yet the dom is yielding control to the sub if he changes course in response to her saying: "Pineapple, Sir"?
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Lets look at it in basic terms. What is the purpose of using a safe-word?
Most would reply protection.
Well in the broadest sense of the word, sure, this might sum it up. But if you mean that to be short for “protection of the sub against damage by the dom, period” then I think you’re out of touch.
As I detailed in my post the central purpose of safewords for people where I come from, so to speak, is to "protect" certain sorts of speech from being taken the wrong way. Or you could say to "protect" certain sorts of opportunities, such as the opportunity to say "No" loud and clear and have that understood as something more complex than a simple refusal, to allow it to be situationally overruled, you might say, without constant renegotiation as one goes along. Or you could say to "protect" the flow of the scene.
Safe words can offer protection in this sense and also in more direct senses, as I will describe below.
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This is the main reason we focus upon when we counsel others that we say, IN OUR OPINION, they are counter protection.
Look. If I say: "IN MY OPINION Belgians have webbed feet and hatch from eggs," I'm not bullshitting anyone but myself. I am making a factual claim and in a cowardly way dressing it in the ill-fitting robe of opinion.
If you want to say that in fact safewords haven't worked out for you, that's cool. If you want to state the opinion that safe words are more trouble than they're worth, that's cool too. But don't make a factual claim like "safewords are counter protection" and hide behind some conceit that you're merely expressing an opinion.
If you want to opine that safewords can turn out in some common sorts of cases to work counterproductively, I'm with you. But to say that they ARE counter-protection, as if they have some sort of active malevolent agency of their own is just provocative, incendiary talk in my opinion.
Scissors can hurt you. That doesn't license the claim that scissors ARE hurtful objects and ones to avoid to boot.
Scissors and safewords are tools. Tools can be used well or misused. Even before usage becomes an issue we can note that tools can be well or poorly designed. The whole selection and implementation of a safeword policy can be done well or poorly. That's a fine thing to discuss and share wisdom about.
To make statements like "safewords ARE counter protection,” however, doesn't advance that conversation, in my view. It hinders that conversation first by its needlessly polarizing approach and secondly by often being flat wrong. I mean look at any case where a well-designed safeword policy is executed well and serves it's purpose. How can it be claimed that the safe-word in that case WAS counter-protection? And if safewords can and do work often enough how can it be claimed that safe words are quite generally "counter protection"?
The safe word was counter protection that accidentally or magically protected someone in contravention of its basic inherent nature? Please.
If we want to talk about risks, lets call them risks. If we want to make unqualified ontic claims like "safewords are counter protection" ... well I just don't know why anyone would want to at all, having given this all as much thought as you guys obviously have. And I mean it is clear that you are very bright as well as caring people.
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The most adamant newly initiated submissive, can believe they should resist using their safe-word to prove how intense they are.
Yes. They can. They can also believe that full-force bullwhips are not problematic for the abdomen. That someone can misunderstand or misapply a tool is no discredit to the tool.
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The new dominant can believe that until they hear a safe-word, or at least whatever version of 'yellow' they are using, he isn't giving the submissive what they want.
I can't relate to the dom who manages interactions in terms of fulfilling the submissive’s every need and desire. I guess some do operate that way and that's fine with me. But that aside, honestly this example of yours would strike me as improbably rare and more important not to the point at hand. What is problematic with it isn’t the presence of absence of a safeword but the lunkheadedness of this hypothetical new dominant.
If two people have a safeword policy there seems at least a reasonable chance that they have had at least some brief discussion about it, eh? Fair to say? So you would hold that this dom is likely to believe that unless he does things the sub explicitly doesn't want, he isn't giving the sub what she does want? That sounds a little cockeyed to me.
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How counter productive to what a scene should be! There is no argument in that no safe-word occurs prior to the fact. Your gun example being the exception,
But it isn't the exception. It is common as dirt.
2. He walks up to her with a needle./ she safewords out upon seeing it.
3. He says: "Tonight we're gonna try some scat" and she safewords out at the mention of the activity.
4. He pulls in to the SPCA. She asks what's up. He tells her his idea. She safewords out.
5. He serves her a plate of brussel sprouts. She safewords out.
I could go on all day. {Can I get an "AMEN" on that at least?}
It is perfectly conventional, well within the usual range of ways in which people use safewords, for them to be used pro-actively.
Please note--all those who try to make a doichotomy where there is none between safewords on one side and clear communication on the other--that saying an agreed-upon safeword to indicate a desire to interrupt or discontinue is nothing else but a case of clear communication. All sorts of other warm and fuzzy talk can preceed it and more can follow it. The employment of safewords does not limit any other kind of communication. No one has proposed that one use safe-words to the exclusion of other communication and all the persistent argumentation against that case which no one has made is tiresome and pointless.
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but I've seen 'gun-play' in intense interrogation scenes, not loaded, but used as a prop. It's the 2nd shot. that would generate the safe-word should the gun be loaded, again too late.
I won't dispute your testimony. In the (unloaded) case you're talking about with the people you know, maybe that is how it would work. The fact is that for lots of other people in all sorts of other cases it works differently. That isn't some theory of mine. It is how I have seen safewords used and how others posting here have detailed their own experiences with safewords.
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To frame a discussion of safe-words with a premise like "they occur after the fact" is simply to ignore vast quantities of plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face facts Outside the 9mm example where is this "vast quantity of plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face"?
Why don't you ask Lashra, or Gypsygirl, or Celeste43 or any of the other posters to this thread who kindly gave example after example of this exact thing, to which you have turned a blind and seemingly rather disingenuous eye.
For your convenience I have included a few of them below.
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Injecting the mocking "Weal and Twue" were brought into the debate by you. Just as the attack on using safe-words was implied by you.
So when on page one PhilLogan said:
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Safewords remove power from the D to the sub. It is McBondage.
... he wasn't attacking safeword usage? Come on guys. If he wasn’t then why did he return to apologize for it?
And when he says that safe-wording is McBondage it is precisely what I am talking about when I bring in the Weal and Twue language.
daddysprop247 said on the same page:
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like PhilLogan, i've always believed that safewords allow the bottom or submissive to ultimately be the one in control, often allowing little to no actual domination or submission to take place.
She obviously took his comment to be disparaging of the authenticity of D/s with safe-words. It wasn't just myself and E1956 and Morrigel and so many others.
One calls safewording McBondage (momentarily). The other says that the presence of safewords prevents "actual" domination or submission. "Actual" is as good a synonym as you could ever want for "Weal and Twue"
So please drop this transparently false claim that it was I who brought this stuff into the conversation. I highlighted it with the artificial spelling but it was very much in play. And the fact is that you brought it in yourself with your "chartreuse or plaid" comment quoted above.
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Confidence in what you do doesn't require mocking those who disagree with your position. If an argument is strong enough it should be enough. to support your position. My perspective is what generate the questions. My apologies if those questions came across as an attack.
You're offering lessons in argumentation. Fair enough. Each of us can learn from each other one of us, I figure.
One of my arguments was that the premiss of this thread just doesn't obtain. I gave testimony of my personal experience that it doesn't obtain and I gave a counter example which was of a type that could easily be widely differentiated. I would think that would be strong enough.
Meanwhile several other people have testified to their own use or observance of safewords used preemptorally (if that’s a word). You disregarded my testimony and inexplicably called my example exceptional and you ignored the testimony of all those other people in support of my argument that the premiss doesn't obtain.
Is that how argumentation is done down your way?
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Lashra
My sub has been instructed to use "yellow" as an indicator that things are getting a bit to intense for him to handle.
Note that she said "getting" a bit too intense. Not that it was too intense yet. This is pre-emptive.
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gypsygirl
I can feel the beginnnings of a panic happening, as my body reacts. At this point I say yellow.
again, pre-emptive of possible further eventualities.
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Celeste43
If I start to feel nauseous, and use a safe word right then, it's before I get to the point of vomiting. The same with feeling as though I may pass out. I can use it, explain what's wrong and be loose with my head between my knees in time to prevent going unconscious. In bondage, I tell him when the hands begin to get numb, I don't wait until there's no sensation left. I say something in time to prevent a worse outcome.
I could go on but what is the point? You have been presented with lots of evidence that safewords are commonly used pre-emptively and you persist in your contention that this is not the case.
You can hold whatever false and misinformed views you care to. I can point out the fact that they are false if I care to. We aren't talking about a difference of opinion here. It is a matter of fact, not opinion, whether people use safewords pre-emptively. In fact they do. In fact they have told you that they do. In fact you ignore the facts and cling to your false contention. What's up with that?
You pose in this role of the defender of calm, reasoned discourse. Somehow though, when your central premiss has been dismantled by solid empiracle evidence from a wide range of sources you refuse to acknowledge the truth, or your error. With whom would you rather seek truth and understanding? Someone who sometimes speaks derisively but argues ingenuously and admits when his central premiss is wrong, or the well-mannered guy who defends his mistakes at all costs and when the last hope is gone fails to acknowledge that his “insight”--the one that inspired the whole damned discussion--was flat wrong from the start?
Pass the beer nuts.
You spoke above about "needing" include soemthing in a response. Here more recently you speak of what isn't "required" in a post.
I don't post, nor choose my terms, as a matter of need or requirement. I post what I please and I choose my terms to generate the the effect I desire. Sometimes I succeed, but rarely with all the people, as it were.
When someone starts talking about "McBondage" without copping to the fact that he is calling the kink of others unreal, I find that nothing less that ridiculous.
When someone starts talking about how her submission is "actual" and someone else's isn't, all because the other person employs a safeword and she doesn’t, once again I find that ridiculous.
I feel that in some cases the proper response to the ridiculous is ridicule. In any event, the degree of confidence I feel should be of no importance to anyone in comparison to the importance of establishing the truth or falsity of the claims on which the entire discussion hinges.
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Other reasons? Its a shortcut, you don't need to know the other person so well if you can trust them to respond to a safe word. Well, as someone pointed out, casual encounters are better facilitated with a safe-word. Of course the comment had to be given with an inference that those in relationships don't play as much as those causal players.
It seems obvious to both (or all of us) then. A person who is in themselves trustworthy can hardly be counted upon to recognize subtle and possibly apparently contradictory unspoken signals the way an intimate might be able to. So we can see that this trustworthy person can reasonably be counted on to safeguard a not-so-familiar partner more effectively (though far from perfectly) with a safeword than without--in certain common and familiar sorts of cases, anyway.
I completely miss your point in the sentence about how a comment "had to be given," by the way so I'll leave it for further explanation if you think it is worth doing.
In short. Safewords can effectively contribute to the safety of a scene. So we agree on this and yet you propound the view that safewords ARE counter protection. Isn't contributing to safety an odd accomplishment for something which is by it's nature counter protection? {edited to note that since I composed this you have in a subsequent post backed away from the strong ontic claim. Good for you and good for everyone who helped you see the wisdom in this dialectical adjustment you have chosen to make}
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But causal play, like casual sex is a physical experience that doesn't compare to the same physical encounter with a known and trusting partner.
It doesn't compare? Well I can certainly see all sorts of ways in which it compares. But what does this have to do with your dual contentions that safewords are always used after the fact and that they are counter protection?
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A safe-word is just like a condom. It works great when it works, when it doesn't the consequences are usually very serious.
I certainly don't have the data to support or refute that claim. I'm pretty sure you don't either. The cases where condom failure results in serious consequences are easy to note and well reported. The possibly millions of cases where condoms fail with no noticeable results whatsoever are by definition not noticed, not reported, not worked into any equation.
The health consequewnces of crossing the street are usually serious too if you only count the times the pedestrian was hit by a car or got knocked up or infected on the other side of the street. "Usually", though, when someone crosses the street it isn't a real big deal. My guess is that usually when a condom fails it is no big deal either, although in a significant minority of cases someone might get pregnant or infected and it is a big huge deal for sure.
But if the failure of a safeword--by your analogy--usually results in serious consequences then it would seem to follow that whenever a safeword actually works serious consequences are successfully avoided thereby.
The fact that zillions of people use safewords and many keep using them year after year suggests to me that they often work fine. Your argument, viewed closely then, gives powerful reason to believe that safewords are for some a powerful and effective tool--even as they are in other cases at the center of failures, disappointments and sometimes grave harm.
Sounds kind of like scissors, or cars, or telephones, etc, etc. I'm not gonna campaign against scissors, cars, telephones OR safewords, though you obviously have taken up one of these campaigns.
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The aspect of who controls the scene in a safe-word environment is a matter of honesty. If hearing yellow, green, plaid, or chartreuse, changes what you are doing, or if you'd stop hearing a safe-word from your submissive, in those instance at least the submissive maintains the control.
Honestly, this is just sophistical noise-making if you ask me. I don't use sagfe words but if I did, if I decided to for my own reasons and insisted upon it and used them as and where and when I pleased and taught my partner to relate to safewords in every way exactly according to my will to the point that she did so uniformly and without question, you could of course persist in your claim that this constitutes upending the power dynamic.
(which, let us be careful to note is no less than tantamount to saying that the dom is no longer "actually" in control so the submission is not "actual" which of course is a synonym for Real which all puts you in the "I'm Twue, You're Not Twue school of BDSM discourse.) Daddysprop and Phil were not the only ones derogating the practices of others as inauthentic. You were too.
There is a thread running in which people are saying that anal penetration IS not domly and so anyone who enjoys it cannot BE a TWUE dom.
That holds about as much water as your claim that anyone who employs a safeword is not actually dominating (from the top) or submitting (from the bottom.)
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If I'm driving the car, pushing the gas, brake, clutch pedal and steering; but every turn or the important turns are determined by someone else, I'm a chauffeur in control of the mechanism known as a car, but someone else controls where it's going.
And what if you're driving the car, as an expert driver but unschooled in the intricacies of engine mechanics, and a good mechanic happens to be riding shotgun, and the mechanic says "That exhaust color just changed from dark to white, which means that whereas before it was merely running rich it now has a breach in the cooling system, probably a blown head gasket, which in the case of aluminum engines like this can rapidly be catastrophic." He is telling you that for reasons you didn't have access to it is a really good idea to stop the fucking car unless you intend to ruin it. He may say it with a long discourse like that or you may agree in advance that if he notes signs of impending catastophic engine failure he just say “Pineapple!” so that you can shut the goddam engine off quicker and minimize the repair bill.
Do you want to maintain that this means that anytime the shotgun knows more about engines than the driver, and the driver is willing to take his counsel, it is therefore the case that the driver is not really in control of the car? Go ahead, then. But I think you're playing with words in a silly way.
If a couple likes to do medical scenes in which she frequently describes feeling symptoms of debilitating injury and the dom insists to have a safeword on the table in case one time she is actually being debilitated, and you want to maintain that the dom is therefore not in control. Go ahead. I think you are playing with words in a silly way.
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Communication is where the distinction blurs. There is constant communication with us. Sometimes, as subtle as a touch in the 'right' place. Sometimes a whispered question requiring a response. Getting back to danger again, in lieu of a touch or whisper, and instead waiting for a safe-word, I could be flogging a dead or passed out slave if her back was to me; not knowing it happened until releasing the bondage.
So explain this to me. If she says "there is a nail sticking up from the floor you are boinking me on. It is digging three-quarters of an inch into the flesh beside my spine and I'm really not enjoying this, can we stop?" and if in that case you interrupt your play, are you "not in control". I mean you are the driver but she is telling you she wants to turn and you are turning.
If you are still in control in this case, why are you not still in control in a case which is exactly similar except instead of giving you a drawn-out explanation she just says: "RED" as you had previously told her to do in cases where she was being damaged in a way that might not be immediately apparent to you but wherein time was of the essence?
In short, why does changing course in response to ANY other sort of feedback from your partner qualify you as a Real dom still in charge but changing course in response to an insisted-on-by-you safeword constitute abandonment of the power dynamic?
I really want to know.
It is just so whack to say that a dom who devotes his entire attention to searching out non-verbal warning signs from his partner, maybe even to the point of erasing any chance that he can relax and enjoy the scene (not that this need be the case but it could be the case,) is a big domly dom while the guy who proceeds with reasonable care including an ear out for a safeword is actually a submissive who is kidding himself.
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The exact reasons given for using safe-words are the same reasons I would point out against their use. They don't help you learn about the other people. They don't replace trust. They don't protect against the exact thing that they are meant to.
So in hours and hours of discussion of the value and right application of safewords a couple categorically cannot learn anything about one another?
When safewords come into the picture they don’t arrive vacuum packed.
You can of course learn similar things about a partner in a conversation about why you aren’t gonna use safewords. I don’t dispute that. But for you to dispute that the careful employment of safewords contributes nothing to mutual understanding at best betrays a gross lack on your part of understanding how people actually employ safewords.
When the action starts, maybe the dom stops when the sub voices a synonym for the safeword. I think the sub might thereby glean some insight into the degree or care and attention this person brings to the table. As a result they can have another conversation they may never have had absent the safeword. There are uncountable ways in which the employment of safewords can facilitate mutual understanding between partners. The world is just not nearly as black and white as you choose to paint it.
As to trust, you're not being as ingenuous as you might be here, Merc. The fact that the use of safe words can facilitate the trustworthiness of a partner (as you admitted in the one sort of case) does not imply that the safeword replaces trust. So you are arguing against a straw man here that I have not seen anyone try to prop up but you.
Safe words, properly designed and used can--as you yourself have said, work when they work. That is to say that they can protect protect certain things in certain ways. Just as a good lock can protect you in your home. In a given case the high quaility and effectiveness of your lock may enrage a home-invader who responds by crashing through a window and killing you rather than just stealing your TV. That doesn't mean that "Locks are counter protection" It just means that they are not perfect, impervious protecttion.
I wonder if you, or LA, can provide a link to any post in the history of this forum in which someone seriously proposed that safewords are perfect, impervious protection. I doubt it. {edited to note that Sinergy and perhaps others have already asked for this and when last I looked it didn't seem to be forthcoming}
We all have evidence that safewords can work. We all have evidence that they can fail. We each have personal preferences. But only some of us say that when you exchange power the way the OTHER people do you aren't really exchanging power.
When you say things like: “They don't protect against the exact thing that they are meant to.” it rings altogether differently than when you oscillate to something like: We don’t prefer them personally and see them as imperfect but mean no derogation of practices which involve them. Which standpoint are you really taking here?
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Argumentatively, safe-words are what allow a person to submit as a 'victim' of sensation play while maintaining control. They are the same as a person who whats to go someplace, but doesn't want to drive so they hire a chauffeur, or taxi service.
This is one, and only one of many uses for a safeword. And a fine one if you ask me. If a person wants to surrender control in various significant ways and mantain control in this significant way, terrific.
In asphixiation play the sub temporarily surrenders control of her respiration. Now beth might not want to surrender this particular control to you. Does this mean that breath-players are licensed to say that you and beth don’t really exchange power? That she is ultimately in control at any time when you don't have a baggie over her head? Preposterous. Just as preposterous as your claim that a sub who surrenders control in all sorts of ways but employs a safeword in some situations is actually topping from the bottom.
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But - SO WHAT? The problem that people have with that statement is that they see it as an attack. It isn't.
Look. You are maintaining that a person for whom their power exchange may be the most powerful and precious activity in their life should sit and listen to your theory that if they use a safeword they aren't REALLY exchanging power because the sub is REALLY in control. And you expect them to not see this as an attack?
But when I point out that some people can appreciate more subtleties than other people I should be seen as attacking? Man you really seem to like having things two contradictory ways.
You claim that WhatItIsThatYOUDo is real power exchange and WhatItIsThatOTHERSDo is is fake power exchange. And you are all sniffy that anyone should see this as an attack. Well you have illustrated for us anyway something about your definition of the word attack, which might be seen by the average person as somewhat idiosyncratic.
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No matter how you enjoy your dynamic, from either side of the flogger, you enjoy it. If safe-words facilitate your ability to experience it - CONGRATULATIONS! I simply point out what is pragmatically apparent by their use. I would say IMO, but it would be like saying a stone drops due to gravity - IMO.
Here’s your oscillation again. Back and forth between two positions. On one side you make categorical statements like: “They (safewords) don't protect against the exact thing that they are meant to” and “If hearing yellow, green, plaid, or chartreuse, changes what you are doing, or if you'd stop hearing a safe-word from your submissive, in those instance at least the submissive maintains the control.” and your driving metaphor which ruled that the driver is not in control of the car if he ever accedes to the passenger’s input on important issues, on the one hand.
Then you oscillate to the other side and indicate that Everything is Beautiful and I didn’t mean to say suggest that anyone else’s kink is less authentic than mine.
So which is it, Merc? Which do you believe? That a submissive can indeed submit in the presence of a safeword or that she really can’t? That a dom can be in control while insisting on a safeword, or that he can’t?
And are you finally willing to grant that you were just plain wrong in asserting that safewords are only ever employed retroactively except in my hypothetical gun example?
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