The Origins of Safe, Sane, Consensual (SSC)

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The Origins of Safe, Sane, Consensual (SSC) - 3/14/2007 3:36:27 PM

DominaSmartass

Posts: 961
Joined: 1/12/2006
From: This month? Maryland
Status: offline

On a previous thread, someone wrote, in regards to SSC:

quote:

Just as an FYI, that's not the BDSM foundation. It's a slogan that was made up to make us more palatable to the vanilla masses.

Some people chose to not live their lives based on an advertising slogan. I am one of those people.

So here is my response. SSC, though it may have evolved into a slogan, was never "made up" to be such. The original use of the phrase was in the mission statement of GMSMA (Gay Male S/M Activists) to state that "GMSMA is a not-for-profit organization of gay males in the New York City area who are seriously interested in safe, sane, and consensual S/M." It was their way of saying that they were a group of guys who were into kinky stuff for their own pleasure and by their own choice, as opposed to "involuntary" sadomasochism AKA abuse. Do you think abuse still occurred even within people who claimed to practice "SSC S/M" ? I certainly believe so. But abuse is a tricky word and I believe it can be attributed not only to the intent of the abuser but to the perception of the abused. That is, someone may believe everything is honky-dory and the person on the other end may feel abused. It's not mutually exclusive.

I think we have to consider the climate of the time when SSC was coined as a phrase. Gay men were seen as dangerous in many ways due to their sexuality and what came along with it (subverting societal norms, AIDS...) I think people who write off "SSC" as a marketing ploy to make us more accepted into the vanilla world are looking at it wrong.

But here is a link to an essay by slave david stein, the originator of SSC. You might find it interesting.

http://www.leatherleadership.org/library/safesanestein.htm

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