Safewords

I don’t play with safewords.

Let me rephrase that: I don’t generally play with safewords.  I have used them in the past, as both top and bottom, but I can probably count those instances on one hand over the past 20 years.

SSC vs. RACK

Safewords are a by-product of “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” (SSC), which was the guideline of the leather/BDSM community in the 1990s.  They show that what we are doing is Safe (see, “safe” is even part of the term!), Sane (we understand and respect limits), and Consensual (we negotiate scenes and agree on what will happen).

Today, people increasingly embrace “Risk-Aware Consensual Kink” (RACK) as a model.  The need to present Safe and Sane are not embedded in that phrase, and thus play without safewords may fit in more easily.

Let’s be clear, though: I am not bashing SSC in favor of RACK.  Both are valuable phrases for people to learn and understand.  They are not a one-or-the-other option; they can both be in effect at the same time.  SSC is externally focused, saying “BDSM play is not inherently a bad thing, so long as you are doing it with sense and reason,” while RACK is internally focused, saying “Some of the things we do may appear and even actually be risky and a bit crazy, but we know this and deal with those issue appropriately.”  It is difficult to convince someone familiar with SCC that fisting to the elbow or flogging with blackberry vines or skewering the testicles with electrified needles are safe and sane activities, but they are certainly kinky and can be done risk-aware and risk-mitigated.

Why I Don’t Use Safewords

I find that there are three main purposes for safewords:

1. Safewords are used in a public context (even required in some cases), to make sure that the PC police are convinced that we are doing BDSM play the right way.
   
   That is, we use safewords not so ensure that our scene is safe, but to ensure that other believe that it is.  Safewords in this context only really apply in public dungeon spaces.  Public dungeon play is a great thing.  But there are relatively few dungeon spaces which are both welcoming and conducive to gay male leather play, and rules requiring safewords are typically seen only in pansexual spaces.  (Gay leathermen don’t really like rules forced on us, you know?)
    
2. Safewords are used with BDSM newbies (or others) where there is a need to show them that we are competent, honest players.
   
   This is the one place where I have used safewords in the past, both as a bottom and a top, to establish a base level of competency and trust.  Recently, I offered to establish them for a play scene with a newbie, but it wasn’t expressed as needed, so we didn’t use them.
    
3. Safewords are used when we can’t trust that “No” and “Stop” will be intended as such and will be heeded.
   
   There are two places this happens.  First is where the bottom doesn’t know his limits (or the top doesn’t believe that he does), so words other than the automatic ones are  set so that the bottom has to process a little deeper than “No” and “Stop”, has to consider a little more whether his limits have actually been reached.

The other is “mind fuck” play, where it isn’t that the bottom doesn’t know his limits but that the top (and maybe the bottom as well) wants to push past those, and they depend on safewords to help force the bottom away from calling it quits too early.

You’ll note the inherent problem with safewords: they are meant to establish trust and competency, but they don’t ensure it.  If you need to convince a play partner that you are competent, does mouthing sound bites about “yellow and red” do that?  If you need to convince watching third parties that you are competent, are you playing or are you performing?  If you don’t trust that “No means no” (or you don’t allow that meaning), why do you trust that “Red” (or god help us, that “Chocolate cream pie”) will mean “No”.

So to summarize, I don’t use safewords because:

• I don’t play in spaces where there are required to be allowed to play
• I rarely play with guys who need that I prove that competency level
• I don’t play with guys/in situations where “No” and “Stop” don’t mean “No” and “Stop”

What I Use Instead

Obviously (I hope), I don’t ignore all communication from my play partner about his state and needs.  I just don’t use formal, negotiated safeword language.  I use body language and actual language to determine the state of my play partner, and I react according to what that tells me.

Since fisting is a big passion of mine — as top and bottom — I know that in the heat of a scene, especially when the bottom has gone into a sub headspace (or beyond; I go into animal headspaces — dog, pig, bear, werewolf, trout), the bottom may not be able to form coherent words.  Even “No” and “Wait” and “Stop” and “Pause” and “Ouch” may not be possible; “chocolate cream pie” is surely out the window.  When words cannot be formed, and when the bottom is literally thrashing in the sling, growling and barking, clawing at the air (is it getting hot in here or is it just me?), the top has got to depend the ability to “read” what the bottom needs well beyond negotiated words and signals.

(This isn’t limited to fisting in a sling.  I’ve seen it and done it with fucking, nipple play, CBT, flogging… anything where the bottom’s headspace goes sub-verbal.)

Further, of course, is that the “red” safeword is typically meant as “stop the activity now, we are done,” but that doesn’t typically apply with fisting.  With fisting “Stop” typically means “Too much intensity!  We need a serious pause to let me come down from my endorphin high an evaluate, but we’re probably not actually done here.”  (I have only once had to stop a scene outright in the middle.  Once you start seeing scaled, tentacled elder gods from beyond space looking back at you with intelligence and hunger, you’d want to stop it, too.  Bad bad juju.)

Other Thoughts

There’s only one safeword that really works: “lawsuit”.

I host play parties 4-5 times a year, and I don’t use Dungeon Monitors for them, either.  As with safewords, DMs are a facet of SCC, useful for either proving we run a “proper” play party, or where the attendees cannot trust one another’s competency and need a chain of command to deal with potential issues.  My parties have a sufficiently vetted, experienced, empowered set of players involved that this has not been an issue.