It is also critically important that everybody involved in alternative sexual practices must be able to give meaningful, well-considered consent. If someone’s mood or judgment has been altered by alcohol or drugs, their consent doesn’t mean much. Intoxication is strongly discouraged in virtually all kink communities. (Besides, why would anyone want to set up all that wonderful kinky sex and then miss out on it because they’re too drunk or stoned to feel the sensations? Our experience is that “feeling no pain” usually means feeling no pleasure either.)
Limits.
A good player knows his limits, whether he is planning to be the bottom (victim, slave, baby, kidnapee, or whatever) or the top (villain, master, mommy, pirate captain, etc.). Everybody has limits. Even though some of us would rather dream of wide open spaces, where anything is possible, the truth is that we are planning to bring a fantasy into reality, where suddenly the laws of gravity and the limits of our knowledge, our experience or our desire - often even our equipment - are entirely real and need to be dealt with.
If Bill is turned off by sticky feelings, it’s good idea for Joe to know it before he cuts loose with the whipped cream and an eager tongue. Some people have limits around real traumas from the past ― Dossie still doesn’t play with anything that sounds like punishment - or anything else that they believe will be too scary or too uncomfortable, not erotic, or anything else that might cause problems in the scene. Tops have limits too ― limits of experience, as well as whatever is uncomfortable or undesirable for them. We all have physical limits ― asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, contact lenses, etc. - that need to be discussed and understood before anybody gets tied up.
During negotiations, information is exchanged and agreements made about safer sex, any health risks (from herpes to HIV), birth control, and what precautions the players plan to take to reduce the risk of passing something unwanted from one to another. Your authors strongly believe that all sexually active adults have a responsibility to educate themselves about safer sex and practice until they become competent with whatever protections, like condoms, they deem advisable to preserve everybody’s health. Many kinky players have advantages here, as most toys can be easily sterilized or kept clean, and fantasy roleplaying is often a no-risk sexual activity. We wish we could refer you to a good book on current safer-sex thinking here, but there hasn’t been one in several years, and diseases and their prevention change rapidly. The World Wide Web and your local sexually transmitted disease clinic can answer any questions you might have; good places to start your search would be your local chapter of Planned Parenthood, or the excellent website at
http://www.safersex.org
.
Two people who have played with each other before might simply inquire if anything has changed, or talk about how they envision the proposed scene. If they are planning a scene that has the potential for profound emotional catharsis, they might more deeply discuss their feelings, or what works for them if they should need comfort, or calming, or support. Both of them: once when Catherine played violent juvenile delinquent ravishing Dossie’s innocent prom queen in what became a very intense scene, it was Catherine who needed comfort and reassurance afterward ― which, we assure you, she received in generous measure.
Many players also set a time, perhaps the next morning over breakfast, when they will discuss how the scene went for them, what worked, what didn’t, what they might have liked a little different: such discussions should also include thanks and praise for what made them the happiest about the scene, which is often the most important information of all.
Safewords.
Much kinky play involves the fantasy of nonconsent, which means sometimes the bottom may wish to make believe he doesn’t actually want to (even though he does), and may enjoy shrieking, “No! No! Not the rabbit fur! Anything but the rabbit fur!” (This is affectionately known among players as “Please don’t throw me in the briar patch.”) So some other way to communicate actual nonconsent is needed, ideally in words that neither player would ever utter in the heat of passion: “Please, please, please” is too ambiguous. Some players call for a break, others use pet words (uncle, for instance), and many find the words “red, yellow and green” a convenient code, where “red” means “Stop right now, we need to talk,” “yellow” means something like “Slow down” or “Go a little easier, please,” and “green” means “This is great, let’s keep going!”
Safewords may be used by the top or the bottom, and are always to be respected. It should be understood that a person who has stopped a scene with a safeword may be very embarrassed or feeling like a failure, so the ethical response to a safeword is mutual support, reflecting the assumption that a safeword communicates an honest need and is never to be questioned.
One kinky friend of ours, the mother of young children, has taught her kids and their friends how to safeword - an ideal strategy for keeping childish tickling and wrestling at a level that feels safe and fun for all concerned.
Years ago Dossie described this approach to negotiation to a friend who was worried about Dossie’s safety in exploring S/M. This friend, on hearing what you have just read, was so moved that she burst into tears. She explained how much she wished sex in her non-kinky life could be negotiated with so much thoughtfulness and respect. Indeed, the principles of negotiation in S/M were derived from what sex therapists recommend to all sex partners: good and accurate communication improves everybody’s sex life. So much for the “unspeakable.”
Communication
. Talking explicitly about sex has been forbidden in our culture for a very long time, so anyone who values clear and honest communication about sexual matters can expect to invest some time and energy in learning how. We promise you that should you choose to make the effort to overcome embarrassment and learn to talk about sex, your investment will be richly rewarded. Imagine how your life would be if it were easy to say “That tickles!” or “You’re rubbing... too hard, too soft, too high, too low,” whatever it is that will make your lovemaking work better. Only with good communication has your friend or relative been able to develop the trust on which good sex is based ― remember, the shared vulnerability of risky communications can only strengthen and deepen intimacy, and get everybody more of exactly the right kind of sex they need for the joy in their lives. If you’d like to learn more about being a better sexual communicator, you’ll find some good books about communication for people in all sexual lifestyles in the Resource Guide. But meanwhile, rest assured that your kinky person has already done at least some of the hard work of learning to communicate the information required to keep her sex life healthy, happy and fun.
Safeguards.
Everyone is responsible for safety. All players, not just the tops, are responsible for researching any proposed activity and learning how to do whatever that is safely. For instance, it is safe to spank or flog on well-padded parts of the body, and not on unprotected areas where organs or tendons, or other vulnerable parts, might get bruised. Good bondage requires knowing how to maintain circulation and comfort: very few folks are eroticized to pins and needles. Reading good books and attending support groups and workshops are good sources of information about how to make one’s dreams come true in a healthy and safe way. So if you want to know if your kinky person is playing safely, you might ask about where she gets her information.
While the top is primarily responsible for preserving safety during a scene, and knowing how to do bondage or use a whip correctly, the bottom is also responsible: for setting limits, for letting the top know when something is going wrong, for using safewords when needed. The bottom may feel reluctant to stop a scene in progress to let someone know that his foot has fallen asleep; the top may feel reluctant to ask if the bottom wants more or less of whatever - it is embarrassing, and definitely disrupts the flow. Experienced players learn that interruptions can be worked through, and that a level of arousal that took half an hour of foreplay to get to in the first place can probably be reattained in just a few minutes after a pause.
So the bottom who heroically thrashes on even when he knows that the whip is landing in the wrong place is not a hero at all, but simply irresponsible: imagine how his top will feel in the morning when he sees all those welts in the wrong place!
Similarly, emotional safety needs to be discussed and negotiated, and that means we may need to talk about some pretty vulnerable stuff. If a play partner wants you to role-play a rapist and you have been raped yourself, then there might be a lot of risk for me in there, and even if you decide you want to try it out, and even if it turns out to be an effective way to empower myself and heal old wounds, it is obviously important that your partner in this endeavor should know about your concerns.
A final kind of safety involves partners who have not played together before. While predators are rare in the kinky communities - possibly rarer than in the straight world - they do exist, and playing with someone you don’t know very well without protecting yourself is foolishly dangerous. Thus, one of the most important functions of our kinky community is to help us take care of ourselves. When we play with someone new in private for the first time, we set up a “silent alarm” - a trusted friend who knows where we are, who we’re with, and when we’re expected back home. We may set up a special check-in time at which we’re supposed to call our friend to let her know we’re okay; if we don’t show up or call, the friend may have directions to call the police, or to take some other agreed-upon action. We also make sure that our play partner knows ahead of time that we’ve taken these precautions (which, thank heavens, are very rarely necessary).
Two different worlds
. Probably the ultimate safety device in the playing out of fantasies is the clear boundary between scene space and the rest of our lives. Much of the content of most people’s fantasies, kidnappings, pleasure slaves, and so forth, are unacceptable approaches to how they are going to live their lives in the real world. If any of us choose to be victims or villains as a permanent lifestyle, like at work or raising the children, obviously we would be making dysfunctional choices with potential for harm to others, and our lives wouldn’t work out very well. So we make agreements with people we trust, and with clear negotiation, to pretend to be the creature of our fantasies for the duration of a scene, or a weekend, or at certain times in a long-term relationship.
The very language we use to describe ourselves defines the boundary between kink and our everyday lives. We call it “play,” and call ourselves “players.” What we do is a “scene,” who we pretend to be is a “persona” or “role,” where we do it is in a “playroom,” and the implements we use are “toys.”
Understanding the difference between fantasy and reality is the customary definition of sanity, and it is our criterion for sane play. Good players become experts at negotiating this boundary, and adept at changing roles from “Lord of the Universe” to “It’s my turn to do the dishes, right?” Agility in these matters comes with practice, and a sense of humor is most helpful. What is important, psychologically and emotionally, is that we know when we are playing, and what we are playing, and when we are not.
In a previous book
2
, we compared this boundary to making a fireplace before you light the fire, so a force which could be scary and destructive becomes a safe source of heat, warmth, comfort and energy.
And so the space, mental or physical, in which we play out our kinks become like the play houses or treehouses of our childhoods ― a place set aside for make believe.
“Others find
Peace of mind
In pretending:
Couldn’t you? Couldn’t I? Couldn’t We?”
7
Your Kinky Person’s World - And Welcome To It
A brief hisory of sex-negativism.
This idea that sex is immoral has been part of our culture for a very long time - so long that it can be hard to see the many consequences of these cultural values. To get an idea of how thoroughly such beliefs have pervaded our lives, take a minute to imagine what your life would be like if you had never experienced guilt or embarrassment or shame about your sexuality, your body or your fantasies. What would our lives be like if we were not limited by shame and negativity about sex?
In the last thirty years or so, there have been tremendous changes in how the world looks at sex. The “Sexual Revolution” of the sixties has engendered a more open discussion of sex, and the free exchange of a great deal more information - we doubt if you would have been able to read this book in the fifties. Our culture has also come to accept a much wider range of sexual behavior: sex outside of marriage is hardly controversial in most parts of the country; gay and lesbian lifestyles are openly accepted, and discrimination outlawed, in many areas. We hope that other alternative sexual behaviors will also someday gain such widespread acceptance.
Meanwhile, in the world we live in today, where kink is often viewed with almost superstitious horror, how do cultural taboos affect the kinky person you know and love? What is life like in the kinky closet?
Feeling unseen
. When we live in the closet we must keep secret a large part of our lives that is very important to us. We cannot discuss our relationships, our loves, our griefs and our triumphs outside our immediate network of kindred souls. At work, around our families of origin, or chatting with our neighbors or our friends at the PTA, we maintain a certain distance. We begin to feel kind of invisible.