This is a continuation of my previous post. If you haven’t read that then I’d suggest doing so if the rest of this is to make any sense at all.
Before I go on, I should make it clear that none of this post should be taken to suggest any blame or fault is directed towards the submissive in the original scene. I can well imagine I’d have done the same things in her situation. The fault lies with the dominant. The priority should be for the community to blacklist him and warn others about his behavior. However, I’m an engineer, and when fallible humans are concerned my instinct is to look for processes that can help. I’m not part of ‘the scene’ and I’m not experienced when it comes to play parties, but I thought I’d throw a few ideas out. Perhaps people with more relevant knowledge can critique them and improve them.
In the last post I drew an analogy between a scene and a computer system. Both can go badly wrong, and when that happens the badness is compounded by the unusual nature of the situation. Continuing that analogy, one approach frequently used to mitigate emergencies is to make the emergency process part of the normal process. For example, you don’t want to have a primary system and a backup system that’s used only when the first fails. The middle of an emergency isn’t the time to try and fire up a rarely used backup system. A better approach is to designate both systems as primary, and flip between them on a regular basis. That makes the standard process the same as the emergency process, which means when your data center catches fire you’re not exploring an entirely new situation.
Applying this approach to a BDSM scene would mean that safewords wouldn’t be the exception, they’d be the rule. I’m not sure how often safewords are used in play parties, but I’m guessing it’s rare. That potentially sets up a situation where using one feels unusual or even ‘wrong’. It makes the critical case the exception case. If instead every single scene had to end with a magic word, said loudly by either the dominant or the submissive, then perhaps that barrier would be significantly lowered. If you’ve heard ‘Red’ shouted a dozen times already in an evening, maybe it feels easier to say when it’s really necessary, even when dealing with a submissive headspace and a fucked up scene.
Another computing idea that seems applicable here is the idea of the heartbeat. This is one of the ways you make an unreliable system reliable. Components send out a regular heartbeat signal to let everyone know they’re OK. If the monitoring systems don’t detect a heartbeat signal they notify someone about the problem and kick off repair procedures. Applying this to a BDSM scene would mean that an external observer would have to get a periodic ‘Green’ from a submissive or the scene would be stopped. That’s obviously not a system to use in every situation, but perhaps could be a default for scenes where the players are unfamiliar with each other. It would be helpful if a submissive suffers a panic attack or is in such a bad place that they’re not able to safeword.
The final computing analogy I want to use is the idea of watchdogs. These are systems that are specifically designed to watch other systems. They’re constantly checking that the right processing is happening and are primed to shutdown anything that appears to be misbehaving. In the BDSM space the equivalent of watchdogs would be dungeon monitors. They key question is what they actually monitor for. Simply looking out for safewords being ignored or legal violations leaves a lot of scope for abuse. Perhaps the default should be that any kind of ‘no’ or negative response from a submissive stops the scene. If you want to do an explicit safeword based scene then that needs to be agreed and confirmed beforehand. Otherwise the assumption should be that anything other than a visibly willing and keen submissive is cause for stepping in and at least temporarily halting things.
It’s kind of depressing that these kind of protocols would be necessary. Abusive assholes will never go away, but you’d hope a community that talks about consent so much would do a better job of identifying them and isolating them. Clearly that’s not currently the case.
I wasn’t sure what image would be suitable for this post. I didn’t want to trivialize the issue by featuring something pseudo-non-consensual. So instead I’ll go in the opposite direction, and feature something cute and life affirming.
I found this on the Fucking Cuddle tumblr.
Interesting and important reflections on good practice. I have to mention that I’m not in ‘the scene’ either and nor do I have anything more than very fleeting experience of play parties but I too was going to point out that if ‘traffic light’ colours were used as safe words, green for go, amber for caution and red for stop, green is just as important as red. At a traffic junction, the green light must be ‘on’ before traffic can flow. Maybe in a scene, green must be spoken before the action begins – and continues?
Yes, that’s kind of the heartbeat approach I was trying to sketch out. Rather than defaulting to a keep going unless told otherwise, it would seem better to default to a stop unless told otherwise. At least in situations where the players don’t know each other. I can imagine it would be a little disruptive to a play environment, but if ‘the scene’ can’t effectively police itself then better disruptive than non-consensual.
-paltego
I don’t really use safewords actually. I encourage people I’m playing with to communicate with me more normally i.e. actually say ‘no’ or ‘stop’ or ‘that’s too much.’ I also check in on people regularly, kind of similar to what you’re suggesting with saying ‘green’ but just with me saying ‘Are you OK?’ This takes out the ’emergency’ element which I feel applies with safewords. Of course, if I was playing with someone who’s going to say no when they don’t mean it, if that’s part of their kink, I’d use safwords, but tbh I don’t think I’d be comfortable doing a scene like that myself.
Safewords are a useful and important mechanism, but they’re not the be all and end all – and I do think they can make it more difficult for the submissive rather than easier. Safewords can feel like they cut into a scene, and I prefer to incorporate consent throughout – and that’s easier to do through more normal conversation.
I actually don’t use safewords myself when I’m playing. I don’t roleplay ‘forced scenes’, and I typically know the domme I’m with well enough that I trust we can step away from the scene if we need to. So I play in a very similar way to what you describe.
However, the tricky situation is when the dominant is unknown and untrusted. How do submissive protect themselves? I’m sure you’re very conscientious, but how about the dominant who says similar things and then acts like the asshole in the original post? In private 1:1 situations there’s not a lot that can be done in the moment, but in play parties it does seem that better process and involvement from others there might help.
If you’re interested I’ve written in the past about my approach to safewords, both with known and unknown dommes: http://www.femdom-resource.com/2012/02/02/safewords/
-paltego