BDSM & D/s
A Word in Your Ear
by Des de Moor
Des de Moor looks at the issue of
safe words
Safe words and safe signals (sometimes called stop words and stop signals) are codes agreed by the partners in an SM scene that the bottom can use to ask the top to ease up or to stop the scene. There are various reasons
why this could be useful. Most obviously, some scenes are role-played,
which constrains the scope for communication during the scene and opens up the
possibility of ambiguity when a bottom pleads with a top to stop.
Even in non-role-played scenes, bottoms can still end up saying no when
they mean yes, and it can be difficult in the heat of the interaction to be
able to clearly explain what you are feeling.
In these circumstances, giving a bottom a simple panic-button
makes sense for some people for emotional and physical safety reasons, and it
will certainly feel more secure for the bottom, especially when playing
with a top that they don't know very well. For some people safewords are an
important way of managing consent: the bottom is assumed to be consenting so long as the signal has not been given.
The signal can be anything, so long as it is agreed on by the parties, but
it should be simple and memorable and also unlikely to come up in the normal
course of the scene. Some people use nonsense or unsexy words but they can
be difficult to remember and can seem very silly and forced in context. One good choice is to use either the top's first name, if the bottom
would not otherwise use it in the scene, or the bottom's own first name,
which he or she is not likely to use in the normal course of things and which
won't cause any memory problems.
Some people use more than one word, with more shades of meaning available than a simple 'stop'. Karen Johanns, writing in The Lesbian SM
Safety Manual, (1988) suggests 'mercy' to mean 'lighten up the physical
stuff', 'cruel' or 'you're cruel' to indicate when an emotional or
psychological limit is being reached (say in a verbal abuse scene), and the
top's first name for 'stop everything now'. 'Traffic light' words have some
common currency too: 'yellow' to warn that a limit is being neared and
'red' to demand a stop.
When the bottom is gagged or their speech is otherwise restricted, a
non-verbal signal is often desirable, and is probably essential in
very edgy and dangerous games where there is a likelihood of the bottom
passing out or injuring themselves. A fingerclick is a good one, unless gloves or
other bindings prevent it or the bottom is not easily able to do it. One
top who specialises in breathgames gives her bottom a small ball to hold
which can either be deliberately dropped or will be dropped as a fail-safe
should the bottom faint.
Many players absolutely insist on using safewords and can be very
critical of those that don't. When the SM scene first began to articulate
an open identity in the face of radical feminist hostility in the 1980s,
many people insisted on safewords as a means of guaranteeing that a scene fell
within the ethically approved guidelines of 'safe, sane and consensual',
and still today those who play without safewords sometimes find themselves
regarded with suspicion by certain other SMers. 'Make sure you agree a
safeword' is a piece of advice still regularly given to a novice bottom starting
out on the scene.
Personally I'd argue that the faith in safewords is largely
misplaced, and there are certainly no grounds to criticise those who choose to
play without them. The ability of a bottom to 'safe out' is not a function of
the safeword but of the way that the consent in the scene is managed.
The security of the safeword is largely illusory: even with an agreed
safeword there is nothing to ensure a top will respect it, and in any case
it's unwarranted to assume that the top is entitled to do anything they
like just because a safeword hasn't been used.
Safewords can be useful for giving an extra subjective feeling of
security with those new to SM or with new partners whose responses you may
not yet be able to read correctly, and it's obviously sensible to have some
form of distress signal in cases where someone's speech and movement are
particularly restricted. But they should certainly never be relied
upon as the only indicator of what the bottom is feeling: they are no
substitute for awareness, sensitivity and genuine communication, which a safeword
cannot guarantee and may even distract people from developing.
For myself, I haven't played using safewords for ages, either as a
top or a bottom -- I find nothing breaks up the mood of a scene more than
having to do something artificial such as say a name or some irrelevant word
just to ease things up a little, though I will agree to one and respect it
if a partner insists. Safewords are a very crude form of communication:
as a top I'd rather a bottom is explicit about what they are feeling, and
as a bottom I'd prefer to be as communicative as possible with the top.
It's true that this isn't always so easy: some people play scenes
where normal conversation is prohibited by the demands of the role.
Perhaps, for example, you may be acting out a torture fantasy where the bottom
wants to be able to protest and complain but still undergo the torment. But
even here it is my experience that there is a big difference between a 'no'
that means yes and a real 'no' that indicates a consensual limit is being
breached. For most bottoms this is an unmistakable and instantly recognisable
event that will cause an abrupt change in tone of voice and body language
that only the most insensitive and literal-minded person would fail to
recognise.
If you feel happier using safewords then by all means continue to
do so, but
don't fool yourself into thinking they're a substitute for
building true
rapport and communication between the partners. And if you don't
use them,
don't be pressured into thinking you ought to be. SM is a complex
interaction that isn't so easily reduced to technical solutions
and formulae, and only you and your partners can in the end be the
judges of consent.
Used with permission from UK Essex
