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Kink Education Time - Consent
So, everyone knows that consent is incredibly important in kink. It's incredibly important everywhere, but especially when one wrong move means a consent violation. But kink often involves pretending to violate consent (CNC). So, how do you navigate consent in kink in the safest and most knowledgeable way possible? The answer lies in two things. First, safewords and other safety items. You probably know about safewords, but what about drop items, or other ways of communicating consent? The second category is less commonly-known: consent acronyms.
Safewords & Safety Items
Safewords are basically flags that you can raise that inform your partner(s) about your current state in the scene. The most obvious benefit to using safewords is that, plainly, a play partner can scream, "no, please, stop, leave me alone", without ending the scene. Meanwhile, they can just say, for example, "Pineapple!" to end the scene at any time. Usually, there are three categories: Green, Yellow, and Red.
Green safewords are meant to mean "everything is all good; please continue". This category isn't really used unless one partner wants to check in on the other partner. An example would be that, during a spanking scene, the giving partner notices that the receiving partner is crying. They may ask, "Are you okay?" They may also use a pre-negotiated term to check in, such as a code word. At which point, the receiving partner may respond with their green safeword if they're doing fine and want to proceed.
Yellow safewords are used to caution the other participant(s) in the scene. Their basic meaning is, "Hey, I'm doing mostly okay right now, but we're close to my limit. Please be careful." To some people, yellow means "do not do anything more than what you're doing right now". To others, yellow means "keep going, do what you wanted to, but I may need to use red soon". It can even mean "I'd like to talk to you about this, can we pause for a minute?" It is absolutely vital for both partners to know what yellow safewords mean before play begins.
Red safewords are the ultimate safeguard. Red means "stop". No questions, no exceptions. If you are doing a kind of play that can't be stopped right away (such as rope suspension), you must begin the process of stopping play. In some cases, that means taking drastic measures. In the case of rope suspension, that can even mean cutting the rope away from them immediately. Red safewords must be obeyed at all costs. Refusing to honor a red safeword is sexual assault. Always be mindful of your partner's red safewords in particular.
It should also be noted that safewords are not just for the receiving partner. Everyone gets safewords, and everyone can use them at any time, for any reason. It's important to know what someone's safewords are before play begins, so you can recognize them when you hear them. However, a commonly-used set of safewords is the stoplight system ("red" for red, "yellow" for yellow, "green" for green). Usually, in most cases, using those safewords is absolutely fine, and no other words are needed.
Safety Items/Nonverbal Safewords
Safewords are all well and good. But what if the person is gagged? How do you safeword with a dildo gag shoved down your throat? These are important considerations for any play. You can have many different nonverbal safewords,as long as they're discussed with your partner beforehand. It could be a hand signal, or three claps, or a little red card in their hand. Another commonly-used solution is what's called a "drop item". The person is given something heavy to hold, like a book, that they can drop if they need a check-in. If you're doing a form of play that prevents someone from talking, ALWAYS have nonverbal safewords in place.
Consent Acronyms
This section is more about what consent can actually mean in kink. Typically, people subscribe to one of four "ideologies" when it comes to consent: SSC, PRICK, FRIES, or RACK. Other acronyms exist, but these are the most common. The basic idea behind any consent acronym is to get you to think about what actually goes into consent, and how someone can say "yes" to something WITHOUT actually consenting. Understanding these acronyms is a great way to prevent your own consent from being violated, as well as to prevent violating others' consent, even without your awareness. I'll be explaining each of those four acronyms below in brief detail, but I highly recommend that you research consent acronyms yourself.
SSC - Safe, Sane, and Consensual
SSC is the most common, and "basic" acronym. The guiding principle of this acronym is that, in order for something to be consensual, the act must be safe, sane, and consented to by both parties. This means that you must take all necessary precautions (such as safewords, safety shears, etc.), you must both be of sound minds, and you must both give express consent before play begins. Some complaints about this acronym are about the "safe" and "sane" portions, because kink inherently has risks (making it unsafe from the start), and some kinks could be considered "insane" (like flesh hooks or branding).
PRICK - Personal Responsibility In Consensual Kink
Some people prefer PRICK for its acknowledgement that kink can be dangerous. The basic idea of PRICK is that everyone has a responsibility to learn how to go about their kink lives as safely as possible. This also includes educating yourself on consent, in all its aspects, and how to respect it at all times.
RACK - Risk-Aware Consensual Kink
RACK is similar to PRICK in that it emphasizes knowing the risks to all parties inherent in your play. This includes all mental, social, physical, psychological, and/or sexual risks. The idea behind this acronym is that, unless you're aware of all of the risks, no play is truly consensual.
FRIES - Freely-given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, and Specific
FRIES refers to the act of giving consent itself. This ideology argues that nothing is consensual unless it matches those 5 criteria. This acronym was pioneered by Planned Parenthood, and is a favorite amongst kinksters. The idea is that unless consent is 1) given freely (under no coercion or force), 2) reversible (able to be rescinded at any time for any reason), 3) informed (such as with RACK or PRICK), 4) enthusiastic (basically just not reluctant; you can also just do kink because you're fine with it, not because you're absolutely thrilled to do it), and 5) specific (as in you are made aware of all acts that could happen beforehand for you to specifically consent to).
You may notice that these ideologies can coexist. They should. A truly responsible and safe kinkster will consider all of these when playing. They all have very valuable messages that you should internalize and keep in mind during your play. If anyone has any other consent acronyms they'd like to share, please do so in the reblogs/replies!
The best kink experiences I’ve had with people are the ones that are very fluid. Where you can flow easily between being silly/awkward and sexy/serious. I used to get so worried about “ruining the mood”, but all that did was put unnecessary pressure on everything. It’s so much better when you just get to be your whole self with people, and you feel comfortable to do so. When there isn’t the expectation to perform. Where you can just be a human being having a human experience. That’s the kind of sex I want to have.
Hot take for pride month: Ripping into people who are exceptionally horny JUST for being exceptionally horny, comes from the same place of puritanical cishet normativity that "you'll want sex one day" at aspec people or "I dont care what people do in their bedroom" at most queer people comes from, because cishet normativity includes the societal beliefs that everyone should be cishet, should want vanilla straight sex, and should be quiet and ashamed of wanting sex at all despite the previous 'rule.'
Like it's one thing if someone is being kinky and horny at everyone without regard for consent or safe spaces for kink/sex, that's not chill and definitely needs to be called out, but I see a lot of you just. Plop yourself into someone's porn blog or into a group of friends minding their tags and staying in their own NSFW positive community with their NSFW, and ripping into them like they're criminals for being horny at all. So many of you will put yourself into an NSFW space and tell people in it that just by existing somewhere they can be discovered they're undermining consent when by invading an inherently sexual space uninvited and with malicious intent, it's YOU who is undermining consent! No one consented to having you interrupt their sexual enjoyment just to fucking kink and slut shame them! If you accidentally come across an NSFW space it's so fucking easy to remove yourself from it and not participate! Just like it's easy for cishet people to remove themself from queer spaces instead of telling everyone in them how gross they are!
Sexual attraction or enjoyment isn't something everyone experiences, but it IS often important to the identity and lives of the people who DO. Sex and kink have been tools for a lot of non-het, gnc, queer, and trans folk to explore their identity, gender, and attraction For Since The Beginning Of Civilization, and your willingness to hurt and shame others for even touching that tool is hypocritical and oppressive.
By garnering a general public feeling of shame and disgust toward sex and exploring it with other consenting adults, you're making trans people feel ashamed of trying to find comfort sexually in their gender now that they recognize it and even more so for enjoying that new found comfort and pride, you're making queer people as a whole feel ashamed of expressing a chunk of their sexuality and the sexual attraction that comes with it, you're making aspec people who want to explore and discuss with others what they do and don't enjoy sexually ashamed and scared to do so, and you're even making survivors of SA feel guilty and gross for trying to discover ways of feeling comfortable in their sexuality and attraction again. Not even going into hypersexuality, it's common existence among queer folk and SA survivors, and how a positive if vigorous relationship with sex tends to help this group of individuals cope and live healthy lives despite it.
I'm tired of seeing y'all rip on porn blogs just for being porn blogs, I'm tired of seeing some of y'all call groups of grown adults being horny at each other in safe and careful ways Groomers, (as if doing so doesn't also diminish the definition of actual grooming and darken the already murky waters for seeking help and helping others dealing with grooming.) you're using the same rhetoric made to make queer people ashamed of being queer to continue making other queer people experiencing queerness differently from you ashamed of being queer!
The queer community, and pride, are about celebrating the fact that as people we all have unique and individual ways of experiencing life and expressing ourselves, and have been othered because our experiences don't line up with what society has deemed 'normal' and I'm tired of watching y'all demonize others when that unique individual way is in any way horny, because you're othering groups of people from your community! For not fitting! Into your definition of normal!!
[THIS USER UNDERSTANDS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOM/SUB AND TOP/BOTTOM]
Same, it's the best!
The best kink experiences I’ve had with people are the ones that are very fluid. Where you can flow easily between being silly/awkward and sexy/serious. I used to get so worried about “ruining the mood”, but all that did was put unnecessary pressure on everything. It’s so much better when you just get to be your whole self with people, and you feel comfortable to do so. When there isn’t the expectation to perform. Where you can just be a human being having a human experience. That’s the kind of sex I want to have.
especially if you have a dom who's nervous about hurting you or pushing you too far!!!! this is so important!
For the love of god, praise and reassure your Dom after sex. I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ve told a Dom they did a good job after sex and they’re like “???? Why are you saying that???” It’s INSANE. Aftercare goes both ways! Praise! Your! Dom! Tell them the specific things you liked! Tell them how hot they were! Tell them that you appreciate them taking control! It goes such a long way, trust me.
