Getting into BDSM Part 3: Safety.
BDSM is not, in itself, super mega dangerous. It’s like any contact sport–there’s always a risk of an accident, so it’s good to be prepared, but the risk isn’t so high that you should be afraid to try it. And BDSM people are no different than any group of people–most will never harm you unless in a freak accident, a few will harm you through incompetence or pigheadedness, and a very small minority will harm you on purpose.
All this applies to tops and Doms as well as bottoms and subs; you may be at less physical risk, but bad things can still happen. And all this applies to emotional harm as well as physical; if someone makes you cry in the bad way and doesn’t try to comfort you, that’s “harm” just as much as if they bruised your face.
That said, there are some precautions that will help keep you and your partners safer:
Trust your instincts.
This is the most important thing. If a person seems to have nothing wrong with them that you can put your finger on, but they just give you the willies, the skeevies, and/or the heebie-jeebies–DO NOT PLAY WITH THEM. If a particular activity, invitation, or group of people makes you more nervous than it really ought to–stay away. That crawly feeling on your spine and that sinking feeling in your stomach are the best safety aides you have. They are not wrong. They are not silly. You should not “give that person/activity a chance.” Do not doubt your gut.
Don’t be afraid to be a picky, stuck-up, arbitrary jerk. “No” requires no explanation and no debate. Play with someone because you want to, not because you can’t come up with a good reason not to. If someone asks you “why not?” after a “no,” that’s a big ol’ warning sign in itself.
Don’t play in private with strangers.
I’ll play with strangers–well, with new friends, at least–in a party with lots of my older friends around. But if I’m on unfamiliar turf, or one-on-one, I need to know someone as a friend before we play. It takes a certain amount of trust, and exactly how much is up to your own judgement, but it’s an amount of trust that has to build up with time and getting to know them. If you don’t know someone at all, but they’re offering some kind of super exciting play or they make you feel super extra submissive/dominant–play with witnesses around or wait ’til you know them better. Better yet, get to know other people who know them as well and get some outside opinions.
In particular, be extra careful about letting someone restrict your movement. Cutting off the option to leave a scene is a serious thing, even with super nice people who seem super serious about your well-being. Don’t do it until you feel damn sure that there’s no reason you could possibly need to leave.
When playing with someone in private for the first time, it can be a good idea to let a friend know exactly where you’ll be and who you’ll be with. And more importantly, it can be a good idea to let your partner know that your friend knows.
You don’t “have to” do anything.
There’s a widely mocked phenomenon in BDSM called the “One True Way” (or “twoo,”if you’re being even snarkier.) These are people who have decided that a real Dom or sub does it like this, and if you don’t do that, you’re not real and just a poser and totally lame and probably not even kinky. These people suck. Mostly they suck because they’re just annoying, but sometimes they’re outright dangerous.
If someone tells you that you have to play with them, that you have to play a certain way, or that you really ought to have them as a mentor (or God forbid, master) to be a real kinkster or to be accepted in the group–run don’t walk. Consent to things because you want to do those things specifically, not because anyone or anything challenged your authenticity or competence, or in any other way made you feel obligated.
Don’t play under the influence.
Of anything. If you’re a top, you’ll be less able to control yourself and judge how your bottom is handling it; if you’re a bottom, you’ll be less aware of when you’re getting hurt. And either way you’ll have less judgement as to when something is just a bad idea.
Be knowledgeable about the specific play you engage in.
I don’t have the space or expertise to go into detail here, but know that every kind of play, from punching to using complex electrical apparatus, has its own technical rules that you need to learn from someone who knows their shit. This is why I’m a big believer in BDSM communities; I can’t tell you on the Internet how to do fire play or suspension bondage or even flogging safely and effectively. These are skills that you have to pick up the old-fashioned way. Take a class, go to a party and watch an experienced person at work, and better yet ask an experienced person if they can teach you. Reading about something or watching a video isn’t as good as learning in person, but it’s still preferable to just picking up a toy and guessing.
Also, if you’re a top, know what it’s like on the bottom. Don’t flog people without knowing what a flogger feels like; don’t stick needles in people without knowing how a needle feels.
Communicate.
Negotiate before a scene what both partners want and do not want to happen, and continue communicating in the scene. The less you’ve played with someone, the more you need to make an effort to do this. If you’re on the bottom, let your partner know how you’re doing and what you want and need and don’t be shy. Don’t let fear of “topping from the bottom” scare you into tolerating play that’s not working for you
If you’re on top, repeatedly check in with your partner as to whether they’re enjoying themselves or starting to tire out or feel unpleasant pain. Dominance doesn’t mean being psychic, and it certainly doesn’t mean “you’ll take what I choose to dish out”–it means that if you order your sub to tell you how they’re feeling and how well they’re tolerating a particular type of play, they damn well better tell you, huh?
Plan for disasters.
Taking a basic first-aid course, and having a basic first-aid kit around, are always good ideas. (Not even for BDSM. For life.) Any time you put someone in bondage, have a plan for how you could release them in a hurry, whether that means having shears on hand to cut rope or a quick-release link on a chain. Don’t tie someone up in such a way that they’d choke or tear any body parts off if they fainted or lost their balance. (That’s why I think this [NWS picture!] is a terrible idea.) Remember that a person who faints in bondage must be brought down–if they stay upright they won’t get blood to their head and may not wake up.
Remember that the top could suffer some kind of emergency, and don’t put the bottom in a situation where they’d be trapped if that happened. This doesn’t mean you can’t play with bondage one-on-one, but it does mean that the bondage should be “insecure” enough, or a phone close enough, that they could wiggle their way to the phone if they really had to.
Regular safer sex rules still apply.
Duh, right? However much latex you’d use with this person normally, that’s how much to use in a BDSM context. Remember that blood is a high-risk body fluid too, and that touching genitals in a not-exactly-sexual way can still get fluids on your hands.
Use a safeword.
I put this way down the list, because I think it gets presented as the be-all end-all of safety sometimes, and it’s not. It’s no substitute for knowledge, preparation, and trust. Personally, I prefer to agree that “stop” still means “stop” unless we have specifically negotiated a consensual nonconsent scene. But I also have a safeword in place, just in case I have an immediate need to say “STOP” in a totally unambiguous not-even-joking sort of way. That word, as I’ve said before, is the emergency brake, no questions asked. Whether you’re the top or bottom, you don’t continue one second after the use of a safeword and you don’t even think about whether they “should” have used it. You just stop dead, undo any bondage, hug and comfort the person or leave them the hell alone as they wish, and wait for things to cool down before figuring out what went wrong and whether to go on.
The Pervocracy
Sex. Feminism. BDSM. And some very, very naughty words.
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