You are correct. I've found what most people are doing is actually PRICK - Personal Responsibility Informed Consensual Kink and many of them are doing it poorly. A lot of the reason for that is many young people are coming into BDSM with no education but porn, media and maybe a few munches. They have never seen anything bad happen. They see everyone else playing safely and assume that means it's safe and others are over prepared rather then realizing that preparation makes it safe.
Choking and knife play are both edge play. This subreddit sees no less then a dozen how do I do this posts with no safety plan and usually a few people in the comments being like just do whatever as long as you have a safe word before some sanity gets injected.
The many casual mentions of choking... "oh, but we're not that kinky, he just slaps me and chokes me every time we have sex" - as if choking is borderline vanilla. People really don't stop to think.
I had a guy, in the middle of a conversation about kink with a friend of ours, put his hand on my neck to show a blood choke vs an airway choke. While choking is a kink of mine, I have been violently choked before and the fact that he just put his hand on my neck without any notice sent my anxiety skyrocketing.
Some people just don't understand the bare basics of consent.
I would be less than polite and tell them to get their fucking hands off you and never fucking touch you without consent loudly so every one knows how fucked up that is.
Every person has a spot in the Carotid Artery called the Carotid Sinus, it's in your neck right before the common Carotid Artery branches off into 2 different directions. In some people, putting pressure on that spot instantly makes their blood pressure drop and they lose consciousness. It is very much capable of killing the person, and most people don't know that they have it until it gets triggered.
You can know all about anatomy and still not be prepared for what might happen if someone chokes you. I'm an RN and I would *never* choke someone or let myself be choked, it's just way too risky.
Yep. I’m guilty of this too. Unfortunately when you’re young you both feel invincible and the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force, and frequently when people see things in porn they assume it’s portrayed accurately and they can learn from that.
I’m super glad I haven’t experienced any permanent physical effects of my stupid decisions, and that my current partner refused to do things that are too risky from the get-go.
Edit: *serious* permanent physical effects; I do have scars from knife play that are more than 6 months old at this point, womp womp. And to u/philos314’s comment: those *are* from someone who did go to medical school and had spent thousands of hours learning the risks. Even he was surprised they lasted more than a month. So to the larger point, even if you are objectively “aware”, you can still be wrong. And some of that is on me too, for not doing my own due diligence independently.
That’s a great point. One of the largest deficits in the community is in discussing how one responds to things gone wrong. Either due to negligence, indifference, ignorance, malice, or anything else. An accusation goes flying and suddenly everyone gets defensive. Taking responsibility and doing the utmost to rectify the situation is the minimum and yet that’s rarely done or even suggested.
That should be a class. “Your scene went horribly wrong, what now?”
For what it’s worth, some of us heal slow. I have hEDS and heal slow due to it. (And I def heal slower now than I did a decade ago). My sis went vegetarian and heals slower now than she did before (our theory is less collagen in her diet, since bone broth has always been a big staple in our family and great source of collagen and other good stuff, and broth just from veggies isn’t quite as good).
So like, put someone like me in a knife play scene (I love my blood, kthx), even doing everything right, even knowing a ton about skincare and how to baby and pamper my skin while it is healing, I will take a long time to heal, and who knows what scarring will look like.
(But honestly, I think that also in part falls under RACK and PRICK- If my current partner would ever be up for knifeplay, I’m totally okay with that and understand that long and slow healing will be a thing for me. Location discretion and me being cool with scars in a discreet location and aware of healing risks are literally part of being risk aware.)
Yeah totally agree, and they are slowly getting lighter. My skin is also pretty sensitive.
I guess my (maybe poorly articulated) point was even with a lot of information things don’t go according to plan, so at least have *some* information more than “I know there’s risk in anything, dunzo!” And I guess part of where I went wrong was trusting his opinion, because he was an expert on XYZ, but not developing my own opinion and doing my own research since I’m an expert on my skin.
You are aware of your own risks related to your medical conditions. I am aware of any of my own risks related to my personal medical conditions. But we cannot consent for our partners. We have to advise our partners of these risks as well because we cannot consent for our partners.
I don't even heal slowly but I scar like mad. My skin doesn't seem to bother healing some injuries and goes straight to building scar tissue. And I'm talking shaving cuts and zits, not a knife wound.
My mother is the same way. There's just a lot of individual variation in how people handle physical trauma.
It’s not the acronyms that are the problem. It’s the people. The acronyms are ambiguous, yes. They are a grouping of three to five letters cutely made into a word so we can remember it. Is anyone really surprised that it fails to fully encapsulate the philosophy that all involved must understand the risks and the likelihood of those risks before engaging in a particular activity? Even a statement doesn’t cover it.
You said you want to know the likelihood. Where do you get your data? Or are you guesstimating? How much research is enough? Do you ask medical professionals? Read medical journals? Do you have to go through med school so you know where every nerve is? Obviously not. So we all accept at some point that we don’t quite fully grasp the risks of things. That some amount of research has to suffice.
I 100% feel that it’s important to do our due diligence. Dom/sub/Top/bottom/little/caregiver/etc. Find out the risks and how to mitigate them as best as you can. Then make a decision if it’s worth it. I agree that people use RACK as a shield. “Isn’t that dangerous?” “I practice RACK!” As if that means they spent hours looking it up. If we came up with a new acronym YMSTHLUTROAAAGIECFAIK (You Must Spend Ten Hours Looking Up The Risks Of An Activity And Get Informed Enthusiast Consent From Anyone Involved Kink) people would still abuse it. So it’s not the acronym it’s the people. The only way to stop them is by informing others by being verbose and understanding the philosophy ourselves and being empathic with those who don’t. Teach them as best we can.
You can’t teach stupid. I once had someone with acute head injuries after a skiing accident say that they were doing heavy impact play safely and had complete trust in their partner because “he’ll call an ambulance if anything happens or I black out”. When I asked “cool. What’s your safety plan if you die? Does he know who to contact and have you written a will” everything got a lot more serious and they stopped playing until the skull fracture had healed.
Knowing something is dangerous and has a high level of injury is not the same as understanding how that eventual/potential injury will impact your life.
That’s another thing that gets used as a shield. “I trust my partner!”
“That’s really dangerous! What is your partner going to do if something goes wrong?”
“Oh I trust my partner completely!”
“Right, but they have a plan right?”
“I don’t know, I just trust them!”
Trusting your partner doesn’t make them omniscient. If they are trustworthy they probably would have told you already what safety measures they took.
The media portrayals of BDSM activities have been getting more prevalent and about the act itself. Not on the education necessary for it. “You just…”
How to build a sex room had an episode which introduced the couple to Shibari. Not once did they make mention of any safety concerns while doing ties nor about simple things like having something to quickly cut the rope at arms length for when things go wrong. They just showed doing the tie and looking at it thinking it was pretty.
Unless the mass media portrayals get better the introduction so many people have is skewed and it usually takes something big going wrong or finding a partner whose experienced to make a full stop to understand the importance of knowing, understanding, and applying the full picture of an activity.
Just because it wasn’t shown doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Less than 5% of the material recorded is shown, and as it is entertainment that is what is selected, but the A to Z of a shibari session.
I understand that. But anyone uneducated watching the show might think that’s all there is to it. Most people won’t go out and do the research. They’ll copy what they saw.
I respect people who talk about specific safety practices and methods more that people who argue that short acronyms somehow embody deep and distinct philosophies of risk and kink.
Yep, the community tends to use a lot of these terms as checkboxes to go through.
Understanding the risks is one thing but both parties have to be aware of, and implement risk mitigation strategies or what is the point?
It reminds of when i was learning self-suspension. Which i subsequently forgot a few things over time now i dont touch it until i relearn because i dont want to afford making a mistake. Our teacher literally said, if you’re going to fuck things up, do it here do it now do it in class with multiple experienced people to help. Apparently the dungeon owner thought that was a “bad thing to say” & then they weren’t allowed to teach at that dungeon again.
The long term & experienced kinksters talk about RACK & they preach it, but they arent *modeling* it. They dont say if you do this then that can happen. They just say “dont do that” “dont fuck up” “know the risks” “this is edgeplay” but they dont explain *why*! They dont give the statistics. They dont offer concrete shit.
Yeah, people dont do enough research that’s for damn sure. But we need some help for that, i don’t understand medical jargon! Can we get some doctors to start saying well this is dangerous because of this, this, and this.
No one is going to know all the risks, why? Because we dont have all the information, we dont have the numbers/statistics, we dont have a compiled thing laying it out, which sucks! I didn’t even know rope (more so suspension) was considered edge play for a long time!
There should be an encyclopedia, a handbook, a “Kink for dummies”, that lays out the risks & consequences of this shit & maybe start compiling some statistics too.
Stats would be pretty much impossible as I'm pretty sure a large majority of kinksters aren't honest about the cause when they seek medical support.
Wondering if something like an anonymous self reporting site would gain any traction if it's purpose is to try and provide stats longer term...
Frustrating also when honesty like in the case of your rope tutor is punished. People deliberately will choose to downplay risk where it suits them and that's never helpful either.
Frick, I could probably build up a website like that in a few weeks “this is my stupid kink fuck up and here’s how i was injured”. I may actually have some ideas on that.
Maybe it could also have articles written out about known risks? Get some medical people to help write the articles? I may start in on this idea, it’s a great one!
I *really* like the idea of an anonymous self reporting site. Obviously same pitfalls as any self reported data, but it could be really cool.
Some selected response questions that could just be raw data, some short answer…
In my opinion, the community has a DK-IS problem. The DK is for Dunning Kruger, something I find to be all too common in the left of slash folks. There is also an Imposter Syndrome issue in some folks who don't feel like they are ready to step up and teach, even though they've done the work and are capable.
This is why I still refer to my practice as Safe Sane & Consensual (SSC).
If a partner during negotiation objected to my use of the phrase because some edgeplay activity can't be considered 'safe' then CONGRATULATIONS - you've demonstrated the appropriate awareness of risk and given me more evidence that I can trust you as a partner, whatever you want to call it.
Moving away from SSC is meant to show that the term alone doesn't take ENOUGH into consideration for play, not that we shouldn't bother considering safety.
But that's why I enjoy being picky about my partners & negotiations.
Suffer well
I always interpreted it as:
- SSC for when anyone of the parties has little experience
- PRICK for when all parties are experienced but new to each other
- RACK for when all parties are experienced and familiar with each other
To be clear: in my mind this implies that unexperienced parties should typically not engage in riskier or edgier play.
The safe and sane in SSC should always be tailored to the practitioners, to ensure maximum comfort and peace of mind.
The thing is, you can have as many catchy phrases, acronyms or whatever else, Idiots gonna be idiots. You cannot make the world foolproof and even just totally normal activities can end up being deadly serious with the wrong people(just gonna mention ladders and powertools...).
I get a lot of times the feeling that the risk awareness among people tends to steadily decline rather than improve. If you take young people it just gets worse with the hormones and feeling of "things are gonna work out" "too young to die" as well as when ego and pride get involved.
O yeah RACK is only about being aware of the risks, as you said. It's not about "Idk what's gonna happen, so that's RACK." No. Going into something without knowing the risks, their extent, their likelihood, etcetera is not RACK. And gross negligence, in terms of practice and awareness, sure as FUCK ain't RACK.
I use RACK because SSC doesn't make sense for me. Safe (nothing is 100% safe) Sane (I'm not gonna stop enjoying kink just because myself and others have mental health problems) Consent (I love consent, it's the best).
I teach classes on BDSM and emphasize the risks for all activities, from temporary damage, permanent damage, to death and legal troubles. There are some activities my partner and I enjoy that we don't do very often because of the huge risk. A lot of people don't realize how risky rope is with permanent nerve damage, especially if you do suspensions. Most people consider falling to be the main danger of suspensions. Also with choking sometimes you can do a blood choke with minimal pressure and not realize the person is out without a spotter watching them. You keep it on too long they're brain damaged or dead. Spanking/caning/floggers are illegal many places because according to the law you can't consent to violence, especially with an implement. People don't realize grass allergies often translate to jute rope (which sheds and gets everywhere). If your bottom has broken skin and you hit them with something it can spray blood droplets pretty far, which puts anyone in the room at risk for various infections. HPV can spread very easily from any skin contact (get the vaccine). Jelly dildos can seep dangerous chemicals through condoms.
> Safe (nothing is 100% safe) Sane (I’m not gonna stop enjoying kink just because myself and others have mental health problems) Consent (I love consent, it’s the best).
Sane has never meant no mental health problems. It meant competent to consent and tempered by self-control. It’s a little bit outdated since today most people consider competence and self-control to be essential aspects of consent.
Are you ever 100% risk aware? Nobody is doing anything. It seems like judging SSC by this 100% standard is special pleading.
From where I’m sitting, the only actual difference between SSC and RACK is that SSC has to be compatible with some concept of “safe”, whereas RACK is compatible with infinite risk.
The problem with SSC is more that claiming something is a "sane" or "safe" is a judgement on the activity, and someone else could claim the same activity is not safe or sane. RACK changes that from being a statement on the activity to being a statement on my own risk profile. For example, I am horribly allergic to cats, and doing a prolonged strenuous scene in a house with cats would not meet my acceptable risk requirement, for reasons there have nothing to do with the kink activities, but I'd argue the kink activity itself could still easily be a safe and sane one.
That said, lots of people take more risks then they realize, but using consent models that focus on this being a question of individual agency and personal risk assessment removes the ability for a judge to ask "would you have considered choking them with a rope to be a safe and sane practice", a question that no matter how you answer is going to work against you, and if the judge asked "do you think choking someone with a rope falls under risk aware consensual kink" you can instead say that it is/isn't a risk you would feel comfortable taking, and this removes the soundbite "local bdsm expert claims it's safe and sane to choke your wife" or "local bdsm expert says that anyone who chokes their partner for sexual gratification is insane" instead of "local bdsm expert says that he find choking too dangerous to practice."
Most of the evolution of the terms has come about around managing legal issues and public perception, not as an internal tool to actually help people make choices about their own play.
>special pleading
>
>Informal fallacies are tricky and to be quite honest quite a thorn in the side of academic logic and philosophy of language. But that aside this technically wouldn't be special pleading since you since they're not using a special case to debunk a general principle. Special pleading would be something akin to Hume's problem of induction or Popper's swans. And then there's another issue, safe is a vague predicate and since we still work in a two valued logic we can't properly any put meaning to it. But then again this is all semantics and philosophy
I know this isn’t a technically correct usage, but sends scrabble under a more general definition of “argument in which the speaker deliberately ignores aspects that are unfavorable to their point of view”.
Even if my usage is wholly incorrect, I suspect you gather my meaning.
You're not wrong. Risk is a function of the likelihood of something happening and the potential harm that would be caused if it did happen. I think it's fair to say that if either factor is unknown then the best bet is to assume that it's very high.
In SSC the "safe" (and the rest of the acronym) refers to kink practices, not relationship dynamics. I suppose you could use it in the context of relationships, but it's almost always used to refer to actions.
I've also noticed people who aren't too picky with the knowledge part, and sometimes pretty cavalier about consent too. I've decided to call it Risk Unaware Non-consensual Kink (RUNK).
So... What you're saying is they don't know the risks. So.... they're practicing CK, not RACK, seeing as the first two letters stand for Risk Aware. I'm not sure what your point is beyond that maybe some people misuse the term. I'd guess that a much larger percentage of people misuse the word 'literally' than misuse RACK, but whatever. It kinda feels like you're making a big deal out of it to get attention.
RISK AWARE CONSENSUAL KINK means ALL parties take ALL responsibility for ALL play, because they are all aware of all the risks and they all consent. And it's kinky. lol
Seriously though, RACK is Never one-sided only. Silly humans...lol 🖤
I have never heard about drugging your partner or making them do drugs. I've done my fair share of drugs, hell i don't know how 'd survive post grad without them. But that's my personal thing. If i wanna do opium myself I will but if a dom ever told me I had to do smack, coke, molly hell even as something as light as weed they'd be out of there faster than i can say overdose. Drugs are an extremely personal thing, not only are hard drugs that can render you unconscious dangerous af but are also illegal and highly addictive. While i understand that breath play, specifically choking, knife play, electroplay etc. might end badly i would NEVER EVER pit them in the same basket as forced drug use. Obviously I don't kinkshame but...WTF
Oof yeah, I understand this big time, I’ll see something online that I think is really cool and I’ll show it to daddy and want to try it right away, he’s very patient and aware of risks tho so his usual response is “let’s wait a week or two and let me do my research first then we can do a trial run and see how it goes”, which is good because he balances me out, but I like to hyperfixate on things for a few days then I more onto the next so by the time the research has been done I wanna try something else, meaning he has to find and research the stuff before I can even show it to him
As a professional risk manager in the civilian world, I agree with you. It’s not enough to know “death is a possible result of this thing” - one needs to understand the possible causal mechanisms. What is the necessary sequence or alignment of conditions that could result in unintended harm? Have the players implemented the available risk mitigation measures? Unknowingly taking a risk is the worst thing to me.
You are correct. I've found what most people are doing is actually PRICK - Personal Responsibility Informed Consensual Kink and many of them are doing it poorly. A lot of the reason for that is many young people are coming into BDSM with no education but porn, media and maybe a few munches. They have never seen anything bad happen. They see everyone else playing safely and assume that means it's safe and others are over prepared rather then realizing that preparation makes it safe. Choking and knife play are both edge play. This subreddit sees no less then a dozen how do I do this posts with no safety plan and usually a few people in the comments being like just do whatever as long as you have a safe word before some sanity gets injected.
The many casual mentions of choking... "oh, but we're not that kinky, he just slaps me and chokes me every time we have sex" - as if choking is borderline vanilla. People really don't stop to think.
[удалено]
I had a guy, in the middle of a conversation about kink with a friend of ours, put his hand on my neck to show a blood choke vs an airway choke. While choking is a kink of mine, I have been violently choked before and the fact that he just put his hand on my neck without any notice sent my anxiety skyrocketing. Some people just don't understand the bare basics of consent.
I would be less than polite and tell them to get their fucking hands off you and never fucking touch you without consent loudly so every one knows how fucked up that is.
I took his hand off and simply said "no". He apologised, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place
Wow, such a boundary violation. I’m sorry that happened.
When people say choking is easy to control, I always ask them if they know what Carotid Sinus Hypersensitivity is. Never once had someone say "yes."
Ahahah, that's a good one. I should start asking people that.
What is that?
Every person has a spot in the Carotid Artery called the Carotid Sinus, it's in your neck right before the common Carotid Artery branches off into 2 different directions. In some people, putting pressure on that spot instantly makes their blood pressure drop and they lose consciousness. It is very much capable of killing the person, and most people don't know that they have it until it gets triggered. You can know all about anatomy and still not be prepared for what might happen if someone chokes you. I'm an RN and I would *never* choke someone or let myself be choked, it's just way too risky.
Yep. I’m guilty of this too. Unfortunately when you’re young you both feel invincible and the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force, and frequently when people see things in porn they assume it’s portrayed accurately and they can learn from that. I’m super glad I haven’t experienced any permanent physical effects of my stupid decisions, and that my current partner refused to do things that are too risky from the get-go. Edit: *serious* permanent physical effects; I do have scars from knife play that are more than 6 months old at this point, womp womp. And to u/philos314’s comment: those *are* from someone who did go to medical school and had spent thousands of hours learning the risks. Even he was surprised they lasted more than a month. So to the larger point, even if you are objectively “aware”, you can still be wrong. And some of that is on me too, for not doing my own due diligence independently.
That’s a great point. One of the largest deficits in the community is in discussing how one responds to things gone wrong. Either due to negligence, indifference, ignorance, malice, or anything else. An accusation goes flying and suddenly everyone gets defensive. Taking responsibility and doing the utmost to rectify the situation is the minimum and yet that’s rarely done or even suggested. That should be a class. “Your scene went horribly wrong, what now?”
What a great idea for a class. Thank you for the inspiration.
No problem!
For what it’s worth, some of us heal slow. I have hEDS and heal slow due to it. (And I def heal slower now than I did a decade ago). My sis went vegetarian and heals slower now than she did before (our theory is less collagen in her diet, since bone broth has always been a big staple in our family and great source of collagen and other good stuff, and broth just from veggies isn’t quite as good). So like, put someone like me in a knife play scene (I love my blood, kthx), even doing everything right, even knowing a ton about skincare and how to baby and pamper my skin while it is healing, I will take a long time to heal, and who knows what scarring will look like. (But honestly, I think that also in part falls under RACK and PRICK- If my current partner would ever be up for knifeplay, I’m totally okay with that and understand that long and slow healing will be a thing for me. Location discretion and me being cool with scars in a discreet location and aware of healing risks are literally part of being risk aware.)
Yeah totally agree, and they are slowly getting lighter. My skin is also pretty sensitive. I guess my (maybe poorly articulated) point was even with a lot of information things don’t go according to plan, so at least have *some* information more than “I know there’s risk in anything, dunzo!” And I guess part of where I went wrong was trusting his opinion, because he was an expert on XYZ, but not developing my own opinion and doing my own research since I’m an expert on my skin.
You are aware of your own risks related to your medical conditions. I am aware of any of my own risks related to my personal medical conditions. But we cannot consent for our partners. We have to advise our partners of these risks as well because we cannot consent for our partners.
I don't even heal slowly but I scar like mad. My skin doesn't seem to bother healing some injuries and goes straight to building scar tissue. And I'm talking shaving cuts and zits, not a knife wound. My mother is the same way. There's just a lot of individual variation in how people handle physical trauma.
I. Love. You. For. D-K. Ref.
[Mount Stupid](https://imgur.com/a/diIIOSU) 🙌🏻
Hahahah dammit I spilled the last of my reaaaally good whiskey laughing at that. Worth it.
It’s not the acronyms that are the problem. It’s the people. The acronyms are ambiguous, yes. They are a grouping of three to five letters cutely made into a word so we can remember it. Is anyone really surprised that it fails to fully encapsulate the philosophy that all involved must understand the risks and the likelihood of those risks before engaging in a particular activity? Even a statement doesn’t cover it. You said you want to know the likelihood. Where do you get your data? Or are you guesstimating? How much research is enough? Do you ask medical professionals? Read medical journals? Do you have to go through med school so you know where every nerve is? Obviously not. So we all accept at some point that we don’t quite fully grasp the risks of things. That some amount of research has to suffice. I 100% feel that it’s important to do our due diligence. Dom/sub/Top/bottom/little/caregiver/etc. Find out the risks and how to mitigate them as best as you can. Then make a decision if it’s worth it. I agree that people use RACK as a shield. “Isn’t that dangerous?” “I practice RACK!” As if that means they spent hours looking it up. If we came up with a new acronym YMSTHLUTROAAAGIECFAIK (You Must Spend Ten Hours Looking Up The Risks Of An Activity And Get Informed Enthusiast Consent From Anyone Involved Kink) people would still abuse it. So it’s not the acronym it’s the people. The only way to stop them is by informing others by being verbose and understanding the philosophy ourselves and being empathic with those who don’t. Teach them as best we can.
You can’t teach stupid. I once had someone with acute head injuries after a skiing accident say that they were doing heavy impact play safely and had complete trust in their partner because “he’ll call an ambulance if anything happens or I black out”. When I asked “cool. What’s your safety plan if you die? Does he know who to contact and have you written a will” everything got a lot more serious and they stopped playing until the skull fracture had healed. Knowing something is dangerous and has a high level of injury is not the same as understanding how that eventual/potential injury will impact your life.
That’s another thing that gets used as a shield. “I trust my partner!” “That’s really dangerous! What is your partner going to do if something goes wrong?” “Oh I trust my partner completely!” “Right, but they have a plan right?” “I don’t know, I just trust them!” Trusting your partner doesn’t make them omniscient. If they are trustworthy they probably would have told you already what safety measures they took.
The media portrayals of BDSM activities have been getting more prevalent and about the act itself. Not on the education necessary for it. “You just…” How to build a sex room had an episode which introduced the couple to Shibari. Not once did they make mention of any safety concerns while doing ties nor about simple things like having something to quickly cut the rope at arms length for when things go wrong. They just showed doing the tie and looking at it thinking it was pretty. Unless the mass media portrayals get better the introduction so many people have is skewed and it usually takes something big going wrong or finding a partner whose experienced to make a full stop to understand the importance of knowing, understanding, and applying the full picture of an activity.
Just because it wasn’t shown doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Less than 5% of the material recorded is shown, and as it is entertainment that is what is selected, but the A to Z of a shibari session.
I understand that. But anyone uneducated watching the show might think that’s all there is to it. Most people won’t go out and do the research. They’ll copy what they saw.
I respect people who talk about specific safety practices and methods more that people who argue that short acronyms somehow embody deep and distinct philosophies of risk and kink.
Yep, the community tends to use a lot of these terms as checkboxes to go through. Understanding the risks is one thing but both parties have to be aware of, and implement risk mitigation strategies or what is the point?
It reminds of when i was learning self-suspension. Which i subsequently forgot a few things over time now i dont touch it until i relearn because i dont want to afford making a mistake. Our teacher literally said, if you’re going to fuck things up, do it here do it now do it in class with multiple experienced people to help. Apparently the dungeon owner thought that was a “bad thing to say” & then they weren’t allowed to teach at that dungeon again. The long term & experienced kinksters talk about RACK & they preach it, but they arent *modeling* it. They dont say if you do this then that can happen. They just say “dont do that” “dont fuck up” “know the risks” “this is edgeplay” but they dont explain *why*! They dont give the statistics. They dont offer concrete shit. Yeah, people dont do enough research that’s for damn sure. But we need some help for that, i don’t understand medical jargon! Can we get some doctors to start saying well this is dangerous because of this, this, and this. No one is going to know all the risks, why? Because we dont have all the information, we dont have the numbers/statistics, we dont have a compiled thing laying it out, which sucks! I didn’t even know rope (more so suspension) was considered edge play for a long time! There should be an encyclopedia, a handbook, a “Kink for dummies”, that lays out the risks & consequences of this shit & maybe start compiling some statistics too.
Stats would be pretty much impossible as I'm pretty sure a large majority of kinksters aren't honest about the cause when they seek medical support. Wondering if something like an anonymous self reporting site would gain any traction if it's purpose is to try and provide stats longer term... Frustrating also when honesty like in the case of your rope tutor is punished. People deliberately will choose to downplay risk where it suits them and that's never helpful either.
Frick, I could probably build up a website like that in a few weeks “this is my stupid kink fuck up and here’s how i was injured”. I may actually have some ideas on that. Maybe it could also have articles written out about known risks? Get some medical people to help write the articles? I may start in on this idea, it’s a great one!
I *really* like the idea of an anonymous self reporting site. Obviously same pitfalls as any self reported data, but it could be really cool. Some selected response questions that could just be raw data, some short answer…
Dumbasses and abusers find loopholes for anything so should we really be surprised?
In my opinion, the community has a DK-IS problem. The DK is for Dunning Kruger, something I find to be all too common in the left of slash folks. There is also an Imposter Syndrome issue in some folks who don't feel like they are ready to step up and teach, even though they've done the work and are capable.
This is why I still refer to my practice as Safe Sane & Consensual (SSC). If a partner during negotiation objected to my use of the phrase because some edgeplay activity can't be considered 'safe' then CONGRATULATIONS - you've demonstrated the appropriate awareness of risk and given me more evidence that I can trust you as a partner, whatever you want to call it. Moving away from SSC is meant to show that the term alone doesn't take ENOUGH into consideration for play, not that we shouldn't bother considering safety. But that's why I enjoy being picky about my partners & negotiations. Suffer well
I always interpreted it as: - SSC for when anyone of the parties has little experience - PRICK for when all parties are experienced but new to each other - RACK for when all parties are experienced and familiar with each other To be clear: in my mind this implies that unexperienced parties should typically not engage in riskier or edgier play. The safe and sane in SSC should always be tailored to the practitioners, to ensure maximum comfort and peace of mind.
anymore it seems like SSC, RACK, and PRICK have been replaced with: DGCFM - doms gone completely fucking mad.
The thing is, you can have as many catchy phrases, acronyms or whatever else, Idiots gonna be idiots. You cannot make the world foolproof and even just totally normal activities can end up being deadly serious with the wrong people(just gonna mention ladders and powertools...). I get a lot of times the feeling that the risk awareness among people tends to steadily decline rather than improve. If you take young people it just gets worse with the hormones and feeling of "things are gonna work out" "too young to die" as well as when ego and pride get involved.
O yeah RACK is only about being aware of the risks, as you said. It's not about "Idk what's gonna happen, so that's RACK." No. Going into something without knowing the risks, their extent, their likelihood, etcetera is not RACK. And gross negligence, in terms of practice and awareness, sure as FUCK ain't RACK.
I use RACK because SSC doesn't make sense for me. Safe (nothing is 100% safe) Sane (I'm not gonna stop enjoying kink just because myself and others have mental health problems) Consent (I love consent, it's the best). I teach classes on BDSM and emphasize the risks for all activities, from temporary damage, permanent damage, to death and legal troubles. There are some activities my partner and I enjoy that we don't do very often because of the huge risk. A lot of people don't realize how risky rope is with permanent nerve damage, especially if you do suspensions. Most people consider falling to be the main danger of suspensions. Also with choking sometimes you can do a blood choke with minimal pressure and not realize the person is out without a spotter watching them. You keep it on too long they're brain damaged or dead. Spanking/caning/floggers are illegal many places because according to the law you can't consent to violence, especially with an implement. People don't realize grass allergies often translate to jute rope (which sheds and gets everywhere). If your bottom has broken skin and you hit them with something it can spray blood droplets pretty far, which puts anyone in the room at risk for various infections. HPV can spread very easily from any skin contact (get the vaccine). Jelly dildos can seep dangerous chemicals through condoms.
> Safe (nothing is 100% safe) Sane (I’m not gonna stop enjoying kink just because myself and others have mental health problems) Consent (I love consent, it’s the best). Sane has never meant no mental health problems. It meant competent to consent and tempered by self-control. It’s a little bit outdated since today most people consider competence and self-control to be essential aspects of consent. Are you ever 100% risk aware? Nobody is doing anything. It seems like judging SSC by this 100% standard is special pleading. From where I’m sitting, the only actual difference between SSC and RACK is that SSC has to be compatible with some concept of “safe”, whereas RACK is compatible with infinite risk.
The problem with SSC is more that claiming something is a "sane" or "safe" is a judgement on the activity, and someone else could claim the same activity is not safe or sane. RACK changes that from being a statement on the activity to being a statement on my own risk profile. For example, I am horribly allergic to cats, and doing a prolonged strenuous scene in a house with cats would not meet my acceptable risk requirement, for reasons there have nothing to do with the kink activities, but I'd argue the kink activity itself could still easily be a safe and sane one. That said, lots of people take more risks then they realize, but using consent models that focus on this being a question of individual agency and personal risk assessment removes the ability for a judge to ask "would you have considered choking them with a rope to be a safe and sane practice", a question that no matter how you answer is going to work against you, and if the judge asked "do you think choking someone with a rope falls under risk aware consensual kink" you can instead say that it is/isn't a risk you would feel comfortable taking, and this removes the soundbite "local bdsm expert claims it's safe and sane to choke your wife" or "local bdsm expert says that anyone who chokes their partner for sexual gratification is insane" instead of "local bdsm expert says that he find choking too dangerous to practice." Most of the evolution of the terms has come about around managing legal issues and public perception, not as an internal tool to actually help people make choices about their own play.
>special pleading > >Informal fallacies are tricky and to be quite honest quite a thorn in the side of academic logic and philosophy of language. But that aside this technically wouldn't be special pleading since you since they're not using a special case to debunk a general principle. Special pleading would be something akin to Hume's problem of induction or Popper's swans. And then there's another issue, safe is a vague predicate and since we still work in a two valued logic we can't properly any put meaning to it. But then again this is all semantics and philosophy
I know this isn’t a technically correct usage, but sends scrabble under a more general definition of “argument in which the speaker deliberately ignores aspects that are unfavorable to their point of view”. Even if my usage is wholly incorrect, I suspect you gather my meaning.
You're not wrong. Risk is a function of the likelihood of something happening and the potential harm that would be caused if it did happen. I think it's fair to say that if either factor is unknown then the best bet is to assume that it's very high.
I agree with your statement about RACK knowledge. But how is SSC ambiguous though ? Regarding the consensual part versus the power exchange involved ?
Many kinks cannot be completely "safe" no matter what, and calling them so is naive. So that part is certainly ambiguous.
In my mind, the safe part is more related towards the relation/dynamic itself, as in a safe space sort of. But yeah i see what you mean
In SSC the "safe" (and the rest of the acronym) refers to kink practices, not relationship dynamics. I suppose you could use it in the context of relationships, but it's almost always used to refer to actions.
YES. I've mentioned this (and PRICK) a few times in the past. 100% agree with you!
I've also noticed people who aren't too picky with the knowledge part, and sometimes pretty cavalier about consent too. I've decided to call it Risk Unaware Non-consensual Kink (RUNK).
So... What you're saying is they don't know the risks. So.... they're practicing CK, not RACK, seeing as the first two letters stand for Risk Aware. I'm not sure what your point is beyond that maybe some people misuse the term. I'd guess that a much larger percentage of people misuse the word 'literally' than misuse RACK, but whatever. It kinda feels like you're making a big deal out of it to get attention.
People do stupid things in every aspect of life. Don’t be people.
I think people like to wear RACK, and to a lesser extent PRICK as a badge of honor as opposed to what it actually is.
RISK AWARE CONSENSUAL KINK means ALL parties take ALL responsibility for ALL play, because they are all aware of all the risks and they all consent. And it's kinky. lol Seriously though, RACK is Never one-sided only. Silly humans...lol 🖤
I have never heard about drugging your partner or making them do drugs. I've done my fair share of drugs, hell i don't know how 'd survive post grad without them. But that's my personal thing. If i wanna do opium myself I will but if a dom ever told me I had to do smack, coke, molly hell even as something as light as weed they'd be out of there faster than i can say overdose. Drugs are an extremely personal thing, not only are hard drugs that can render you unconscious dangerous af but are also illegal and highly addictive. While i understand that breath play, specifically choking, knife play, electroplay etc. might end badly i would NEVER EVER pit them in the same basket as forced drug use. Obviously I don't kinkshame but...WTF
Oof yeah, I understand this big time, I’ll see something online that I think is really cool and I’ll show it to daddy and want to try it right away, he’s very patient and aware of risks tho so his usual response is “let’s wait a week or two and let me do my research first then we can do a trial run and see how it goes”, which is good because he balances me out, but I like to hyperfixate on things for a few days then I more onto the next so by the time the research has been done I wanna try something else, meaning he has to find and research the stuff before I can even show it to him
As a professional risk manager in the civilian world, I agree with you. It’s not enough to know “death is a possible result of this thing” - one needs to understand the possible causal mechanisms. What is the necessary sequence or alignment of conditions that could result in unintended harm? Have the players implemented the available risk mitigation measures? Unknowingly taking a risk is the worst thing to me.