Guidelines for Consent and Communication in BDSM Relationships

* Acknowledging past use of violence. * Admitting being wrong. * Communicating openly and truthfully. TRUST AND SUPPORT: * Supporting her goals in life. * Respecting her right to her own feelings, friends, activities, and opinions. All these things ought to be present ina BDSM relationship! Some people do heavy role- play situations where they have specific personas that they don't want to break out of... and they still can make sure that all those elements are included. For example, they can keep simultaneous journals about the relationship, and thereby keep up with each others’ feelings and consent without breaking out of their roles. I also think that the list is especially useful in that it highlights places where non- consensual control is likely to happen... and therefore, places where BDSMers should be especially careful. For example, failing to support a partner's life goals would be okay in the middle of an intense BDSM encounter. But afterwards, it might be good to give extra support, just because that can be such an important genuine danger spot. Just like vanilla people, BDSMers have a lot of unspoken elements of our relationships. For example -- the partner I mentioned earlier, who held me in place when I gave him a hug on the street. We didn't negotiate that particular act ahead of time. But we have an established relationship, and we've done similar things before; I knew that if I wanted to talk about it -- or ask him not to do it -- then he'd listen. And, even more importantly, the rest of our relationship lines up with the Equality Wheel. te Ok ok This can be found on the Internet at: COMMUNICATION: [theory] What Happens After An S&M Encounter "Gone Wrong" I wrote this in late 2011. At the time, I didn't mention another factor that makes it important to talk about S&M screwups: we should do it because talking openly about honest mistakes makes it harder for actual abusers to hide in the S&M community. As I note at the end of this piece, sometimes a miscommunication is a real miscommunication, but sometimes it's a "miscommunication" that's covering for abuse. The only way we can HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018651