A Post About Safety

First I would like to say I am sorry for my lack of posting of late. For awhile I just couldn’t think of something to post about, once I found a topic I never made the time to post.  So here is my apology, not that there are too many people that are following my blog but for those that do there it is.

 

So I had a couple of things that I wanted to post about but I will only choose one for today. A friend of mine asked me to make a post about safety. This isn’t unusual for me as I have led some discussions on the matter and it is something that is very important to me. I could go on at length about where it is okay to strike someone and the risks involved with many BDSM related activities. But, I think a post like that would miss the true mark of the topic I was asked to post about. The concern for a topic about safety came from viewing pictures in which a submissive was, I am assuming, caned until it caused lacerations on her skin. Now for most of you the BDSM mantra of “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” come to mind almost immediately. Here was the question that my friend posed, “Which of those three words do you put the most importance in?” Does the fact that such a beating was consensual make it okay? Or is there a certain line where, no matter how much consent there is, a set of actions is unsafe? Do you question the sanity of the people involved in such an action? Personally, I have never liked the “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” motto, now let me qualify why. It has nothing to do with not liking the idea that your play needs to be all of those things. Rather, it comes from perceptions and people’s desire to force their ideas of safe and sane onto others. Nothing that you do as a BDSM practitioner is completely safe. The idea of safety is taking calculated risks and knowing the ways to keep your play as safe as possible. If you do those things then I consider your play safe. If both you and your submissive know the dangers of playing with electricity and are properly prepared if something were to go wrong then you are playing safe. It doesn’t matter that electricity is more of an edge play than say for instance light bondage.  That being said there are some things where I think the risk outweighs any benefit that you get from the play. If it is very likely that playing a way will cause lasting damage to your partner or yourself then that method of play isn’t safe. Granted this is my opinion but I think it is fairly good all in all, take for instance using metal cuffs in a situation where your partner will be putting weight on them. This type of action is very likely to cause tendon or nerve damage to your partner, therefore, isn’t safe to be done.

 

So I guess the safety thing that I want to hit on is know what you are doing. There are many things out there that I do that others would probably consider unsafe. For instance, I enjoy electrical play for many people this is something that should never be done because of the risks involved. In my case, I have spent a great deal of time looking into the risks involved and what all can be done and what should be avoided. I know the most basic rules like, when using toys that send current through the skin never cross the heart.  I also know about the toys I use, I know for instance that a violet wand has many fail safes built in that make it difficult to impossible for straight current from your standard socket to enter the body. I keep my equipment in proper working condition so that these fail safes are maintained. 

 

In the end, you should never want to do serious damage to your partner. I don’t mean this to bad mouth people into things like branding or scars. What I mean is you should never want to beat your submissive so badly that she starts to experience kidney failure (Yes that is possible). You shouldn’t want to do something to your submissive that will make them unable to write properly or use their hands. As a partner hopefully you care about them enough to avoid these things and would never play with them in a way that could cause lasting damage to their ability to function.  That is where I draw the solid line of safety. If something you are doing could cause serious permanent damage and you aren’t aware of the potential and doing everything you can to avoid that damage you are being unsafe. To the couple that would want to play with a cane like that I can only ask a few questions. Are you trained in first aid to deal with the lacerations that were caused? Do the two of you know that intense beatings like that can cause a huge dumping of myoglobin into the blood that can lead to kidney damage? Are you keeping a close eye on your submissive after a beating like that to look for sluggishness and signs of the things that could go wrong? If the answer to these is yes, then congratulations you were inside the bounds of what I would consider your right as a couple. Is what you were doing risky? Hell yes, but you know the risks and are doing what you can to prevent, avoid, and treat the problems that may come up. If the answer to any of those is no, well my friends you are doing something that could change your lives forever, and not in a good way.