abuse among the kinky - p.s.
Just in case anyone reading this is considering #1 on the list of 10 things to do, I figured I’d post this little p.s. if you’re feeling twitchy about the safeword question.
I checked through the works cited at the bottom of the Network/La Red document I linked to in my last post, and found a couple from the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), a US-based legal support group for kinksters and other alternative-sexuality folks. Interestingly, and happily, the NCSF documents do not insist on safewords… and they were adopted in 1998 (after that year’s Leather Leadership Conference), so clearly even then some people must have seen the problem with an excessive focus on safewords.
In the document "What Is S/M," chapter 3 - "SM Is Not Domestic Violence," there is no mention of safewords at all, just a general explanation about the distinctions.
In the document "S/M vs Abuse," the only time the word "safeword" is mentioned is in the following paragraph about SSC (Safe, Sane and Consensual): "Consensual is respecting the limits imposed by each participant at all times. One of the recognized ways to maintain limits is through a "safeword" which ensures that each participant can end his/her participation with a word or gesture." (The "one of" part of course being key.)
However, it must be said that while both of these documents do a great job of explaining the difference between SM and abuse, they are for the most part not intended for potential abuse victims. In their wording it seems pretty clear to me that they’re intended for the general public, lawyers, other people in law enforcement, etc. - i.e. not people who do WIITWD, but people outside it who misunderstand its nature. The exception would be the two series of questions in the "Guidelines" section of the "S/M vs Abuse" document - but even those are a lot more theoretical and heady than practical and concrete, compared to the explanations of abuse situations given by The Network/La Red.
Of course, for all you curious people looking into this for more academic reasons, these links are excellent. But with all that in mind, I still think the Network/La Red document is more appropriate to link to withthe aim of giving newbies a tool to help them assess whether what’s going on in their relationship is OK. It’s way more concrete in its SM-specific examples of actual abuse situations.
Of course, if you’re thinking of putting an anti-abuse link on your SM- or sexuality-oriented website and the safeword thing in the Network/La Red document bugs you a whole lot, I still certainly think it’s better to post the NCSF link(s) than nothing at all.
