(written in January of 2000)

Safewords

We as a community do newbies a real disservice by promoting the use of safewords. I’ve known doms to completely take advantage of a new submissive by encouraging early play because “you have a safeword”. Newbies can get themselves into situations that they are not emotionally or physically prepared for, with the mistaken belief that yelling purple-alligator will magically extract them from the chains they are in.

Safewords can be a crutch for doms

“I didn’t stop because she didn’t say purple-alligator.” Doms are supposed to be responsible for the scene, and doms who use safewords are transferring that responsibility to the submissive in question (SIQ). So the SIQ, whose brain may be flooded with mind-altering chemicals like endorphins, is now supposed to be keeping track of what’s okay, what’s enough? What a bunch of hogwash.

It can make a dom feel safer to know that the safeword exists, that the SIQ will yell purple-alligator when it’s too much, but I think that shortcuts the intimacy and communication that they are trying to achieve in the first place.

It’s very intimate and revealing to get to places where limits are being pushed. A safeword doesn’t accomplish anything that plain words alone would accomplish.

Plain English works better

A submissive has a sudden cramp in her leg. Why is hearing “purple alligator” any better than hearing “cramp” ? I feel like I can’t take another stroke of the cane. Why is “red” better than “please Master, I can’t take any more”?

Let your submissive feel free to tell you anything, and you won’t need safewords. If I won’t get punished for telling my Master how I feel, and he won’t feel obliged to do anything more than listen and evaluate what I tell him, it’s amazing how open I can be.

He reminds me all the time that my job is to be transparent. I can and do tell him everything. “Please Master, no more!” He doesn’t take that as an order — he listens to me beg, and digs out more from me, makes me feel even more vulnerable. “Why, slave girl? Don’t you like to scream for me?” or “Oh, no slave girl, we’ve only just begun. Don’t make a sound until I tell you that you may.”

Safewords are unreliable

If you’ve been in the scene for very long at all and have any experience in playing on the heavy end, you know that the submissive in a scene in usually not in any way a good source of information about her own state. Arousal and endorphins are likely to cloud any judgment I make. I’m usually unable to articulate anything with words, anyway. One of the first things to go away when I play is my ability to speak words. When given an order, I can follow the words. But I feel so intensely during a scene that I begin almost immediately to think in emotional terms only, and in visual ways, that all of my thoughts get translated into moans and groans and words escape me.
It’s caused some real problems in scenes.

There was one time in the early ’90s when my Master and a friend were playing with a violet wand on me. They got the most interesting reactions from me when they held it directly on my nipples. I squealed and moaned, even started to cry. But though I had the feeling that it was hurting more than they thought it was, I was completely unable to do more than moan, cry and whimper. They thought that reaction was jolly fun, and kept it up even more. The violet wand produces sunburn like blisters when used too much in one area, and the next day, I had blisters all over both nipples. But I was completely unable to give information in words. A safeword would not have helped at all — I couldn’t think of English words, and translating those feelings into words and then to a safeword was completely beyond me. Now I
might be special in that way, but I’ve talked to enough submissives over the years to know that I’m not alone.

Safewords are like riding a bicycle with training wheels

Before I met my Master, I was in relationships where the DIQ used safewords. It felt completely artificial to me. I know it was supposed to be used only in the case of emergency, but giving me that responsibility kept me grounded and unable to really let go. I couldn’t get past the fact that I really held all the power.

Safewords keep the control in the hands of the submissive.

If what you are doing is playing at BDSM, perhaps safewords are a good idea for you. But if you really want to do is give the dominant all of the power, then safewords are completely wrong for a power exchange. If the SIQ truly has the ability to stop the scene at any point because of a perceived danger or landmine, then the DIQ does not have control.

I can’t conceive of a situation where I would make the better judgment call in a scene. I belong to my Master, and my job is to give him information, to be transparent. I am totally free to give him information, in fact, expected to do so to my fullest ability. That includes words when possible, and expressions of danger and fear as I feel them. I’m sure he takes all of that into account when he plays with me.

But in no way do I have the ability to stop anything that he’s going to do with me.

So how have I survived a ten year relationship, where he routinely takes me past my limits? Ten years ago when I first started talking about safewords, there were dire predictions of my ability to live this way. People were convinced that he would push too far, that I would totally freak out at being pushed way past my limits. They were convinced that physical problems would crop up that Frank wouldn’t be able to detect, and I would get physically damaged beyond repair.

Amazingly, none of that has happened. Frank has pushed me many times into a screaming, crying puddle of mush who is unable to do more than moan and cry at the end of a scene. He likes to do that, actually. I think he believes it demonstrates to me on a deep level that I am not in control, period. Even when I’m convinced I can’t stand another second of the single tail, or the cane, or of the extreme bondage, he likes to push me that little bit more.

If I had the power to end those scenes, I would have taken it, because at those moments, I firmly believe that it’s unbearable. I am incredibly grateful when it ends. But paradoxically, I am incredibly grateful that I belong to a dominant who feels completely free to do with me as he pleases. If he wants a screaming, crying puddle, he knows how to get it. If I could stop the scene, we’d never get there, because I wouldn’t be able to let myself go that far. I think it’s instinctive, that level of self-protection.

Safewords are a sign of distrust

If a submissive insists on using a safeword, I think there is a serious lack of trust going on. Either the SIQ doesn’t know the DIQ very well yet, or doesn’t trust you. If you don’t know each other very well, why are you playing at levels where the need for a safeword would come up?

And if she doesn’t trust you, why does she think saying purple alligator will accomplish anything at all anyway?