How Consent is Encoded as Protocol in the Kink Community
SSC, RACK, and PRICK define levels of consent in your kinky play
Consent is an important part of all we do in the kink community. After all, we engage in sexual sport that often leaves one or both partners bruised, physically or emotionally. From an outsider’s point of view, there is a semblance of coercion or force inflicted from one person to another. But everything we do is negotiated and occurs in a consensual framework.
The kink community has a phrase that most of us abide by — Safe, Sane, and Consensual. Encoded into everything we do is the concept of consent. It is important to kinksters that we are not abusing each other, that we are respecting each other’s boundaries, individuality, and autonomy. We like to get each other’s rocks off, but we do so with integrity and an ingrained sense of propriety and rules that are codified. Safe, Sane, and Consensual (SSC) is to kinksters what The Ten Commandments is to the religious.
For the uninitiated, we use the stop light metaphor as a method to signal “go, slow down/pause, or stop” during scenes. If anything goes amiss, there is a way to stop the action. Dungeons routinely have Dungeon Monitors who also keep an eye on things and will step in when need be to stop things from becoming medically dangerous. This signal system serves most people well. It’s considered a red flag in the community when a relative stranger wants to play without a safety signal of this type. Regular partners pride themselves on learning to read their partners, but even the most experienced players run into trouble sometimes. They know how to stop a scene. A simple cal of “Red!” and all stops. There are no take backs. They can play another time.
As the kink world has grown and matured, we have questioned our own inclinations to safety, to sanity, and to consensually. Thus, new flavors of consent have given rise to more nuanced acronyms. Most contemporary kink practitioners adhere to one of three popular acronyms that codify their behavior. In each of those acronyms, the common denominator is consent.
Safe, Sane, and Consensual (SSC)
Safe, Sane, and Consensual is the hallmark creed that most kinksters live by. It is usually the first one that new kinksters are introduced to when becoming familiar with their local communities. In short it means that all actions they take will be safe, sane, and consensual. They are not going to act in ways that endanger themselves or their partners. They will engage with an appropriate mindset so that the encounter is sane (usually forgoing any kind of alcohol or mind-altering substances prior to kinky BDSM play). And all activities engaged in will be fully negotiated in advance and are thus consensual.
One of my first experiences in the kink community was as a guest of a Mistress at her Victorian three-story house that she used as a dungeon for a business. She invited several couples to use the house at their pleasure, for a price, and to engage in whatever games and practices that they thought up.
One young couple arrived with an ice chest in tow, despite being the middle of winter and bitterly cold in the Midwest. The gentleman, a young Dominant, ordered his young blonde submissive partner to get naked. He took a long length of heavy chain from the ice chest, full of ice, and draped it over her. She stood there, white as a polar icecap, with this cold metal chain draped from her very white skin, shivering as he laughed at her and told her to hold her composure and posture.
Later, he tied her hands above her head to an exposed pipe overhead and began flogging and whipping her, pinching and prodding her, leaving welts and marks, and generally violating her body while she cried out “no! please no! stop!” My immediate reaction was to stand up and intercede on her behalf. But in the kink community, we learn not to interfere in anyone’s scene.
As it turned out, they were practicing “consensual nonconsent,” a more advanced BDSM play. She had agreed to the play in advance and reacted as she might have had the encounter not been consensual. But it was all on the up and up. When their scene was done, they hugged and cuddled and seemed as happy if not happier than before the scene.
He had not “hurt her” in any way. She was not marked, he had not done anything that was unsafe, that was not thought out completely ahead of time, and that was not done with both of their full knowledge and consent for the situation.
This was my first exposure to Safe, Sane, and Consensual in action. And while it pushed my own boundaries at first, once I understood the concept of “consensual nonconsent,” I was turned on even more at pushing the envelope of boundary-pushing kink.
RACK
RACK stands for Risk-Aware Consensual Kink. This permutation of SSC represents a more advanced understanding of what we do in kink. It is a code often adopted by people who have been in the kink community for a while and realize that some of the things we do are neither “safe” nor “sane” in the normal ways we think about things. Consensuality, however, remains as one of the central tenets of the equation.
For instance, experienced kinksters often engage in “fire play,” advanced play we call “edge play.” Fire is inherently dangerous, often volatile, and sometimes difficult to control. It can pose danger to humans and to structures. In extreme forms, it requires squadrons of paid community first responders to tackle. But you can learn to play with fire in safe ways.
We light batons on fire and apply them to human skin, immediately wiping the fire away before it can settle in and burn. We also douse each other with alcohol-based liquid and then light it and jump into swimming pools while on fire. While we may lose some superficial body hair, we rarely encounter anything close to a burn. Lest you think we are complete fools, when we engage in fire play, we have spotters nearby with wet rags and fire extinguishers within reach in case anything gets out of control.
In the ordinary sense of things, lighting someone on fire does not seem inherently “safe” or “sane” behavior. Things can go wrong. Someone could slip and not end up in the pool and thus suffer burns to the body.
As kinksters, we are aware of the inherent risks that we are undertaking. And thus, with some forethought, the idea of being “risk-aware” has become one of the hallmarks of what we do. Much of what we do is “risk-aware.” Using whips on each other can lead to abrasions and cuts on the skin, that, if not treated, can lead to infection. Hurting each other to the point of leaving bodily marks and psychological injuries can lead to lingering aches and pains.
As a counterpoint, more people suffer serious injuries every year merely crossing the street and getting hit by vehicles than are seriously injured during BDSM play. RACK helps us to acknowledge the inherent dangers of some of our acts and give even more thought to safety protocols necessary for playing safely. With prior thought to the act and safety in mind, usually, both parties experience great pleasure. Playing with risk in kinky play is probably less risky than rock climbing and other outdoor sports.
PRICK
PRICK stands for Personal Responsibility, Informed, Consensual Kink. This is one time when being a PRICK is actually okay. This variation of the safety protocol regards the participants’ personal involvement in the choices they make in kinky activities. More experienced kink players know what they are getting into. They are “Informed” about the activities, and they take “Personal Responsibility” for their own involvement in the kinky activity at hand. Just as in the non-kink world, consent in any kind of physical interaction regarding humans has become paramount in negotiating fulfilling interpersonal relationships and activity.
In order for participants not to backtrack and rewrite an unpleasant encounter — “x happened and I wasn’t expecting it, and I feel violated by another!” — adherents to PRICK have a mature understanding of what happens in kink activities, what could happen, and the possibilities of violation that are inherent in kink play. These consensual violations are partly what kink practitioners seek.
We are not talking about violations that go beyond negotiated boundaries. Rather, we are talking about kink play that becomes physically or psychologically intense beyond the imagined limits that everyone has agreed to. We are still human, and human sexual activities can get away from us in kinky encounters. Our Dominant side becomes turned on and more aggressive than usual, or a submissive heads into subspace more heavily than ever before and has less coherent verbal control of a situation and thus cannot employ a safe word as readily.
With each person taking personal responsibility for their own part in the kink play — and with each person looking out for the other — the chances of a real violation are greatly lessened.
For example, during a fire play session, one of the participants was very hairy, which helped him to catch on fire more quickly and intensely than some of the others. While the entire scene went off without a hitch, and he hit the pool within a second or two of being set on fire, he still experienced some mild 1st degree burns on his body, not to mention exposing the rest of us to the smell of his burning hair. This experienced player adopted PRICK as his protocol. He did not blame the firestarter for his burns. He received some first-aid, celebrated his success and participation in the scene, and went about his business. He knew the risks, was informed ahead of time, and took personal responsibility for his actions that led to these minor burns.
SSC, RACK, and PRICK are not a hierarchical system nor is one protocol necessarily more meaningful than the other. Because kink poses some inherent physical dangers, these protocols were developed to help inform practitioners of their own responsibility in creating enjoyable kinky scenes.
Most kink practitioners spend many hundreds and thousands of hours developing skills so that the intended outcome can be as safe and controlled as possible. The last thing we want to do is cause pain unintentionally and inflict damage that was not negotiated, that is not consensual.
Just like everyone else, kinky players do not like unintentional pain. They may flog and whip each other to the point of having road maps of welts on their bodies, but stub their toes on a stair or leg of heavy furniture, and they will hobble about and howl in pain into the wilderness.
Few of us will ever consent to such abuse from a table leg. Hey, but you never know. There are some kinky fuckers out there.
Mister Vinnie is a cismale, sex-positive, pansexual, polyamorish, Dominant leatherman with 28 years experience in the leather community. He edits the sex blog, EDGEPLAY.
