I recently got to collaborate with the Bound-Together blog to share a version of this writing off-site. You can check it out here!
I first heard the term “risk profile” a few months back, and never really was given a solid definition of it. “That’s not in my risk profile” was something I took to just mean “I’ve deemed that too risky for me”, which I think most would probably say is fair. But the more I’ve thought about the way I approach my comfort level in play, the more I’ve found that the term fits, and it fills in the blanks my lack of explicit limits or safewords leave for people. So in discussions with some other bottoms who are like me recently, we started to operationalize it a bit more.
Safewords are easy ways to help play stay inside your comfort zone, but there are many extremely valid reasons that people might not want to use them. Maybe you’re like me, and the sort of power exchange you need in your play must preclude you having any of that decision-making power. Maybe you’re unlikely to actually use your safeword, or you know you’d use it too soon and be disappointed in yourself afterwards (not that there’s *any* reason to be), or you don’t think you’d know what constitutes enough of an emergency to stop the scene. Hard limits are adjacent to what I’m about to discuss, but they aren’t perfect either: most folks use them to list kinks and implements they aren’t okay with, but there always might be things you haven’t thought of. Not all people use the same implements in the same ways, so what is a hard limit with one could be a yes please with another. And, as I once read somewhere here, hard limit lists frequently become check lists; keeping one for me became “I’m afraid of this,” which isn’t the same as “I don’t want to do this,” and these traditional lists eventually were too, well, limiting.
Enter the Risk Profile: a method of determining what one does not want to happen in play that I believe is simultaneously more comprehensive and more permissive of experimentation in scene.
What
I will define the Risk Profile broadly as a set of parameters encompassing the things in one’s life that, if lost, would cost more than the opportunity that play provides. What you are not willing to risk. As I go more into this, that will make more sense. These parameters will, of course, be wide for some and narrow for others. They’ll look different and how they come out in people’s play will vary. **They focus on end result, not in-play experience.** They may include such items as ability to engage in one’s work, interact with family, or maintain mental health, among others. Someone who works as a professional model would have a different risk profile from someone who works in a call center, and so forth. Since I write, I’ll be using that as my example in this post.
They are *not* a list of kinks or tools that are off limits, though they might include them. They are not a list of “things I don’t like”. I am speaking to a particular subset of person with this, who may *want* to be put in experiences they don’t like or that even make them feel like they’re unsafe, even if they aren’t–though there’s no reason someone couldn’t have a hard limits list in addition for more coverage, if that isn’t their style. They are not necessarily a substitute for a safeword—a safeword can be used with them, or not. They aren’t as broad as “I would not be okay with paralysis or losing cognitive ability” and I’d recommend you just not play with people who you think wouldn’t already know something like that.
Why
Defining particular categories or health elements one is not willing to put in jeopardy does a few things over the other failsafes.
The risk profile allows for inclusion of limits one might not have thought of. “Being able to write” as part of my risk profile gives my top more information than “no bending fingers back”. From that, they can also determine that needles under my fingernails would be an issue, even if I hadn’t thought to say that. At the same time, it means I don’t have to approve everything that will be done to me, which would make a scene not enjoyable for me personally.
The risk profile allows for the bottom to better vet a top’s knowledge and skills. We often see somebody do one thing at a high skill level and assume they are well-versed in others. With my writing example, I could toss out potentially (not necessarily) irrelevant knowledge such as how long somebody has been in the scene, and narrow it down to “can you tell me which nerves connect to the wrist?”
The risk profile allows for prioritizing of first aid. It is impossible to plan for every emergency or to know how to fix every problem. It simply is. But, having determined my risk profile, I can educate myself as to tests to make sure nerves are not being damaged, as well as create (as much as possible) a plan of action as to treatment if things do go wrong.
The risk profile helps both top and bottom determine when a scene has to end. For those of us who don’t like to or can’t use safewords, this clarifies what an actual emergency would be. I don’t actually want a scene to stop immediately, even if I say otherwise in the moment, because I feel like I might vomit–but I do want it to stop if I can’t move my fingers. Additionally, having focused medical knowledge about such things has allowed us in a real-life example to address just the portion of a scene affecting my hands without slowing down the rest of it, as opposed to stopping everything in order to figure out the cause.
The risk profile gives the parameters in case of surprise CNC scenes and similar. For those open to scenes that they don’t negotiate everything into, the risk profile allows a top to easier think about what they’re going to do without asking leading questions that might give their evil/creative (and therefore not on a typical limits list) plans away.
How
This is fairly simple, in theory. There are only three steps.
1) Determine the things in life that, if lost, would cost more than the opportunity play provides.
Consider emotional and physical health risks that are particular to your body, jobs, hobbies, values and beliefs, family and romantic relationships, among others.
2) Determine what specifically you need in order to maintain those things.
In terms of writing, I need to be able to type, I need to meet deadlines, and I need to be able to think and create. That’s fairly straightforward. If I can’t go out for a week because I have a black eye, that isn’t outside of my risk profile. A singer, for example, may need to avoid screaming in the week before performances so as to not damage vocal cords. Someone who puts raising their children in their risk profile may need to include more, such as the ability to drive them to day care, lift them into their high chairs, not have marks visible to them, and not be in such a state of drop that they couldn’t avoid letting on that something was off. Depending on mental health, this might include taking a pill at a certain time, not having restrictions on food, sleeping comfortably. This is all highly individual.
Again, pretty similar to a hard limits list in many ways, except that it focuses specifically on end result.
3) Codify it, if that’s helpful to you, and talk about it.
Just as you would any other negotiation. I’ve never had this discussion explicitly, but I live with my partner and He knows what’s important to me. I had to say at some point “hey, when x happened, I wasn’t able to write because of the pain” and I feel fairly confident He isn’t going to do x again in the same way or with the same force. You could also, of course, discuss it in certain terms. You could write it down, particularly if you have non-obvious skill requirements, and have that list to share. You could just use it for your own information, to help you focus your own knowledge acquisition as a bottom.
And I should say that tops can have this for their bottoms, as well—my Owner generally won’t risk anything that is known to put my bad shoulder out of commission for a day, even though I’d be okay with it in a lot of cases.
And there you go. That’s the risk profile. My framework of it, at least.
This isn’t something you sit down and do in a few minutes. I run a two-hour workshop on it (insert “sign up for my substack to get notified if i’m giving one!” here) and that’s just the getting started part. This is a process that you spend time on, over many many days and weeks and months, and that you revise as time goes on. And then you do research about the possible risks of the kind of play you like, the medical information you need in order to protect those things that you can’t risk, and so on and so forth…
I am not even slightly pretending this is a perfect system. It isn’t comprehensive, just a way to be *more* comprehensive. You might have this as well as a hard limits list of things you just don’t like, and you might also use a safeword to mark any stop at all; this just allows coverage of what you haven’t thought of. Making it clear you want to avoid anything that would produce x result doesn’t necessarily mean x result won’t happen in a worst case scenario, but it does mean you can prioritize that over other results (in the case of two non-life-threatening injuries, that is. Of course you should always prioritize things such as long-term unconsciousness and drops on heads first.) It doesn’t account for all that could go wrong, but it will tell you what emergencies you want the top to have a more than basic knowledge of. And it won’t stop consent violators—but your limits list and safeword weren’t going to do that, either.
And for those of us who do want to play not knowing what our tops are going to do to us, without any way out, maybe this helps give them more information so that we can both be successful. Maybe it helps us to up our own medical and play knowledge, or to narrow down what criteria we use to figure out who we can and can’t play with. Maybe it helps us determine what’s an important no, and what’s just an “I’m scared.” Maybe it helps us, even a little bit, mitigate our risk.
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