CNC

31
Dec
2025

The CNC Paradox: Why Consensual Nonconsent Stops Feeling Real (and 10 Things You Can Do About It)

TL;DR: If you struggle to feel genuinely powerless in CNC because you trust your partner and understand kink safety too well, this article explains why—and offers psychological immersion techniques for bottoms and tops to work with the nervous system instead of against it.

I hate that I Love Him.
I hate it worse that I know He Loves me.
That I want this.
That I know that He is skilled with His implements and can read me like a book.
Most of all, I hate that He… yuck… cares about my goddamn welfare.

If you like CNC, fear, ESM, or similar play and you recognize my thoughts there all too well… you aren’t alone. (Obviously, because I’m here, but also beyond me too!!!) In fact, I’d say that this is one of the most common challenges to come up when I teach my class “When No Doesn’t Mean No: Negotiating and Communicating for Consensual Nonconsent (CNC). This love, this trust, this care from people who care for our welfare… these beautiful things can really get in the way of the kind of CNC that some of us want.

Why does consensual nonconsent stop feeling real?

In consensual nonconsent (CNC), the very elements that make play ethical—trust, communication, and safety—can undermine immersion. When the nervous system recognizes safety too clearly, it becomes harder to experience genuine powerlessness, fear, or loss of control. This tension is what I call the CNC paradox.

This happens because our nervous systems react to things more rationally when we know we are safe. They’re supposed to — that’s the whole point of a lot of bottoming education, training you to read and speak up for your needs and signals, as well as to understand kink safety so that you can exit panic mode and actually enjoy yourself. But the problem is that then you’re stuck in the paradox where the safety you need also prevents the experience you want. The better you are at negotiating and the more you trust your own ability to vet and communicate with a play partner, the harder it can be to access that raw, desperate feeling of genuine loss of control.

This isn’t a problem we can solve by becoming better actors or just pretending harder (if that’s even something which aligns with the CNC you want at all, which is not the case for many of us). You simply cannot logic your way into feeling genuinely powerless. But you CAN work with your nervous system in ways that lower your brain’s ability to maintain that logic — that metacognitive awareness of “this is a scene and I consented to it.” And that’s what these techniques do: manipulate how the brain processes what’s happening, which helps you kick that logic out so you can have an absolutely delightfully awful time.

Before we go further, let’s be clear: CNC, a negotiated BDSM dynamic where all parties agree in advance to play that simulates a lack of consent, is always edge play (play with risks that can’t be entirely mitigated)—and some of these techniques are edge play within edge play necessarily, because they exist to change our in-the-moment awareness and ability to think things through while playing.

Messing with that calls for tops who are skilled at reading their bottoms even when said bottoms can’t advocate for themselves, bottoms who know how to assess their own bodies and signals (after the fact, if not during), and aftercare plans that address both the physical and psychological impacts and the when-not-ifs of things sometimes still going wrong. If you don’t feel 100% confident in those elements, that doesn’t mean don’t do CNC, because this isn’t a pass/fail sort of thing! But it might mean not to go full Kool-Aid Man balls-to-the-wall without engaging in some kind of CNC-oriented kink education (which certainly need not be mine). Even then, please talk these techniques over with your play partners before using them to make sure that everyone is aware of and okay with taking on the extra risks.

With that said, let’s talk about how to get your brain to shut up and let your body believe what’s happening.

What can bottoms do to make CNC feel “real”?

Remove Predictable Play Cues

Your brain uses pattern recognition to determine safety. We are all, in the end, creatures of habit in some form or another.

When certain elements are present—your partner’s usual tone of voice, your bedroom with the same lighting, the smell of the lip stain you always wear to play parties—your nervous system files the experience under “known and familiar.” And familiar equals “I keep coming back to do this again” equals safe equals aware you’re in a scene. Even the order things happen in (negotiation, warm-up, play, aftercare) creates a predictable structure that signals “this is a scene.” Contained. Controlled.

But… when those familiar markers are absent or changed, your nervous system loses some of its anchors to “this is just play.” To do this, start by considering ANY sensory details which you usually place before kink play. Your getting-ready playlist, your protein-heavy prep meal or electrolyte drink, your perfume. Then, systematically alter or remove these details. This might also mean ditching a bracelet you often fiddle with as a nervous habit, or taking a picture off the wall that you glance at habitually… Anything which breaks you away from the everyday state of things.

The extra risks: Removing safety cues means removing some of your brain’s ability to categorize “this is different from real danger.” This requires everyone to be more vigilant about actual problems precisely because the usual signals are confused and other deviations might not be noticed, either. Removing comfort items (which we don’t always even know are our comfort items) can also trigger freeze responses in particular, as taking action often gets linked in our head to our awareness of our escape options. So a top needs to be reading the bottom fresh, not just relying on usual patterns (which is always the better choice there, to be fair).

Time Dilation Through Monotony or Overwhelm

Time tracking is one of the ways your brain maintains its “this is temporary” awareness. When you can’t track time reliably, you lose one of your orienting factors for “how long has this scene been” and “when will this be over.” You become more present in each moment because you have no sense of the larger timeline.

However, you can create conditions before play where your sense of time becomes unreliable in a way that can stick with you through the scene by removing your ability to look at the time (yes, including your phone) and then either engaging in repetitive monotony (same action over and over until time blurs) or overwhelming intensity (so much you’re trying to do at once that time seems to compress or expand). Not knowing if something has been happening for 5 minutes or 30 minutes, not knowing if you only have 5 minutes or hours before a deadline… this creates an uncertainty which mirrors the uncertainty of real lack of control.

One word to tops here, though I’m not putting this one in the techniques-for-tops bit on its own: if you play songs the bottom knows or ones with lyrics, you’ll undo this work. We know innately that songs tend to be like 2-4 minutes. This is why lo-fi music gets used for studying; the lyric-free fade-into-the-next quality helps maintain the flow state.

The extra risks: If you have lots of deadlined responsibilities or appointments, losing track of time can be problematic. Time dilation can also make drop worse—you might feel like you’ve been through more than you have, which affects recovery—and can also lead to genuine dissociation, so know if you’re someone who needs temporal anchoring for mental health. On the other end of this, if you’re all go-go-gadget-ADHD-exec-dysfunction like I am, this may be no different than your norm and therefore do squat to reduce the paradox problem. Womp womp.

Strategic Exhaustion

For most play, you want to start off rested and energized. I talk about this when I teach “Changing Your Relationship with Pain,” how it’s important to be at your best-as-baseline so that you can play for longer. But those of us who deal with the paradox problem in CNC can actually benefit from depletion. This is because metacognitive awareness—the observing part of your mind which thinks “this is hot” or “I wonder if she is going to use that one toy” or “I trust him to know when I’m close to my limit”—gets quieter when your system is already taxed. When you’re tired, your prefrontal cortex has fewer resources to hold two truths at once (I’m consenting AND I’m helpless) and so it defaults to the immediate bodily experience.

This might mean creating physical exhaustion (through playing later in the day or through physical exertion beforehand), as your mind will sense that you’d have a harder time fighting back regardless of if you actually try to do so. And so even if you’re not a fight-er, feeling more limited in stress response options makes you… Well, feel more limited. Less escape possibility. Less choice. Less control.

But cognitive exertion counts too, and maybe even more so. Decision fatigue and emotional exhaustion quite literally do lower your capacity to maintain that foundation of “I’m not really helpless” because you are actually less able to access your agency in these moments. So before your CNC scene, you might try to engage in extensive difficult decision-making, chat with a tough family member, work on your finances… Whatever tends to actually drain your executive function.

The extra risks: This one adds serious complications to consent, as exhaustion can impair your ability to recognize actual danger or communicate distress — there’s a reason why you’re not supposed to drive when tired. This one probably should only happen with partners who can read your specific mental state even when you can’t articulate it, your risk profile should be something that everybody is 100% clear on, and your top may need to be more conservative about intensity as a direct result of you using a technique which reduces your capacity to advocate for yourself. Also consider: exhaustion affects aftercare needs significantly. You might drop harder and recover slower.

Self-Gaslighting/Question Your Desires

CNC often involves doing things that part of you actually doesn’t want (that’s often the whole point). In the hours or days before a scene, you can actively cultivate doubt about whether you want this. Journal about your fears. List out all the things that could go wrong. Let yourself feel the “what the fuck am I doing?” of it all. Don’t reassure yourself away from it.

If you’ve cultivated genuine uncertainty about whether you want it at all, then when you’re thinking “I don’t want this” during your scene, you’ll have less ability to reassure yourself with “but I consented to this, I asked for this.” Because did you? Do you want this?
Really? No matter what?
Are you sure?

The extra risks: This one is especially psychologically risky in multiple ways. First, if you enter a scene truly not entirely sure if you want it, you’ve undermined your own consent in ways that can be hard to recover from afterward, and a top may (reasonably!) be uncomfortable with that as well. Please do not do this without consent from your top to try it out, as they may very well say, “No, if you aren’t coming in 100% clear on wanting it, we aren’t going forward.” If nothing else, I’d say they ought to be aware their bottom’s self-knowledge is deliberately compromised and be prepared to do extra check-ins of some form accordingly. This one is also important to be careful with if you know you’re someone prone to anxiety or overthinking, as it certainly could create mental health spirals of its own.

Pre-Scene Deprivation/Create Bodily Need States

When your body has real, pressing needs that aren’t being addressed, you’re less abstract and more animal. You can’t maintain psychological distance as easily when your body is loudly insisting on some demand that isn’t being met. The “this is just a scene” awareness gets drowned out by “I really need to pee” or “I’m so hungry.”

Why? Well, because it’s one thing to imagine being denied food; it’s another to be actually hungry while being denied food. Real need states bypass the “pretending” layer entirely, and doing that in one realm will sort of kickstart the others. (For extra fun, this also can be used against you by your top ignoring or denying requests to take care of those things… At least as far as taking care of them in the normal way, and that’s how I ended up with a piss-and-blood angel on an old yoga mat, I will be taking no questions.)

The extra risks: This means putting your body in states that have actual health implications if prolonged. Skipping meals can cause blood sugar crashes, especially combined with intense physical activity. Prolonged bladder holding can cause UTIs or bladder issues, like, big-time. Extended sleep deprivation impairs judgment and can trigger mental health issues. This should be done conservatively, with defined limits (you don’t eat for 6 hours, not 24; hold your bladder for 2 hours, not 8), and with partners who will prioritize your health over length of play. Some people with particular health conditions shouldn’t do some of these ones at all, and I say this as someone who has several conditions that applies to — please know and trust your body!

Practice Saying No Outside of Scenes

Okay, I swear I’m not trying to trick you into getting better at boundaries (unless it’s working 👀). But: if you’re someone who struggles to say no in a general sense, then not getting to say no in a scene doesn’t really feel that different from your baseline, right?

On the other hand, if you’re someone who confidently advocates for yourself everywhere else… then a situation where that doesn’t work creates a legitimately-abnormal sense of powerlessness that your nervous system recognizes as more “real.” Spoilers: the less codependent I’ve become (over years and years of therapy, mind you), the more intense our CNC has gotten.

Practice with low-stakes things. Say no to social invitations you don’t want. Refuse foods that aren’t your favorites. Push back on small requests. Advocate for yourself in daily interactions: ask for the table you want at a restaurant, request a different time for an appointment, speak up when someone’s interrupting you and tell them to cut it out, then walk away if they don’t.

The extra risks: I mean, the bonus is that this one is fairly low-risk as far as scene techniques go — building healthy boundary-setting skills is good for you!! The only caution is that you might find yourself more aware of when boundaries are being violated in ways you haven’t consented to… which is actually a good thing, but can be uncomfortable (even if in a necessary way) if you’ve been tolerating violations for a while.

And hey, I may be all-bottom personally, but I know a thing or two about immersion. So why not. Let’s do a few

What can tops do to make consensual nonconsent feel more “real” for their bottoms and subs?

Remove Predictable Play Cues:

Yes, the bottoms’ #1 applies here too. Don’t wear your normal boots, don’t play the normal playlist, don’t use the same starting words you always use to transition into scene.

Added risks: the same as theirs.

Verbal-Physical Dissonance: Gentle Words with Rough Actions (or Vice Versa)

Create contradictory inputs by speaking tenderly while doing something harsh, or being verbally cruel while touching gently. “I’m doing this because I love you” while doing something they’re struggling against can be so hot. Degrading language while providing physical comfort like stroking their hair can too. The brain struggles to classify the experience (Is this caring? Is this cruel?), which prevents the distancing effect of neat categorization.

Added risks: This can create genuine confusion about the nature of your relationship or feelings, which could persist even after the scene. It can also make it harder for your bottom to identify actual red flags later (with you or in other relationships) because they’ll have learned to interpret contradictory signals as intentional play rather than warning signs.

Somatically Re-Create Powerlessness

This one goes along with the reverse-engineering process I’ve outlined for emotional S/m: Talk to your bottom about times they were helpless somehow and physically couldn’t control outcomes in vanilla life, and see if you can determine physical elements here (e.g., being held down for medical procedures, wrestling matches they lost, being physically stuck in an elevator and GUYS ELEVATORS GET REALLY HOT AND GROSS WHEN THIS HAPPENS TRUST ME). Then try and find a way to replicate just enough of the conditions. Bodies remember what genuine helplessness feels like, so this can help them access that embodied knowledge and induce similar feelings.

Added risks: This is playing with body memory, which can trigger very real trauma responses even if the original experience wasn’t what you’d call traumatic. Add elements slowly, debrief carefully, and be prepared for unexpected responses (all of that in general, with CNC!)

Additional Rules or Goals/Give Them Something to Fail At

This one I can speak to the effectiveness on from very recent experience, so trust me ya fools. Layer additional rules on top of the scene, like “no sound until you can’t help but make a sound” (🔥), maintain eye contact no matter what, don’t move your hands, count something silently and get the answer right later or else. Give them something else to focus on, and something to fail at. Like, yeah, I want Him to take advantage of me. That makes rape play hard. But I also can’t resist a challenge, so when He tells me to be quiet and then does the stuff which makes that nearly impossible to maintain… Well, now I am genuinely struggling and genuinely resisting something so that I don’t “lose,” which then puts me back in the headspace for the rest of it.

Added risks: Additional rules/goals add complexity, which makes it easier to miss problems. If the bottom is focused on maintaining a rule, they might not realize they’re in actual trouble, so be more attentive to their signals. Someone too challenge-focused may go as far as to look past harms they do notice out of a desire to accomplish their goal. And for some bottoms, this sort of thing—especially the potential of failing—can also cause the bad kind of dissociating from the scene.

The Point of All This

Here’s what I want you to take from this writing: immersion in CNC isn’t about being a better actor or pretending harder. It’s about understanding that your nervous system responds to real inputs, and that you can create conditions that make those inputs more intense and your mind a bit quieter. It’s a form of active bottoming and co-creating your play as an actual exchange, not just something where one party is active and the other is passive.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Some of these will work for you and some won’t. Some will work once and never again. Some will work better than you expected and that might be terrifying. The only way to know is to try, with people who can hold space for both the version of you that wants to forget what you consented to and the version of you that needs them to remember that you did.

But also, immersion isn’t the goal in itself. The goal is… whatever experience you want to have together. Sometimes that requires immersion. Sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s just as good! Sometimes you have the intense experience you’re chasing while remaining fairly aware it’s a scene. Sometimes the attempt to increase immersion makes the experience worse, not better.

And sometimes the hottest thing is just that you and someone(s) else are doing this thing together. Your brain being aware of that doesn’t diminish the experience. In my experience, it often deepens it, because you’re aware that this is real trust, vulnerability, and care happening even and especially in the middle of something which looks like the opposite.

It’s just that sometimes, first, you gotta get out of your own way.

Key Takeaways About Psychological Immersion and Suspension of Disbelief in CNC

  • CNC immersion fails when the nervous system recognizes safety too clearly
  • You cannot think your way into powerlessness—but you can create conditions that support it
  • Psychological immersion works by disrupting time, predictability, and agency
  • These techniques increase risk and require advanced negotiation and aftercare
  • Immersion is a tool that both bottoms and tops can lean in to in order to achieve their desired BDSM scene(s)

Find the original post on Fetlife here to join in on the conversation in the comments!

About vahavta: I teach kink education focused on consensual nonconsent, psychological play, and nervous-system-aware power exchange. My work centers on helping people pursue intense desires without abandoning risk awareness, clarity, or care.

Posted by vahavta
27
Dec
2025

“Dear Rape Culture”, or, On Being Loudly, Gloriously Happy About My Rape Play

Dear rape culture,

Here we are again.

You show up so often when I talk about consensual nonconsent (rape play or otherwise). You do it in my AMAs, comments, messages, or sometimes just in what friends of mine overhear.

You especially like to show up when I talk about the fact I’ve given my Owner blanket consent, and even more when I mention that I did so within a few months of us dating (which, to be fair, I don’t necessarily recommend, but maintain that it was the right path for me).

Sometimes you’re polite and concerned, sometimes you’re sharp and accusatory, sometimes you’re straight out of Mean Girls, but you’re usually pretty sure of one thing: that how open I am about my CNC is a threat to… something? That my talking about how fulfilled I am in my kink is irresponsible. That my own consent doesn’t matter as much as the looming fear of how someone else might misinterpret it.

I do hear what they are trying to say, you know, and 99% of the time, I genuinely think it isn’t ill-intentioned. Truly, it’s usually not even people saying that I shouldn’t do it, nor that I shouldn’t write or do classes about it. Mostly, they’re just saying I shouldn’t talk so openly about how soon in my journey I started playing like this. That this kind of CNC isn’t one I should endorse so heavily where The Newbies can see. That this is “advanced kink,” with a nuance which people will eventually be able to pick up on and risk-assess but that they just can’t when they first come on the scene… so we should protect them until then by keeping it behind closed doors, they think.

I can often understand where comments like those are coming from, and that’s because I DO care a great deal. I care about how you, rape culture, have woven yourself into our daily lives, and I care about how often you get used to bludgeon people into being quiet about what actually brings them joy.

Fuck, dude, aren’t you tired of this? How often you show up to cross your arms and shake your head and assert that people who want stuff like this should really be more careful. More mindful of the potential social consequences of our liberation. More conservative in how loudly we move through the world.

Well, I’m not letting you in here to do that.

Because rape culture, bro, what you’re missing is that fighting you off is actually part of why I teach communication and negotiation for CNC at all (though I’ll note that CNC as I define it does not only apply to rape play)—not because everyone should do this kind of CNC, but because pretending it doesn’t exist just won’t make anyone safer. Literacy, visibility paired with education and resources, will.

Sometimes, people justify their take that I should Keep It Quiet by telling me that the personal, especially in kink, is political. And the thing is that they’re entirely right: Yes, the personal is political. That’s WHY I talk about my CNC and rape play openly (on a platform where I’ve been explicit about what I post and where anyone engaging with my content is doing so by choice). That’s WHY I believe it is so very important that I live my values on here just as I do in “real life,” including my belief that anyone deserves to express and pursue their desires, so long as those desires are entirely between consenting adults.

And in fact, rape culture, I happen to believe that the suggestion that I should censor, soften, hide, or gatekeep the realities of these consensual desires—including to those who are new to kink—is far closer to your wheelhouse than anything -I’m- doing. Nobody should have to make their consensual desires smaller, quieter, or more discreet out of shame or fear, and especially those who have historically been told to do exactly that. (Like, say, disabled queer women, just for example!! 🙃)

Now, sure. If I were bringing this into vanilla public spaces where people hadn’t known they might encounter it and/or lacked the context of my own consent, that would be a problem. That would model that people should be okay with being mistreated, and it would be inviting you in. That’s not what I’m doing.

It also would be perpetuating your existence, rape culture, if I were taking this into enclosed kink spaces which others could not easily leave. That, again, would be a problem. But Fetlife or my personal website are places in which people engage in autonomously and out of full choice, and where I’m extremely upfront and consistent regarding what I post and talk about so that folks can abide their own boundaries by simply no longer clicking on my page or even blocking it so that it doesn’t come up in their feeds, just as I do with the handful of interests that I am not willing to see in my feed. So that’s not what I’m doing, either.

And of course, if I were ever glorifying actual rape, that would be the biggest problem of all.

But you see, rape has to do with a lack of consent and with a power that is taken regardless of what someone else desires. And that’s just… not what I’m talking about. Not at all.

Still, I am glorifying something. (And also, I’mma keep on doing it and you can’t stop me, so there!) What I’m glorifying is my ability to pursue my own bliss, especially in a life where much of my own experiences with others—and, indeed, with you, rape culture, yourself—has told me that my desires are invalid, inappropriate, and incompatible with feminism and strength.

The personal is political, yes. And you are so real and present in our everyday lives, even on Fetlife or sex ed sites. You try to put on a mask, but I see you, and I’m going to tell everyone exactly where you are.

Rape culture, you are the voice telling others that they should be cautious and reserved about expressing what gives them pleasure, and of asserting their deservingness to pursue and discuss that pleasure as they go. You are an upholding of the Madonna/Whore dichotomy which supports the myth that only “bad” people have certain sexual fantasies or jump into them early on in knowing someone, an idea which leads to the continued erasure of the diversity of sexual experiences. You are what happens when someone’s right to define their own erotic and romantic life is subordinated to social policing.

Rape culture, you are the dynamic which states that we must always be careful to ensure our sexualities are not too disruptive, too wild, too dangerous—because this is the same logic that blames victims for assault based on how they dress, act, or express desire. Even when people “mean well,” implying that I am responsible for promoting the harm done by actual rapists as a result of discussing my relationship and sex life as it actually exists, on the actual timeline it happened on, is still assigning blame to a sexual woman for the bad behavior of the perpetrators of rape.

Rape culture, you are the one infantilizing other adults by suggesting that even when I am explicit about my consent and enjoyment, others here on Fetlife will be unable to differentiate between my consent and actual violence. You are a reinforcement of the idea that women and others who are marginalized in some way simply cannot be trusted to understand nuance or distinguish between fantasy and reality.

And rape culture, especially in today’s age, you so often flatten sexual discourse through silences: silence around consent, silence around assault, silence around pleasure.

These silences, especially around things like CONSENSUAL nonconsent, muddy the broader cultural literacy of how negotiation and enthusiasm might actually look in practice. Every time we decide to stay quiet until The Newbies have “enough” experience in some invisible jury’s eyes, we make those newbies less equipped to recognize harm, set boundaries, or have informed sexual relationships. When we suggest that silence is safer or better than modeling how consent can function even with edgy or taboo interests, this silence makes room for you to step in.

Because the truth is that rape play IS one of the most commonly documented sexual desires, especially (though not only) among women, and keeping it locked away until people are at the appropriate Kink Experience Level doesn’t change that. It just means less-experienced folks have fewer perspectives on tools to keep themselves safe, less knowledge of potential support systems, and less ability to recognize harm or set boundaries in their own relationships.

And look, rape culture, buddy, you don’t have to like it. That’s fine.

But I refuse to let societal norms of being polite and contrite make me feel that I don’t get to be loudly, wonderfully, gloriously happy, especially not when discussing consensual play which I have never regret in either subject matter nor timeline, consensual play which I personally find empowering, validating, and affirming of my own sexuality. Play which, might I add, I’ve found especially potent in recent months as far as accepting and transforming the recently-discovered less-than-consensual acts in my own past.

Oh, yes, rape culture, I see you plain and clear.

You are the implication that my saying “I want this” isn’t powerful enough to matter as-is.

And you are wrong.

My consent is enough.
My consent is not the problem.
My vocal expression of what I consent to is not the problem. It never has been.

You, rape culture, are the problem.

And you can get the fuck outta here.

If you read this while nodding along but still feel a bit like “Okay, but how the hell DO I play in these edges and let go enough to experience the moment while still keeping things grounded in consent?”, you’re exactly who my live class on Negotiating and Communicating for Consensual Nonconsent this upcoming Monday was written for. If you’re seeing this message, there aren’t currently any tickets available—but if you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll get a heads up the next time I’m teaching it!

If you’d like to join in on the conversation in the comments, you can find the original post on Fetlife by clicking here!
About vahavta: I teach kink education focused on consensual nonconsent, psychological play, and nervous-system-aware power exchange. My work centers on helping people pursue intense desires without abandoning risk awareness, clarity, or care.
Posted by vahavta
04
Oct
2025

How to Communicate About Your Degradation Kink

Degradation kink and humiliation play can be some of the most intense forms of emotional S/M—but they’re also some of the hardest to negotiate. Telling a top “I like degradation” before a scene doesn’t actually clarify if you mean playful objectification, true humiliation, CNC, or something else. This guide will show you how to translate your personal “I like degradation” into clear, negotiable steps so that you can fulfill more of your BDSM dreams.

My friend Courtney and I have something in common: we both like appearance-based degradation. (Hey shut up weird thing to bond over but I’ve bonded over weirder and so have most of you.) But it turns out this looks… really different for us.

See, Courtney loves having “date” scenes where a play partner takes her out, whispers to her all evening about how unflattering her dress is and how ugly her freckles are, and then cuckolds her. Then, she wants them to be clear as to how gorgeous she is.

That wouldn’t work for me for a variety of reasons. I remember once, after mentioning degradation to an ex, having sex while he tried to tell me how unattractive I was to him and being like “yeah except the past three years of you telling me I’m hot kinda makes this feel just like lying?” as I totally checked out of the evening. And then nobody got off and everyone was in a Mood.

On the other hand, Courtney once told me about a scene where someone stripped her down, sat her on newspaper on top of a washing machine, and turned it on. They then circled in marker everywhere on her body that jiggled and played some kind of porn as they pointed out when the newspaper started to show how wet she was.

From her perspective, this was just “mean girl bullying” and didn’t land. Sure, she jiggled on top of a washing machine. So what? Don’t all of us? Besides, in what other situations would she end up on a washing machine? Meanwhile, I ended that conversation and immediately added “bullying” to my fetish list.

For me, appearance-based degradation is about being made disgusting. The degradation is the play. I want my face fucked with. I want my hair rubbed in cum or worse. I want to feel like I’ve been put in a position where any innate hotness I have doesn’t even matter, because I’m more useful to my Owner as a source of amusement.

For her, appearance-based degradation is about being unattractive in some way, and it’s more like foreplay where the scene = the consequences of that. And she wants to know afterwards that it was all made up.

Both are degradation.
But when we said it, we meant very different things.

This is because while traditional negotiation in kink is often activity-first—“I want spanking,” “I want rope,” and so forth; you can say yes to “flogging” and both people usually know what to expect—emotional S/m doesn’t work that way. “I want degradation,” “humiliation,” or any other -ation can have *completely* different implications and emotional effects depending on how it’s delivered, why it’s happening, and what it means in the context of the scene or dynamic.

Reverse-Engineering from “I Like Degradation” to “Here’s How to Degrade Me”

Here’s what I know after over a decade of bottoming to emotional play, and half of that teaching classes like my “Negotiating and Communicating for Emotional S/m” (and for CNC!): most of us into Emotional S/m (ESM) have highly specific desires. We just often lack the language to communicate them. We say things like “humiliate me” or “degrade me” or “break me down,” and we genuinely mean something by those words. But those phrases are like saying “I want to feel good” — technically true, but useless in practicality.

Your partner can’t read your mind. Sometimes, things just don’t translate. But guessing and getting it wrong with emotional play doesn’t just mean the scene wasn’t hot. It can also mean serious psychological harm. As I’ve written before, you can’t safeword out of your own head. A scene might stop escalating, but the impact of what happened doesn’t necessarily stop with it. All the more reason to articulate what we want as clearly as possible.

So here’s a bit of a process to help you narrow down what you do and don’t desire in this realm. (This can be done from either side, but I personally speak from the right side of the slash.)

STEP 1: Name the Target Feeling Precisely

So to do this, we start with the emotion, not the activity. What do you want to feel during or because of this scene? If you need inspiration, you might use the ESM-adapted emotion wheel I made (or write out your own), or even use a thesaurus… an ESM negotiator’s best friend, IMO!

Emotion wheel for emotional S/M negotiation and degradation play - showing relationships between feelings like shame, disgust, fear, and humiliation
Use this tool to target the exact flavor of degradation, humiliation, or other emotions you’re looking to add to your BDSM play!
Want your very own sticker of this wheel? You can get one on Etsy here.

What’s important is you get specific: not just “degraded” or “humiliated,” but flavors like dehumanized, exposed, made disgusting.

Maybe you know this answer innately. If not, you might ask yourself questions like…

  • If I could only keep one word from the emotion wheel, which is it and why?
  • When I’ve fantasized about emotional play, which feelings am I chasing?
  • Are there feelings that I’ve experienced accidentally in play which I want to recreate intentionally?
  • Are there feelings that seem hot in fantasy but I suspect would be devastating in reality?
  • If I imagine the perfect scene for what I want right now, what emotion am I left with at the peak moment, and what emotion am I left with after it’s over?
  • Is what I want to be seen as [word], or being made [word]?
  • Are there adjacent feelings on the wheel that I’m not interested in, even though they’re close? (This helps identify boundaries within a category!)

STEP 2: Mine Your History for What’s Created This Before

Helping someone else create this emotion in you means giving them some kind of framework of how. Sometimes, we can mine this from past memories, with or without them being ones we’d call play.

I recommend looking in the following places:

Kink experiences: Scenes that worked, dynamics that hit right, porn/erotica that made you go “oh, yeah, that”

Vanilla experiences: Moments of genuine shame, fear, exposure, worthlessness, etc. (yes, even the painful ones, to the extent that is safe for you — you’re looking for data, not trying to relive these memories (unless you *are* trying to, of course))

Fantasies: Even ones you’d never actually do, as they often reveal what your psyche is actually responding to

To get to these, you might ask yourself:

  • In a kink scene or dynamic moment where I felt something close to this target emotion, what specifically was happening? Who was there? What did they say or do?
  • In a vanilla experience where I felt this way (even if you I didn’t want to at the time), what were the conditions then?
  • Is there a specific memory I keep returning to—even if it wasn’t kink—that has the emotional flavor I’m chasing?
  • Which story/porn/fanfic beat made my chest pull tight in the right way, and what was the narrative meaning of the emotion (punishment, use, entertainment, devotion)?
  • When have people tried to create this feeling in me and missed? What was different about those times?
  • If I could direct a film scene of this happening to someone, what would I include? What would be essential vs. optional?
  • Have I ever felt [target emotion] and found it erotic vs. felt it and found it devastating? What was different between those times?

And don’t censor yourself here, seriously. Something might have worked in your head that you’d never actually do, and that’s totally fine. The point is to notice patterns.

Which then brings me to…

STEP 3: Pattern Recognition and/or Choosing New Context on Purpose

From your notes, look for repeat details. These might be sensory (e.g., public vs. private; verbal vs. physical; eye contact vs. averted; posture/position), relational (e.g., who can say/do this? Someone whose respect you’ve earned? Someone who holds power over you? Anyone? Does it require them to really believe or clearly not believe something?), narrative (e.g., the meaning/why it’s happening, like for someone’s amusement, a sadist’s pleasure, “because you deserve this”), or contextual (e.g., timing, setting, what comes before/after). Ask yourself questions like:

  • What sensory elements appear most often? (Words in a particular tone? Being positioned a certain way? Being watched? Physical touch or lack of it?)
  • Who delivers the experiences that work? What’s true about those people/relationships that isn’t true of the times it didn’t work?
  • What meaning does the degradation/humiliation/fear/whatever carry in the moments that land right? What is whatever is happening meant to signify about me?
  • Do I need buildup or does it work better when it’s sudden?
  • Does this need to be “deserved” somehow or does it work better when it’s arbitrary?
  • Do words or actions get me here quicker?

Quick aside: Meaning matters most.

If you could only answer one of these, make it meaning. Meaning is what can get fuzziest in between these emotions, which means it’s actually the most important part. Different “meanings” in ESM might be things like…

  • “You are less than others.”
  • “You failed/disappointed.”
  • “You are only useful for X.”
  • “You are disgusting/shameful.”
  • “You are beneath notice.”
  • “You deserve this treatment.”
  • “You exist for my entertainment”

…but this is a very non-exhaustive list!

And also, meanings interact with relationships. Some may feel safer for you inside steady devoted commitment (“only useful for X” can feel like worshipful utility) but dangerous inside more brittle attachments, or some other contingency. It’s okay to say this outright in your negotiation.

Step 4: Communicate it!

Now you put your shiny new well-articulated desires into practice! This could be in any number of ways, but here’s a framework if it’s helpful:

“To make me feel [specific emotion], I need [sensory/relational/narrative context]. What tends to work is [primary patterns you discovered], especially when [meaning/undertone].”

For example, I might say…

“To make me feel humiliated, I need to be turned into someone who isn’t the way I’d want You to see me, and I need to be laughed at for it. What tends to work is something being done to me physically or being commanded to take actions I find embarrassing, followed by laughter and verbal degradation — especially when it’s delivered like You find my shame entertaining and like this is the most use I could possibly have. For this to feel erotic instead of erosive, I need it to not impact Your usual level of physical affection toward me, even if it’s framed as happening for a reason which is different than usual.”

(And heyyyy, if you need a reason to practice getting your final statement here out in the open… feel free to link this writing to your person along with some kind of “thought I’d try this just for funsies, here’s what I came up with”! Jus’ saying, happy to be your bold ESM moves excuse 👀)

What if the scene still doesn’t feel quite right?

Sometimes, everyone will do everything “right” and it still won’t hit the way you thought it would. The “close but not quite” problem is actually incredibly valuable here, though. It helps you to determine the boundaries around making your desires come true more precisely. “Oh, I thought I wanted to feel worthless, but what I actually needed was to feel worthless in this specific way, and when they made me feel worthless in that other way, it just felt bad.”

You might ask yourself questions like:

  • Which dial was off (e.g., meaning, intensity, context)? Which ones weren’t?
  • If we keep these actions or words but flip tone, does it become right?
  • Was the meaning right, but the tone off?
  • Did something about the relationship context shift recently? (Trust level, recent conflict, life stress)
  • Did I need something different before or after?
  • What would have shifted it from “close” to “yes, that”?
  • Do I need to add this to my explicit boundaries, or was it just about calibration?

And then you know. And then you can communicate it before next time.

—

For those who desire it, emotional S/m can be some of the most intense, intimate, potentially even transformative play there is. It’s also some of the riskiest, precisely because we’re working with elements that can’t be cleanly removed once introduced. There are plenty of important considerations as far as whether its risks are ones you’re willing to take.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. It just means we owe it to ourselves and our partners to discuss it as skillfully and as well-informed as possible.

Learning to reverse-engineer desires is one of the most important skills I’ve developed as a bottom. It won’t eliminate all risk. Nothing can. But it will dramatically reduce the chances of these desires being knowable — to yourself, and to your partners. Your desires are valid. And the more you can turn “I want to feel […]” into something specific—the more you can translate vague wants into concrete, context-driven asks—the closer you get to bringing them to life.

Want to join in on the conversation? You can find the original Fetlife version of this writing—and the comment section—by clicking here.
Posted by vahavta
24
Mar
2025

The Shame Game: A Primer to Playing with Shame in BDSM

Of everything that comes up in that intersection between psychology and kink that I’m so fond of, shame play might be one of the most powerful. Maybe that’s because it is so flexible and so related to so many kinds of Emotional S/m (ESM), binding to other parts of play and wrapping around them in unique ways that make them into something more. That power itself is what draws many of us to it: the cathartic release, the reclamation of emotions we previously tried to avoid, the liberation from our social conditioning around desires and acceptability, the extraordinary connection that can come from exploring it with someone you trust. It’s also this power that makes it dangerous.

The way that shame can cause or result from nearly any emotion you can think of is what makes many researchers and educators (including but not limited to Brene Brown) refer to it as the “master emotion.” And most certainly, with all the subcategories we think about when we think about ESM—objectification, degradation, fear, others—the psychological mechanics of shame can enter in.

I’ve been thinking and learning about shame for a bit now in a few different realms of life (and have even been considering a 102 level for my ESM class that really focuses there) because that power is just so great, and to me, that makes it really cool. So this is a little bit of a primer on the matter, for those who may not have thought about the workings of shame in-depth… Or maybe for exactly the people that have.

As with anything I write about ESM, I may use examples that could be triggering for some, so please do care for yourself and step away from the writing whenever needed.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Shame in BDSM

Shame operates differently in our brains than other emotions we might consider when it comes to play, or even when it doesn’t. While emotions like fear and anger stem more from our basic survival cues (and certainly there’s a lot of overlap that can happen here), what we think of as “shame” links more directly to our social-emotional circuitry—that is, the parts that evolved to help us better navigate complex social communities. That’s part of why shame is often very culture-specific, from the norms that cause it to how one is expected to respond (both to their own and to others).

During a scene, basic emotions that get brought up (fear, anxiety, arousal) may activate your social circuitry, adding shame which can persist past when those basic emotions subside. This makes a lot of shame play really memorable and makes it build up over time to different effects, but it’s also what makes it tricky: social emotions don’t simply disappear when the present situation ends, unlike with something like fear where the adrenaline rush subsides once the threat is removed.

Shame can also develop “meta-shame,” where we are ashamed of feeling ashamed. And in that, it can become integrated into our identity, our sense of self, in ways we might not intend. When we experience meta-shame, this creates patterns of avoidance that operate subconsciously and prevent addressing the original issue, affecting you and your experience in and out of scenes without you necessarily even realizing it is there. Meta-shame magnifies the perceived gap between the “ideal self” and the “actual self” in our heads and the greater this gap, the more intense the shame experience. Which can be used for a lot of fun in kink contexts, when done carefully! But it can also lead to situations where no amount of endurance, submission, or service ever feels like “enough” to close that gap, and this can have wide-reachinf effects that we just don’t want.

This is why emotional S/m that plays with shame is always edge play that requires a ton of consideration. It it risky even for those who communicate well 99.99999% of the time — it can compromise communication in a number of ways, and there’s no safeword that can stop this process once it begins because it happens in the psyche, not at the hands of the top. So before even consider playing with shame, we should do whatever we can to really get our communication and negotiation skills up to speed. But with everyone informed of the extra risks and and consenting, it sure as fuck can be a very good time.

Different Types of Shame

Shame manifests in various forms depending on our history and psychological makeup, and we start to form these on the identity level at different developmental stages (which I’m not going to get to into in this writing). Understanding these possibilities can be something we can use to negotiate shame play and ESM beyond broad level categories, honing in more on what we do and don’t want to approach at that point in time — and I say that because this definitely can and even should vary based on what point in time we are playing, who we are playing with, and individual preferences.

To name just a few:

Judgment shame creates feelings of being fundamentally “bad” or “wrong” for desires or actions that contradict. It often gets talked about in combination with taboo play, if we are talking about societal norms, but might take other forms (like going against internal ideals or value systems) as well.

Control shame connects to one’s ability to competently express and enforce one’s personal agency, and can come into play either as “taming”/overriding of rebellion against authority or shame being attached to the complete surrender of autonomy some of us go for in our relationships.

Perfectionism and autonomy shame, which may or may not be closely related to the above, plays with the idea of the bottom being able to succeed at certain actions or respond in certain ways, whether or not those actions are even possible. Messing with this can lead to hopelessness and confidence loss when meta-shame and identity integration kicks in. On the other hand, it can be really, really liberating in some cases and lead to an increased sense of external or self-acceptance.

Social status shame centers on feeling inferior to others. This can be about embarrassment, power, “measuring up,” or something else — power exchange in the D/s sense may be an element but does not have to be. It also can be particularly risky for those who are prone to fawning or to excessive people-pleasing outside scenes, especially when linked with play that goes near those boundaries, because one might stop feeling that speaking up is even something they deserve to do.

Unworthiness shame centers on the core belief that one is inherently flawed, unlovable, or bad as a person, or that an action or behavior could make them so. That inherent vs. action element is important, because there’s a big difference for many between playful degradation (“you’re such a dirty slut”) and identity-level condemnations like “nobody could ever want to someone like you around long-term.”

…and there’s more of these where that came from, and just what kinds of shame someone experiences (and how) are going to shift with different individuals and their dynamics. So observation and awareness, both of the self and of others, is really the key to drawing lines between them and deciding which you want to touch, and which you’re leaving the hell alone.

Kink Risk Profile Considerations for Shame Play

There are a few specific risks I think are especially important to consider in shame play, among others. These include that identity integration risk I’ve mentioned, but also risks of emotional binding (how shame might permanently bind to other emotions like arousal or affection, or even identities or activities (including sex or play as a whole)) and relationship “contamination” (where the shame between two people spills over into their interactions outside of play, whether that’s a romantic, friendly, sexual, or simply community-level relationship). This is where shame can start to really spill into other contexts of life, with sexual shame in one relationship impacting someone’s other sexual relationships (present or future), impacting job performance, or creating long-term issues in a whole variety of other ways.

For each element of shame play you introduce, consider which of these risks might be activated, how to mitigate them with the specific people you play with, and how to evaluate if other elements of life have been affected. Mitigation may look like creating clear “containers” for shame play (e.g., particular locations, explicit beginnings and endings, specific language that only exists within the play context), incorporating identity-affirming elements or pieces which connect those playing to the core of their relationship to each other, or scheduled check-ins with one’s support network as part of ongoing aftercare. For emotion binding risks, mitigation might include things like ensuring experiences of pleasure, arousal, affection, or whatever else might be combined also occur without shame elements—both in that particular scene and in scenes that are not meant to focus on shame at all—or doing the same with particular roles or kinds of play that you want to ensure don’t codify as “a thing that inherently causes feelings of shame.”

This is also where developing emotional resilience practices becomes super important for bottoms engaging in shame play, some of which I talked about in part of this AMA answer on Fetlife. This also might include working to recognize your own shame triggers and response patterns, practicing grounding techniques, and developing a clear sense of who you are and what you love and value in yourself so that you can more clearly draw internal boundaries between play experiences + what an external party might say or cause and your more persistent self-concept. Mindfulness of meta-shame—noticing when you begin feeling ashamed of your shame responses themselves, and especially when you may be hiding them—might also be a warning that play may be crossing into potential harm.

Aftercare Considerations for Shame Play

I’ve written a bit about a framework I like for potentially-traumatic play but there are some intentional integration techniques that might be especially useful with shame play.

One of these is to include, create opportunities for, or emphasize acts of witnessing, which I know may seem a bit backwards when we think about shame’s social origins… But that’s exactly why it matters. Shame is about what we perceive as a social inadequacy, but that shame can be counteracted by those perceptions being proven wrong. Shame thrives in secrecy, but that means it dissolves when brought into the light. (There’s a reason that effective addiction recovery support models usually include sharing stories with others who share the same experiences.) The witnessing that occurs during the scene itself can begin this process, as a top acknowledges and accepts the vulnerable expressions of shame that emerge there, and can continue in processing the scene together and/or underscoring the ways that the scene felt intimate, like an act of service, or otherwise positive to the top. Beyond the scene, sharing the experience with trusted others—with appropriate consent, of course—provides opportunities for renarrativization, allowing the experience to be processed not just as a source of shame but as a moment in time. Writing and sharing the story of the scene with (one’s own or the extended) kink community can help to avoid or counteract the meta-shame and decrease the long-term risk.

Self-integration is the other big consideration here. Taking time for solitude (which I wanna note is distinctly different from isolation) allows for honest reflection and processing that isn’t always possible when still in with others. This might mean identifying specific shame thought patterns (e.g., “I should be better,” “I’m not good enough,” “no one would want me if they knew”), but that isn’t a skill that necessarily comes naturally to most of us, and a therapist or even just a CBT workbook of some kind may help if you’re not used to catching these sorts of things. Structured reflection or journaling on things like specific triggers, reaction patterns, contained versus lingering elements, etc. also help prevent shame from remaining an Amorphous Cloud of Bad to transform it into more specific, manageable elements that we feel capable of addressing and moving past.

In all cases, you mitigate the most risk when aftercare is not an afterthought. Consider and negotiate aftercare needs with the same care and specificity you bring to scene negotiation itself, recognizing that shame’s particular risks often require aftercare that addresses both immediate emotional states and the longer-term impact of this play.

Shame play exists in paradox, like other forms of ESM (or I might even argue with BDSM at all): we consensually engage with some of the most destructive and challenging human emotions for purposes of pleasure, catharsis, and connection. Trying to fully resolve this paradox is a losing battle, with ESM, and may just lead to losing sight of the risks until they reach a critical mass and explode (something else that I hope to write about and share experiences with at some point in the future). So the mark of someone who is mindfully engaged with shame play isn’t based on who can create or endure the most intense reactions, but who can hold the paradox consciously and with grace—being in experiences that are genuine and powerful in the moment while maintaining the psychological grounding necessary for integration afterward, reaching for support wherever it is needed.

Playing with shame in kink isn’t unlike learning skills for any kind of edge play. It begins with respect for its power and the ethical considerations it demands, it develops through careful preparation, and practice, and it continues and evolves with awareness and reflection. If I’ve learned anything these past few years, it’s that I don’t know how much here I don’t know, that the ways this pops up in ugly ways can be unexpected and brutal, even for someone that might be called “experienced” here.

But what I want to leave you with is that this idea of “shame thrives in secret but dissolves in the light” is one that also can explain what makes it feel so profound, for those of us who love it. In those darker, duller spaces of our psyches where life has taught us to feel shame and hide some part of ourselves, consciously-engaged shame play within the context of connection says “this part of you is valid and it gets to be seen without that compromising anything else about who and where you are.” Not just from one person to another, but to ourselves. This witnessing—this refusal to look away from the parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to hide—becomes a radical act of intimacy and ownership. And for lack of a better way to end this…

Well, hell. I just think that’s really fuckin’ pretty.

Join in on the comments of the Fetlife version of this post by clicking here!

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

The Kool Aid Man-Sized Hole: pre-planning for unintentional consent violations

An amazing group of edge-players I’m in recently was having a conversation about those of us who like play that’s more… well, as @zel put it, “less hip-checking the edge and more Kool Aid man.” There is a subset of people out there who want play that doesn’t just bring us to our boundaries but sometimes leaps over them. This may include bottoms deciding to forego our safewords and/or negotiation, tops intentionally pushing further at signs of distress, picking at emotional scabs, gaslighting, or any number of things that could, sometimes, lead to going too far. (Note: if you do not believe that this sort of play should be done, even if both parties personally want and seek it out, this note won’t be relevant to you.)

In my CNC Negotiation and Communication class, I refer to this possibility as an unintentional consent violation. In relationships or scenes that purposefully play this way, it’s possible for consent to be violated in a way that isn’t with intent. Both parties play understanding it’s a possibility and fully want to be playing that way still—and yet navigating how to move forward and rebuild after a consent trauma of this nature can be very difficult, particularly if you know you do want to continue playing like that in the future.

I believe unintentional consent violations are a when, not an if, with no-safeword arrangements like the one I’m in and rather likely with other similar CNC structures, and there is *nothing* that will guarantee anyone involved will be okay when this happens. I tend to think that this sort of play should never be engaged in without that being understood by all parties. The best chances of this turning out well may rely on a sort of communication that becomes more difficult after-the-fact, so it can be best to prepare for it in advance.

Below are a few considerations I have when talking to folks about how to navigate this. Please note that this is my process, that everything I say always has a “this may not necessarily apply” asterisk on it, and that those quoted should not be considered as having endorsed anything beyond the inclusion of their quotes.

Behold, a list with confusing and somewhat arbitrary numbering.

Step 1: Figure out systems.

Systems, in this case, refers to anything set up in advance for you to lean on in a time of crisis. I put this as step #1, but in many ways, it’s step all-encompassing. Everything I am suggesting you discuss is setting up a system, a big one: “This is what we will do when an unintentional consent violation occurs.”

This is the part where I address that you can’t always know how you’ll react to something going wrong in this manner—one that may be with someone who you actively ignored the protests of because that’s what they deeply desire in their play and/or sexuality, one who you are hurt crossed a line all while knowing they couldn’t have possibly known the line was there. Cognitive dissonance of that variety *does* change the “typical” trauma responses that rarely have a “typical” in the first place. In fact, you likely *won’t* get it all right. But with systems, there is something to lean on as it gets figured out so that you aren’t having the “What the fuck do we do and when??? What if our needs conflict?” conversation when you really need to be having the “Are you still eating and sleeping?” conversation.

  • On the more specific level of systems, this could look like:
  • Knowing one partner’s trauma response is going to involve a much lower energy for a while and deciding that if an unintentional consent violation happens, the other partner takes on their household tasks
  • Knowing taking medications on time can get lost in the shuffle and ensuring the other partner has the correct information to check in during the days following to remind or confirm.
  • Knowing that someone needs to withdraw emotionally to feel safe at the same time that the other will need other support and establishing—you got it—a support *system.* In discussing playing this way at all, @arrogantslut mentioned “wrapping in the support system of existing partnerships. Telling them I am doing it and asking them if they will be able to catch and hold me if things fall apart.” This is valuable for any sort of play. It is especially valuable in cases where there is a mismatch of needs.

The more specific you can be about systems, the better. Saying you have a support system is one thing. Knowing exactly the people in your sphere who understand and support this sort of play—because it isn’t everyone in kink—may be another. Another still to have people who’ve preemptively agreed that, in such a situation, they’ll ensure those eating/medicating/existing in your world things are happening.

Step 2: Figure out timelines.

In the aftermath of an unintentional consent violation, you may have different aftercare needs than otherwise. Tops may want to know this happened as soon as the scene is over so that they can process where things were misread with the memories still fresh. Bottoms may need extra time to process without physical touch. All of this may even have caveats, such as what sort of violation occurred. In addition to immediate needs, think about debrief conversations, amount of time systems should be in place, and amount of time you might wait before considering trying something similar again.

Step 3: Figure out what you will do next with your play.

This might be an automatic “this sort of play is off the table for x amount of time” or “we move back from exclusive negotiation with no-safeword play to exclusive negotiation with-safeword” or “we take a step out of 24/7.” It can also be “we don’t play again” or “we don’t change play at all; we just go forward with new knowledge.” This one is important to discuss in advance (especially for those engaging in deeply emotional S/m) because in the trauma-recovery state, some may have a “fawn” reaction where they’re likely to acquiesce to their top’s desires, or a “flight” reaction where they back all the way off in a way that makes their bottom feel they’re no longer interested, and so on and so forth. Knowing what direction you’re headed before you start, even if it does change, means that there’s no questioning from either party on if the other is able to both be self-aware and compassionate to the other’s needs in that moment (which you may not be!)

In terms of both this and the prior step, you may wish to set an amount of time to wait before determining to end a partnership. Of course, if someone wishes to walk away, they walk away—but some may want a reminder that they agreed to wait however long before making drastic decisions.

But that all brings me to…

Step 0.5: Figure out that you can indeed do all this with the person you’re considering engaging in this kind of play with.

Not everyone is the right partner for the variety of CNC which may lead to unintentional consent violations, even if they’re the perfect partner for other things. In fact, some may not want to do this with a life-partner because of the possibility of these occurring. You might do this through reflection on your own, and/or you might do it through negotiation conversations. There are questions with concrete answers here, but some may somewhat require believing the other party saying they will be able to do something or you making a judgment. @Pepper_Pots suggests asking (or at least considering how the other might answer) specific questions like “what is the max time/energy you can spend fixing this? Also, do you like/trust me enough to do that sort of work with?” You might also ask if they’ve had other incidents in the past, how those were handled, and what did and didn’t work about that. Of course, this is all irrelevant if you don’t know what qualifies someone as this person for you, so…

Step 0: Figure out *what* your who-can-I-do-this-with requires.

This probably will take a lot of reflection, maybe over time. It could include more abstract factors, such as

  • the ability to own up to mistakes
  • the ability to communicate and listen in the ways you operate best
  • willingness to see the process through with as much honesty and openness as possible, even if that’s saying “I’m no longer finding it easy to be honest and open”

But don’t ignore the more practical aspects either: for this kind of play, do you need…

  • someone who is able to unquestionably able to prioritize you if you need, and therefore unable to do this with someone who has a different primary partner in a hierarchical poly structure?
  • someone who is willing to drive you and stay with you with medical professionals in case of emergency, even if that potentially means discussing the reality of maybe doing things that can’t legally be consented to in your area?
  • someone with certain preexisting medical skills?

Again, go specific with all of this, particularly the abstracts. “I need someone I can trust to go through these things with me” is worthwhile, but there’s more to it. @zel, for example, takes it a step further by breaking down what trust means for her:

when i say trust in this context, i mean that i need to trust:

* your ability to consistently do what you say you will do, and communicate constructively when that becomes difficult or prohibitive.
* your ability to proactively and intelligently participate in risk assessment, mitigating, and care planning.
* maybe most importantly, your ability to own your mistakes and receive honest and compassionately-given feedback with grace and curiosity rather than defensiveness, and to meaningfully learn from those situations for the future.

this last “why” is maybe the most important: consistency for me doesn’t mean making few mistakes or causing no harm; it means consistently working together to handle mistakes and repair from harm. if you can’t emotionally handle hearing that you fucked up or hurt me (given my trust in your intent and my disinterest in casting blame), handling mistakes and repairing from harm becomes very likely to create more things to recover from.

@Darren_Campbell says,

I think it’s also important here to understand what we are talking about when we say “trust”. Am I trusting your truthfulness and ability to make promises you intend to keep? Am I trusting your ability to keep to the word of your agreements, or to the spirit of your agreements (these are 2 VASTLY different things in my experience). Am I trusting in your ability to assess how you feel during and after what we are negotiating? Am I trusting in your ability to adapt and communicate after the fact should expectations not be met? Am I trusting in your ability to read me really well? Am I trusting your own self knowledge? Am I trusting your intent or am I trusting your abilities or am I trusting a combination of both? To me, as I get older, I’m really valuing people who know themselves as best they can and then say “I don’t know” a lot. If I can trust your ethics and your ability to own your mistakes, we can build something cool.

One final step, a step ∞ for anyone still here:


Realize that doing this is still playing with fire — and for all us edge-players’ nice words about risk awareness and safety protocols and mitigation, those risks are real and can be devastating. Physically. Emotionally. To your relationships. Be upfront about these possibilities using your imagination and your self-awareness. Communicate best you can. I really loved these two examples of what that might look like, which come from @suspenddisbelief:

“If you do this, I might feel angry at you for a long time afterwards. Not in a hot way, in a really unsexy resentful way. I might devalue your intelligence in my head as a defense mechanism. Is that okay with you? Why is that okay with you?”

“If you speak to me this way, I might have behavioral spirals that you can’t fix with the number of words you used to set it off. I might require intensive outpatient treatment. Past partners actually came to this treatment with me even though they weren’t the ones who set me off. How does that sound to you? I’m not able to quantify the risk. It’s low, but possible.”

When we were talking about this sort of process, @Chayla said, “I think for me, maybe the way I conceptualize the thing that you’re pointing to is doing what feels necessary to build a foundation where forgiveness is available afterward. This is generally building some level of trust in the other person’s good faith and their intentions, and one of the ways that can happen is conversations about what’s for real badbad.”

The thing that stands out for me is how many of us who play Kool Aid Man style have had things go badbad in various ways. Permanent scars that change how we move through the world. Relationships that end. Trauma responses that bring us back to nightmares we thought we had dealt with and cause major problems in our lives. And yet, these are stories I know specifically from those who play in that space—present tense. There are of course an unknowable number who have had things go badbad and never return, to this kind of play or even to kink at all. But it is doable to have it happen and not regret it. I’d argue many of us play accepting that it one day will, not letting it stop us. We deserve to: to follow our desires. To feel intimacy in the ways that we specifically do. To be fulfilled alongside others drinking the same Kool Aid we are.

Join the conversation on this post in the comments on Fetlife!

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

CNC is not an unraveling.*

I used to think that it would be an unraveling: that moment of “this is happening now and I can’t stop it.” I used to think that it would be a coming apart like unmooring, there being nothing I could do. It would be the all of me, flung into floating particles of acquiescence, the endless deep below me of uncertainty and lack of control.

I used to think it would be that easy, I suppose, that gentle. The crossed-wires I call masochism and the strange cravings for dark could be pulled apart, sorted into separate threads and made smaller. Then, there would be something that I could point to – look: you can see where those once wove together. You could put that back together exactly, if you wanted, the twists still visible, the ends maybe even still clinging as one. It wouldn’t be easy, but you could do it. Given enough time, you could.

I used to think it was an undoing. It is. But it’s not the kind I thought.

No, it is not a sorting out or a separation. It is not a coming apart.

It is an unknotting. It is a deliberate taking apart of what I have carefully put together. Now it is another thing, another thread. It is the string it was at its core, the knot as if it never happened. I can knot it again, and I likely will — but it will be a different knot. I cannot twist it up straight to where it once was; I cannot re-make it in any exact former image.

It is not a breaking-down of my self as it is, was. It is a breaking apart of my illusions of control.
Or call them illusions of sanity. Illusions of grandeur. Illusions of consent. Call it what makes sense to you.

Yes, that’s it. Not an unraveling but an unknotting: careful, skillful, intentional. The destruction not of a mess, but of something that used to be exactly how I’d planned it — with nothing there to prove that it really once was so.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Don’t Threaten Me with a Good Time: how do you say that you want to not want it?

Don’t threaten me with a good time.

No, really. Don’t.

It’s not that I don’t like being fucked or beaten. I like both more than I probably should. But tell me it’s going to happen, and I still may let life get in the way. Tired or moody, and I’ll ask to put it off a night or two. After all, even the lazy or depressed nights with my Owner are good nights, better than any I could ever imagine. Promises of good things I will let happen if I can. Having things I like done to me is… well, something I like done to me—but I may not dream about it for more than a few weeks, usually won’t text my best friend to tell her all about it (with exceptions).

But set the toys out I hate the most. Grab me when I really don’t want it. Strike or speak to me in a way that actually makes me angry—and it’s all I’ll come thinking about for months.

That’s all putting it lightly. Yes, I think about the time I curled up crying and wouldn’t touch Him as He uncaringly scrolled through His phone. Yes, I think about the blood on the hotel sheets, the challenge I was set up to fail, the question I was never asked before my speech was taken away. Yes, I think about nearly vomiting from pain in the old office chair and the things He did to make me retch more. Yes. Yes. Darker.

There’s a reason that when I’m not quite wet enough and His cock is hurting me, He simply mentions that very fact. I’m usually soaking and pliable in seconds. But I have to really have not been wanting it. It doesn’t work if I’m playing a role.

That’s the inherent problem in the way I do CNC: how do you say you want something without ruining it by wanting it? Not overall, that’s not what I mean—it’s more than possible to discuss this in long-term negotiations and still have days where you don’t want it enough for this to work. But in the short-term, when it’s what I want soon, *soon*. What are the options?

How I ask to not want it is the same reason we can do this at all: my unstoppable need to announce everything I’m feeling. My training to try to tell the truth.

I let my fantasies about the moments I have been most afraid of Him happen out loud, tell Him how momentous and ominous the strikes to the box that my head was in felt. I find opportunities to state my aversions out loud: electricity is the reason I couldn’t do this event. Being made to eat disgusting things is what might really make me quit. I describe my horrid nightmares and shudder openly at tortures in films. I send or say the kinds of words described in this universally applicable guide that’s actually about no-safeword tickling which should be required reading for anyone who plays like us, and then I trust I’ve let Him see enough of me to make it possible:

I’m not looking for a “yes, it’s ok to tickle me if I cry.” I’m looking for “hell yes, I want to be sobbing and I want you to keep going. Please don’t stop. If anything, go harder. Wreck me.” -@wren_

And because I also announce all the days I need my sleep, or when my joints are fighting the weather, or if I’m running errands or seeing my mother, my Owner knows both how to use my honesty and when not to.

I knew I wanted to write this, didn’t know if it should be poetic or a guide. But for me, there’s nothing more poetic than being known well enough to be made to suffer. So why shouldn’t it be both? Besides, I can’t really write a guide—because the answer is, “I don’t entirely know.” I’ve just found a few ways to dance this dance. I know what I do to try.

I voice the fantasies. I react fully. I show it all and say it all. When He says, “Are you too tired to be fucked?” I smile, and then I mean it when I say “yes.” I show Him pictures of things that make me cringe. I shop for the toys I’d rather run from. I tell Him what I can’t stop thinking about.

I put up writings like this one.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

How do you make sure CNC isn’t too “real”?

I asked the other day for people’s burning CNC-related questions in preparation for teaching my CNC class. I got a lot of good and intriguing topics in response, but there was one I was immediately struck by:

How do you make sure it’s not too ‘real’? Like fun in the moment and [not] totally traumatic afterwards?

Soon after, I got to discussing some of this with my long-time Fet friend, @-chickenlittle-. -chickenlittle- is a very wise, very thoughtful human who also engages in CNC in a way similar to how I do, and they agreed to let me publish some of our chat. You’ll find their thoughts in bold, and mine… well, not.

The idea of “going too far.” For me, there really isn’t. In my submission, he decides how far we go. If there is active harm I can tell him, but it’s built into my submission that he decides how much I take.

That’s my take too. And that “I tell Him” is very important… People think no safeword might mean not speaking up. It means speaking up even more. It just means I can’t count on the decision being mine.

One thing I do want to say in response to that question is that some people do want CNC to be NOT fun. That’s a valid choice. Defining terms is really important, because some people use CNC to mean totally roleplay and some of us use it to mean I want to fear for my life and be made to do things I hate for real; some of us use it to mean no safeword at all and some of us use it to mean only the safeword will stop things, etc. etc. Tops get a say in that too, of course. If a top isn’t okay with the idea of someone *actually* suffering at their hands, they should play with bottoms who also desire scenes that always have that undercurrent of “fun.”

I’d say suffering is a *heavy* part of why I enjoy CNC. To put this in an easy way, there is so much suffering around us. Pain, injustice, etc. Having some sort of consensual suffering… it feels like an escape from that world.

I find some people have a hard time understanding that, or have been shamed into thinking it isn’t okay to want. It’s inherently not real because of the consent part. It’s not necessarily the goal to be “fun” outside of that.

Sometimes when people grow up in unsafe situations they develop responses to situations. I deeply feel this is part of why I enjoy suffering. It creates my fawn response and to be honest, it is so much easier to be happy and grateful for my life. Suffering keeps me here. It keeps me present. When we haven’t played in a while I get… Distant. I find it hard to connect with anyone, even my human. When we engage in consensual suffering it connects me to my body better than anything I’ve experienced. I don’t regret it when the response has faded, nor do I experience negative side effects. I think this is in large part to the trust I have for my Owner, as well as my consent to the situation.

Honestly, while I don’t consider my draw toward suffering to be a trauma response exactly, this does nail down a lot of it. Things like drowning force my body to fight to live, no matter what my emotions are telling me, and that’s a powerful symbol for me.

What do you think keeps a scene for you in that fawn response zone and not into the “okay, I’m having an actual trauma response”?

Doing this with my partner, we do it out of love. If I do fall into trauma response and am needing help, we immediately do that. I’m safe. In a similar situation, rape play gave me power back because I could have some control over the scene, CNC gives me power back because it’s founded in love. If [my abuser] harmed me, that was it. If my Love harms me, everything is paused until we are both okay again. It’s not about Him getting His way. It’s about me continually following his authority. To be honest, I hate doing the dishes more than I have ever hated what he was doing to me.

So looking at the original question… is it even about the scene construction and the events that happen for you? Is the difference the everything-outside-of-the-scene… As in the way we make sure it’s “fun,” whatever that means, and not too real, has to do with the relationship itself, discussions you have had, and knowledge you’ve consented (whether or not we really call that negotiation at this stage)?

I’d say those things are the most important. That makes all the difference for me internally.

Yeah, me too. Especially when we are dealing with those things not meant to be “fun.” It’s also helpful when things go sideways… and I strongly believe that if you do play with blanket consent at all, that’s a when, not an if. For me, I really emphasize knowing how you’re going to handle that.

I am very vocal when I’m afraid of harm. Even though I trust him implicitly there are still things he can do without intent. Any time he gets near my knees or does a bad position on my shoulder, it flies out of my mouth. I’m highly protective of myself by reflex now, sometimes too much.

That’s my method too. And not always during the scene. I don’t go nonverbal frequently, but it happens. You can still communicate. I have done it once by going as still as possible. But before, after, randomly throughout the week… things have to be said. Whenever they occur to me. Particularly because we don’t pre-plan all our scenes, I have to just announce when I’m having trigger-y days, when I’m overly tired, when I’m having bad pain days. It may be what

I personally couldn’t ask for a better Owner, and I’m glad he takes my constant chatter as communication and not some annoying bullshit.

Lol. Yep. We are the same on a lot of this. What I’m wondering now is your thoughts on how trauma and trouble is avoided when people do want to do pick-up CNC or CNC with near-strangers, which is also a valid thing. I try to talk about partner selection, risk profile considerations, in-moment communication and such in class, but so much of communication for something like this does occur over time it becomes even more difficult.

This is a very hard question. It also depends on what kind of CNC. There’s literally infinite ways to do CNC. If it were *me*, I would figure out what play I want and why, do a personal risk assessment, consider if I’m willing to accept the ramifications of permanent damage and how likely that is (possibly impossible to answer), what support I have if shit hits the fan, what I would do if they forced something I didn’t actually consent to and if that’s a risk I’m willing to take… The biggest questions are this: Am I prepared to deal with the possible consequences? Do I need this to be a stranger because of the thrill or because I don’t have a partner and really really want this scene? Am I okay with that? The issue is thinking “Oooh this sounds fun!” instead of “this sounds fun, and the possible ramifications are X, Y, Z. Can I deal with that?” It takes a lot of hard self-honesty. Not many are capable of that.

This was just a bit of our conversation, which was honestly fantastic. I learn from my friends here, new and old, all the time. That’s part of what I love about teaching on Zoom—people’s contributions in chat add to the conversation even more in a way that can’t be done in-person. If you want to take my Negotiating and Communicating for CNC class, keep an eye on my newsletter or Fetlife profile for the next time it’s scheduled… and if there aren’t any listed, ask your favorite event hosts to shoot me a message about collaborating! Or we can have these conversations in my inbox anytime—truly. Please feel free to reach out and say hi.

-chickenlittle- is also open to your messages for those with questions about CNC, which I recommend because they’re just generally a really great human. Many many thanks again to @-chickenlittle- for allowing me the honor of your words.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Actually, limiting CNC content is the *more* dangerous option.*

As a frame of reference/bias, I am in a 24/7 CNC TPE, which for me means I have no safeword and—outside of my needs for a lifetime relationship, as someone who wants a family—have not and do not set limits. I have been in this arrangement for six years at time of writing (ten years at time of this website launching).

The relationship I’m in is one I have always wanted. Before I knew what BDSM was, I knew this was what I was interested in sexually. I believe all forms of sexuality are on a spectrum, and on this spectrum, mine is pretty close to the limit of one side—I never, ever fantasized about a sex life that wasn’t like this. Same thing romantically. When I first ever heard what a safeword was, I felt wholly uninterested. Note that I don’t think it makes anyone any lesser in any way to have and want that; it just doesn’t do it for me. I tried. Believe me, I tried. I recognize that as an easy way to increase safety, and I sometimes *wish* I could be happy with one—but I can’t.

I wasn’t officially on Fet long before I met my Owner, who shared my interest in this sort of thing. I encountered lots and lots of info on negotiation and safewords and consent, and also a lot of vitriol towards the sort of thing I wanted. It’s unequivocally abuse, I read. Others said people who wanted it had no empathy for those who are being abused. Or that those who wanted it should seek therapeutic help (not that I believe there’s anyone who shouldn’t, mind you). Or that those who wanted it deserved to be violated. Or worse. I was just barely 19, my brain certainly still hardwiring, and my big step to embrace/seek fulfilling happiness had only led me to more shame, to more wondering if something was wrong with me. That’s something many of us experienced before finding this site. For me, it lived here.

But—luckily—I also found a handful of people talking about CNC. Group intellectual discussion, writings of both the explanatory and erotica varieties, some pictures. All these led me to private conversations with those people about how their relationships and scenes worked, what got them there, how they made themselves as safe as they could, what had gone wrong, what they would do differently. They helped me, a 19 year old who knew no one in the area but the man she was about to start dating, figure out how to do this. I wasn’t in The Scene here at all then. I’d been to play parties, but not in this state. There weren’t really classes available on this. It was only through others discussing this on Fet that I found allies and mentors and sounding boards. And obviously it turned out just fine—but had it not, they would have been the people I knew I could get help getting out from. How could I know for sure someone else wouldn’t just tell me I deserved it for my naivety in asking for what I did, which would actually mean “I deserved it because of what makes me happy”?

Here’s the thing. If I never found CNC content here (and the people making it), that wouldn’t have stopped me from going after what I wanted. I still would have tried to build a relationship without safewords or limits that I set, but I would have withdrawn from any sort of community. I would have no concept of the actual risks (which are not so simple as getting attacked with a chainsaw as some would like to think) or how to communicate within it. I would have no affirmation it was okay to want this and that it was possible without abuse. I would have been on my own.

And that’s me. Most who play with CNC aren’t wanting as high-risk as I am, much less 24/7. If you ask people to not post CNC content, you’re definitely isolating the people like me and preventing them from making things that fulfill them safer for themselves, but you’re also taking valuable info away from others who want it who *do* need to know that it’s okay to say no to a partner in negotiations, that safewords can be used in this, etc, so that they have the example if some assclown tells them otherwise.

CNC porn exists outside the site. CNC erotica exists outside the site. CNC discussion of safety, of reality, journal entries and conversations and accounts of things gone wrong? Not so much. Those of us drawn to this are already seeing the blinding lights, and it’s an internet community that is willing to share and discuss and answer questions that gives the wider picture.

Limiting this content doesn’t actually make anyone safer at all. Those who aren’t interested were never relevant to this discussion, and those who are will not know where to get resources. The people you think this would protect—yes, including the kids who shouldn’t be here, of which I was once one—aren’t coming online and saying “oh, guess this doesn’t exist, so I won’t do it.” They’re still doing it. They’re just isolated.

I truly think those in the conversation saying my kind of CNC should be fully banned often have good intentions here. But from where I stand, limiting it only sets bottoms up for danger in the long run, and I will not be a part of it.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

The best way I heard from someone who thought I was being abused*

(Disclaimer: I am not.)

I’ve been in two relationships that people have thought of as abusive. I have been, and continually am, shocked by the many extremely poor ways they deal with this. Some recent posts have made me think about those experiences, and the one, the only one, that could have done me any good. The one time that someone who thought I was being abused could have actually helped me.

And I’ll tell you that, and hopefully if you’re concerned about someone, you’ll emulate it.

But this writing necessarily starts on the other end.

What are the worst ways to find out someone thinks you’re being abused?

I considered this for a while and in the end, it has to be a tie.

The first of these: after the fact.

One of those two relationships, people were right about. I was being abused, and everyone knew. But no one ever suggested it during. No one ever asked me if I was okay with the changes and sacrifices I was making in my life. No one questioned that I paired my definitions of love with tears and obligation and fear. But after? Oh, they told me after. Yes, after it was all done, really done, I started hearing it all the time. “We always knew he was abusive. We’re glad you’re finally out.” “I’m so relieved that you finally came to your senses.” “I am sorry I stopped being close to you. Your boyfriend’s treatment of you really disturbed me. But we can be friends again now!”

They all knew. Apparently. They knew better; they knew best. But they didn’t do anything, because… because it was too much drama. Because that was mine to deal with. Because surely I must have known how much they cared, that I could have come to them.

Time and time again, I hear from my friends who have also gotten out of abusive situations that they’ve heard these things after. But during? No, never during. Getting through that, they did alone.

And the other first place winner: through the grapevine.

That’s the way I have heard it most often about my current relationship. Screenshots sent by friends of friends. Posts I come across with vagueries about “the girl who crumpled up crying.” Randomly happening across my name in the comments of strangers on Reddit (seriously.) The things they do, people say? That can’t be healthy. She’s in too deep. There’s no way she really wants it. Classic Stockholm Syndrome. He controls her posts.

Whenever I hear these, I react poorly (as, I think, anyone would). It’s shit to be gossiped about, but more so when it’s people who want to show they’re “concerned” but simultaneously don’t actually care about you at all.

What they care about is being right. Being above. Pointing out all the things they’d *never* be; pitying the poor girl with no agency or desires of her own.

Now, here’s the thing:

I know what makes my relationship look abusive.

I’d bargain that most CNC types do. I am hyper-aware of it. I make sure to smile at worried parties after scenes; I am vocal about consent and risks; I keep a lot more private than I used to. This is intentional, after hearing I’m being abused so many times. I wouldn’t have had any idea when I was actually in an abusive relationship, but now? Sure. I know what their reasons are.

Many elements of my relationship, were my desires or our communication or anything else even slightly different, could be abusive: no safeword, no negotiation, phone tracking, ignoring as punishment being on the table, and so forth. If the concerned parties asked, they’d know about how I longed for this sort of thing all my life. They’d know about how unsatisfied I was without it. They’d know about the parts of our TPE that were actually *my* idea, how those discussions went, all my considerations of my risk profile and how each bit fits in.

But they don’t ask. Because—and I cannot say this enough in this writing I think—they don’t actually care. They might care about abuse, maybe. They certainly care about being righteous. They likely care about being right. But they don’t care about me.

Which brings us to the “mildly shitty” category.

These are the people who have just told me point-blank: this is abuse. They comment it on my photos and writings or send me a message to let me know. In a few particularly awful cases, they’ve mouthed it to me during scenes. They are willing to actually take that action, but they’ve already made up their minds. They know best. They care, but they care about telling me how right they are more than they care about me. They don’t care enough to think about their responses.

They also have no knowledge at all of the dangers of abusive relationships, and were I actually in trouble, they’d be making things worse. I refer you here to @Archeologist’s excellent On Suspecting and Calling Out Abuse on Fet or Any Other Social Media], which enumerates how public call-outs or contact on a form of media an abuser has access to increases the cycle of shame that goes along with abuse at *minimum*, and how they might very well cause dangerous retaliation and an escalation of the abuse the person was allegedly trying to stop.

So what do we do?

I’ll admit, kink makes this all particularly difficult. Healthy dynamics can be built in a way that looks to the world like abuse. They’re just a hair’s length away from the ones that actually are. So how do we tell the difference? Do we sit back and do nothing, lest we accidentally kink-shame? Do we just let adults be adults, declare it none of our business?

I don’t think so. I wouldn’t. I can’t. I’d like to think the people I love and trust couldn’t, either. They’d want to be as sure as they could that things were okay, and if they weren’t, they’d want to help.

And here’s the one time I’ve seen this done right.

It was in a conversation that I started with this person. We were discussing something else. My relationship did come up. She mentioned that despite things she’s seen or heard that she might consider problematic, she genuinely hoped it was making me happy and fueling good things in my life. And she said that if there was anything she could ever help me with, to reach out, and then she gave me her phone number. That was it. That was all.

I knew what she was saying to me. I think she knew I’d know; she trusted my intelligence. And I must admit, too, that I still initially balked at this. Insinuations that I’m being abused or that my partner is an abuser are always upsetting on multiple levels.

But you know what? Over a year later, I still know that number is there. And I almost used it once, about something completely unrelated. I genuinely believe that if I’m ever in *any* sort of trouble I have no support system for, I can reach out to this woman.

She’s the one who did it right. She didn’t come into a conversation with me with words laden with implications. She didn’t tell me what was going on in my relationship as if she knew better than I did. She didn’t make herself into a savior, a person with no other role in my life. And she opened a door for communication if I ever needed it. She opened it to be about anything.

I’m a lucky person. I’m in a healthy relationship that feeds all my needs. What’s more, I have people keeping an eye on me who legitimately care about my well-being and wouldn’t judge me if I needed help. Were the first not true, it is this one message, of all the other times it has been said, that would have given me knowledge of the second.

And there are a few other options that work, to be sure. I have a lot of compassionate people in my life who I feel I could tell anything to, and maybe they have established this trust with me with that possibility in mind. I’ve heard from DMs after intense scenes that people asked them to stop us, but those people were sensible enough to trust official channels, and they didn’t take things into their own hands when they were told “she knows what she’s doing.”

If you’re worried that someone is being abused, don’t rush in and tell them they’re in a bad situation. Not here, not in the middle of a scene, not as an opinion on their photos or writings. Don’t discuss it with other people like it’s the latest silly political tweet you’ve seen—*especially* not where someone could come across it, be they victim who you might force into more shame and secrecy, or stranger who just doesn’t deserve to hear all the things about their relationship that the world has decided are wrong. And for god’s sake, don’t stay silent and step away until after the fact, and then declare you knew the whole time.

Instead, consider opening a line of communication. Make yourself available. Be a good listener.

Care.

Posted by vahavta