risk awareness

28
Jan
2025

Fear Responses: Risks, mitigation, and/or use in escalation

Fear play in BDSM is one of those topics I’m lucky enough to get to approach on multiple levels. There’s what I have learned and experienced bottoming to some pretty intense stuff here, but there are two other layers for me, too: one where I’ve coached horror writers and written horror myself, giving me a different lens on the storycrafting of it all and how fear can be created in the mind of another during (and around) a kink scene, and one where I’m a creator of remote immersive horror experiences and where with basically two exceptions, every person on my “I talk to them nearly daily” list of friends is either a creator of or actor in an extreme haunt or immersive terror experience, or they’re someone who attends every one of those they can possibly get a ticket to. Though the people in this latter category are, importantly, not engaging in kink, there’s still lots to learn from what they’re doing: in creating a for-profit immersive terror experience, they have legalities and publicity to contend with that kinksters don’t always have to approach, which means that they often put much more into the training of the actors, the considerations of safety and ethics, and the care that goes into the creation of the experiences.

And on all levels, I’ve seen the incredible power of these experiences and stories to push boundaries, explore the depths of our psyches, and create profound connections between people. And I’ve also witnessed how easily things can go awry when fear is misunderstood or mishandled. I think fear is powerful, and delicious, and hard. And I love it. But something that has come up again and again and again when I discuss these things is the way that different fear responses might change interactions, especially as pertains to risk, communication, and consent — and so that’s what I’ve created a little resource on below.

Some fear responses are very physical in nature.

There are different types of fear, and some are more individual. I’ll get to those in a second. Others are engrained. It’s well-acknowledged in the extreme haunt sphere, for example, that water is often used to “break” participants and that drowning and waterboarding scenes are where many hit their limit. And though the risk on it should not be understated (in either case, really), many of us do “enjoy” drowning or waterboarding in kink – but I happen to think of it as a culmination of a scene, in my fantasies, and not an entire scene… once it begins, it ends up being “over” relatively quickly if not handled within a larger “narrative,” so-to-speak. This is because survival-based panic can only be thought its way out of and “managed” for so long. Mindfulness techniques can help some, and there are things I can teach bottoms in this class about how to manage these reactions a bit better… but ultimately, our bodies are built to respond in such a way that keeps us alive. And so, when a core function like breathing is compromised, there’s often a very strong panic response. On a physical level, this can be one of the most risky moments in a scene because bodies are likely to writhe, buck, and flail in efforts to get out of the moment. Tops who are playing with conscientious bottoms that are usually quite unlikely to behave or move in ways that put themselves in greater danger may suddenly need to take more physical precautions to avoid someone hitting their head on porcelain, for example.

But then there’s another kind of fear, and that’s what most people are asking about when they ask me about this question:

The psychological fear responses of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (and how they show up in kink)

When we’re confronted with intense fear, our bodies and minds instinctively react in certain ways, and these are four that I see discussed semi-regularly. These are where things get really tricky, as each can display in ways that are highly individual and have their own effects on communication and consent. The below information is not meant to be all-inclusive or comprehensive – not on how it can be recognized, how to de-escalate, or even how to escalate! – and as in near every other realm I teach in, I’ll say that communicating for in-scene enjoyment and safety begins long before your scene and continues long after.

But vahavta, isn’t the solution to all of this “use a safeword”?

Not quite. I say that partially because I don’t, and I know there are many who follow me or come to my classes who also don’t. But even if you do use safwords, it’s important to realize that’s a tool, not a sure thing, and that fear responses inherently impede rational thoughts and actions. Having a safeword in your toolbox for the scene can HELP you stay aware of needs… but it should never be the only thing you keep in mind, or you’re setting yourself up for trouble.

But! There are some broad-strokes guidelines I can give you for each response here, so that’s what I’m going to do. Below, you’ll find a few different ways to recognize and respond to each of these categories. Keep in mind that we rarely ever end up engaging in only one fear response all the time, and it’s a good idea to have a watchful eye on the way they might shift over the course of the scene.

The first two of these are what I’ll call “active” fear responses. These are ways we try to regain power in a situation where we feel threatened.

Fight

Recognizing: When someone goes into fight mode, they may become aggressive, confrontational, or physically resistant. They might lash out verbally, try to push the threat away, or even attempt to “take control” of the scene. Some, not all, will show signs first that are similar to an animal raising its hackles, with tensed shoulders and clenched fists. This also might look like “bratting.”

Heightened risks: Similar to the physical danger panic response, there is a greater amount of risk to play when someone is physically fighting back because there is less control the top can have over the situation. From a consent perspective, a fight response can make communication harder whether it’s a physical or an emotional fight, as the bottom may be so caught up in their own emotional state of fight that rational thought is impaired and the defense becomes more important to them than simply articulating needs and/or boundaries.

Response to the response: Tops, you have a few options when you identify a fight response.

  • If you want to escalate the fear, you can meet their aggression with your own, pushing back against their attempts to gain control (maybe physically; maybe via verbal taunts or something else). This can create an intense power struggle that heightens the adrenaline and the sense of danger.
  • If you simply want to mitigate risk as far as what comes with this, this might be time to add (or increase) restraints, particularly if you are planning to use anything that requires precision as to location on the body (like blades, for example!) You can also refuse to continue a scene without the bottom giving you some kind of check-in that requires they actually take a breath and respond verbally and with thought, perhaps with some kind of count-down or limit, which can add its own fun fearplay pressure while still serving to allow them to opt-in to continuing (“if you don’t tell me you’re good to continue before I count from 10 to 1, we don’t go forward”).
  • And if you want to de-escalate without ending the scene, remove any aggression coming from your end. Speak in a calm, soothing voice, and back off from anything combative. This might be a time to leave the bottom to think for a bit and play into one of the TYPES of fear we’ll also discuss Sunday, dread. (Of course, if there’s any kind of restraint, you’ll want a way to also keep monitoring what’s happening with the bottom and remain within earshot either way.) You could also empower them to see the scene as a challenge and redirect the fight impulse away from you and toward their own willpower – “You’re so aggressive, surely you must be strong enough to keep going” – but this should be done with caution, as it can shift some into a fawn response and get messy as far as consent.

Flight

Recognizing: We often think of flight mode as simply “escape,” but that’s not always physical, nor does it always actually result in an escape attempt. Someone in flight mode may start towards an exit or back away from the danger, but they also might have eyes darting around looking for exits (whether they’re conscious of that or not!), become restless or agitated, or start to dissociate from their surroundings – this last one, particularly, will happen with psychological fear and this gets tricky as it is not exactly the same as a freeze response but can look that way. This response, however it presents, is rooted in an effort to get away from the perceived danger and find safety.

Heightened risks: A flight response can also increase physical risk, depending how they attempt to “escape,” and can make it harder for a participant to communicate their needs (sensing a pattern?). They may be so focused on escaping that they don’t take the time to check in with themselves or express their boundaries. While this is a very different kind of risk, someone in flight mode may also end a scene out of panic in a way that they will regret later (and this is why I don’t personally play with safewords!)

Response to the response:

  • If you want to use a flight response to escalate the fear, you can play into their desire to escape. Block their exits, corner them, or create a sense of being trapped. This can heighten their panic and make the experience feel more intense. Maybe you add restraints, if they aren’t already there… or, if you are confident you can express greater strength and control a situation, you might even challenge them to go ahead and try to move while holding them in place.
  • To mitigate risk, figure out what is making them feel a need to escape and respond accordingly: remove restraints, take a physical step backwards so they feel less cornered, or even move to a larger room. Maybe you can open a door. Maybe this is taking a metaphorical step backward, if the scene is more emotional. Make continuing the scene require an active opt-in of following you somewhere or making a choice (discussed more in the Freeze section). If they’re escaping via disassociating, demand eye contact or ask open-ended questions that require thought to answer.
  • To de-escalate, both remove anything that makes them feel restrained or cornered and provide reassurance that they can stop any time they want (assuming that’s how you play) and that any sense of being “trapped” is only within the confines of the theme. Remind them that when the scene is over, it’ll be over: this will end. Breathe calmly and encourage them to follow your breathing to reduce panic. Set up situations that require them to approach (both physically and emotionally) to continue. If they’re disassociating, a gentle hand on the back or the knee can be grounding for some, but can make this worse for others – so discuss first, if possible.

The second two responses here are the more “passive” ones, and these come when someone no longer believes that a threat is escapable. In fact, switching from active to passive fear response may be a way to monitor the pacing of how fear is escalating for a bottom — they’re signs of acceptance, in a way!

Freeze

Recognizing: When a participant freezes, they may become silent, unresponsive, or appear to “check out” of the experience. They might stop engaging with the scene entirely, become passive, or seem emotionally distant. They may become very still, end up with a blank face void of emotion, or fail to respond to stimuli. Though the lines can blur, the difference between dissociation here vs. in the flight response is that this isn’t really dissociating; it’s freezing without responding in a way that seeks to camoflauge (which sometimes also looks like not reacting), but often still involves fully experiencing the moment under that facade – for some, not all.

Heightened risks: From a consent perspective, a freeze response can be particularly challenging because a bottom may go nonverbal. A freeze response is one that literally exists for prey to try and not be perceived by a predator, so the cues a bottom gives may decrease here and they’re unlikely to be able to communicate needs at all. Tops need to be very attentive to their nonverbal cues and err on the side of caution, and bottoms who do freeze and know they freeze should do themselves a favor by paying close attention to what happens in their head in those moments, communicating to your top before the scene what your freeze response means and what, historically, has snapped you out of it.

Response to the response:

  • If you want to use a freeze response to escalate the fear, you can capitalize on the sense of helplessness. Take control of the bottom’s body, move them around like a doll, or put them in positions that make them feel vulnerable. This can create a sense of powerlessness that heightens the fear. To this end, much in the “flight” section for this applies.
  • To mitigate risk without stopping the scene, this might be a good moment to give them some sense of autonomy via choices that they have to respond to, even if both choices are “bad” as in predicament play. I’d suggest requiring a verbal response along with whatever physically is required from a choice that is given, myself, with the same approach that I recommended above: not making a choice is the same as opting out and the scene ends. You might also ask yes/no questions until you can get them to a place where they’re able to articulate needs and boundaries more clearly.
  • To de-escalate, slow down the pace of the scene to give opportunities to process, removing the tension of time pressure and reminding them you’ll wait for them to respond – “When you’re ready, let me know how you’re feeling.” You might remind them they’re in control and can choose to end the scene at any time, if that’s a choice given. In general, freeze responses seem common when there’s a stimulus overload, so slowing down the onslaught of events in the scene or reducing stimuli (like bright lights or music) can help de-escalate this one, too.

Fawn

Recognizing and heightened risks: Fawn response is a coping mechanism that aims to decrease a perceived threat by doing what it wants, more or less. In short, it’s when someone in danger becomes particularly submissive. It’s the answer to when people ask the (incredibly naïve) question of “but if you were being abused/raped, why did you say yes and keep going along with it?” and that’s what makes it one of the most difficult parts of fearplay: the things that characterize it are inherently also heightened risks. In fawn mode, someone may become overly compliant, agreeing to things they normally wouldn’t, or trying to appease the threat to avoid further fear and danger. They may be more concerned with pleasing the top than advocating for their own needs or boundaries.

Response to the response:

  • If you want to use a fawn response to escalate fear, you can take advantage of the bottom’s compliance. Push them, make increasingly extreme demands, and/or put them in situations that feel degrading or humiliating then deepen that by pointing out what they’re saying yes (or not saying no) to. (This is my favorite time for that, probably. Not when it’s happening, though! Brought to you by the number of times I had to repeat “because I’m fucked up” just the other day, until it sounded matter-of-fact enough and no longer like a question or attempt to appease. And make eye contact the whole time. Yeesh.)
  • Mitigating risk: Tend toward open-ended questions here, “How do you feel about…?” as opposed to the yes/no, red/green, rate from 1-10 types. You can also give them a piece of paper (or keyboard) to write their answer down, which sometimes subverts the “just say yes!!” signals for long enough to get an actual answer. And though I’d normally put something like this in the de-escalating bit, this is a time to remind them that there is no punishment for ending a scene or for speaking up about not wanting to do something. Fawning happens because we see a decreased threat if we please the other party, and so reminding them that going along with things isn’t actually necessary to end the threat can help with some of the inherent problems that arise. You might also offer autonomy, like I mentioned with the Freeze response.
  • De-escalating: Remind them how much you are enjoying what you are doing already and how much you enjoy playing with them in general, making it clear that they have already pleased you and don’t HAVE to keep saying yes in order to have done so. You might want to even let them know they please you when they are clear about their boundaries and say no, that this is a way of helping you make it a good experience. You could also switch to an activity that you know they actually enjoy and feel somewhat less fearful of, de-escalating the actual fear response before you ask those open-ended questions again in an effort to encourage honesty over appeasement. When you do check in again, be sure to do so in a non-threatening way to the extent that you can.

However, I want to underline once more how important it is to be very mindful of the power dynamics at play here. A bottom in fawn mode may not feel able to say no, even if you’re pushing them beyond their limits. They may go along with things that they’re not truly comfortable with out of a desire to please you or avoid punishment. And so it’s extra, extra important with fearplay scenes to debrief several times after play so that you can continue getting and sharing information that arises with more distance from the scene, as both parties are able to reflect without the heightened arousal that comes from the charged environment.

Conclusions

Navigating fear responses isn’t a 101-level task, and it’s not one that I can cover comprehensively — not in a writing, nor in a 2-hour class. So please, use this as a start to your toolbox… but then let the real learning start. This is a skill that requires empathy, attunement, and a willingness to adapt, as well as a great deal of self-awareness (both emotionally and as to where you are in space) – and that entire sentence was directed to both bottoms and tops.

At the same time, fear responses can be a really powerful way to make these scenes and experiences even more intense and transformative. And so for all these reasons and more, learning as much as you can about these fear responses will make scenes both safer and more enjoyable for everyone. Like with any other skill, you’ll do best with patience, practice, ongoing education, and an approach of mutual respect and curiosity.

Want to join in on the conversation in the comments? Find the Fetlife version of this post by clicking here.
Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Ten Ways to Research Risk in Kink

1) Classes

The move online has made kink education more accessible, more frequent, and higher quality—you’re no longer limited to the resources in your local area, and therefore more able to hear from experts. It’s wild how many topics you can find if you look for them! If you aren’t sure where to find classes relevant to you and don’t know what specifically you want to search for, start clicking on any that show up in your feed and go to the event host’s profile and check “events organizing”—more than likely, you’ll find a list of other upcoming classes soon! Start following these venues and you’ll build up a good list before long. In particular, @WickedGrounds, @TES-NYC, and @PragmaticKink have been hosting a bunch, and that barely scratches the surface.

2) Fetlife groups

The “groups” feature can be overwhelming and you’ll need to use your best judgment on who’s a valid source, but there’s an amazing wealth of resources available with knowledgeable people you can ask questions to. Some Fetlife groups that I think are particularly educational include Heavy Sadomasochism Technical and Rope Incident Reports. As shameless of a plug as this is, I also run the Risk Evaluation Database (RED) as a Fetlife group (though it now is also in non-group form right on this website) to make it easier for people to research risks.

3) Webinars and Podcasts

Similar to classes, these options you can access on your own time. Kink.com/KinkAcademy is one popular option, as is Shibari Study. I’m truthfully not up-to-date on the kink podcast scene, but I’d love you to recommend your favorite in the comments of the Fetlife version of this post!

4) Learning-by-doing/labbing

Working alongside knowledgeable friends or partners in non-charged, controlled contexts (read: not scenes) can be a great way to explore how something should feel, what your own personal danger signs might be, and the things you want to be sure your partner is aware of. Many are familiar with this sort of learning in the form of Rope Bite and other rope labbing, but you can lab out anything at all in kink—and both tops and bottoms will know more about what they’re doing for trying.

5) Conventions

Keeping your own health limits in mind, conventions are an excellent place to find a combination of all of this. You’ll be able to attend classes, try things out alongside others, and have discussions with strangers who can share their experiences with you.

6) Non-kink professionals, &
7) Vanilla scholarly research

Kink is, inherently, a limited playing field. Searching for valid, reliable, academic research on a particular kink’s risks may not be as possible as searching for something adjacent. You may not have local kink educators in the hands-on skill you want to know more about the risks of, but you may have someone else who’d know even more. I’ve personally found you can learn a lot that’s relevant to kink from tattoo artists and SCUBA and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners, in particular. And of course, your friends in the medical field (thank them extra). One friend notes this method:

If it’s mental, and not physical, I will look for actual medical journals on the subject. (ie: trigger play. We started with trauma theory, and worked backwards to “risk of inadvertent exposure” to “risk of nonconsensual intentional exposure” to “retraumatization by partner”.)

8) Speak to those who have bottomed for it

Though participating in a kink is no guarantee of having expertise of it, someone who has bottomed for something may have a good grasp of what did and did not feel risky to them, what they saw as possible danger areas, and what they’d want tops who are doing that thing to know. Both parties certainly assume some amount of risk in any kink context, but as the typical “receiver” of more kink actions than not, bottoms hold specialized knowledge here that can be a good complement to the research you’ve done.

9) Post on kinky social media and ask!

I’ve garnered amazing amounts of info simply by posting statuses that ask for the risks of an activity, or any other question for that matter! People are generally happy to share what they know, and it often introduces you to other people on Fet who saw your status or writing in their feed because of a commenter they know, widening your general knowledge base. And finally…

10) Connecting with and being open to good people

Best said by my friend @sinsational, “Creating an environment where I felt I could ask someone to teach me about something I was curious to do or see.” Project an openness and curiosity, and people will be more likely to share their knowledge with you for free. Share what you know when you can, and you’ll create a safer environment for everyone. Create a community where you can discuss openly if anyone knows anyone with your particular disability who has tried that particular kink, or where you can ask other tops if they’ve ever done x thing and how they prevent y happening to their bottom. It’s cheesy, but it’s true—you get what you put in. When it comes to learning about safety, a community can be everything.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

You should reevaluate your risk profile.

There was a time when I would have come into something with this title with my hackles up. I’d be prepared to bite back: no, my being young, my being new do *not* mean that I don’t know what I’m doing. I should get to do edge play if that’s what I want. I can evaluate risks just fine. And if that’s you, the first thing I want to say is: you’re right. I agree. This writing isn’t going to tell you you can’t. This isn’t even a writing geared toward the inexperienced, anyway. This is a writing geared toward everyone

because we all should reevaluate our risk profiles.

no matter where in our journeys we are; no matter how long we’ve been with and intend to be with the same partners. The things we are willing to sacrifice for what kink gives us–which is what I use to define risk profile, but your own definition probably works here too–just don’t stay the same. This all needs to be looked at and talked about, frequently.

It isn’t a one-time assessment; it’s a process–because being a human being is a process. We learn. We become more aware of ourselves and our bodies. We interrogate our desires, needs, and priorities in life. And those desires, needs, and priorities change. Constantly. Dynamically. Often in surprising ways.

As I recently started to think about an upcoming Risk Profile Workshop I was teaching and topics people here on Fet said they wanted to hear about, I put out a status asking how people’s risk profiles have changed over time. I have had some great conversations since. This writing is an attempt to sum up those responses—something which this answer, by @MadQueerBitch, does quite nicely (and much more briefly than myself, lol):

Much more detail.
More body parts that are fragile.
More time constraints.
More emotional availability.
More hard skills.
Far more soft skills.
More “No, none for me, thanks”
More self-protection.
More ease in stating boundaries.
More self-strength in my “vetting”.

Here are the things I saw come up over and over again.

Our risk profiles change in how we evaluate and discuss what fits into them.

People spoke of their risks becoming less about “this is what I like and this is what is a limit” and more about skills. Do tops have the proper training? Have bottoms taken classes or done enough research to identify warning signs? Have tops and bottoms talked together about elements of risk mitigation? More access to classes, experts, and resources is a big part of this. So is figuring out we can’t really take anything for granted—be that knowledge, willingness, or capability. Itai said, “I left behind Guess Culture for Ask Culture,” which I thought was a particularly wonderful phrase.

Our risk profiles change in response to changing bodies, desires, abilities, and needs.

What our bodies can and can’t handle is in flux all the time for so many reasons: age, ability, hormones, what prescriptions we are on, the amount of sleep we are able to get. What is safe for our bodies one year may not be the next. Play that didn’t used to cause scarring may one day start to. New disability happens. Injuries. Changing needs for changing careers and family structures. Wear and tear on our bodies simply from kink itself. It’s worth noting that changing bodies, as @Friskybunny pointed out to me, can subtract risks and make us able to do more, as well as less—bodies that have a risk of becoming pregnant that causes more caution at one point in life, for example, one day will not.

Minds change too, both in their health and in what interests us. I’ll speak to my own experience here: there was a time when appearance or intelligence-based degradation were things I was wholly unwilling to touch. Now they’re among my favorites. I can’t say what changed—was it comfort with my partner? A new fetish I picked up reading someone’s writing? More confidence in myself? I’m not sure, exactly. Maybe it was just time: learning our reactions and experimenting makes a difference, and it makes our awareness of our needs and abilities more nuanced. As the very smart and experienced-with-this-sort-of-thing @_Pavlov_ says:

I’m WAY more emotionally healthy than I was years ago, and can do MUCH cooler and higher-skill-needed emotional kinds of play now. That being said, I’m much less willing to risk fucking around with play that can easily result in unintended feelings of attachment.

Our risk profiles change in response to experiencing and knowing more in kink.

Sometimes learning and experiencing more means that we have to rule out play we once loved in order to keep our ability to do the things we most prioritize safe. This can come with learning about a risk we didn’t previously know could happen (may I direct you to the Risk Evaluation Database?), gaining understanding of the skills required to execute a certain sort of play properly and realizing the people we know who actually have those skills are more limited than we thought, and the things we observe in our communities. To that end, @off2infinity added an interesting point about how his time in the scene has changed *who* fits into his risk profile:

I feel safer with newbies and people who don’t have a leadership position within the community, whereas before, I leaned towards more experienced tops. It’s difficult to speak out against someone who is perceived as an authority figure or leader.

But knowing and experiencing more can also lead to doing more. Being exposed to new and different kinks (and ways of making our current kinks happen) can open up opportunities. This might mean that we can make things happen with less risk and no sacrifice to the amazingness of play–increasing both tops’ and bottoms’ comfort, frequency they’re willing to engage in certain things, and so forth. @MadQueerBitch’s growing kink experiences have led to figuring out that “the results/feelings desired can be duplicated in lower risk actions, most of the time.”

Hand-in-hand with this is the fact that…

Our risk profiles change in response to experiencing and knowing more of ourselves.

When I talk about my approach to risk management, I occasionally get asked about renegotiating mid-scene—something which is generally spoken of in “the community” as being a no-no, but that I am not personally unilaterally opposed to. Consenting to this, sleep play, playing around under the influence of or even with substances, are all things that I think can end up removed from someone’s risk profile over time. That’s the key to me with all of this: time. Time enough to know how you respond to various sorts of things, how they affect your decision-making, how you feel about it (immediately, days, months) after.

And with time comes experiences: the things we pick up along the way. @venerant spoke about her risk profile expanding to allow more play through experimenting a little bit at a time:

So many years of incremental risks and practice in recovering from experiences has given me more confidence that I am capable of weathering things that go badly. It has made me more open to things I once would have viewed as dangerous.

Specifically when it comes to emotional play, she said,

I’ve been able to let myself have more small risky experiences so that I can witness myself in crisis (or at least, facing down strong emotional experiences that I’m unprepared to handle) and practice managing myself.

Other personal knowledge/experience items mentioned that can change our willingness to take risks included having new outlooks on who is/isn’t in our support networks, figuring out we can heal from things we didn’t think we could (and vice versa), learning new coping methods and ways to stay grounded or take care of ourselves/our partners after intensities, and an increasing awareness of our relationship needs.

When @_Pavlov_ (who, again, is really incredible (and also writes about topics that go along with this one) ) suggested this topic to me, she said:

We don’t wake up in exactly the same place inside ourselves everyday. We don’t stay the same person our whole lives. We change, our bodies change, our emotional landscape changes, our lives change us. Trying to apply yesterday’s or last year’s or last decade’s self-made-rules can go really wrong.

It’s a process. It’s in flux. It’s a constant re-evaluation.

What’s important to note is that this change isn’t just one direction or another. What play we decide we can do both expands and contracts. As @twisted_hugs put it:

I feel like I am less willing to take risks now than before, but only because I didn’t realize how risky things were when I was doing them before. Now I’m more willing to do things I thought were very risky before, but only because I have more education on ways to mitigate the risk pretty well.

But one things for certain: things *do* change.

So if you’re reading this right now, take a moment to ask yourself how yours has changed lately and, if relevant, communicate these answers to your partner(s). What do you feel more confident about your feelings on? What new life priorities affect your kink world? What new kinks have you become aware of and interested in? What does your body do now that it didn’t when you last asked these questions?

Join the conversation in the comments on the Fetlife version of this post here.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

The Risk Profile: an alternative measure for safety and comfort in play

I recently got to collaborate with the Bound-Together blog to share a version of this writing off-site. You can check it out here!

I first heard the term “risk profile” a few months back, and never really was given a solid definition of it. “That’s not in my risk profile” was something I took to just mean “I’ve deemed that too risky for me”, which I think most would probably say is fair. But the more I’ve thought about the way I approach my comfort level in play, the more I’ve found that the term fits, and it fills in the blanks my lack of explicit limits or safewords leave for people. So in discussions with some other bottoms who are like me recently, we started to operationalize it a bit more.

Safewords are easy ways to help play stay inside your comfort zone, but there are many extremely valid reasons that people might not want to use them. Maybe you’re like me, and the sort of power exchange you need in your play must preclude you having any of that decision-making power. Maybe you’re unlikely to actually use your safeword, or you know you’d use it too soon and be disappointed in yourself afterwards (not that there’s *any* reason to be), or you don’t think you’d know what constitutes enough of an emergency to stop the scene. Hard limits are adjacent to what I’m about to discuss, but they aren’t perfect either: most folks use them to list kinks and implements they aren’t okay with, but there always might be things you haven’t thought of. Not all people use the same implements in the same ways, so what is a hard limit with one could be a yes please with another. And, as I once read somewhere here, hard limit lists frequently become check lists; keeping one for me became “I’m afraid of this,” which isn’t the same as “I don’t want to do this,” and these traditional lists eventually were too, well, limiting.

Enter the Risk Profile: a method of determining what one does not want to happen in play that I believe is simultaneously more comprehensive and more permissive of experimentation in scene.

What is a BDSM Risk Profile?

I will define the Risk Profile broadly as a set of parameters encompassing the things in one’s life that, if lost, would cost more than the opportunity that play provides. What you are not willing to risk. As I go more into this, that will make more sense. These parameters will, of course, be wide for some and narrow for others. They’ll look different and how they come out in people’s play will vary. **They focus on end result, not in-play experience.** They may include such items as ability to engage in one’s work, interact with family, or maintain mental health, among others. Someone who works as a professional model would have a different risk profile from someone who works in a call center, and so forth. Since I write, I’ll be using that as my example in this post.

They are *not* a list of kinks or tools that are off limits, though they might include them. They are not a list of “things I don’t like”. I am speaking to a particular subset of person with this, who may *want* to be put in experiences they don’t like or that even make them feel like they’re unsafe, even if they aren’t–though there’s no reason someone couldn’t have a hard limits list in addition for more coverage, if that isn’t their style. They are not necessarily a substitute for a safeword—a safeword can be used with them, or not. They aren’t as broad as “I would not be okay with paralysis or losing cognitive ability” and I’d recommend you just not play with people who you think wouldn’t already know something like that.

Why Should Kinksters Know Their Risk Profiles?

Defining particular categories or health elements one is not willing to put in jeopardy does a few things over the other failsafes.

The risk profile allows for inclusion of limits one might not have thought of. “Being able to write” as part of my risk profile gives my top more information than “no bending fingers back”. From that, they can also determine that needles under my fingernails would be an issue, even if I hadn’t thought to say that. At the same time, it means I don’t have to approve everything that will be done to me, which would make a scene not enjoyable for me personally.

The risk profile allows for the bottom to better vet a top’s knowledge and skills. We often see somebody do one thing at a high skill level and assume they are well-versed in others. With my writing example, I could toss out potentially (not necessarily) irrelevant knowledge such as how long somebody has been in the scene, and narrow it down to “can you tell me which nerves connect to the wrist?”

The risk profile allows for prioritizing of first aid. It is impossible to plan for every emergency or to know how to fix every problem. It simply is. But, having determined my risk profile, I can educate myself as to tests to make sure nerves are not being damaged, as well as create (as much as possible) a plan of action as to treatment if things do go wrong.

The risk profile helps both top and bottom determine when a scene has to end. For those of us who don’t like to or can’t use safewords, this clarifies what an actual emergency would be. I don’t actually want a scene to stop immediately, even if I say otherwise in the moment, because I feel like I might vomit–but I do want it to stop if I can’t move my fingers. Additionally, having focused medical knowledge about such things has allowed us in a real-life example to address just the portion of a scene affecting my hands without slowing down the rest of it, as opposed to stopping everything in order to figure out the cause.

The risk profile gives the parameters in case of surprise CNC scenes and similar. For those open to scenes that they don’t negotiate everything into, the risk profile allows a top to easier think about what they’re going to do without asking leading questions that might give their evil/creative (and therefore not on a typical limits list) plans away.

How to Build Your BDSM Risk Profile

This is fairly simple, in theory. There are only three steps.

1) Determine the things in life that, if lost, would cost more than the opportunity play provides.

Consider emotional and physical health risks that are particular to your body, jobs, hobbies, values and beliefs, family and romantic relationships, among others.

2) Determine what specifically you need in order to maintain those things.

In terms of writing, I need to be able to type, I need to meet deadlines, and I need to be able to think and create. That’s fairly straightforward. If I can’t go out for a week because I have a black eye, that isn’t outside of my risk profile. A singer, for example, may need to avoid screaming in the week before performances so as to not damage vocal cords. Someone who puts raising their children in their risk profile may need to include more, such as the ability to drive them to day care, lift them into their high chairs, not have marks visible to them, and not be in such a state of drop that they couldn’t avoid letting on that something was off. Depending on mental health, this might include taking a pill at a certain time, not having restrictions on food, sleeping comfortably. This is all highly individual.

Again, pretty similar to a hard limits list in many ways, except that it focuses specifically on end result.

3) Codify it, if that’s helpful to you, and talk about it.

Just as you would any other negotiation. I’ve never had this discussion explicitly, but I live with my partner and He knows what’s important to me. I had to say at some point “hey, when x happened, I wasn’t able to write because of the pain” and I feel fairly confident He isn’t going to do x again in the same way or with the same force. You could also, of course, discuss it in certain terms. You could write it down, particularly if you have non-obvious skill requirements, and have that list to share. You could just use it for your own information, to help you focus your own knowledge acquisition as a bottom.

And I should say that tops can have this for their bottoms, as well—my Owner generally won’t risk anything that is known to put my bad shoulder out of commission for a day, even though I’d be okay with it in a lot of cases.

And there you go. That’s the risk profile. My framework of it, at least.
This isn’t something you sit down and do in a few minutes. I run a two-hour workshop on it (insert “sign up for my substack to get notified if i’m giving one!” here) and that’s just the getting started part. This is a process that you spend time on, over many many days and weeks and months, and that you revise as time goes on. And then you do research about the possible risks of the kind of play you like, the medical information you need in order to protect those things that you can’t risk, and so on and so forth…

I am not even slightly pretending this is a perfect system. It isn’t comprehensive, just a way to be *more* comprehensive. You might have this as well as a hard limits list of things you just don’t like, and you might also use a safeword to mark any stop at all; this just allows coverage of what you haven’t thought of. Making it clear you want to avoid anything that would produce x result doesn’t necessarily mean x result won’t happen in a worst case scenario, but it does mean you can prioritize that over other results (in the case of two non-life-threatening injuries, that is. Of course you should always prioritize things such as long-term unconsciousness and drops on heads first.) It doesn’t account for all that could go wrong, but it will tell you what emergencies you want the top to have a more than basic knowledge of. And it won’t stop consent violators—but your limits list and safeword weren’t going to do that, either.

And for those of us who do want to play not knowing what our tops are going to do to us, without any way out, maybe this helps give them more information so that we can both be successful. Maybe it helps us to up our own medical and play knowledge, or to narrow down what criteria we use to figure out who we can and can’t play with. Maybe it helps us determine what’s an important no, and what’s just an “I’m scared.” Maybe it helps us, even a little bit, mitigate our risk.

Join the conversation on this post in the comments on Fetlife

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Questions and Considerations for Bottoming to Degradation Play

Over time, emotional play has become one of my core kinks. Very few of our scenes don’t have at least some element of degradation, and casual degradation and humiliation is a part of my day-to-day life. It certainly has caused its issues at times, but I wouldn’t want to remove it from our dynamic for the world. It makes me feel Loved. Most of my erotica involves it. *All* of my fantasies do. Often times, I can’t get off without it. Suffice to say, I think about this sort of thing a lot.

I recently read someone’s guide to emotional sadism. In the comment section, many bottoms expressed regret over emotional S&M gone wrong in the past, whether because their partners did not engage in it from a healthy place, boundaries weren’t clearly considered or communicated, or other reasons. My aim here is to create a resource for bottoms to help them think through potential pitfalls before they encounter them.

This is a non-comprehensive list of possible questions you might ask yourself or discuss with your partner when considering delving into emotional play. Sometimes I’ve added examples or other commentary, but it’s mostly just the questions. It’s by no means exhaustive. It also is not at *all* meant to qualify if you personally should or shouldn’t engage in this sort of play—if your answer to a question is something negative, that doesn’t mean “don’t do it”; it means follow the question up with “and am I okay with that?”

  • What feeling do I wish to come out of this with?
    options might include: shame, loneliness, fear, worthlessness, failure, abandonment, guilt
  • Do I want this to be role-play (my partner says things we both definitively know to be untrue) or do I want this to touch on real insecurities and beliefs?
  • What categories of degradation are too far, desired, or won’t have an effect?
    options might include: attractiveness (physical? personality? smell?), intelligence, worth as a partner, worth in general, capability (of being a good submissive, at your job, to achieve your dreams, etc), aspects of identity (race, religion, sexuality, gender), promiscuity, sexual ability/worth, core values
  • Am I okay with real-life events being mentioned?
  • If we are role-playing but my partner says something I believe is true about myself, will I be able to trust that they *don’t* think that? If no, will that undermine my concept of true and false for things they say in the future?
  • Have there been any recent hurdles with this partner that might affect my ability to see something as play?
  • If I am feeling ashamed, unimportant, or otherwise lesser in the scene or dynamic, will that affect my ability to communicate if I need things to stop?
  • Are there reactions that should signal a stop or pause to my partner beyond explicit communication
    examples: shutting down, crying, inability to make eye contact, heavy breathing
  • In some physical scenes, a safeword stops the thing causing the pain. When emotions are involved, the escalation can stop but the pain might not (ever). If I have the ability to stop this in our scene/dynamic, am I able to do that *before* it gets to a point I won’t be able to handle?
  • How long do I want to sit with the bad feeling(s)? Do I want it made better after (being “built back up”)?
  • If I need my top to make me feel better after, do I want them to negate what they said/did in scene and tell me it was all a lie, or build me up about other things?
    (Personally, if my Owner were to say He didn’t believe the things He told me, I’d start thinking that He didn’t really enjoy degrading me and that would make me feel worse. YMMV.)
  • What else do I need after? Are there behaviors of mine that might need to be monitored (eating properly, fulfilling goals, communicating, etc) based on what we do? For how long? Will this partner be in my life for that long? Are there other people that can look after these things if they aren’t?
  • If this scene involves certain activities, props, or locations, they may trigger these feelings in the future. Am I okay with that?
  • If I do this in public or write about this and people think/know my top really thinks these things about me, will the way they perceive us be bothersome to either of us?
  • Is my top prepared to handle the emotional labor that may come with my feeling they think x about me? Will they feel guilty if I become afraid of them or their presence makes me feel negatively? Are they aware of that possibility? Will they be patient if it is hard to overcome, or even if it doesn’t ever go away?
  • Are other relationships prepared to handle the emotional labor that may come with my believing x about myself? If I need extra reassurance or am suddenly insecure in our relationship, will that make them feel negatively about themselves?
  • Do I have events in the near future that will be affected by my confidence in myself changing? (important presentations, job interviews, performances, first dates)
  • Am I comfortable being vulnerable in front of my partner? Will I be after this happens? Do I have a support system I can speak to honestly about this experience without fear of judgment?
  • How might this affect any emotional issues I already deal with?
  • If this partnership dissolves in the future, will this experience make that harder to handle?
  • If I begin associating affection or sex with these negative feelings, how will that affect my perception of reality, and how will that affect how I evaluate this and other relationships down the line?
  • What traits, connections, perceptions ground me to the reality of whatever this relationship is? How will I be reminded/remind myself of them if/when I need to?

Obviously, everyone experiences things differently. Though I hope it goes without saying, emotional S&M can be very hard on a person and on a relationship, whatever that relationship is, and should be carefully thought through—but with the right partner, I think it’s one of the most incredible, intimate, and even empowering experiences to be had. These questions are meant as thought/conversation-starters, not a comprehensive checklist.

Come over to the comments section of this writing on Fetlife to tell us what you’d add!

Posted by vahavta