Yes, a tweet is one way to look at it. It’s more an annoying rule, really! Because I want to be completely free of responsibility or any of the other yucky things that come with control and power [grins] and instead, I have to speak up and say when there is a problem he might need to know about — darn it!

I was always one of those subs who didn’t want to use my safeword, for a number of reasons ranging from silly to extremely silly. And when we are in a scene, my first response is always to see if whatever is bothering me is ignorable, before I bring it to my Master’s attention.

And then of course there are the times when I go off into my masochistic deep end. At that point in the game, not only would I not use a safeword if I had one, but I won’t even notice and/or care about problems which normally should be mentioned. When I get in that space, my Master has to take very close care of me, because I’d happily let myself get injured (or simply not notice) … in those instances, if he was waiting for me to use my safeword and just kept on going, Very Bad Things would happen, because I’m simply in no space to care for myself, I just want more pain, more pain NOW, and I don’t really care what kind of pain it is…. If my Master wasn’t used to being totally in control, at that point it would actually become dangerous to play — but I’m so very glad that we are able to have those moments, because we can have really profound experiences when I’m in that place!

There are absolutely people for whom safewords can be and are an important part of punishment, and they are not any “less real” than my Master and me, or anything silly like that.

It’s just that it’s very important for my Master’s and my dynamic that there be no safewords (in case we haven’t made that abundantly clear by this point in time!) and the only reason we’ve had to argue this point in the first place is because of the people who insist that safewords are the only thing that turn what would otherwise be hideous abuse into happy, sex-positive BDSM.

As I’ve said, neither my Master and I have anything against safewords, and we encourage other people to use them. We just are happier not using them ourselves, and it’s important for who we are as Master and slave that we feel we do not have them…. And whether or not you think we have them, well, you can think it all you like if it makes you happy! But we are going to continue to insist we don’t use them, and since that makes us happy, well, why bother arguing it?

(And now it’s my turn to apologise if I come off sounding combative … I’m a wee bit hung-over and I am having trouble thinking of the sweet and gentle way of phrasing things at the moment!)

When I wrote:

…I just say, “Master, there’s a problem you need to know about,” and he ends the scene.

it was a serious over-simplification, which worked at the time, but now that we are bogged down in the semantics of “what a safeword does and doesn’t mean,” is just getting in the way.

To clarify, my Master doesn’t have to stop the scene and no matter what I say, it doesn’t necessarily end the scene.

I see now. It’s not a safeword; it’s a *tweet*.

However, just because someone defines safeword in a different way, does not mean that my Master and I use safewords.

Right. I didn’t/don’t mean to suggest that there’s anything wrong with not using them. I couldn’t get my head around you talking about not having a safeword, yet elsewhere describing a process which sounded to me exactly like a safeword in action.

My main goal is just to argue that *some forms* of safeword aren’t at all inconsistent with R/L punishment, since using one doesn’t necessarily mean that the bottom has control over deciding when it stops. Ultimately I reckon it’s better to talk about what one specifically uses safewords *for* (maybe nothing), than whether one has them or not. I’m not sure the on/off binary really captures the variation of behaviour that’s out there.

Excuse any combative tone; it’s hard-wired, I’m afraid.

When I wrote:

…I just say, “Master, there’s a problem you need to know about,” and he ends the scene.

it was a serious over-simplification, which worked at the time, but now that we are bogged down in the semantics of “what a safeword does and doesn’t mean,” is just getting in the way.

To clarify, my Master doesn’t have to stop the scene and no matter what I say, it doesn’t necessarily end the scene. I could say, “Master, I’m about to throw up,” and he could decided that it would be hot to have me throw up (if you go over to http://underhishand.com/ there was a scene where kaya threw up from a blow job and the scene continued) and thus there would be no “cause and effect” from my comment. He does pause perhaps to consider the matter, but as he is constantly considering what he is doing, and how that’s effecting me, and what he wants to do next during the entire scene, that’s not really a significant change.

I think it makes perfect sense that people use safewords in different ways, because everyone’s got their own unique take on sexuality, and on doing kink.

However, just because someone defines safeword in a different way, does not mean that my Master and I use safewords.

If we go by the standard definition, from Wikipedia:

A safeword is a codeword or series of codewords that are sometimes used in BDSM for a submissive (or ‘bottom’) to unambiguously communicate their physical or emotional state to a dominant (or ‘top’), typically when approaching, or crossing, a physical, emotional, or moral boundary. Some safewords are used to stop the scene outright, while others can communicate a willingness to continue, but at a reduced level of intensity.

then my Master and I do not use safewords.

Interestingly, Wikipedia does point out that:

Those who practice the more permissive philosophy of risk-aware consensual kink may abandon the use of safewords, especially those that practice forms of edgeplay or extreme forms of dominance and submission. In such cases, the choice to give up the use of safewords is a consensual act on the part of the bottom or submissive [...] While many in the BDSM community consider safewords an essential part of safe play, there is a significant contingent that does not have any such term in their relationships or their play. Some of these people simply use the word Stop, but this may be risky as it may be misinterpreted as role-playing.

Others rely on the ‘top’ to monitor the condition of the ‘bottom’ and stop if necessary, at their discretion. In such circumstances the ‘bottom’ or submissive must have consented not to have control over the duration of the scene in advance.

So, by the standard definition, we are in the group of people who do not use safewords. But of course we have communication — it’s just that I have no way to stop or temporarily halt a scene.

You are missing (or dismissing) the core point here: as commonly used, and indeed as you refer to them, a “safeword” (whether in the conventional sense or your whatever-you-want-it-to-mean one) is a mechanism by which the recipient can cause something to happen.

*nods* That works as a definition. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something. Zille wrote:

…I just say, “Master, there’s a problem you need to know about,” and he ends the scene.

What I read there is that Zille *does* cause something to happen: you end the scene. Or, if I read the other stuff correctly, you at least take a moment to assess the situation and decide what to do about it – perhaps nothing. I don’t think I’m playing with words in seeing that description as a ‘mechanism by which the recipient can cause something to happen’. That ‘something’ might not involve the scene ending, but it’s still something, and something to do with safety.

Another point your missing or misunderstanding is the fact, not opinion, that the use of a safeword does require the user to jump through an extra mental hoop, and whether you think that’s “a mistake” (as you wrote above) or not is irrelevant: it is a fact that you cannot escape.

No, it’s an assertion, rather than a fact, and I don’t think it’s necessarily true in all cases. It doesn’t seem improbable to me that a safeword can potentially be internalised to such an extent that it requires *less* mental effort than the construction of something more elaborate. It’s exactly how I interpret the situation I described with my wife. To wit:

I’ll demonstrate that by borrowing your example: your wife felt ill, remembered her safeword, said it, and within seconds she was in the bathroom… OK, I suspect that you’re omitting the bit where you ask her what was wrong, she explains, and makes her dash.

No, there wasn’t any omission. There was the safeword, I immediately lifted her off my lap, she dashed to the bathroom, and then explained afterwards what had happened. She was pretty explicit in expressing that it was the safeword and my immediate response that allowed her to get to the bathroom in time. At the very least it saved us plenty of embarrassment.

Much as you – quite rightly – condemn blanket statements that people ought to have safewords, I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that the process of *using* a safeword is the same for everyone.

You are missing (or dismissing) the core point here: as commonly used, and indeed as you refer to them, a “safeword” (whether in the conventional sense or your whatever-you-want-it-to-mean one) is a mechanism by which the recipient can cause something to happen. That “something” might be to stop (often “red” is used), or to check in (often “yellow”), but it is a command from the bottom to the top that must be obeyed if the thing is to have any meaning. If it’s purely advisory, then it cannot be a safeword, not matter what your efforts are altering meaning might suggest. Giving Zille a pause button, a stop button, or a “check in with me now” button distorts what we want to have. It may not disrupt your relationship at all, which is fine, but safewords, whichever definition you choose to create, have a harmful consequence for ours.

And that’s the reason we prefer not to use them.

Another point your missing or misunderstanding is the fact, not opinion, that the use of a safeword does require the user to jump through an extra mental hoop, and whether you think that’s “a mistake” (as you wrote above) or not is irrelevant: it is a fact that you cannot escape.

I’ll demonstrate that by borrowing your example: your wife felt ill, remembered her safeword, said it, and within seconds she was in the bathroom… OK, I suspect that you’re omitting the bit where you ask her what was wrong, she explains, and makes her dash. Compare the non-codeword, non-safeword example: Zille feels ill, says “I feel sick”, I immediately help her to the bathroom (or get out of her way). That’s THREE unnecessary steps eliminated: the remembering what the safeword happened to be, her saying it, my question to her “what’s up? Why did you safeword?”, before we get back to the important issue (that she felt sick).

Oh, and your implication that a normal language dialog (“Excuse me, my leg is hurting”) could somehow be considered a safeword is obviously missing the whole point of the things. They exist, whether you’ll admit this or not, so that we can play with scenes in which “no” doesn’t mean “no”. The whole point of a safeword is that it is a word that is carrying additional meaning during that scene; if someone was to simply use words at their face value, resistance play could never happen because the “victim” would yell “help! stop!” and the scene would be over!

I will agree that safewords are another tool in the toolbox. The issue, though, is that they are a tool that is well suited for a limited number of situations, is usable, but suboptimal for a large number of them, and is unsuited and will damage a final group.

I’ll offer a parting observation: in SCUBA diving, a lot of people vociferously assert that diving on your own, without a buddy, is horribly dangerous and should never be done. I’ll state, as a fact, that there have been plenty of situations where two people as a buddy team ended up in life-threatening danger, because one of them was stupid. Of course, sometimes having that second person along saves the first’s life, but there are also times where it simply increases the death toll. So the buddy system is a tool, but like safewords, its a tool whose suitability for use is rarely examined dispassionately, and sometimes the tool is just unhelpful.

The profound irony is that the loudest advocates for these “safety” measures have typically not assessed the individual situations well enough to be qualified to have an opinion on the value of the measure AS IT APPLIES to that situation.

However, there is one small — and of course huge — difference.

As I say … it’s a small thing, because most of the time, if I bring something to his attention, he will most likely agree with me that it merits at least a break to fix the problem. But for the two of us, it’s also a huge, vital thing, because in the end I have NO control and NO power … only the allowed freedom to make suggestions which he may or may not act upon.

Yes, it’s a difference both small and big. Not to be argumentative (though it probably is), but though that dynamic doesn’t feel safewordy to you, that sort of stepping outside of the scene to check on something that might not be right – even if it’s then decided unilaterally by the scene top to carry on regardless – has some features of a safeword. As with most things BDSM-y, it’s never a good thing to think that words have a single, specific meaning. I’d like to imagine that people can think of a ‘safeword’ as a collection of different ideas and approaches, rather than *this*, or *that* idea or approach. Whatever works for them. A ‘safeword’ doesn’t have to be that ‘get out of jail free card’ in order to have usefulness. I do think that often the rejection of the use of a safeword often amounts to the rejection of a specific *type* of safeword, rather than the general concept.

Safewords do nothing of the kind; COMMUNICATION increases safety, so the question becomes do safewords improve communication? Now, we’ve all heard of cases where the sub has forgotten their safeword, so there is a least one group of situations where safewords erode, rather than bolster, the level of safety. There’s also the point I mentioned originally, where someone has to jump through an extra mental hoop when they’re in difficulty: “I’m in trouble… what’s the code?… Say ‘Umbrella’!” as opposed to “I’m in trouble… say ‘Help, Im in trouble’”.

I definitely agree that seeing a safeword as a mental hoop to be jumped through is a big mistake. Notwithstanding that some obvious part of the usefulness of a safeword is that it *can* allow for freer expression of discomfort and resistance without implying a genuine desire for things to stop, an extreme case in which – in the dispassionate manner of a login password which must be entered exactly as expected – all aspects of communication about safety are crammed into a safeword, seems pretty silly. Maybe I don’t get out enough, but it has a straw-man feel about it. Safewords don’t have to be like that.

It’s possible to see a safeword, not as a replacement for other modes of communication, but as an additional bit of shorthand – another tool in the toolbox, if and when it’s useful. Without wanting to argue by anecdote, the only time I can remember my wife safewording was during a scene in a hotel room, when she was taken suddenly, violently ill. Within seconds she was in the bathroom, and various ickiness was avoided. She claims that the speed and clarity of the moment came from having the safeword to use, and that, though of course she could in theory have described how she was feeling in all sorts of other ways, which I would have understood, the suddenness and violence of the moment made articulating things next to impossible.

You are right that there are varying levels of safewords. The standard that I think is most common is “yellow” or some variant for “Um, something is a bit wrong, but nothing we should stop the entire scene for,” and “red” or the variant for, “Oh FUCK this needs to stop NOW!”

As I’ve said, there ain’t nothing wrong with those. I think they are great ideas, esp. for roleplay and “consensual non-consent play.”

And, obviously, saying “Red!” and saying, “Sir, I’m bleeding from my eyeballs!” are pretty much the same thing on the outside — they will both generally have the same effect on the scene.

However, there is one small — and of course huge — difference.

If a sub says, “Red,” the Top must stop . If they do not stop, they deserve social shunning at best.

But if I say, “Master, I’m bleeding from my eyeballs,” my Master may assess the situation, and decide that in that moment eyeball-bleeding is an acceptable side-effect, and continue on his merry way. That he is unlikely to do so is why I feel safe with him, safe enough to live a life with him without safewords … but he knows and I know that I never have a “Get out of jail free” card, that I never have a guaranteed way of ending a scene … he always has the discretion to not stop if he doesn’t see fit.

As I say … it’s a small thing, because most of the time, if I bring something to his attention, he will most likely agree with me that it merits at least a break to fix the problem. But for the two of us, it’s also a huge, vital thing, because in the end I have NO control and NO power … only the allowed freedom to make suggestions which he may or may not act upon.

“Red” means “STOP!” But I never say, “STOP!” All I say is, “May I bring this matter to your attention, Sir…?”

As my Master said further in the post on FetLife:

while it may be a great idea for you to have seatbelts for your scenes, for some of us the very idea of any kind of safety net is precisely what we’re trying to avoid. It’s exactly what we DON’T want, under any name.

To offer a parallel, when Zille & I got married, we made promises to each other “until death us do part” — no safety net, no “until we feel like it”, no “assuming you’re still cute” escape clause. Sure, we know that there are ways we could get out of the marriage, but we aren’t building those ejection seats into our life.

Nor are we building artificial “safety mechanisms” into our kink life. We neither of us want the distortion that her having a way to control a punishment would bring.

Your mileage obviously varies — and that’s obviously just fine and dandy. But your preferences don’t necessarily translate into “good ideas” for us… and I suspect we’re not alone.

And, in response to safewords being vital for safety reasons:

As to your observation about medical situations, I’ll ask you to justify the notion that a safeword is somehow generally more effective — again, in the explicit context of this thread, i.e. “true punishment” — than everyday English (or your language of choice). You cite your one incident, but as a matter of fact I can confidently say that you cannot know what would have happened had you not had the Magic Word… it’s not impossible that the outcome would have been even better!

You see, I see this mentality that “safewords increase safety” as fundamentally flawed, not to say utter balderdash, in any number of different types of scenes (including, but not limited to, the sort under discussion). Safewords do nothing of the kind; COMMUNICATION increases safety, so the question becomes do safewords improve communication? Now, we’ve all heard of cases where the sub has forgotten their safeword, so there is a least one group of situations where safewords erode, rather than bolster, the level of safety. There’s also the point I mentioned originally, where someone has to jump through an extra mental hoop when they’re in difficulty: “I’m in trouble… what’s the code?… Say ‘Umbrella’!” as opposed to “I’m in trouble… say ‘Help, Im in trouble’”.

Against which we have the situation where the dom is merrily flailing away and ignores the yells of “help! stop! I can’t breath!” or whatever, until the magic word is uttered. Can that ever be considered SAFER? (n.b. I’m not at all saying it’s unsafe, merely that it’s less safe than it could be).

Or put it another way: would you really want to submit to someone who would ignore cries for help merely because they didn’t use the right code words?

So, no, safewords don’t make this stuff safer. Communication does (well, duh!), and whether a safeword aids communication or hinders it depends very much on the circumstances, how well you know your partner, the background noise level, and so on. I am of the considered opinion that in the vast majority of cases, it doesn’t do anything to help, AND in a significant minority of cases it hurts, usually because it fosters a false sense of security, and makes it easier for the dom to miss/ignore signals that the sub is in trouble.

That last point is, of course, why they’re usually A Good Thing for casual or new play partners. But we’re getting away from the punishment focus of this thread…

Now, to confirm Zille’s response: in this context (punishment), some nuances of our relationship would be damaged if we had an agreed safeword. Your nuances may vary! And, truth be told, if anyone I’m playing with without a safeword starts yelling random colour names or shrieking about laundry and/or rain gear, I’ll likely check in with them pronto. But it’s not the magic of the word, but the fundamental change in behaviour…

One of the problems inherent in discussion of this subject is that people are often talking about one of at least three different types of ‘safeword’. There’s: 1) the traffic light type of safeword, which is explicitly *about* control and communication, in an exploratory sort of scene. It’s akin to a volume control. Then there’s: 2) the idea of a safeword as a way of protecting limits, a regulatory safety-valve controlled ostensibly by the scene bottom, but sometimes both top and bottom. And then there’s: 3) the shit-happens safeword, which is for the psychological, emotional, physical stuff you just can’t predict, but which needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

My impression is that a lot of the criticism of those who advocate safewords comes from an assumption that they’re talking about type 2, when in fact they’re advocating something closer to type 3. This is especially highlighted with respect to R/L punishment. The argument that one ought not to have a safeword during a punishment rather *assumes* that what’s meant is a type 2 safeword – why would one have control over limits if this is a real (and consensual, for some value of ‘consensual’) punishment? Fair enough. But it’s reasonable to see a type 3 safeword as not at all inconsistent with punishment. A sudden physical or emotional issue which relates to the bottom’s well-being needn’t have anything to do with wresting control from the top, or somehow avoiding punishment.

Zille’s piece here provides a couple of really good examples. Firstly:

Of course, I do not have a safeword at any time, and the very last place my Master would consider letting me have one is during punishment! I mean, how handy to hand a submissive a key to ending the punishment!

That’s a rejection of a type 2 safeword during punishment, which seems entirely reasonable. But then:

My Master and I don’t need safewords because if I have respiratory issues, leg or abdominal cramps, or severe emotional distress, I just say, “Master, there’s a problem you need to know about,” and he ends the scene.

This strikes me as contradictory, because ‘I just say X and he ends the scene’ is a perfect description of what a safeword *is*. Granted it’s more like a safe-phrase, and it’s certainly type 3, but it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t serve as a ‘safeword’.

Personally I’m a big fan of type 3 safewords. I can understand the dismissal of the others, but type 3 seems to me a basic foundation for good play. It might be relevant that I don’t feel that having something like that takes anything *away* from play/punishment. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I did think something was lost or subtracted, but I don’t. It doesn’t reflect at all badly on my ability to judge how a scene is going, or any ability (or lack of) as a top, to have a small, clear, useful panic-button, for the occasional bit of unpredictable weirdness. If something is potentially extremely useful in that one-in-a-thousand situation, and doesn’t compromise the other 999, it seems a good bet.

And you’re quite right it’s all about connection. And it’s very rare to have that level of connection with a new partner, so it’s much better to have safewords to start!

Tamsyn — Public play often does require a different set of rules than private play. You sometimes, need to be able to communicate without other people knowing exactly what you are saying, or you need to communicate a whole lot of words in a little amount of time, so setting up pre-arranged codes only makes sense.

I hope you get to play with someone who is considerate and thoughtful, and cares about you *at least as much as he cares about himself* [grins] and with whom you have such perfect love and trust that you never need a safeword!

Nahoi — Yes, you are just right: it’s all about risk mitigation.

I love your points about not wanting someone with a “regulatory structure to keep themselves from repeatedly screwing up,” and “being a grown-up, I think, is accepting that life comes with a certain amount of risk involved” — thank you for those, I will quote you!!!

I know the concept of safewords is over there in the U.K., and as I say, I like safewords in and of themselves, but the Brits are just more mellow about them, and about other things, like having a bar and a dungeon in the same place, or not insisting that their customers wear a full-body condom!

But I think the difference is also the spanko community vs the BDSM community. Once difference is that the spankos *know* they come from centuries of tradition, whereas the BDSM people can go around trumpeting that “Leather Families” have log traditions stretching back into history, in fact this stuff has all been made up, starting about when the soldiers got back from WWII, and the gay kinky ones wanted to have that same sense of hierarchy and community as they’d had in the military. So this is all very new and shiny — and scary! As opposed to the idea of school or family discipline, which is a pretty comfortable and safe notion.

Hello Jay — I’ve seen you’ve been getting lots of spanking action! Congrats!

Yes, I know all about people freaking out about something silly — made sillier when it all ex post facto and you’re obviously fine and not hurt or upset in the slightest!

I wouldn’t ban safewords … they have their uses, and within those activities are very helpful. Consider something a lot of people think is hot: “consensual non-consent” (or, to make some modicum of sense, pretending not to want the hot scene/sex you’re getting!)

In a situation like that, when you’re yelling, “No! No!” you want to be able to pathetically whimper, “You’re hurting me!” and the Top has the freedom to say, “Yeah, well you’d better do as I say or I’ll hurt you MORE! Bwahahaha!” … and not second-guess themselves and wonder, “Am I hurting her too much? Do I need to stop?!” because they know if they were unduly hurting you or freaking you out, you’d say your safeword. For situations like that, safewords can give both the Doms and subs a freedom to explore those more potentially dangerous fantasies.

So safewords surely do have their place … but to go so far as to insist that everyone use them all the time is just forcing your beliefs and values and limitations on other people, which of course is no good!

Hi Pandora! Thanks for stopping by! I think safewords are a great idea for if you’re tripping your balls off! There are certainly times and places when a safeword becomes something handy, even if you normally don’t need one!