“Sub drop” or that after-scene crash
January 31st, 2010 | Author: Zille
Here is an excellent article which I think anyone who does kinky play (or is looking into getting into that sort of thing) must read, contemplate, and discuss with play partners and anyone who will hold still for the discussion.
The BDSM scene can get a bit too caught up in trying to codify the “rules” of kinky play. Since we are all playing different games at different levels of intensity, this ranges from silly to stupid in results, although of course one understands the desire to have one set of stable and unchanging rules — doing kinky stuff is playing with fire, and people want to figure out how to make that as safe and rewarding as possible. Sadly, making people jump through hoops of rules they may or may not want or need can take away the “rewarding” part, and can sabotage the “safe” by people rebelling and saying that “Safe, sane, and consensual” is utter bollocks. Hell, even I am more likely to call myself “Risk aware consensual,” because the SSC people have become so weirdly puritanical.
On the other hand, at least the BDSM scene is trying to do something to address the issues (issues like sub-drop, in this case). From experiencing the spanko world over the past couple years, I can say with certainty that some spankos are so insistent that what they do has nothing to do with anything that remotely involves BDSM, that they “cut off their nose to spite their face,” ignoring the good possibilities and examples that comes from the organized BDSM community. Safewords have their place, for example, in the spanko world. But people have to remember that safewords are not a perfect band-aid for every situation. I guess safewords are a bit like condoms: they are good tools to making play safer, but they do not take away all risk, and they don’t protect against a number of ways that diseases can be transmitted (and they can break!) and so an attitude that they makes things 100% safe is stupid and can have regrettable results. (And of course, some couples don’t want or need to use condoms, and forcing them to do so is really imposing your agenda on someone else.)
So, not everyone needs or wants after-care. But the fact that post-play “fallout” happens needs to be recognized and acknowledged, and people need to either offer some remedy for it or make it clear that they don’t offer anything for it, before play happens between new partners. It could be as simple as asking, “Do you have someone whom can lean on if you feel down after this scene?” Here, I’ll use the metaphor of fire again: you don’t just start a fire in a forest without doing some basic forest-fire-prevention steps, and you clean up after yourself.
I don’t care if you want to believe you’re not kinky and that spanking is entirely unrelated to the BDSM and fetish worlds. Fine — if that’s what you need to accept your desires and live a fulfilling life, go for it. But you still have to be responsible and treat the people with whom you do-whatever-it-is-that-you-do with respect and consideration. And that’s what things like safewords and after-care really are, under the terminology: care, consideration, respect, and responsibility.
Okay, I’m backing away from the soapbox! Back to your fun, everyone, because just because you need to be an adult about the broader aspects of this doesn’t mean you can’t savour it like a kid!
Northern Spanking
I Feel Myself.com
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Honestly, this is one of the aspects of ‘porn s/m’ which bothers me the most, and really concerned me when I worked in that industry. The complete and utter lack of after care provided for the models. Considering that often what goes on during a shoot can be MORE intense then individual play, throwing sex into the works and the like… it would really bother me that the day (or week) would end with handing the model a check and sending them on their way.
Some of the models had partners or lovers who understood the need to decompress, others did not. I’ve always felt that to be a good top you need to consider the whole needs of the person you are playing with – including making sure they are alright afterward.
Knowing one of the places where you worked, Tristan, I can see very much why you’d feel that way. Let’s say one was to suspend a model upside-down, with a sybian between their legs, and doing things like clothes-pin “zippers” to them. You know — as just a completely random example!
When you get that model to the point where she can only shake her head in overwhelmed post-verbal-ness and say, “Fuuuuck…” it’s a situation for making sure there’s someone to take care of her while her brain chemicals normalize (and perhaps her brain flips right-side-up!)
Like hospitals insisting that after surgery you have someone to take you home!
And it’s also a whole ‘nother thing when you work with vanilla models. Girls who are into BDSM or spanking can generally be assumed to have some level of knowledge about post-scene-drop. But vanilla girls who come in and do the most intense porn shoot of their life, and then go home and don’t realize what they are possibly about to go through, well, that’s something that can and should be avoided!
I’m not saying the companies have to provide the after-care, but they should inform models that they might need extra support from friends/partners after the shoot, and that it’s not weird or unhealthy.