Consent NEEDS communication.

There's a lot of discourse about consent going on lately. And that's a good thing. We've ignored consent violations too long, both as a BDSM community and in American culture as a whole. As much as it's frustrating and painful to talk about such things, talking about consent and what it means is good and healthy for us. It's like lancing a wound, it hurts and a lot of pus comes out at first, but it's what's required to start the healing process.

Here are a few things to start. These are my views on consent when it comes to playing with people or touching them sexually:

• If someone says NO, DON'T do it.
• If someone doesn't say NO but doesn't say YES, DON'T do it.
• If someone says YES to something, DON'T do anything else. (an example, "I want to be flogged." Then you sexually touch them during the scene or start doing caning during the scene. NOT OKAY.)
• If someone says YES to something, but you were threatening them to get that yes (such as with violence, blackmail, etc), DON'T do it.
• If someone says YES but cannot give consent due to an altered mental state, DON'T do it.
• If someone says YES but then later says NO, DON'T KEEP GOING

This boils down to: Ask if you can do things, don't assume one yes means forever yes and don't take silence for a yes. This doesn't mean prior consent can't be given (such as in a CNC scene or if someone wants to have sex while drinking and gives sober consent beforehand because of this), it just also means that consent should always be able to be withdrawn.

Here's where things get fuzzy. In an article by nymag a woman was having sex with her partner. She didn't like it and didn't want it to continue due to how rough he was being (he caused her injury) and started crying.

I never said, "No, no, no." When I’d cry — almost every time we had sex — he asked if he should keep going. Keep going, I’d say. Just finish. And he would.

Here's the catch. He asked if he should keep going. We do this in scenes sometimes, a check in. "You good?" "Should I continue?" "Should I stop?" And she responded, "keep going." In a thread (it's a bit of a ways down) it was said:

call it whatever you want, if you continue to fuck someone who is crying, miserable, and in pain... is that somehow not abusive? If you continue to fuck someone who says yes because they're scared, confused, and naive... is that somehow not predatory?

Maybe he didn't intend to coerce her into sex, but his indifference and ignorance left her feeling coerced into a lot of painful sex she really didn't want to have.

Wait. But how was he supposed to know? How was he supposed to know that her verbal "keep going" wasn't what she meant? Most of the time, my partners are crying when we're having sex. Most of the time, they're in pain. They LIKE it that way.

Before we say, "but they aren't kinky" we have to admit that the BDSM community is not the only place kinky sex happens. I know I was having kinky sex before coming into the scene. Hell, I'm a Dominant who's a size queen who had told vanilla partners who balked after causing me injury, "No, harder, more, I can deal with the blood later, it was just getting GOOD."

This guy has rough sex, very rough, and when his partner starts crying HE DOES THE RESPONSIBLE THING. He checks in. He asks, not just once, but ALMOST EVERY TIME, "should I keep going"? And EVERY TIME she says, "keep going." Never are we told that he has given a sign that he wouldn't stop if she asked. In fact, with him checking in every time, he seems to be showing he WOULD stop. But he's abusive because he didn't know what she was thinking?

I'd like to say, this isn't me saying she didn't suffer. This isn't me saying it's her fault. What I'm saying is that it wasn't HIS fault either. This is a tragic miscommunication that caused the misery and injury of a young woman. But saying that he should have just known puts an unreasonable burden on him. It expects him to be able to read her thoughts. I've stopped scenes for my bottoms and subs before. But I've also had partners Red. If they hadn't said Red I MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN TO STOP. I'm trusting them and I work very hard to make sure that they will tell me if I need to stop. But I cannot be expected to be psychic.

Everyone has different levels of ability in reading social cues. The way to protect against violations of consent is to not do things you don't ask consent for. It isn't hard. "May I touch your genitals?" "Are you okay with oral penetration?" "Is it okay if I use a variety of impact toys? Are there any impact toys I shouldn't use?" But in return I need to know that I'm getting an honest answer. When I check in, I need to know my partner isn't saying YES but thinking NO. And perpetuating the idea that a "good partner" can read your mind is dangerous for everyone.

Courtesy Of: PatchworkChimera's Writing 25M Dom (New York City, New York)

https://fetlife.com/explore/#/users/503036/posts/1191386