Guide/Chapter II
Consent
How to agree beforehand, stop during, talk it over afterwards, and recognise a yes that is not really a yes. This holds for a BDSM scene as much as for any intimate relationship.
In this chapter
The examples in this chapter come from BDSM, but its principles apply to any intimate relationship, including a vanilla one, with no rope and no power play: saying yes knowing what to, being able to change your mind, agreeing beforehand, stopping without having to justify yourself, checking in afterwards. You can read it with your own life in mind.
What consenting means
Consent is not a box ticked at the start of the evening.
It is informed: you know what you are saying yes to, risks included. “We’ll do a bit of rope” is not enough if the other person has a suspension in mind.
It is specific: yes to the flogger is not yes to wax. What has not been negotiated is not a given.
It is ongoing: it is checked during the scene, the moment of play itself, not only beforehand. A yes given at 9 pm does not automatically cover what happens at 11 pm.
It is revocable: anyone can withdraw it at any moment, without having to justify themselves, and the withdrawal applies immediately.
The frameworks: SSC, RACK, PRICK, 4Cs
Communities, and then researchers, have coined several formulas. None has the force of law; each partly corrects the one before it.
SSC (Safe, Sane, Consensual) appeared in 1983 in New York, in the statement of purpose of an association of gay men who practised SM (sadomasochism)1. It is criticised on two counts: nothing is ever entirely safe, and “sane” implies that other desires are unhealthy2.
RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink: a consensual kink practised with awareness of the risks) starts from that observation. It does not promise safety; it asks that each person know the risks of what they agree to.
PRICK (Personal Responsibility, Informed Consensual Kink) adds personal responsibility: it is up to you to inform yourself, to know your limits and to state them.
The 4Cs, proposed in 2014 by four researchers, broaden the framework: Caring (care for the other person), Communication, Consent and Caution3. Their most useful contribution is to distinguish three levels of consent.
| Level | What it covers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Surface | The first “yes, I’m interested” or “no”, before any details | “A rope session on Saturday? Yes, gladly.” |
| Scene | What is negotiated in detail: content, limits, signals, aftercare | “No suspension, no visible marks, amber if I get tired.” |
| Deep | The real capacity, during the scene, to feel distress, express it and withdraw agreement | Too dazed to say stop, a person is no longer fully consenting. |
The deep level is the most fragile. It is the reason you have to keep watching the other person rather than relying on a safeword, the word agreed on for stopping.
Negotiating: before, during, after
Before
Negotiating means saying what you want, what you do not want and what you need. It is done with a cool head, fully clothed, away from any arousal, and, for a first time, preferably not on the same evening.
Some questions that help:
- What do you want to experience: a sensation, a role, a state?
- What is ruled out, whatever happens? What is possible with care?
- Are there areas of the body to avoid, an injury, a course of treatment, a vulnerability?
- Are marks acceptable? Visible where, and for how long?
- How do we stop, and with what signal if you cannot speak?
- What will you need afterwards: contact, silence, something to eat, a message the next day?
Ask these questions even when the answer seems obvious to you. People are sometimes surprised by their own preferences, and even more by other people’s: some people do not like kissing and yet enjoy far more involved practices. Nothing is “easier” or “more normal” on principle. You ask instead of assuming.
The portrait can serve as a basis: each of you fills it in separately, then you compare. It also lets you name very gentle wishes, such as kissing, cuddles or a massage, not only intense practices. For a rope session, the shibari questionnaire covers the points specific to tying.
Hard limits, soft limits
A hard limit is a firm no: it is not touched, not “tested” and not renegotiated during a scene. A soft limit is an area of hesitation: possible under certain conditions, with caution, or later on. A soft limit is not an invitation to push. It is discussed again with a cool head, never in the heat of the moment.
Limits shift over time, in both directions. What you accepted six months ago may no longer suit you, and that is information, not betrayal.
How you are today
Your permanent limits do not tell the whole story. Tiredness, stress, pain, mood, bad news: how you are today changes what is possible tonight. Take five minutes before each scene to say so. The Tonight questionnaire is made for exactly that.
During: safewords and signals
A common system borrows from traffic lights. Green: all is well, carry on. Amber: slow down, adjust, something is not quite right. Red: the scene stops immediately. Red calls for neither negotiation nor explanation in the moment.
When speech is prevented (a gag, breathlessness, emotion), you need a non-verbal signal agreed in advance: dropping an object held in the hand, tapping three times, grunting a specific rhythm. Test it before you start. A signal that has never been tried may not work when the moment comes.
The safeword does not replace attentiveness. Watch the breathing, the colour of the skin, the quality of the answers. Ask simple questions (“colour?”, “squeeze my hand”) and wait for a real answer. A person who no longer answers, gives answers that miss the point or no longer seems present is not consenting: slow down, check in, stop if necessary.
After: aftercare and debriefing
Aftercare is the care given right after the scene: a blanket, water, contact, calm, or on the contrary a little space, depending on what was agreed. It concerns both roles. An emotional low can also come later, sometimes several days afterwards: this is called drop, and it affects the bottom (the person receiving) as well as the top (the person leading)4. Knowing this lets you plan a message or a call the next day.
The debriefing comes next, with a cool head: what you enjoyed, what bothered you, what you would do differently. That is where the next negotiation begins.
Alcohol and substances
Alcohol and drugs reduce the ability to assess a risk, to notice abnormal pain and to say stop. They also affect the person leading the scene, whose alertness and precision decline. A prudent rule: no scenes under the influence, and no negotiating either. A yes obtained after three drinks is not worth a yes given sober.
An ignored “stop”: K.A. et A.D. c. Belgique
In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the conviction of two men for extremely violent sadomasochistic practices did not violate their right to respect for private life. The person subjected to these practices had consented at the outset. But the Belgian courts had established that on several occasions the two men had ignored that person’s cries of “mercy” and “stop”, the words agreed on to halt everything, and that they drank large quantities of alcohol during the sessions, to the point of losing control of the situation5.
The Court drew a clear line. Everyone may claim the right to live their sexuality freely, but “the will of the ‘victim’ of these practices” must be respected. Yet the commitments to “stop immediately” when that person no longer consented had not been kept5. The consent given at the start did not cover what followed: that is exactly what “revocable” means.
CNC, with caution
Consensual non-consent (CNC) means playing “as if” consent were absent, on the basis of a very precise prior agreement: a meta-consent. It is an advanced practice, between partners who know each other well, who have negotiated at length and who always keep a real stop signal, respected without discussion. CNC does not remove the deep level of consent; it makes it harder to read. It is neither a practice to start with nor an argument for ignoring a refusal.
When consent is distorted
A yes can be spoken without being free. Here are a few situations to recognise, in the other person as well as in yourself.
- Pressure: insistence, emotional blackmail, “but you said…”, comparisons with other partners. A yes obtained by wearing someone down is not a yes.
- Fear of disappointing: saying yes to please, so as not to come across as “vanilla”, to keep the relationship. This is precisely what negotiation should bring to light.
- Dependence: when a person depends on the other for housing, money, status or access to a community, saying no costs them more. The imbalance does not make all consent impossible, but it calls for twice as much care.
- Subspace: during an intense scene, you can enter an altered state, relaxed or floaty. A pilot study measured lower performance on an attention test among bottoms, consistent with a partial idling of the prefrontal cortex6. In that state, you judge poorly and struggle to say stop. A yes given in subspace to something that has not been negotiated does not count.
Abuse is still abuse
The BDSM framework does not turn violence into play. If someone ignored your stop signal, forced a practice on you that had not been negotiated, punished you for setting a limit or is stopping you from leaving, what you went through is abuse, however the scene had been presented. You do not have to prove that you were submissive “enough”, nor ask yourself whether you were asking for it.
Going further
- Tonight: taking stock of how you are today before a session or a moment together.
- Safety: the risks specific to each practice and the signs that mean you should stop.
- Law: what consent covers in court, and what it does not.
- Resources: places to get help, associations and reading, by country.
Sources
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Stein, D., 2013. Consent Alone Is Not Enough. Woodhull Freedom Foundation. link ↑
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Litam, S. D. A. and Speciale, M., 2020. Kink Culture: What Professional Counselors Need to Know. American Counseling Association. link ↑
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Williams, D. J., Thomas, J. N., Prior, E. E. and Christensen, M. C., 2014. From ‘SSC’ and ‘RACK’ to the ‘4Cs’: Introducing a new framework for negotiating BDSM participation. Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, 17. The three levels of consent are presented in the American Counseling Association brief cited above. link ↑
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Sprott, R. and Randall, A., 2016. Black and blues: Sub drop, top drop, event drop and scene drop. Journal of Positive Sexuality, 2(3), 53-61. link ↑
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European Court of Human Rights, 2005. K.A. et A.D. c. Belgique, applications nos. 42758/98 and 45558/99, judgment of 17 February 2005, § 57 and § 85. HUDOC. link ↑↑
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Ambler, J. K., Lee, E. M., Klement, K. R., Loewald, T., Comber, E. M., Hanson, S. A., Cutler, B., Cutler, N. and Sagarin, B. J., 2017. Consensual BDSM facilitates role-specific altered states of consciousness: A preliminary study. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(1), 75-91. link ↑