That's too much: consent and risk

If you follow my tumblr, you know that I value consent.

Wait. Let's take a moment and look at that. Nowhere in this world should that even have to be questioned. Everyone should value consent and seek to secure informed consent before doing anything that will impact another—whether we're talking about sex or kink. If I feel the need to preface my remarks like that, our society is broken.

Enough of the rant. The point I was trying to get to is that there are things that everyone can agree are fine so long as the people involved are consenting adults: spankings, light bondage, blindfolds, sensation play, love bites… you get the idea. These are the things that come up in conversations about "spicing things up" in the bedroom.

Then there's what I do. I push limits. I like to see blood and play with it (there's a name for that). I enjoy causing pain for its own sake—real pain (there's a word for that, too). I like tears (guess what?) and sobbing. I enjoy seeing my playmates broken—and having them know how much I care about them and love them.

But it's not abuse—if not from a legal perspective, at least from my perspective (and the perspective of anyone I'm playing with). My partners know what they're getting into, they know the risks—and they've said they want it. I'm not going on guesswork or making assumptions about what I think they'd love. I'm not deciding everything for them even if it is that kind of relationship—we've talked about hard limits and soft limits, we play with safewords.

Consent is why I don't do kink with people who can't tell me exactly what they want at least once, in enough detail that I know where their limits are.

So if you're a top (because this is much less of an issue for bottoms), consider the position you're putting your bottom in. If you're hitting that emotional point where they are breaking, they are not able to make decisions anymore. If their body is flooded with endorphins, there's no way you should be pushing past a hard limit or doing something that wasn't negotiated.

I'm all for edge play, but keep it respectful—your partners are people, too.