Has Consent Culture Gone Too Far?

Do we have too much consent?

Consent prior to play is a fundamental tenant for BDSM play. People talk about what they want, don’t want, and things to be aware of prior to play. Ideally, it is done with an unimpaired mind and good intent. This is to increase the level of safety for what is by all definitions, somewhat unsafe activity.

When I started playing over three decades ago, consent was basically:

                A: I like to get hit.

                B: I like to hit people.

                A & B: Cool! Let’s play!

This, of course, left lots up to chance. Things like “triggers” and “soft” versus “hard” limits weren’t discussed. In the lesbian world, STI protections were rarely brought up. As a result of this very abbreviated form of negotiations, people got hurt. Sometimes the hurt was unintentional or simply an accident. Sometimes it was more malicious.

As a result, consent models began to emerge. We moved from “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” to RISK, PRICK, the 4C’s and others (see a full discussion here). Today, “Yes/No/Maybe” lists have proliferated and are pro forma in many negotiations. Additionally we have classes and writings on trauma informed consent, consent for folks with mental health issues, discussion of triggers, and more. You could reasonably spend a year studying consent in the BDSM context and not cover everything which is out there.

Have we gone too far with what we mean by “informed consent?” Is it ruining the BDSM scene?

Consent as a Form of Risk Reduction

By any measure, BDSM play involves some level of risk. Whether you simply tie your partner’s wrists together with a silk tie before sex or engage in edge play, every activity has the potential to result in harm. Prior negotiation and consent aim to reduce the chance harm will occur.

In general, this is a good practice. I always negotiate and establish basics like what language will be used during a scene (e.g., safe words versus plain language), limits, triggers, and desires before playing with someone. Like many players, I want my partners to leave an engagement satisfied and harm-free.

Prior to the 50 Shades phenomena in subsequent influx of new players, entering the kink community took time. People found the kink world through chat rooms, internet research, and (in my early time) the back pages of free newspapers. It was a smaller community. The slower entry to the kink world meant people had more time to learn about other players, about local customs and rules, and hear about potential dangers.

Post 50 Shades, we had folks flooding into Fetlife, onto other kink sites, showing up at play spaces where they were there with little screening or time in community. This increased the risk that a player was uninformed about the customs and local consent models. It also meant more people were trying activities they had little or no experience with. As the level of knowledge prior to play decreased, the risk to players increased.

Additionally, armed with new language about “consent” and “power exchange” abusers had wider avenues to find potential victims. In the past 20 years, we have seen a number of high-profile court cases about intimate partner violence couched in a defense that the abuser believed it as “consensual BDSM” and framed their abuse as a consensual form of power exchange.

Submission as a “Gift”

At the early influx of new players (about 2014), there was a boom in posts about “submission as a gift.” These writings identified the submissive as the one with “real power” because they could “always say no or stop play.” I wrote about this phenomenon at the time, pointing out that this framing was more to make vanilla folks and those unfamiliar with BDSM and power exchange comfortable with the activities we engage in rather an a true reflection of BDSM and power exchange players.

Every individual has a risk tolerance. Some of us are comfortable with higher risk activities (think people who enjoy sky diving or racing cars). Others have a low risk tolerance. We all fall somewhere on the spectrum from high to low risk tolerance. Prior to 2010, the BDSM world tended to attract people with a higher risk tolerance. If you were to go into a bar or club to find someone who wanted to engage in various kink play, there was already a level of risk you had to be okay with.

In the past decade, munches, conferences, and clubs have worked to reduce the barrier to entry by making these activities less risky. Meeting for a munch in the back of a Denny’s or local coffee shop is already lower risk than going to a leather bar or dungeon to meet people. This means people with lower risk tolerance have a better chance of entry to the kink world than they would have two decades ago.

Submission as a “gift” makes entry to power exchange and kink play feel less risky. If a player believes the submissive always has the “real” power, it means that they sub can control the scene without every really having to submit or release power.

Growing Awareness of Mental Health

Along with the influx of new players to the kink world, we have experienced a cultural shift to prioritizing mental health. There is a lot of pop culture discussion of trauma, triggers, PTSD, neurodivergence, mental illness and more. Like the increased awareness of BDSM as a common human activity which doesn’t need to be stigmatized, reducing stigma about mental illness is an overall positive.

This awareness has prompted a greater interest in creating play spaces and consent models which take these things into account. I am at the forefront of these discussions (my forthcoming book is all about this). There is an argument to be made that expanding consent models will protect more players.

Knowing a partner’s triggers and what that looks like does make play safer. Being able to identify a fawn response during play can help mitigate the chance a player will agree to do something out of distress rather than actual desire to engage with play. But what is the cost of reducing uncertainty in play?

Loss of Risk

Part of the appeal of BDSM play for many players is that there is a form of controlled risk. Engaging in impact play means there is a chance the bottom will get hurt. There is a chance of bruising. There is a chance of blood. There is a chance the top won’t stop before the bottom reaches their limit. This type of play requires trust.

If a partner and I create a container for play, defining the edges with hard limits and allowing any and all play between those limits, there is a freedom to explore. The more specific and defined those edges are, the less trust is needed. For those with little risk tolerance, this can be very appealing. For those of us looking to explore a relationship, our bodies, and our play, highly contained play becomes formulaic and dull.

For example, I play with a Dom with whom I have developed an epic level of trust. We have had a 15 year relationship. We have taken time to develop our relationship and our play. I know he respects and trusts me to communicate needs, desires, and concerns with him. I trust him to do the same.

If I play and each and every piece of equipment must be reviewed and approved before inclusion, if each word has to have approval, if all possible risk must be mitigated prior to play the box becomes significantly smaller. There is a different level of risk when all paddles are an option versus, only the paddles a bottom has pre-approved. If I can only use terms of respect, endearment, or degradation are pre-approved, there is less flexibility in what can happen in the scene. There is only a need to trust the person to stay true to all the pre-set rules, not their ability to flow with a partner.

Trust

Trust has been critical for my enjoyment of play. I have a higher than average risk tolerance and look forward to seeing where a scene will take me. I like to feel flow between me and other players and use all options within preset limits to create something special and unique.

This type of trust also means I believe the people I play with are entering the negotiations with good intent. There is a level of trust that must exist that they have no desire to harm me- either physically, emotionally, or my reputation- by seeking to identify a “consent issue.” They have to trust me for the same reasons.

For lower risk players or people who have had a bad experience with another player, extending this trust may be difficult or impossible. For newer players, it can be difficult to identify those entering negotiations with good intentions versus an abuser. These individuals may feel safer engaging in very constrictive levels of consent. I get that.

What is Lost

There is a need to balance individual levels of comfort with play and negotiations and the community needs to be consent-based. What I have observed is that we have moved the consent bar requirements to meet the least-trusting, newest players at the cost of higher-risk, more established players.

This shift has resulted in those of us who have longer histories in the community becoming frustrated with consent requirements. I have heard at least ten older players grumble about the new “consent” requirements. It is not that they don’t think consent is important nor do they deny harm has been caused by lack of clear consent. It is that they feel play is restricted, becoming formulaic and dull with the new requirements.

People are talking about “finding flow” more because flow has been sacrificed at the alter of consent. My class on consensual non-consent is thriving because people are looking for ways to move away from restrictive negotiations to prior models of consent.

Many of us want connection through play. We want energy exchange, flow, and the opportunity to grow in our kink. Extreme restrictions on behaviors and the assumption any accident is an intentional “consent violation” smothers these more open exchanges.

What Do We Do?

First, consent needs to include some discussion of experience and risk acceptance. It is great for a newer, less-sure player to ask for more negotiation, greater definition of what can happen, and less risk tolerance. Voicing this helps keep everyone in the scene safer. Experienced tops can gear their behavior to meet the expectations of a risk-adverse or newer player. Risk expansive bottoms can pare down their requests from newer or risk-adverse tops.

For players who find negotiations for every item and action too constricting, we can choose our play partners appropriately. As one of those players, I feel out any play request and ask directly about risk tolerance to see if I am a match. I would encourage others to do so as well.

For spaces who have liability to consider, there needs to be a process of identifying what is a consent violation, what is an accident, what was accidentally stumbling over a trigger, and what is player’s remorse. This will require nuance. It will require setting member expectations as to what the space will and will not do when someone gets hurt.

We must also get better about holding those who have engaged in consent violations, who prey on members of our community, and who move from one city to another to avoid accountability accountable for their actions. There are too many instances where we allow a player who has caused real harm to stay in our communities because they own a conference or a space, or they have money, or they have an established public reputation. If we cannot hold folks accountable for harm they caused, then we need to prioritize risk-reducing negotiations in play spaces over flow, trust, and good BDSM.