Friday, August 01, 2008

Who doesn't know what a safe word is?

2 people in my poll voted that they didn't know what a "safe word" was, so as a public service I give you the definition below. If you're ever in a situation where you need a safe word, now you'll know. And if GI Joe taught us anything, it's that knowing is half the battle (the other half involves violence):

A safeword is a codeword or series of codewords that are sometimes used in BDSM for a submissive (or 'bottom') to unambiguously communicate their physical or emotional state to a dominant (or 'top'), typically when approaching, or crossing, a physical, emotional, or moral boundary. Some safewords are used to stop the scene outright, while others can communicate a willingness to continue, but at a reduced level of intensity.

Safewords are agreed upon before playing a scene by all participants. Many organized BDSM groups have standard safewords that all members agree to use to avoid confusion at organized play events.

In BDSM, the safeword is generally used so that the 'bottom' can scream "no, stop", etc. as much as he/she wants without really meaning it, and still have a way of indicating a serious desire that the scene stops. Accordingly, in theory a safeword is usually a word that the person would not ordinarily say during sex, such as red light, big tree, Rumba, scrambled eggs, Alabama, aardvark, or rhubarb.

2 comments:

Paul said...
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Paul said...

Ah... it's great to know that, someday, your child will look at you and ask, "Daddy, what's a safe word; what's a 'bottom'?" and that you can smile back and refer them to your blog =)