Slave Nano Talks About Regulating our Fantasies and the Use of Safe Words

 

It’s my pleasure to welcome Slave Nano to my blog today. Nano read Sunday’s post about the use of condoms in erotic fiction and has kindly offered to do a blog on another way in which our fantasies are regulated. Welcome, Nano.

Thanks to K D for having me on her blog page today.  Indeed my contribution is a response to her own blog, Regulating Fantasies, in which she discusses the topic of safe sex in erotic fiction and in particular whether stories should portray the use of condoms to encourage responsible sex.  I agree completely with her argument that our readers are intelligent enough to realise that erotic fiction is a work of imagination and understand the difference between fantasy and the real world.  I don’t believe it’s the place of erotic authors to write manuals for safe sex.

Nano BDSM no safewordunnamedIt occurred to me that the corresponding stricture on writers of BDSM erotica concerns the use of safe words.  There is something of a mantra that safe words are the touchstone of safe play but I don’t believe that’s the case, neither in the writing of erotic fiction nor indeed in real play.

There are two acronyms in use to define the principles of sensible consensual BDSM, one is SSC (Safe Sane Consensual) and the other is RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink).  The crucial difference between the two is that the latter accepts some activities involve an element of risk which participants acknowledge.  There seems to be an assumption that safe words constitute safe play.  On the face of it, this sounds so easy and obvious; one person is given a word that stops or controls an activity. But it’s far more complex than that.

I’m not going to be prescriptive, people will express their BDSM writing and relationships in different ways and safe words may have a role to play.  My point is that no one way is right for everybody. Sometimes I’m convinced this mantra that safe word = safe play is expounded by people who have no experience of BDSM.  Indeed, I would go further and say that safe words aren’t even safe!  Let me explain.

Safe words can lead to lazing ‘domming’ and that is dangerous.  What keeps a sub safe is an experienced, aware and responsible domme (I’m assuming female domme for purposes of this piece) watching her submissive all the time, gauging his responses and judging how best to develop a scene.  A domme sitting back waiting for a safe word and failing to engage fully with her play-partner is an unsafe practise as she will miss those critical reactions to stimuli.

Safe words don’t take into account the psychology of submission.  The whole point about the relationship between a dominant and submissive is the surrendering of control to another person.  Safe words get in the way of that.  In an intense scene a submissive attains a state in which he will go anywhere, do anything for that other person.  A person in that state of mind is not always in a position to make considered choices.  His focus is on serving and being taken as far as his mistress leads him. In these circumstances the judgement of an experienced domme is a much better safeguard than a safe word.

Edgy is part of it. Once again, this is about the psychology of submissiveness.  Edgy is exciting, it contributes to the sense of anticipation and being thrust into the unknown gets the adrenaline going and the endorphins rushing to your head.  Safe words miss the point. Humans knowingly do illogical and hazardous things and part of the BDSM experience is about taking that risk.

So, to sum up, if you trust the person you’re doing this with you don’t need a safe word and if you don’t trust them, be honest, a safe word isn’t going to do you any good anyway.

Ok, let’s get back to the writing now.  The extract below is from my book Adventures in Fetishland.  It is part of a scene with cling film mummification and breath play.  The setting of the book may be fantasy (it being a BDSM/fetish reinvention of the Alice stories) but underpinning it all is a psychological relationship between dominant and submissive that is real. This is edgy play for my two characters.  To have a safe word lurking in the background would undermine the whole purpose of the scene, which is to show my main character, Kim, demonstrate her trust in the Red Queen; as I think any discerning reader would recognise.

So, I support K D on this one in opposing the regulating of fantasies, whether that be in authors portraying safe sex in erotic writing or safe words in BDSM writing.  I don’t believe authors who write BDSM should succumb to the demands of the safe word police.

You can find out more about me and my writing at http:/slavenano.co.uk

Extract from Adventures in Fetishland

As the Egyptian goddess worked up her body pulling the cling film as tight as she could Kim felt strands Nano bdsm no safewrdunnamedof her long hair brush against her flesh and smelt her sweet and exotic scent.  She worked especially hard to pull the cling film over Kim’s tits and ensure that her soft mounds of flesh and her engorged nipples were wrapped tight.

She had reached Kim’s neck.  How far would she go?

“You trust me?”

“Mmm,” Kim was in a sensual daze and could only mutter her approbation.

“Take this and make sure you hold it tightly between your teeth. Don’t let it go.”

She inserted a plastic tube into Kim’s mouth.  Kim’s heart jumped a beat.  What did this mean?

The cling film was wrapped around her neck and then twisted around the plastic tube to hold it firmly into place.  Kim was wetting herself with fear and anticipation.  She knew what was going to come next and, although part of her couldn’t believe that she had allowed herself to be offered up for this mummification ritual, another part of her desperately wanted to surrender herself to it.  It was this latter part that won over as she laid there quietly, submissively, yearning to be enveloped completely and give herself up.

“This is the gateway Kim, the path into another world for you. The jackal-headed god Anubis is here to ease your path through it,” she said acknowledging the presence of the duchess in the mask.  Kim drank in this moment before she was deprived of sight, perhaps of breath and life itself.  Leaning over her was the imperious dark haired figure of the Egyptian goddess arraigned in golden jewellery and precious stones with her piercing blue eyes that penetrated right into her soul.  Next to her was the snout headed figure of Anubis beckoning her on, inviting her to take a further step into this strange world she had committed herself to.  She had one last chance to look down at herself, a bizarre figure mummified in Nano BDSM No safe wordunnamedwhite cling film.  Kim thought she looked fantastic; very exotic and sexy in a bizarre way.  She took one deep draft of air through her nose before the cling film wrapped around her face, over her eyes and ears until finally her head was covered. She tried to imagine what she looked like now, a cocoon of white with a plastic tube sticking out of her mouth.

Deprived of sight, sound and smell and with only the taste of the plastic tube in her mouth, she was totally immersed in the sensation of the thick white film clinging to her body.  She drew in deep gasps of air through the tube, that very act making her head spin even more. The psychological sensation of surrender and submission was overpowering.  She was immersed in her own body, the overwhelming feeling being that of the tight cling film holding her in.  She felt herself drifting off and would have loved to have floated in this submissive nether-world for ever but then suddenly something yanked her back to a perverse kind of reality and an awareness that there were still other people in the room, even though the sense of them seemed to be some distance away.

Buy links

At the moment Adventures in Fetishland is available for the insanely cheap price of 39p/$0.64

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Fetishland-length-erotic-novel-ebook/dp/B008G3N4HO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389727790&sr=8-1&keywords=adventures+in+fetishland

Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adventures-Fetishland-length-erotic-novel-ebook/dp/B008G3N4HO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389727450&sr=8-1&keywords=adventures+in+fetishland

5 thoughts on “Slave Nano Talks About Regulating our Fantasies and the Use of Safe Words

  1. Really interesting points here. For me, I like knowing that there *is* a way to say I really need to stop—that’s a requirement for me to go into a scene, I think. However, I absolutely agree that relying too heavily on the safeword leads to dangerous laziness. When I’m really caught up in a scene, it’s hard for me not to feel shame about using a safeword, even if I probably should. Or sometimes I’ll wait and push it. I think it’s a problem to think, “Everything must be fine because the safeword wasn’t used.” Also, in reading, I enjoy fantasies where consent gets blurrier, so, going with the theme of fantasies as fantasies, I don’t need safewords to pop up all the time. What I’d like is for books to be labeled with a bit of this information. It would be awesome to see more labels that told the reader if the book was RACK or something edgier (I do know one publisher that does this). Similarly, I’d love to see a label that did that for whether condoms are used.

    Why the labels? If I’m reading to read, I don’t need them, but when reading for self-pleasure, there are certain things that can really, really turn me off if I run into them, so I prefer to have a sense when going in.

    1. Thanks for your comment, Annabeth. I think there are strong arguments both ways. And though I don’t want the safe word to detract from the story any more than I want a condom to detract, the context of the story has to be taken into account. And, in some cases, as you say, labels could be really helpful.

  2. Interesting discussion. It’s worth considering that sometimes the safeword is as much for the benefit of the dom as it is for the sub – most doms want the experience to be enjoyable and safe (in terms of no one ending up dead or maimed) for all participants.
    Also worth considering people’s right – and wish- to do stuff that’s dangerous. People jump out of aeroplanes, dive into very deep water, take wierd pills, run or walk till they drop in a hyperventilating heap somewhere. If we own our bodies and ourselves, that means we should be able to do things that might hurt us, if we choose to, and not lose any legal rights by doing so.

  3. Thanks again to K D for having me on her blog and for the interesting feedback. I think bdsm is not so risky because it’s a controlled not a random activity. You are at far more risk of harm, say, playing rugby or going skiing (or just generally living really!). I’ve always been intrigued by the contradictions in bdsm (pain/pleasure being the obvious one) and risky/safe is another. In consensual bdsm a domme/dom who enjoys risky play is also the one who’s most likely to look out for their sub.

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