What We Say, What We Do

Different people have different skill sets.  Some folks are skilled with needles.  Some folks are skilled with rope bondage.  Some folks are skilled with psychological play.  And while we can all generally improve our skill sets, some of us are going to max out in a less adept place than others will.

And we only will be cognizant of that some of the time.  It's one of those things that's pretty tricky to to be meaningfully self-honest and self-aware about.  Hell, it's one of those things that's tricky to get solid, objective feedback on.  So very, very few people will think of themselves as a dumbass.  Or a predator.

And yet, "Don't be a dumbass" and "Don't be a predator" are often given as stand-alone safety/logic warnings.  Which would be would be perfectly great and sufficient were it not for that part where nobody self-identifies as such.  It will damn near always be read as a warning for somebody else.  You know, those other people over there.  The dumbasses, the predators.  Not me.

I have no qualms with people putting information/content/ideas out there that are not appropriate for all skill levels.  I support greater access to information and education, from introductory through advanced levels.  Breath play is a particular area where this has been in my awareness.  While many folks argue that breath play is simply too dangerous to teach, it's also the kind of play that many, many people- both in and out of the kink scene- practice at home.  With or without education.  Given this, I think that more information is the decidedly preferable option- questions of legal liability for the educator aside.  Recently, my thoughts on this trajectory have gotten complicated.

In addition to pictures of funny cats, the internet has brought us all sorts of photos of edge play.  Since most of my photo-perving time is devoted to rope bondage, that's what I'm most familiar with in this regard.  We have strappado suspensions, predicament ties with bottoms perched precariously on tall structures, and suspensions in which one of the primary load-bearing points is the throat.  All carry very real risks of injury requiring months to recover- or worse.  And I firmly believe that all of those are risks which people can assess and choose to accept.

In addition to Bondage101, kink education has brought us all sorts of techniques for edge play.  We have classes on gun play, abductions, and explicit limit-pushing.  It's the latter that has sparked a discussion that keeps popping up on my kinky internet feed.  The discussion started after a friend of mine attended a class on this topic by at a conference.  Based particularly on personal accounts from folks who have played with the presenter in question, the discussion does not seem to be about the presenter's ability to do these things in a way that is as safe as possible.  The focus seems to be instead on the danger of putting these tools and techniques in the hands of a mixed audience.

So what's the sweet spot?  How can information be made accessible to those who can use it well, without unwittingly encouraging people to make higher-risk decisions which they really are not equipped to make?

I know that I, for one, am interested in more information on things like breath play, higher-risk rope bondage, and limit-pushing.  Preferably all at once.  But only with highly trusted partners.  And my partners and I should be able to make those decision for ourselves.  Because we're not dumbasses or predators!

Oh, right.  That again.

I don't have an answer.  I'm extremely uncomfortable with the notion of censorship (whether external or self-imposed) in the name of keeping people from ideas and information that have been deemed unacceptably dangerous.  On the other hand, we are social creatures prone to imitation.  I know that I'm often inspired by play I see in the dungeons, classes, or represented online- I expect at least a few others are as well.  As subsets of the kink community race to one-up each other with the next edgy, dangerous thing, I expect that the baseline of perceived risk will shift.

I expect that this is a conversation which will continue to unfold both in my own mind and the broader kink community.  Hopefully it will unfold with minimal harm and maximum hotness.

Risk Tolerance

It has recently become clear to me that my risk analysis for sex and sexuality-related endeavors is considerably different than that of most people.  I've known for awhile that I was well outside the middle of the bell curve on a few different fronts.  The full extent of my apparent discrepancies in what I consider acceptable personal risk had never quite clicked though.

I am exceptionally jumpy about STIs.  I'm not entirely sure why this is, though I have a few theories.  I have multiple people who are close to me who have been affected directly and indirectly by STIs- in some cases as a minor temporary inconvenience, and in some cases it's been tangibly life-altering and permanent.  I don't consider STIs to be something that effect other people, over there.  They aren't statistics and data.  I consider them to be a very real phenomenon that affect people that I know and care about.  I know folks that have had to take a round of antibiotics, and that was that.  And I know somebody who has died as a result of HIV.  I consider yet-to-emerge diseases to be a wildcard variable which I cannot possibly plan around.  But I still wonder about them because I know somebody that was affected by a now-prevalent STI before it was well known or understood.  Combine all these personal-to-me anecdotes and a brain that easily goes into hamster wheel mode, and you have a recipe for anxiety surrounding sexual health.

So... I'm prudent when it comes to genitals and fluids.  Especially when I'm a middle node in a web of people, and my decisions with one person could affect another person.  I decline opportunities to have sex with people I like in ways that I'd like to because of my exceptionally low risk tolerance in that regard.  It's entirely my own decision, and I am more than willing to accept the consequence of further restricting my already limited pool of potential partners.

And then there's the non-sexual decisions I make.

As I type this, I have bruises on my neck.  They were put there several days ago possibly by biting, or more likely by choking, by somebody that I had met but a few hours prior, after we'd been drinking.  Yup.  Let's count the BDSM no-no's packed into that.  I violate one major safety guideline or another almost every time that I play privately.  I generally trust strangers on a multitude of fronts.  I've utilized the concept of a safe call exactly once, and it was for a modeling gig very early into my career as a naked chick.  I self-suspend when nobody else is home.  I pretty much piss all over what is often held up as common sense when it comes to safety.

When bottoming, I seem to have an exceptionally high risk tolerance.  This is particularly true with partners who I trust to respond intelligently in dynamic and unpredictable situations.  I'm much more prudent as a top, but my delight in breath play and willingness to tie a struggling partner seem to put me in a category of much higher risk tolerance than that of many.  In all scenarios, I weigh possible consequences, and do mitigate risk in a variety of ways which are not necessarily obvious.  Still, I make decisions which are considered inexcusably dangerous by some.

Does it all come down to payoff?  Perhaps.  I can pretty comfortably go months without partnered sex.  Skip out on the kink for long, and I start getting seriously crabby.  Or does it come down to personal experience?  Sure, I've read horror stories on the internet of breath play gone terribly wrong, or models being drugged and raped.  I'm hard-pressed to come up with a single first-person anecdote from somebody that I personally know who has had shit go south with the more noteworthy risks that I choose to take.  Or is it that, for whatever reason, I feel a greater sense of control over non-sexual variables and interactions?  I do feel more grounded  in my ability to weigh and analyze those risks, and that may well inform my willingness to scoot right up to the edge of what I consider reasonable.

I'm aggressively in favor of letting people make their own decisions.  I can't imagine asking others to jump right on board with the conclusions of my own risk assessments any more than I can imagine following the lead of others without my own analysis.