I have heard lots and lots of debates on the merits and drawbacks of safewords. Are they necessary, are they effective, is someone who yellows a wuss or are they a person in control of their own safety, etc, etc, etc. There are lots of good, intelligent, well articulated arguments for and against the use of safewords out there… this aint one of them.
Yellow is for people who don’t really want to let go of control, while pretending that they do.
First off, this is BDSM. We engage in varying degrees of role play frequently. Ever hear of consensual nonconsent? Rape fantasies? (emphasis on the fantasy part, please and thank you). So why the inherent sarcasm which seems to imply that anyone ‘pretending’ to relinquish control is somehow inferior to someone who ‘actually’ does?
(the ‘pretend’ and ‘actual’ are in quotations since the debate on what types of play and players are real and what aren’t is a chicken and egg deabte of the worst type and would need an entire website full of hundreds of entries to even begin to cover it. So we’ll just leave that for another blogger to cover and assume a level playing field here)
Why is one type of role play considered hot & another considered less than in some way? Whatever the reason, it’s silly. If we were in the business of doing things the way the majority rules there would most likely not be any BDSM in the first place. Let’s show some solidarity? Why the phrase ‘your kink isnt my kink but your kink is ok’ isnt just spouted but embraced remains beyond me. Long story short: your way works for you, their way works for them. What they do in no way directly affects you in any negative way so stop with the false superiority.
But more than that, calling yellow or at least knowing that you can and it will have the desired effect is not a placebo. Its a lubricant.It does not inhibit a scene, it allows it to happen in the first place.
In three years of being with my primary partner we scened countless times and I have called yellow once. In that same time I have bottomed to a dozen or more people at varying levels of intensity and have never called yellow. Yet every single time I’ve scened I know without hesitation that if i feel i NEED to call yellow, i can and it will be respected. Knowing you can press pause for half a second builds trust. Trust facilitates scenes.
If I call yellow it doesnt mean I end a scene. It means I am being an active, engaged, educated, empowered and respectful partner. It means I am making an attempt to give my top the valuable information they need as to how to proceed based on current conditions. Once they have that information THEY can decide whether to stop completely, change intensity or change the direction of the scene entirely. I am providing, THEY are deciding. At that point I neither want to be nor am in control over anything other than the dissemination of information.
An argument can be made much more effectively that when I call RED I have some control over the scene. Red ENDS a scene. We arent talking about red, thats a whole other show.
The calling of yellow is the equivalent of being a meteorologist. You want to go on a picnic, so you check the weather. The weather dude says there is a 75% chance of rain so you decide to stay indoors. So did the channel 4 weather guy make you stay home? Did he have some power over you, did he control your actions? Of course not. YOU made the decision based on the information available. The meteorologist was a conduit at best.
If you go round blaming the weather man everytime you dont get to enjoy outdoor recreation based on a weather prediction, you may well be just a generally unhappy person all round due to near constant feelings of victimizatrion and powerlessness.
That certainly would explain the derision in the original statement.
Use safewords, dont use safewords. personally i think they are useful and often necessary. But I am not in your scene so my views are of little import in that regard other than to educate those who wish to hear my opinion so that they might integrate that information into their own decision. But looking down on those who play differently than you do is not only comically arrogant, it often exposes the espouser as the threatened individual he or she really is.
Pot, meet kettle……
