SSC? Nope.

So we in the BDSM lifestyle are often known to run about preaching SSC, that we're Safe, Sane, and Consensual, and thinking a jazzy slogan makes us oh, so cool.  I call bullshit.  Here's why.  How we define those words can cause radical differences in what those words really mean, enough so that they honestly mean nothing at all.  Let me explain:

Safe:

Sure, this sounds simple enough.  But how I define what's safe could meet not at all with how you define it.  My God, I was a paramedic for a big chunk of my life and thought that shit was safe.  To be fair, I was never seriously hurt, but looking back, I wonder if I was out of my mind to be doing that job.   Let's step outside of kink and look at the more prosaic for a moment.  We see seat belts as a safety measure, but in my EMS years I saw at least three people killed because of their seat belts, held upright and slaughtered in car wrecks.  Two were in one car.  I think the driver fell asleep at the wheel and plowed into a flat-bed truck.  They probably thought their seatbelts made them safe.  Turns out they signed their own death warrants with a click.  Many of you out there refuse to ride roller coasters, feeling they're unsafe, but how many people are hurt or killed annually by roller coasters?  Ditto for flying.  The truth is, even things that seem perfectly routine can, at times, go wrong.   Consider choking and breath play.  As a paramedic, I was taught that interfering with someone's airway was tantamount to going to Sunday Mass, slapping the nun, nut-punching the priest, and then crapping on the altar ... in other words, something polite people simply don't do.  But there's been no rash of deaths, has there?  I think the last breath-player I heard of being killed was David Carradine, when he lynched himself stroking one off and died in that misadventure.  I guess he was hung better than Robin Williams, huh?  Unconfirmed reports maintain that a crew of four morticians worked 'round the clock for 72 hours in an only partially successful attempt to get the happy leer erased from his face.  Else, any number of people engage in this activity and few, if any, come to harm.  So is that safe?  But what if your partner gets too excited and keels over of a heart attack while getting that ass smacked.  Was that safe?  A neighbor of mine a few years ago died screwing his wife.  Locked up and keeled over dead of a heart attack.  I doubt he meant to fuck off and die, so was that safe?  

The flat fact of the matter is that "safe" is in the eye of the beholder, and since we really cannot define it, the word is pointless to the broader community.

Sane:

I cannot define pornography, but I know it when I see it.  This infamous statement was made by a judge in a case, as I recall, involving Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who seems to have spent a great deal of his life before this or that bar of justice before the judiciary finally affirmed his rights under the First Amendment to say what he wants without fear of persecution.  But we could say the same about sanity, that what might meet a legal definition of insanity might not be so clear-cut out in the world at large. 

Where do we draw the line?  Is a kleptomaniac sane?  A hoarder?  Someone who hears voices in his head all the time?  That last happens to me as a matter of routine.  #writerlife right?  Is a bipolar person sane?  Someone with attention deficit disorder?  A sociopath?  Ted Bundy was a sociopath but deemed sane and executed for his crimes of murder.  Charles Manson is in prison for leading his cult and more murders.  I think the argument could be made that neither of those men was altogether sane, yes?    I see skydiving as insanity ... why the fuck would I leap out of an airplane flying under its own power and all but certain to make an uneventful wheels-down landing at the airport?  But that doesn't mean I don't think those into skydiving should be excluded from BDSM activities.  I just ain't gonna get on an airplane with one of those nuts, is all.  But if she's appealing and interested once she lands on the ground, I just might spank her silly, just the same.  I think, again, this is between the members of a partnership to define whether one another is sane enough to do what it is that we do.  I can't define batshit cray-cray, but I know it when I see it!  Seems legit, right?

Consensual:

But this should be easy.  You're both over 18 years of age and both agree to engage in these activities.  Cut and dried, right?  Eh, not so fast.  Hmm ... Mary and Claude both got into a deep scene but Claude was stoned out of his gourd and wakes in the morning wondering how the hell he has all these marks all over him.  Did Claude consent?   Jack and Jill take a naked tumble, but Jill's IQ is about 65 points, and she doesn't understand now why she has rope marks on her wrists and a baby growing in her belly.  Did Jill consent?   Billy is eighteen and his school principal, Mrs. Jingleheimerschmidt, seduces him, or coaxes him, or even coerces him.  Did he consent?  Being that Mrs. J is in a position of authority over him, is his consent even possible or thinkable with her?  Let's say he even wanted it, being the horndog that most 18-year-old young men are?  Still, was it consent, morally or legally?  Larry coaxes Brenda into bed after she agrees in the heat of passion, with some profound morning-after regrets.  Did Brenda consent in the heat of passion?  If not, does that make Larry a rapist?  I knew one woman (I'll call her "Christine") who went excitedly into subspace while negotiating scenes, and got into a pickle after agreeing unaware to all kinds of hijinks.  Did Christine consent from deep in the wilds of subspace?  Did the dom who played with her abuse her?  She learned from it and had a trusted friend with her to negotiate things within her limits, moving forward.  So I would argue, once more, that consent means little after a very short walk down that path.

Conclusion:

I don't think I need to draw you a map.  But don't let a slogan do your thinking for you, kids.

Then What?

A new slogan has come along, complete to ... you guessed it! ... the acronym.  Risk-Aware Consensual Kink, aka RACK.  It covers things better, I think, although I'm personally still uneasy with the slogans thing.  But the fact is, all we do is risky.  So it's a more accurate expression, I think, of what it is that we do.  Ahead of all else, I advocate that you employ the services of that grey icky thing residing between your ears and behind your eyes.  You know, that thinky thing ... shit, what's it called?  Oh yeah!  YOUR BRAIN.  Think for yourself and realize that you are taking on certain risks, and use that brain to manage those risks.  I don't think "she wanted it" will be much of a defense at a trial for involuntary manslaughter, and there's really no olly-oxen-free when you're dead, now is there?

LXB