Imagine, your Domme is spanking you hard. It feels great, so great, until your butt starts to burn painfully. You want the spanking to end, so you shout out “cactus!” Your Domme stops spanking you, places a warm hand on your butt, and tells you your a good boy. You’ve just used a safeword.
Most Kink 101 articles tell you to have a safeword. Some resources recommend the traffic light system to slow down or stop a scene. Based of these resources you would think safewords are a standard of every D/s dynamic… right? To be honest, when I go to a kink party or private kink event, almost no one has a safeword.
How common is it to have a safeword?
Most of the D/s dynamics I’ve seen firsthand don’t have an established safeword, or they had one in the past and forgot what it was. This might be specific to my own kink experiences, since I tend to go to events with more experienced and extreme kinksters. In my experience, subs and Dominants mostly communicate using plain language. What I’ve seen goes more like this:
A Domme tells a sub “tell me when you want me to stop”, and starts spanking her sub. He is enjoying it, until he reaches a point where he says “ok that’s painful”. In response to this, she asks if he would like to stop or wants to keep going. Depending on how he responds they either keep going, slow down or stop.
Usually, I monitor my submissives’ pain level the whole time. I’m gently kicking a submissive guy’s balls. I ask him how much pain he feels from 1 to 10. If he says less than 5, I kick harder and after a few kicks I ask again. I keep kicking until it reaches a point where he says he feels 8 or 9. I ask him, “can you handle 3 more kicks?” If he says yes, I’ll give three more and consider that a good time to stop. Some subs will say “you can keep kicking, I can take more” and so I keep kicking. Another method I use is I tell the sub “tell me when you can only take 3 more kicks”. This way the sub can signal to me when he reaches his own threshold. Most of the time, you can use plain language to communicate with subs.
The origin the safeword
The origin of safewords stems from kinky role play. During doctor-patient rectal exam role play, a sub might be shouting “no, no, please Dr. Vixen, please don’t! I can’t handle it!” But in this case the “no” and the “I can’t handle it” is part of the role play, part of the fun for the sub to play helpless victim. This can create confusing situations where the Domme isn’t sure if her submissive really wants to end the role play or if he’s having fun playing this role. This is why a safeword of some completely unrelated word is good. A safeword like “cactus” or “Canada” is not likely to be part of the role play, so it’s a good way for the sub to signal he actually wants the scenario to stop.
In other kinky activities (with no role play), it’s just a matter of personal preference. I don’t do role play much, so I usually just use plain language. There are times when I’ve given my sub a safeword to use and we both forget it and use normal language instead. For instance, we decide the safeword is “jello”, but during a spanking session, when my sub reaches his spanking limit he says “ok that’s enough spanking for me.” We both forget that we had agreed on “jello”. In this situation, it’s not ambiguous when my sub wants to stop, so the safeword isn’t necessary.
When is a safeword useful?
The concept of a safeword is very useful, especially if you’re a beginner in kink. When you’ve met a new sub it’s good to establish that the sub can exit the situation if it’s too much. Unless you have a total power exchange (TPE) dynamic, your submissive should be able to leave a situations if he can’t handle it. It’s good to tell your sub what he should say or how he can communicate if he wants to stop.
As a Domme, I watch the responses of my subs. I can usually see when my sub needs a break from an activity (usually a pain related activity). A safeword can be useful for the case that the Dominant doesn’t see that the sub is reaching his limit – like in the case that you’ve just met this sub for the first time and aren’t familiar with his responses.
When do safewords not work?
There are times when you need to communicate with your sub and can’t speak. If your submissive is gagged, underwater, has his mouth duct taped, is getting chocked, is not allowed to speak – these are some examples. In these cases you need to create a way that your sub can signal that he needs to exit. With breathplay scenarios this is especially important. The idea behind safewords is to make sure your submissive stays safe. That’s a good concept, since hopefully you want your submissive to be healthy, safe, and devoted to you. As you can see, you don’t always have to use a safeword to achieve that. How you take care of your submissive’s safety is up to you.
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