Negotiating Power, Sex and Consent: An Introduction - By Headmistress Shahrazad
Negotiating Power, Sex and Consent: An Introduction
By Headmistress Shahrazad
Contracts, boundaries and negotiations form the platform upon which consensual BDSM dynamics are built. Without them, BDSM is no longer BDSM, but psychological, physical and sexual abuse. When people are new to the heightened level of communication that BDSM entails, they sometimes feel it to be awkward or excessive, or voice that it takes the mystery and intrigue out of engaging with another person. Others who have been in the scene for awhile, disguise their discomfort in the language of BDSM. They might say that that it makes them feel less Dominant when the submissive regularly offers feedback or critique of their technique, dismissing it as “topping from the bottom.” Others say that they don’t speak up when something isn’t working because they don’t want to be perceived as challenging a Dominant. These statements are ironic when one considers that BDSM is meant to be practiced for mutual benefit and welfare, always.
A significant majority of the human collective is currently in the process of trying to examine and heal from centuries of power exercised violently and without consent (and that continues to be exercised violently and without consent). Part of that healing process involves learning how to give words to and articulate the experience of how power intersects with our lived experience, within our interpersonal relationships, and within our choices of erotic expression. For obvious reasons, then, the realm of BDSM (consensual power exchange) thus becomes an ideal arena to uncover the places where we bump up against shame or reluctance to talk about sex, power, boundaries and consent, and a training ground to learn to advocate for what we need to engage positively in that realm, no matter how dark our fantasies are.
Centuries of consent violations going unaddressed and emotional labour going unrecognized within relationships of all kinds has entrenched layers of highly problematic interpersonal patterns that are taken for granted as “normal”. It’s almost as though, in spite of our best attempts to keep power exchange in BDSM consensual and intentional, we can at times unconsciously fall back into abusive power dynamics in ways that we have all either experienced or witnessed at some point in our lives. We tend to lapse into repeating patterns of trauma, to a greater or lesser extent, as either the perpetrator or the victim.
If you have ever, in your BDSM dynamic or kink play, felt that:
You didn’t want to rock the boat by voicing a truth that your Dominant/submissive might not want to hear…
You shouldn’t set boundaries as a submissive because you’ve been told it means you’re not a real submissive…
You didn’t want to use your safeword because of how your Dominant might respond…
Your submissive should be restricted from developing friendships with others in the kink scene…
You felt that someone’s stated boundaries could be pushed because “you know they can take more than that.”
Your desire to dominate came out of a place of genuine anger/annoyance/rage/frustration…
You accepted a consent violation, rationalizing your Dominants intentions…
Racist and/or misogynistic micro-aggressions were present in your interactions…
…Then it behooves you to spend some time unpacking your relationship to power, sex, and consent.
A proper negotiation starts with you being introspective about your motivations for desiring power exchange. Think about your relationship to power thus far in your life. What did you learn from your parental figures about it? What did you learn from mainstream culture? Are you replicating abusive, oppressive, or codependent patterns? Patterns of victimization? Or are you making your relationship to power conscious so that you can exercise or surrender it differently, i.e. with explicit and specific consent, all along the way? Only after that introspective process has been initiated can we begin the second phase of negotiation – the part that involves another person whom we’d like to exchange power with, whom ideally has also reflected on these things.
I say ideally, because a negotiation between you should not only include the kinds of things you both want to experience, but also the relationship you each have to the non-consensual use of power. On a good day it might not factor in, but on a bad day you might find yourself enacting the very things you said you’d never do, being like the person you swore you’d never be like or acting unthinkingly out of habit instead of intentionally out of choice.
While most BDSM practitioners’ pledges of allegiance to R.A.C.K. (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) or S.S.C. (Safe, Sane & Consensual) play are genuine, they are still ideals to which we aspire. Cleaning up our blind spots, the places where we might ace the theory and still be struggling with the practice, are the places that require our attention if we are to master the intersections of power, sex, and consent.
If this blog article got you thinking, you won’t want to miss my upcoming workshop on Contracts, Boundaries and Negotiations in BDSM, happening Oct. 30 from 7-9:30pm. Sign up today!