I have never safeworded.
Eileen, um, you’re a top. You don’t have safewords.
Yes, I fucking do.
There is this consistent, repetitive argument that I hear all the time from people who want to pick into the nitty-gritty of power exchange. You must have heard it. It goes like this: Bottoms actually have the power in scenes, because they have safewords and can stop the scene any time they want to.
This line of thinking indicates two things to me. Thing the first: There are some serious misconceptions about what a safeword is intended for. And thing the second: there are some serious misconceptions regarding the well-being of tops.
Safewords are not a way to guide a scene. They are a last resort for people who don’t feel comfortable not having a last resort. Plenty of people don’t have them. More often, as in the case of May and myself, we have them and never use them. We forget about them, most of the time. More on this later.
This idea that bottoms have the power because they have this one magic word that protects them from the badness is an incredibly strange all-or-nothing idea. Power shifts and flows; control has levels, variations. It’s sexy to some to think of giving it all up, every iota of control or power. The reality of the matter is that such things don’t work in consensual relationships. I’m sorry to burst that bubble. Get over it. Your fantasy is not reality. It’s simply very hot fantasy.
Perhaps this misconception comes about because people picture bottoms clinging to their safewords, like, hit me just the right way, I can stop this any second, you don’t want to make me pull out now, do you?
This is utter bullshit. If you do this as a bottom, you need to stop and consider how degrading and manipulative this is. And you need to consider what might happen when you play with a top who won’t stand for being degraded or manipulated. It’s a game people like to play, but it shouldn’t be played with safewords.
Safewords are not a sexy toy to play with. They are not sexy. If you think they’re sexy, I think you’ve missed the point.
I have seen people try to play around the idea that the goal of the scene is to safeword. I have seen people try to do battle in scenes, daring one another to safeword first. This never ends well. Sexualizing safewords is an insidious, dangerous, stupid way of getting off on non-consensual play. Safewords are not a fantasy. Safewords are reality.
A safeword is a way to communicate out of role. (I am not going to write about the intersection of role and real today.) A safeword does not indicate that someone’s won some stupid, imaginary prize. A safeword does not indicate a need to guide a scene. It indicates a need to stop. A safeword brings a scene to a jarring, screeching halt that is in no way arousing, in no way fun, but entirely necessary. It is a very handy thing to have around.
I take safewords to mean a person saying to a partner, “I need this to stop right the fuck now.”This is often followed by, “Because I’m hitting an emotional place I can’t deal with.” Or alternately, “Because I think you need to take me to the hospital.”
Safewords are almost never used before something goes wrong. That’s not what they’re designed for; they’re designed to indicate when something has gone wrong already. Someone is already hurt. Someone has passed their consensual limit.
Following from this, the misconception that tops do not have safewords is entirely fucked. It indicates a breakdown in the idea of consensual relationships. Do you know what you imply when you talk about only bottoms having safewords?
You imply that tops cannot be hurt.
I did not consent to a relationship or a role wherein I am expected to never be hurt.
You think I can’t get hurt if I’m on the handle end of the whip? What if I hit myself in the eye? (From personal experience, I can assure you this hurts. A lot.)
You think I can’t get freaked if I’m the perpetrator of an emotional trauma?
You think I don’t sometimes find myself in scenes that aren’t going the way I want them to? That I can’t have my needs derailed? That I don’t have emotional buttons like the rest of the world?
You think that I don’t have to consent?
I used to wig the fuck out when people touched my throat. I still squirm a little when people touch my hair. Once I wrestled with this guy at a party; through a crap communication session I didn’t establish this limit. He put a hand to the side of my throat, I got royally pissed off, and I lost my connection with the scene. I did not, however, safeword. I probably should have. It did not occur to me. I had not yet learned I could.
A common idea is that tops don’t have to safeword because they’re in control of how the scene progresses; that it stops and starts solely at their discretion. If you’ve ever topped a deeply intricate scene, an incredibly intense scene, a long-term scene, or hell, any scene at all, you know this isn’t always true. Scenes take on lives of their own. They grow organically, they establish rhythms and pathways that both partners follow. There will sometimes be moments when your head clears, you look again, and someone you love is sobbing and hurting because you made them sob and hurt. And it’s bad.
When this happens, you can’t just walk away. Call me crazy, but pulling abruptly out of a scene without explaining to my bottom that I’m having a problem, abandoning them in a sobbing, hurting mess, is irresponsible. It means I’ll freak them out, and I won’t get the care I need. And neither will they.Tops are not always the strong guiding forces that confidently lead bottoms to scarier and darker places. Sometimes the places we go are just as scary to us as they are to our partners.
I wrote earlier that May and I have safewords, but never use them. Sometimes they’re not available; sometimes May is gagged or I’m in the middle of a sixteen needle penetration that I can’t simply unravel. But in reality, we’ve never used them because we never need them. This is simply our style; a telling characteristic of how rabidly we demand constant communication. Of how much we trust. Of our mutual consent.
May doesn’t trust that I won’t hurt him more than he can stand. Sometimes I will hurt him more than he can stand. I don’t trust him to never ask for more than I can give. Sometimes he will ask.
We trust each other that no matter how one of us is hurt, or both of us are hurt, we’ll work it out. I can gag him and beat him six ways from Sunday and stage scenes of lust upon his body and mind, and in the end, we will be okay. We are too dedicated to each other and ourselves to accept scenarios in which we fail to work things out.
If he needs to, he can safeword.
And so can I.
