Bay Area Reporter
by Race Bannon
We all know about the Golden Rule. “Do to others what you want them to do to you.” It nicely sums up most of the manners and civility guidelines that our society tends to honor and respect. Think about the other person before interacting in any specific way; good advice.
What’s good advice in the rest of our daily lives is good advice for our leather and kink lives too. Be respectful. Be polite. Honor people’s boundaries and desires. Ask if you’re not sure about something. Seems so simple, doesn’t it?
Simple or not, there are always a few folks who intentionally or unintentionally violate the parameters for basic decent interactions with others. Since in our often erotically intense scene there are safety and consent violations that can result is various levels of harm, playing nice together becomes something the kinky must think about even more.
In our kink world, the kissing cousin of the Golden Rule is the concept of consent. While the word and concept have long been a part of the BDSM ethos, consent was mainstreamed and brought to the forefront of our attentions when the catchphrase of “safe, sane and consensual” was coined by David Stein in 1983, quickly skyrocketing to prominence throughout the leather and BDSM communities.
While many in our scene no longer use safe, sane and consensual as a guiding phrase, instead using concepts such as risk-aware consensual kink or something else, consent remains a foundation cornerstone for how kinksters should behave.
Consent is a hot topic among kinksters, as it should be. Anytime a newcomer to BDSM and kink are taught our scene’s basic principles, consent is typically one of the first things mentioned. It’s fundamental to what we do and who we are as kinksters.
Perhaps the most wide-sweeping assessment of consent within the BDSM world was undertaken in 2012 by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF). The NCSF Consent Counts Survey was a robust internet survey to gauge respondents’ views on consent in a BDSM context. There were 5,667 respondents giving this survey significant credibility.
In their analysis of the survey, Susan Wright and Judy Guerin noted that perhaps the most significant conclusion to be drawn from the responses to the survey is that the respondents overwhelmingly recognize the importance of consent. All the basic questions concerning the importance of consent showed an 84% agreement or higher.
For those deeply interested in our community’s views on consent, I recommend you search for and read the survey analysis available online.
So, it’s heartening that the vast majority of those in our scene recognize the importance of consent. …