Safe, sane and consensual.

We've seen those words time and again, and recently, I've started to think a lot about them. Of the three, sanity is probably the hardest to deal with as I suspect most insane people probably think of themselves as sane. Who is sane anyway? What is sane? Who decides? Sanity is such a relative term, I'd have to write a whole different article to scratch the surface. At the very least, I'd say you should be in your right mind when playing, which means, among other things, sobriety. Scening while drunk or high is asking for trouble.

Safety is another one of those words that can be taken in different ways. How safe is safe? I think everyone should take reasonable precautions against permanent damage, surely. Yet I have a friend who climbs rocks. I've watched him free climb a stone wall in a state park in Illinois. If he fell, he'd have been seriously hurt, if not killed. Is any sport safe? I think it's safe to say that precautions should be taken, but dangers do exist and we'd best be aware of them.

Then we get to consensual, a word that brings to mind agreement. This is a very tricky topic. What exactly does consensual mean? For the purpose of this article, I'm going to be talking about relationships, rather than scening. For one thing, it's something I have more experience with, for another, within a scene, a lot of the time, consensuality is easier to define. People who practice public scening usually have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen before the scene starts. In a relationship, that's not always the case.

It all starts with submission. A submissive has to consent to submitting. She has to give herself into the care of a dominant. So far, so good. To me, consent implies choice. Does a submissive really get to choose? That's where I begin to question.

In my life, I've never chosen who I fall in love with, who I'm attracted to, or what turns me on. There is a zero percent chance I'm going to wake up tomorrow and decide I want to have sex with men. It won't happen. It's about as likely that I'll wake up tomorrow and decide that I've been missing vanilla sex. It's not my thing, never has been, never will be—the question is why.

At no time in my life did I make a conscious decision to become a dom. I've never said, I think I'll be dominant today; it just happened. And while I try to think things through, my relationships just seem to happen too, sometimes when I least expect them. Did I consent to them? Well, I didn't object. Yet what choice did I really have?

I know more than one submissive who was so drawn to a dom that they had no choice but to submit. Their will wasn't their own, at least when they made that decision. Was it consensual? Well sure; they wanted desperately to submit. They wanted to be with this dominant. They longed for nothing more than to kneel at his feet—but did they have a choice in the matter?

Those who haven't felt it, say yes, they chose, but I'm no longer so sure. And once ensconced in a relationship, it becomes even harder. A submissive in such a relationship will often be taken gradually down paths she didn't even know were possibilities. Each step is only a small one, but over the span of years, the journey can be quite long.

In the middle of a scene, as subspace approaches, submissives lose the ability to think clearly, or even at all. Once that happens, how can they consent or not consent? Are they even sane at that point? My slave dana has never used her safe word, because once she's in subspace, she can't think of it. It doesn't matter how many times we practice or how often I remind her, it's something she can't do. Does that mean anything I do to her during that time is with her consent? I don't think so.

A lot of people see safe words as the responsibility of the submissive. If she doesn't say anything, it's all fair game. I say the dominant has a greater responsibility than that. He has to monitor the situation while scening, because submissives often can't. He has to keep enough of his head about him to try to do what's best for her, as well as what's fun for him; it's the responsibility he takes on when he puts a collar around her neck. Or she puts a collar around his neck. Or she puts a collar around her…you get the idea. Once a Dom collars a sub, that responsibility is implicit. And though we talk about consensuality, what it really comes down to is this: a submissive truly wants to please a dominant so much, she will often go too far to so do, even if it's not in her own best interest. That's why Dominants need to be vigilant.

Again, dana will agree to anything once she's at that point (and I think you know what point I mean). There is nothing she won't do. I'm convinced of this. That makes it consensual, if not completely sane. As a dom, do I respect the consensuality of the moment, or do I have an obligation to think about what her reaction might be to what had happened during the scene after it's all said and done? It's something to think about, because you can hurt someone badly by exceeding their limits, even if it seems consensual at the time.

Consensuality is a cornerstone of the BDSM relationship that needs more than just lip service. It's something we all need to think about. Know your sub’s hard limits and keep play shy of them, unless you discuss it first. Don't assume that because your girl doesn't use a safe word that she's going to later be okay with what you've done. And don't take her submission for granted and think you can do anything you damn well please.

The line between pushing boundaries and the abuse of trust can be very thin indeed.