:salt: what do you think fandom generally gets wrong?
belatedly: more salty opinions
this one goes out to both the untamed and fandom in general, none of y’all are free from sin
every damn one of you vanilla ass virgins and diehard BDSM hall monitors needs to quit it with the handwringing “but where are the safewords” shit.
safewords aren’t the be-all end-all of kink safety! and nobody is handwringing this much about “but condoms” or “but where’s the shears while they’re doing rope bondage in case somebody panics” or “how long have those nipple clamps been on?” because for those things people seem to understand that it’s porn and “you have to be careful with abruptly pulling long hair because you might fuck up someone’s neck” isn’t fun and sexy to read about. smut is for fun! the author controls whether or not there’s accidents, so if i’m reading something that’s just a kinky pwp, i assume that no inconvenient practicalities are going to rear their head the way they always might irl. included in “inconvenient practicalities” is being prepared someone might need to safeword out.
sometimes there’s a good reason to put in a safeword discussion: maybe badwrong sexy bit includes someone starting to have a bad time and the presence/absence of a safeword gives the sex scene tension. maybe one character is kinking on inexperience and enjoying leading their partner through the basics in detail. some story justification! something more than “oh right and i need to be a Responsible Porn Writer and include the safeword discussion”
fanfiction isn’t sex ed anymore than pornhub is! you can learn stuff from it, sure (there’s some creative stuff out there on the internet) but it’s not a how-to guide.
but all that isn’t even what i’m most steamed about!
the thing that makes me insane is the idea that you have to have a safeword for all kink activities. safewords are for consent play! there is absolutely no reason that saying “no” or yanking yourself away shouldn’t be sufficient outside of roleplay. otherwise, you know what is a good way to make your partner stop hitting you? saying “stop hitting me.”
if you’re using a safeword as the big consent marker, then there’s only one way to say stop. if you’re not, there’s a thousand ways to say no. body language! tone of voice! a very wide range of vocabulary! there are also a thousand ways to say yes that aren’t “green,” and you can add “stops conveying yes/enjoyment” to the ways to say no. you don’t have to remember a special vocabulary word to be able to say “hey, bad spot, back off.” more importantly, the person hitting you has no excuse to not pay attention to that signal because it’s “well it’s not a safeword sooooo.....”
there’s just such a big difference between how somebody enjoying themselves acts and someone who isn’t! it’s almost always fucking obvious. people who try to convince you it’s all subtle and confusing are not good people.
like: “ah, fuck, that hurts so bad, i can’t, i can’t -- oh my god, no, not again, please please please!”
versus: “whoa, uh-uh, that was too much. ow. i need a five minute break.”
one of those examples has the word “no” in it. it’s not the one that should bring things to an absolute screeching halt. the difference in tone is stark, and would be even starker with an actual voice behind it.
another example with consent play!
compare: “oh no, it’s so big, don’t put it in me! i won’t be able to take it! if you touch me there i’ll be ruined forever!”
to: “wait, i’m getting freaked out, let’s stop playing.”
most fic is writing about characters who know each other really well and should be able to read the body language of their partner. a lot of rules and safety precautions are most applicable when two people who don’t know each other super well are having sex and needing to have things you can point to and say “you agreed if i said red, you would stop, and when i said it you didn’t stop” with no room grey areas. if you have a bad actor in the room, they’ll take any chance they get to say they got mixed signals and how could they have known. two characters who love each other should be different! and in that vein: a lot of kink irl is done with dominant men and submissive women, so the dom is physically a LOT stronger than the sub. so many m/m ships are between characters with basically equal strength and there’s an element of fear that just isn’t present the same way.
a safeword is a big stressful thing to use -- there’s a lot of weight and seriousness put behind it. plus if it’s some cutesy thing you have to remember it under duress, that seems hard! there’s not enough nuance in a single word to easily make the difference clear between “i’m getting a leg cramp” and “if you touch me one more time i’m going to feel traumatized.” in some ways, this obsession with safewords makes me worry about the false safe of security given by following the rulebook. ticking off all the boxes on the consent to-do list isn’t a substitute for using your goddamn human social skills that you’ve been developing for 18 YEARS AT ABSOLUTE MINIMUM!
personally, asking if someone is “green” is also deeply unsexy in my book, akin to my arbitrary hatred of the word “panties,” but that’s less serious, and you’re free to disagree. the rest you can fight me about if you want, but i’m right and you’ll lose
