BDSM and Scene Play

INclusive and exclusive negotiations

I was recently involved in a discussion about negotiating BDSM scene play and the amount of time that should be spent discussing limits and boundaries between dominants and submissives. If you are new to BDSM and are thinking about how you might navigate your first play party there are some useful negotiating concepts to consider in advance.

As a first consideration, it is important to think about what you are hoping for and what are your expectations. Depending on the event you are attending it is worth asking yourself whether you want to engage in ‘pick up’ play (much like an impromptu sports game) or whether you are going to communicate with other attendees and plan a scene in advance.

The Negotiation Balance

Whichever approach you are going to take, the next question to ask yourself is: how am I going to negotiate the scene? Consent is vital for the safety and well-being of all involved, but what types of play need to be discussed?

In many cases, the dominant will have control of and lead the scene (whatever it may consist of) and as such they simply won’t initiate any BDSM activities they are uncomfortable with and to which they don’t consent. By contrast, where the submissive is giving over control, they will want to be very clear about which activities are on or off the table.

There are of course exceptions to this: for example, if the dominant wants service from the submissive, the submissive may well have a relatively expansive field of options as to how to perform this service. In that case, it is easy to envisage behaviours which could cross boundaries for the dominant.

What then is the solution? The answer lies in deciding what form negotiations will take.

What style of negotiation will you choose?

If you hang around in the BDSM community long enough you will almost certainly come across long form negotiation schedules. These can run into pages and pages of BDSM activities, many of which will never have crossed your mind to identify as unacceptable to you. The lists of potential activities are so extensive because of the immense number of BDSM activities that creative and curious practitioners have managed to come up with!

The underlying mechanism at play here is exclusive negotiation: the parties identify everything that is unacceptable and everything else is on the table.

An alternative method of negotiating, and one which many find particularly suitable for pick up play and play parties in general, is inclusive negotiation. Here the parties will explicitly discuss what their scene will involve and everything else is off the table.

Once particular activities are identified as mutually acceptable, embellishments or variations can be discussed to fill out the scene without any party having to detail any further activities which are off limits.

Safe Words

Whatever form of negotiation you opt for in BDSM scene play do always remember to make sure you know the venue’s safe word and use it when you need it. Many establishments adopt the traffic light system: “red” means “stop”, “amber” or “yellow” means “proceed with caution” and “green” means “good to go”.

If you would like to talk to a kink-aware therapist about negotiations in BDSM or kink activities, reach out to Unicorn Care today!