The only pain you should feel is the pain you desire.

Dominance and submission plays with power dynamics that renders you vulnerable, exposing avenues to trigger old physical and emotional traumas or incite new ones. Maintaining safety takes a degree of knowledge, communication skills, empathy, experience, awareness, and care that some people may not have developed before playing.

It’s important to understand which part of your partner’s body and mind are off-limits for personal or universal reasons, such as which parts of the body aren’t ideal to hit or tie up, and which parts of their identity you shouldn’t degrade. Safe playing also requires consistent attentiveness to any nonverbal signs of nonconsensual discomfort, as some people may not feel comfortable using a safeword when they need to due to not feeling safe enough in the scene or other factors.

Additionally, kinksters from marginalized backgrounds, such as people of color, femmes, LGBTQ+, and disabled folks often face extra layers of emotional challenges in the scene that can result in discrimination, unwanted fetishization, and predation resulting in long-term trauma.

I wanted to put this together because I didn’t realize how complex BDSM safety was when I started out. For example, I didn’t realize how mind-altering subspace can sometimes be. That’s why subspace has its own page here.

(Because I don’t know everything about every kink, this site will be a collaborative discussion space where you can leave comments on each page to share any insights or experiences you have on any topic here. Feel free to report any information listed that’s inaccurate or outdated and raise suggestions on what relevant topics should be added to the site.)

Let’s learn how to safely and consensually turn our fantasies into reality where we’re safe to let our inhibitions go.