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theatreofsinI'm not big on the idea of "safe, sane, and consensual" as a litmus test. I manage to take issue to two out of the three, in fact. The safe and sane things, specifically.
Safe because while it's a good general guideline for many people, I don't see that it's something which needs to be enforced. Plenty of things aren't safe. BASE jumping isn't safe. Climbing a mountain isn't safe. Even football isn't safe. Yes, there are safeguards one can put in place, but these activities have never been fully sanitized, and may never be. Transgressing the boundaries of safety is one's prerogative.
Sane offends me on principle, because it's such a squoogy word. One person's sanity is another person's insanity. One person's reviled madness is another person's religion. Any legislation, no matter how informal, which uses sanity as a benchmark is bound to fail, especially on something ass subjective as interpersonal intimacy.
If I had to put forth a standard of my own, it would be Comprehended and consensual. Those are the principles I see as most respectful of the persons in question.
But that's me speaking, from my own value set. And value sets, like sanity, change from person to person.
Safe because while it's a good general guideline for many people, I don't see that it's something which needs to be enforced. Plenty of things aren't safe. BASE jumping isn't safe. Climbing a mountain isn't safe. Even football isn't safe. Yes, there are safeguards one can put in place, but these activities have never been fully sanitized, and may never be. Transgressing the boundaries of safety is one's prerogative.
Sane offends me on principle, because it's such a squoogy word. One person's sanity is another person's insanity. One person's reviled madness is another person's religion. Any legislation, no matter how informal, which uses sanity as a benchmark is bound to fail, especially on something ass subjective as interpersonal intimacy.
If I had to put forth a standard of my own, it would be Comprehended and consensual. Those are the principles I see as most respectful of the persons in question.
But that's me speaking, from my own value set. And value sets, like sanity, change from person to person.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 08:00 am (UTC)From my personal perspective, the value I get out of BDSM isn't that it's safe, but that it's the opposite: that it pushes me and those I'm with beyond boundaries of safety, that it electrifies precisely by being what we cannot usually have in this world because we strive so hard to avoid it-- unsafe. Unsafe in a controlled way, not unsafe like sticking your head into a lion's den, but still fundamentally unsafe.
Sane = no, for all the reasons you said.
Consensual = needs to be part of any such aphorism, for safety's sake. Though I have all kinds of tangential thoughts about this that... I want to share, but probably don't belong here. Maybe I shall email.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 08:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:30 am (UTC)The wiki page explains more concisely than I could, but... Well, there's a reason that, in my NSFW blog, one of my tags is, "i never claimed to be safe or sane".