I wish I could give credit, but I can't remember what podcast it was where I heard a woman say, "Having a safeword is like having a secret key." In the context, she was saying that having the key gave her the freedom to go into scary places, to explore it with all her heart, knowing that she had an out. It's a fairly sexy description of a safe word, and I understood what she meant.
A lock is only as strong as the door that surrounds it. The safety of the key is only valid if there's something even stronger protecting her should the key fail. In the BDSM community, that "thing" is
reputation.
Which is why I talk about BDSM openly. Which is why the only people I listen to talking about BDSM are those willing to talk about it openly. Anonymous commentary and abusive personalities hidden behind deep login pages and robots.txt blockages allow predators, manipulators, and the plain clueless to gnaw away at the structures of her (and all of our) safety.
A lock is only as strong as the door that surrounds it. The safety of the key is only valid if there's something even stronger protecting her should the key fail. In the BDSM community, that "thing" is
reputation.
Which is why I talk about BDSM openly. Which is why the only people I listen to talking about BDSM are those willing to talk about it openly. Anonymous commentary and abusive personalities hidden behind deep login pages and robots.txt blockages allow predators, manipulators, and the plain clueless to gnaw away at the structures of her (and all of our) safety.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}