Safewords Survey – Are safewords essential in BDSM punishment

This article looks at how strongly 499  safeword survey participants felt about using safewords in BDSM punishment.

Readers may find it interesting to contrast these results with earlier, articles where I asked people  whether safewords were essential in all BDSM transactions and whether safewords were essential in BDSM play.

In the article on safewords in all BDSM transactions, only switches were more likely than not to agree with the statement “Safewords are essential in all BDSM transactions”. However, the  BDSM play article shows general, agreement that safewords are essential – with some groups being more emphatic in their agreement than others. Only masters (mistresses) and slaves were more likely to think that safewords are NOT essential in play. This article shows a more mixed picture than either of the above. I wonder if that may be because BDSM people have not yet come to a common understanding of what they consider punishment to be (for reference, my thoughts on this are here and my proposed definition (for voting and debate) is here).

The first chart, below, shows how inclined, or not, all respondents (split by gender) were to consider safewords essential in BDSM punishment (the method I have used for calculating the charts is under the subheading “Data used in this article” below).

The people who took part seem pretty split on this one. Women were slightly more likely to disagree with the proposition than men, but not by very much at all.

However, when it comes to BDSM orientations there are some significant differences in perception (below).

There is a very clear difference of opinion between bottoms/submissives and everyone else. Submissives were three times more likely to disagree that safewords are essential in BDSM punishment than   either tops/dominants or switches. And they were the only group who were less likely to think that safewords were essential in punishment than to agree that they were essential. Switches were the most likely to think that safewords in punishment were essential. But, there is a clear difference of opinion between dominants and submissives here.

The chart above shows that there are also clear differences in the views of respondents from different BDSM components. Sadists/masochists are split on whether safewords are essential in punishment. Dominant’s submissives are more likely than not  to say that they are essential (though the extent to which they disagree is almost identical to S/m respondents) and masters (mistresses) and slaves are nearly five times more likely to disagree with the proposition than to agree.

Data used in this article

The article uses data from a question where people were asked whether they considered safewords to be essential in BDSM play. 500 people answered the question. People were able to pick from the following responses:

• Agree
• Agree strongly
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Disagree strongly

To produce the charts used above I manipulated the data as follows:

• Agree (scored 1)
• Agree strongly (scored 2)
• Neither agree nor disagree (eliminated from responses)
• Disagree (scored -1)
• Disagree strongly (scored -2)

I totalled the  scores and then divided that by the total of all responses (including “Neither agree nor disagree”, in order that a high neutral response would influence the outcome by reducing both negative and positive scores). I expressed that in percentages for convenience.

The data used is in the tables below:

What is your gender?	(All)	Safewords are essential in BDSM punishment
What is your BDSM orientation?	How would you describe the most important component of your BDSM Dynamic?	Agree	Agree strongly	Disagree	Disagree strongly	Neither agree nor disagree	Grand Total
Bottom/Submissive	Dominant/Submissive	37	34	26	66	27	190
	Master/Slave		2	7	38	7	54
	Sadist/Masochist	4	5	6	12	4	31
Bottom/Submissive Total		41	41	39	116	38	275
Switch	Dominant/Submissive	10	19	6	2	10	47
	Master/Slave	1	1		1	3	6
	Sadist/Masochist	7	3	4	16	7	37
Switch Total		18	23	10	19	20	90
Top/Dominant	Dominant/Submissive	14	22	10	27	10	83
	Master/Slave		1	2	24		27
	Sadist/Masochist	3	8	4	7	2	24
Top/Dominant Total		17	31	16	58	12	134
Grand Total		76	95	65	193	70	499
What is your gender?	Male	Safewords are essential in BDSM punishment
What is your BDSM orientation?	How would you describe the most important component of your BDSM Dynamic?	Agree	Agree strongly	Disagree	Disagree strongly	Neither agree nor disagree	Grand Total
Bottom/Submissive	Dominant/Submissive	5	7	5	18	6	41
	Master/Slave		1	1	1	2	5
	Sadist/Masochist	1		1	5	1	8
Bottom/Submissive Total		6	8	7	24	9	54
Switch	Dominant/Submissive	8	9	4		8	29
	Master/Slave		1			1	2
	Sadist/Masochist	3	1	3	10	2	19
Switch Total		11	11	7	10	11	50
Top/Dominant	Dominant/Submissive	9	16	7	20	7	59
	Master/Slave		1	2	17		20
	Sadist/Masochist	1	6	3	4	2	16
Top/Dominant Total		10	23	12	41	9	95
Grand Total		27	42	26	75	29	199
What is your gender?	Female	Safewords are essential in BDSM punishment
What is your BDSM orientation?	How would you describe the most important component of your BDSM Dynamic?	Agree	Agree strongly	Disagree	Disagree strongly	Neither agree nor disagree	Grand Total
Bottom/Submissive	Dominant/Submissive	31	27	21	47	20	146
	Master/Slave		1	6	37	5	49
	Sadist/Masochist	3	5	5	7	3	23
Bottom/Submissive Total		34	33	32	91	28	218
Switch	Dominant/Submissive	2	9	2	2	2	17
	Master/Slave	1			1	1	3
	Sadist/Masochist	4	2	1	6	5	18
Switch Total		7	11	3	9	8	38
Top/Dominant	Dominant/Submissive	4	5	3	7	3	22
	Master/Slave				6		6
	Sadist/Masochist	2	2	1	3		8
Top/Dominant Total		6	7	4	16	3	36
Grand Total		47	51	39	116	39	292

Related articles

• Safeword Survey – Are safewords essential in BDSM play. (belasarius.com)
• BDSM safeword survey – Are safewords essential in all BDSM transactions? (belasarius.com)
• Safeword Survey – who uses them with their principal partners (belasarius.com)
• Differing dynamics: S/m, M/s and D/s (belasarius.com)
• BDSM Safeword Survey – who uses safewords with play partners (belasarius.com)
• BDSM Safeword Survey: what people said about safeword use. (belasarius.com)