By Belasarius and curvy bottom, a British BDSM couple
Author: Belasarius
I possess the submission of curvy_bottom, we have a medium protocol, D/s relationship - based on the feeling that we are equa and opposite and that we love each other.
This article looks at how people who answered the safeword survey said they used safewords and whether this differed for older or younger respondents.
It does. There are large variations according to age and also dependant on whether the BDSM interaction is with a relationship partner or a play partner.
The survey, of course, isn’t representative of anything except the views of people who took part. It’s important to note that some of the age groups are quite small. There were only eight people aged 18-20 (all were women) and four over 70 (all men). The other groups ranged in size from 77 to 148 so are more likely to reflect a spread of opinion (496 of the 533 people in the sample answered the question).
Only 18-20 year olds were more likely to use safewords with both relationship partners and with pay partners.
Over all the age groups, when it came to relationship partners, every group except the 18-20s said they were more likely not to use safewords (other than people of 70 or older where the decision was split 50-50).
When it comes to BDSM interactions with play partners, five of the seven age groups said they were more likely to use safe words than not. The two age-groups that said they were less likely to use safewords (21-29 and 30-39 year olds) only did so by a margin of two or three per cent.
Data for this article
The data for this article was compiled from that contained in the table below.
Thinking of BDSM interactions with your principal relationship partner(s) and safewords…
Which category below includes your age?
I always use a safeword
I mostly use a safeword
I mostly DON’T use a safeword
I never use a safeword
Grand Total
Female
18-20
6
1
1
8
21-29
10
7
6
27
50
30-39
22
5
20
46
93
40-49
21
10
19
46
96
50-59
9
4
7
19
39
60-69
2
1
2
2
7
Female Total
70
28
54
141
293
Male
21-29
8
2
2
10
22
30-39
12
8
12
15
47
40-49
12
9
4
30
55
50-59
13
6
11
23
53
60-69
8
3
3
4
18
70 or older
1
1
1
1
4
Male Total
54
29
33
83
199
Grand Total
124
57
87
224
492
Thinking of BDSM interactions with play partners and safewords…
The safeword survey survey asked the question “Thinking of BDSM interactions with your play partner(s) and of safewords…” and then asked how likely the respondent was to use a safeword.
500 of the 533 people in the sample answered the question.
This article looks at the use of safewords with play partners and looks at the differences that characterised respondents to the survey, based on their BDSM orientation.
Switches use safewords more.
I looked just at those people who always use safewords or never use safewords, crosstabbed with their BDSM orientation (Chart 4). Both switches and Tops/dominants said they were more likely to always use a safeword with play partners than to never use a safeword. By contrast, bottoms/submissives stated they were more likely to never use a safeword.
I asked respondents how many people they played with in a year. I thought it might be interesting to look at whether the number of play partners people said they had affected the way they used safewords.
Bottoms/submissives
Bottoms/submissives who said they only played with one person in the last 12 months are much more likely to never use a safeword than they are to use one all the time. But bottoms and submissives with low or moderate numbers of play parters (between two and five) said they are more likely to use a safeword all the time than not to use one at all.By contrast those who said played with larger numbers of people may be more devil-may-care and are much more likely to never use a safeword than always to use one.
Switches
Switches contrasted sharply with both bottoms/submissives and tops/dominants. Throughout the sample switch respondents stated they were more likely to always use a safeword than to never use a safeword. And, with a couple of exceptions, the more play partners a respondent had, the more likely this was to be what they said.
Tops/Dominants
Tops/dominants with a single plat partner said they were much more likely never to use a safeword than to always use one. But for every other no. of partners the reverse was true. Though the proportion always using a safeword was very much higher than the proportion that never use a safeword, for every number of partners other than one, the levels of safeword use reported were fairly level in comparison with switches – where it respondents reported that the more partners they had the more likely they were to use a safeword all the time.
Data for this article.
The table below shows the numbers of respondents from which the charts above were compiled. Some of the groups are very small.
Thinking of BDSM interactions with play partners and safewords…
Back in June 2012 I ran a survey on BDSM styles and relationships (or “BDSM – How Do You Like Yours”) which looked at some of the basic components of BDSM interactions.
This article looks at the question “How do various BDSM components fit into your life”. It shows, probably unsurprisingly, that respondents that characterised themselves as sadists/masochists (S/m)ranked things quite differently from dominants/submissives (D/s) and masters (mistresses)/slaves (M/s)
S/m people said pain was better than sex. For M/s respondents control, service and ritual came before a roll in the hay. D/s people put sex first, but only a tiny, tiny bit ahead of control.
More details are found in the charts below – where the top three interactions for each group appear in darker colours and the bottom two in lighter shades.
Background
Respondents were asked to score each area 1- 5 in a range of responses that were:
I don’t do this
I dislike this
This is neither important nor unimportant
This is important to me
This is essential to me
The ten areas of interaction were:
Pain
Bondage
Fetish dressing
Humiliation
Exhibitionism
Sex
Safewords
Service
Ritual
Control
429 people answered the question: 94 said they were sadists/masochists, 277 said they were dominants/submissives and 58 said they were masters/slaves. 31 people skipped the question.
Those who responded saying they were sadists and masochists put pain a long way ahead of everything else as the thing that was most important to them. Bondage just edged sex into third place. Control, in fourth, was fairly important too. Service and ritual came ninth and tenth.
Masters (mistresses) and slaves.
Control is the biggest thing for respondents in this group, with service coming second and ritual and sex a short way behind, in joint third. The least important factors are fetish dressing and safewords, which trails a long way behind the other factors. Bondage was a little more important than pain to M/s people.
Dominants and submissives
Dominants and submissives were the only group who put sex at the top of their list. And then, it is only a teensy way in front of control, with bondage a little way behind. Pain comes fourth. The two areas that least interest the D/s people who took part are humiliation and, last of all, exhibitionism.
“BDSM styles and relationships” was the second survey I did (the first was on BDSM and Education) I am in the process of transferring the articles i wrote about the results of these from my blog on the UK BDSM website http://www.informedconsent.co.uk which is due to close at the end of February. That survey asked a question about the nature of people`s relationships (whether they were in one, whether they were monogamous and if they had multiple partners, how aware they were of each other, etc). I asked a similar question in the survey I did on BDSM symbols of ownership and the responses to that can be found in this article.
First, the question was answered by 429 people of whom 94 said they were sadists/masochists, 277 said they were dominants/submissives and 58 said they were masters/slaves. 31 people skipped the question.
The options asked about (and the answers, in percentages, given by each group) are below:
Total sample
I am not in a relationship; 19%
I only have one partner; 48%
My partners all know about each other; 7%
My partners and their partners all know about each other and me; 11%
None of my partners know about each other; 5%
My secondary partner(s) knows about my primary partner; 7%
Some of my partners know about each other; 5%
Sadists/masochists
I am not in a relationship; 27%
I only have one partner; 37%
My partners all know about each other; 10%
My partners and their partners all know about each other and me; 9%
None of my partners know about each other; 6%
My secondary partner(s) knows about my primary partner; 4%
Some of my partners know about each other; 7%
Dominant/submissives
I am not in a relationship; 18%
I only have one partner; 50%
My partners all know about each other; 11%
My partners and their partners all know about each other and me; 3%
None of my partners know about each other; 8%
My secondary partner(s) knows about my primary partner; 8%
Some of my partners know about each other; 4%
Masters/slaves
I am not in a relationship: 10%
I only have one partner; 52%
My partners all know about each other; 3%
My partners and their partners all know about each other and me; 16%
None of my partners know about each other; 10%
My secondary partner(s) knows about my primary partner; 5%
One of the things I usually ask in my surveys is for people to say how interested they are in aspects of BDSM interactions – things like “pain“, “control”, “service”, “bondage”, “exhibitionism“, etc.
In the context of safe words I thought it would be interesting to see how people who enjoy pain one of the intrinsically riskier BDSM practices – use safe words.
Looking at the sample as a whole (500 people answered this question) 43% of people who said “pain is essential to me” NEVER use a safeword. 27% always use a safe word. Even among those who say they dislike pain the biggest group (42%) say they never use a safe word (33% say they always do). The only group where the largest response was that they always use a safe word were among those who say they “don’t do pain”, when 57% say they always use a safe word (see table four, below).
Table 4 – Attitude to pain and use of safewords
Pain
I always use a safeword
I mostly DON’T use a safeword
I mostly use a safeword
I never use a safeword
Essential to me
27%
19%
10%
43%
I dislike this
33%
18%
6%
42%
I don’t do this
57%
14%
29%
0%
Important to me
22%
17%
13%
48%
Not important/unimportant
26%
19%
9%
46%
All
25%
18%
12%
45%
Things get even clearer if you combine the responses to “I always use a safe word” and “I mostly use a safe word” together and also pair “I never use a safeword” with “I mostly DON’T use a safe word”. This then shows that, when it comes to inflicting or receiving pain, roughly one in three are inclined to use safewords and roughly two thirds are inclined not to. (table 5). The group that said they don’t do pain (admittedly only 1.4% of the sample – just seven people) are quite different: 86% use safe words.
Table 5 – Attitude to pain and use of safewords – Use and don’t combined
Pain
Always/mostly use a safeword
Never/mostly don’t usa a safeword
Essential to me
38%
62%
I dislike this
39%
61%
I don’t do this
86%
14%
Important to me
36%
64%
Not important/unimportant
35%
65%
All
37%
63%
I also looked at how the picture changes if you split respondents by their BDSM orientations (Bottom/submissive, Top/dominant and Switch) – see charts four and five below. Interestingly the B/s people (72%) and T/d people (82%) who responded are more likely to consider pain important or essential than switches (67%). Amongst those who think pain is important the largest groups by far never use safewords or mostly don’t use them. Amongst those who dislike or won’t do pain (a small proportion of the total sample) slightly more say they always use a safeword than those who say they never do.
The survey asked the question “Thinking of BDSM interactions with your principal relationship partner(s) and of safewords…” and then asked how likely the respondent was to use a safeword. 500 of the 533 people in the sample answered the question.
Chart one (above ) shows the responses to the question and Table one (below) shows the same data as percentages.
Table 1 Thinking of BDSM interactions with your principal relationship partner(s) and safewords…
Any other preference
Female
Male
Grand Total
I always use a safeword
38%
24%
27%
25%
I mostly DON’T use a safeword
25%
18%
17%
18%
I mostly use a safeword
13%
10%
15%
12%
I never use a safeword
25%
48%
42%
45%
Grand Total
100%
100%
100%
100%
So, across the entire sample, all respondents were far more likely NOT to use safewords with their principal partners than to use safewords (the responses on play partners are quite different, as we shall see in forthcoming blogs). sixty-three percent either never use a safeword with their partner (45%) or “mostly DON’t use a safeword” (18%). Only one in four (25%) always used a safeword. This reflects the results of the survey I did here in August 2012, where 61% of the 309 people who took part said they mostly don’t use safewords.
Gender
Women appear slightly less likely to use a safeword than men. 66% of women either did not use a safeword at all or mostly did not. 59% of men answered in these ways.
BDSM Orientation
Things are different when you analyse the sample by orientation (Sadist?masochist – S/m, Dominant/submissive – D/s, and Master/slave – M/s).
Chart 2 (above) and table 2 (below) show the raw numbers and percentages of each group that answered this question in each way.
Table 2 Thinking of BDSM interactions with your principal relationship partner(s) and safewords…
S/m respondents were far more likely to use a safeword (38% always did – well ahead of the sample as a whole – 25%). M/s people said they were least likely to use a safeword: Only 6% said they used one all the time and 84% said they never used them. Only 22% of S/m people said they never used a safeword.
D/s respondents (who are most of the participants) lay between these extremes and close to the averages for the sample as a whole.
BDSM Orientation
There always seems to be a bias in these surveys towards submissives, especially females. Perhaps they are just more into surveys!
Chart Three (above) shows how tops/bottoms and switches use safewords and table 3 (below) gives the same data in percentages. Again, it’s clear that, across all respondents, most either don’t use a safeword at all – or not the majority of the time.
42% of Tops/dominants use safewords all or some of the time compared with 30% of bottoms/submissives. This contrasts with switches where a majority (52%) mostly use safewords.
Switches were also the group most likely to use safewords with their partners all the time – 38% said they did (20% for bottoms and 29% for tops).
Sometimes that does make me wonder whether I really do own her submission (If I felt I didn’t I’d be on the floor in a heap). I do tend to be a me of little faith, no matter how hard I try :(.
But, as ever, little things make all the difference.
Me:”Would you like to see Film XXXXX this afternoon?, it’s got great reviews”
She (without enthusiasm):”Probably from teenage boys, but – yeah – ok”
Me: “You’re going to go with hubby aren’t you? it’s his sort of movie”.
She: “I’d rather stick pins in my eyes. I told him if he wanted to see it he could go on his own”.
Me:”But you’d go with me?”
She: “Of course, if it’s what you want to see”.
Just a small understanding. Keeps the mojo turning.
The blog below was first posted on the UK-based BDSM website, informed consent – at the time of writing due to close between 17 and 24 February 2013. It will be much missed by many.
I owe a lot to IC, and this, my 5,000th post there, tried to express a little of what IC had done for me – not the least of which was to help me find my girl
IC helped me change my life.
Informed Consent (Photo credit: Kevin Krejci)
When I joined IC, I was in the 12th year of a marriage that should not have lasted that long. I was a devoted father and an abused husband.
It seemed it was escapism that brought me here – desire to recapture something healthier, if less conventional, that I’d shared years before. Certainly, at first, I kidded myself I just wanted vicarious satisfaction – to look, but not to live it.
Thinking back, it seems it was actually my very first step toward escaping my marriage, and getting back myself – and my family – and finding someone who cares for me.
There’s a lot I regret about the time since, but I have no regrets about where I find myself now.
I have a lover who is my partner. Is she my submissive? Yes. Is that important? Yes, vital – but not in the way I expected it to be. I have been here before in some ways, many years ago, when I lucked into my second serious relationship – also my first D/s one. That first time, we both wanted everything and, for a time, that’s what we thought we had.
We were both young. Everything was ahead of us then, whereas now, I have as much of a past behind me as there is a future still to come. That past is part of me and I’ve no desire to leave it behind.
For c_b and me, things are different. Both she and I have rich pasts. Neither she nor I are in a position to give the other everything even though it always feels that we do. I have my children – and leaving their home and my marriage saved my relationship with them. Since, it has strengthened immeasurably.
C_b has her marriage and the life she has built with her husband in over 20 years of life together.
We have our relationship: as lovers, as friends, as partners. And we have our dynamic.
I’ve thought more and more about this dynamic and how it makes our relationship possible, and I am afraid I have few answers. I possess her when she is with me and there is a vital part of her (her submission) that is always only mine.
Neither of us considers the other of less than equal worth or inferior in any way. I love her more completely than I have any other and, for a long time, I considered that, in the context of the kind of relationship I needed (a D/s one) ,this made me inferior – because I worried that c_b could live without me much more easily than I could without her.
We each decided – twice – that love was not enough and that our futures could not lie together. But, now – and, I hope, until she buries me, or I her – we are a tough little partnership with a real prospect of continued success.
Of course, all the best love stories are tragedies, so I am not going to promise myself that this will last forever, but I’m sure, right now, that both of us aim to try.
At the moment, I think that if there is a secret to what we have achieved so far, it is in something that could apply to any couple – but which, for me and for her, has been made easier by a D/s dynamic.
We’re hard work. Both of us.
Not to others, I hope, but certainly to each other. Because we concentrate on each other. Because we try to put the other person first. I’d thought this was only possible in a D/s relationship and have often said so here. I now think I was blinkered and that it is possible for anyone – but I think our D/s natures make it possible for c_b and myself.
An example. c_b hardly ever asks for anything or tells me what she likes or wants. It’s something that just happened and it’s something that we’ve only really talked about recently. But, she always accepts my decision or my choice. It reinforces my D mojo because, in a shared relationship, there is much I can’t be responsible for. But, I want c_b to want me and to welcome what I do with or to her. So, I watch hard to see what makes her feel great, whether because she takes a genuine pleasure in pleasing me or if it is just something that makes her feel good. (Rope, anyone?)
This often leaves me puzzled. If all she wants is my pleasure, then what – really – is in it for her? Well – just that. When she thinks she’s pleased me more than she ever has before, when she thinks she’s amazed me, she feels great. And, sometimes, that’s when I wonder who has the whip hand – because she’s grinning and proud because of the way she’s made me feel and all I can be is amazed at what she’s done for me.
But I know she wouldn’t want to be the best she can be for me if she did not genuinely feel she could offer me her submission. It hasn’t happened just because I am dominant and she is submissive and we get on with each other. It did not happen because we fell in love. It happened because I gained her respect and she desired to give me authority to look after her and to use her. And, I know that if either of us lose that respect for the other, it’s over.
She is in all of my life – not a D/s compartment. c_b knows my children and the rest of my family, my workmates and other friends. She’s seen me through times when I nearly made some bad decisions and been a critical friend when I’ve needed one. It may be “My man – right or wrong” to the world (and often to me), but when I need it she’s right there with the tough love.
And now, a confession: without the community that IC has helped create I am sure our relationship would have had a much rougher time thriving.
We made friends (one especially important but no longer with us – Mrs_Smith) who helped us across the roughest parts of our path so far. We began to understand who we are by posting and talking and meeting people. Even the criticism we got made us stronger by helping us see outside ourselves and to understand who we could be, whilst respecting others’ points of view.
We found people who understood how we wanted to live and didn’t judge us for our failure to be conventional – but who would, by encouragement or criticism, help us feel even more special to each other.
I’ve no idea what the future holds. I just know that, when I joined IC, I never dared look ahead. Things looked black and IC felt like somewhere I could be me, for an hour or two each day.
Now, looking back, even my worst times have been made less frightening by the woman who holds my hand. And the future looks like a place I shouldn’t be afraid to go, if she’ll walk with me.
A dominant and submissive life 