Ignorance Doesn't Have a Consent Acronym

As a kink writer with a breathplay aversion, I’m often accused of being risk averse. I’m not the Kink Karen you think I am. Let’s cut to a metaphor break.

When I was considering brain surgery, I had to weigh up the risks involved in cutting into a tiny part of my temporal lobe. I spent weeks in hospital connected to a monitor to assess this accurately. Every brain resection surgery is different, but mine might have cost me my personality, my mood stability, and my ability to write.

I’ll give you one guess which of those risks I found unacceptable. I was willing to lose my personality, but my life would cease to have meaning if I couldn’t write. An electrician or a full-time dad might think nothing of risking their word power, just as I might think nothing of losing my negligible mathematical abilities.

Epilepsy patients measure risk very differently from one another. Some find cognitive decline an acceptable side effect and some don't. Some are more averse to the perpetual anger that comes with some anticonvulsants. Some are willing to risk losing their voices to implants, and some aren’t willing to take a single risk associated with surgery at all. All of those priorities are valid.

As with anti-convulsants, kink doesn’t have a particularly high universal level of unacceptable risk. Most of us would see death by murder as an unacceptable risk, but beyond those kinds of extremes, we’re all different. We’re all willing to accept different risks, so if you want to be suspended from Occam’s Razor, I won't judge you. My only concern is that you know what might happen when you are.

I’m not risk averse. I’m ignorance averse.

If you tell me you’ve done all your homework and have decided you’re comfortable losing the use of your thumb and forefinger while dangling from a cloud trussed in jute, I’ll give you my full respect. Go forth and dangle.

If you have no idea what the risks of breath play are but engage in it anyway, you're not risk aware. You’re not RACK. You’re not even PRICK. You’re just ignorant, and there is no acronym for that.

I don’t judge edge players. I do, however, go full Karen on people who do crazy things without educating themselves. Every individual has their own risk tolerance. Nobody can do this work for you. Your personal responsibility is yours alone.

There is plenty of room for risk in the kink scene, but there is no room for stupidity.

BDSM risk is a body of hazards that you've assessed and found acceptable.

BDSM stupidity is a body too lazy to even bother educating itself.

I don’t like the latter much.

There is an entire swathe of kinky humans who believe all kink should be “sane” and “safe.” I don’t belong to that club. I find some risks worth taking, but if you’re SSC, you’ve chosen your risk level. Congratulations. You’re almost exactly like me. You have more in common with RACK players than you might think.

There’s an acronym that doesn’t exist in the kink scene:

TILB: Too Intellectually Lazy to Bother.

Don’t be TILB. I hear the last guy had his dick cut off by a roving train while doing some perfectly safe cock and ball torture.