You Don’t Get a Say in How Others Play

Yesterday, a couple informed me that people who engage in pick-up play and opt-in negotiations don't belong in the kink scene.

The Cape Town scene can be rather flighty. H flogs at least a thousand subs a night, and F has a veritable queue of people waiting for fire play. S teaches people about sharps, so she has many single-serving play partners, too. C and N are married and poly. They have serious relationships and casual relationships.

Me? Well, I’m just there to meet my friends and learn a few things through observation. If I play, it’s from within a committed relationship, so I use opt-out negotiations. (That means negotiating according to my hard limits rather than the things I intend to include in a scene.)

I once visited a rope top on the other side of the planet. He wanted to introduce me to rope during the week we had together. Given those limitations, we used an opt-in model. We chose what to include in a scene, and not what we’d exclude. We discussed which ties would be dangerous if I had a seizure and what to do in a crisis. We had three casual rope scenes in total, and as we progressed, we added new extremes. He knew I had epilepsy, and that was the safest way to test it. Essentially, we moved slower than we might have if we’d used an opt-out model so that he could observe my epilepsy’s response to rope slowly.

When I wrote about opt-in negotiations this week, a few people called them unthorough. This doesn’t need to be the case.

Let's say negotiation is a buffet.

In my opt-out negotiations, I put everything on my plate in one go.

In opt-in negotiations, I put a few things on my plate at a time. To test everything in the buffet, I have to eat many more meals, so opt-in models might be faster per scene, but they are actually slower and more careful as a whole.

Even so, opt-in models work well for casual play. Pick-up play enthusiasts are not doing full opt-out negotiations with everyone they play with in a single night. Given their time limitations, opt-in models are often safer.

Yesterday's couple insisted these kinds of people were not serious enough to have a place in the BDSM community. Casual kink is wrong. If it’s not hard work, you don’t belong with us.

Now, I’m not usually interested in casual play. I play with dangerous kinks. This requires work. That doesn’t make my way the right way. It just makes me an individual.

Cape Town’s pick-up-play enthusiasts aren’t The One True Way either. They're just individuals. Some are swingers. Some are just there for a little impact play. Some are learning and thus playing with people like Z, who are generous enough to help newbies with their first experience with fire or sharps. This is why we call these “learn and play parties.” Those newbies will be in a better position to keep themselves safe once they’ve had those experiences with educators. You could say many of them are working harder on their safety than I am with my opt-out model.

My gatekeeping couple thinks opt-in models have no place in kink. Why would you need them if you’re serious? The rope top I played with has travelled the world learning his craft for 20 years. If that’s not serious, I don’t know what is.

Other people’s sex lives are irrelevant to you. You don’t get a say in how others play. Nor do you get to define BDSM or choose the password at the gate.