Let's get consensual

While dominance and submission are seen as defining factors of BDSM, nobody involved should ever be powerless. Beatrice Fanucci spoke to leading members of Ireland’s kink community to discover how they practice enthusiastic consent, ensuring sex remains safe and satisfying for all involved.

Photo by Fionn, Mr Dublin Leather 2024.

Conversations about consent have been taking place for years, especially after the #MeToo movement took the world by storm, challenging the way we think about power when it comes to sex. While there is still a long road ahead until consent is fully understood and respected by everyone, more and more people are talking about how to keep themselves and others safe when intimacy takes place.

One community that has been a champion of what consent should look like when engaging in sexual activity is the BDSM and kink community. Before misleading representations such as Fifty Shades of Grey broke into the mainstream, offering a distorted view of BDSM relationships, this community was already setting high standards and rewriting the rules outside the heteronormative, sex-negative framework that pervaded conceptions of sex.

Most BDSM dynamics - though not all - usually involve some form of power exchange that can take diverse forms. The best-known terms to refer to the roles that partners assume when engaging in such dynamics are Dominant and Submissive, often shortened to Dom and Sub. However, these standard roles can have different connotations - master/slave, hunter/prey, handler/puppy, to name a few. The relationships may also vary in terms of how long and in what situations such power exchange takes place. But what they all have in common is the emphasis on consent and communication.

I had the pleasure of interviewing this year’s Mr Dublin Leather and Puppy Ireland, two prominent members of the Irish BDSM community, who also happen to be in a throuple together. From the very start of our chats, they told me the same thing. “People from the outside looking in tend to see the Dominant as being the one in power, or the one being in control. And in actual fact, that's the complete opposite,” said Kris, who won the title of Puppy Ireland in January 2024.

Echoing his words, Fionn, who was elected Mr Dublin Leather 2024, said: “The reality of it is, the person who is Submissive usually is the person who actually has the power. Because it's their limits that the Dominant person is playing to, it's their limits that they've agreed to. They're the ones who set the boundaries.”

It might seem counterintuitive, but it’s actually quite simple. The Submissive is the one who gives the Dominant power over them, which means they are the one who held it in the first place. If the Dominant were to simply take it, then that’s not a healthy BDSM dynamic anymore. That’s sexual assault.

Limits hold a paramount importance in such dynamics. BDSM relationships involve conversations about preferences and boundaries that often don’t even take place between partners who don’t engage in such practices. “Communication is number one. It's absolutely the golden rule when it comes to BDSM,” said Kris, who, in addition to engaging in puppy play, is also a Dom. He offered an example of how these conversations might play out in practice with a potential new partner. “Before, I will have an evening which is not going to be a scene or anything like that,” he explained. “The plan is actually just to sit down and have a chat. And I will go through this menu, just as a fun thing. It lists basically everything that you could do, or most things. And then you go ‘Absolutely not’, ‘Needs discussion’, ‘Yes’ and ‘Absolutely yes’.

“As soon as they fill out theirs, we'll compare them together and joke about it and laugh and go, ‘Oh, have you done that before?’ and make an evening of that.”

Having discussions about limits and boundaries beforehand is “important, because it means when you actually get into the scene or into the dynamic, those things you don't have to really think about,” Fionn said. “Because they've been laid out. You know exactly where the boundaries are. So both parties know that they can feel safe in what they're doing, because they know the other person won't overstep a line.”

This emphasis on communication is necessary to ensure that everyone who engages in BDSM can give their constant and informed consent, before engaging in any sort of scene. Two main schools of thought have developed within the BDSM community when it comes to consent. One of them is 'Safe, Sane and Consensual', which holds that for a sexual activity to be ethical, it needs to be considered safe, sane and consensual by all parties. Some have highlighted the flaws of this approach, as it is based on subjective measures. Someone may regard a specific sex act as safe and sane, while another partner might have a completely different perception. Moreover, if a person is new to the world of kink, they might not be aware of what is involved in a certain scene and its implications before they have tried it. This, in turn, may lead the more experienced partner to take things for granted, if they are not properly discussed.

For such reasons, another school of thought has recently grown in popularity within BDSM circles: 'Risk Aware Consensual Kink' (also called RACK). As Fionn explained, RACK is about ensuring “that every party involved understands exactly what is going on in the scenario; they know exactly what happens, what their safe words are, where the boundaries are.”

This approach places particular emphasis on discussing the risks involved in a certain sexual activity so that all partners are fully aware of what they are consenting to. It also involves conversations about dividing lines between comfort and discomfort so that partners are aware not to cross them and it provides an opportunity for more informed consent. Moreover, the core idea behind RACK is that, as Kris explained, “nothing can be completely mitigated as being 100% safe.” This makes the need for the people involved to be aware of what they’re going through even more important.

While having conversations before engaging in a scene is paramount, consent also needs to be constant while the action is taking place. That’s where the use of safe words comes in. A safe word is typically a non-sexual word that either partner can use to stop the action immediately and it’s about communicating consent in a fast and efficient way. Another way the community has developed to communicate consent during a scene is the so-called traffic light system, where one of the partners would ask the other what their colour is. “Green is ‘Good, okay’. Orange is ‘Slow down’ or ‘Can we take a breather?’ And then red is ‘Hard stop, hard no’,” Fionn explained. “We also have systems to communicate when one’s ability to speak is impaired or reduced,” Kris said. Examples of this would be when someone is gagged or going into sub space, ie. the altered state that Subs can experience when the rush of endorphins hits.

“Also, no alcohol,” Kris stressed. “I don't drink at all anyways, so it's easy for me. But if the Sub was drinking, for me it's not happening. If you're drunk or on drugs or anything like that, you can't consent. So it's a hard no.”

All these are the basics that any person who wishes to engage in BDSM should know about and abide by. As with everything else in life, there are people who join the world of kink with little knowledge or worse, with the wrong attitude. During our interview, Kris called these people “tourists”.

“The amount of times I would get messages from Subs, just saying ‘Come over, no limits, do what you want’,” he said. “Absolutely not, that's not happening. You clearly don't understand what this is like and also you're in danger. You're really putting yourself in serious danger.” And it’s not just people who are interested in taking on the Submissive role that misunderstand what these dynamics entail. “I've seen some Doms who don't know what they're doing, who just believe that being a Dom is hurting someone. That's just sadistic,” Kris said. “That's not being a Dom. A Dom is the most caring person.”

There are some signs to watch out for to understand whether a potential partner is to be trusted or might be abusive. Fionn explained: “If you feel like you can't voice your concerns or say something because you're worried of what will happen, if you feel like the other person will get mad or get frustrated, that's a major red flag.

“If they can't take no for an answer, if they're not willing to pick up or notice the cues that you're giving, and if you're worried about their reaction, that would be kind of three big things” to look out for.

“Coming into any kind of space, as a newcomer with limited real world experience, there are always people who are going to want to exploit and take advantage of that. And thankfully, those people, in my experience, are few and far between, but those people unfortunately do exist,” said Fionn, recalling the beginnings of his experience as a cis gay man in the world of kink. “I joined, in real life, the scene post-Covid. And my first experience was groups like Leathermen of Ireland and Out in Kink. I was lucky in that regard that there were people who have been around since essentially the formation of the scene here in Ireland.”

He spoke about how these groups often take on the responsibility of guiding newcomers and ensuring that they engage in kink in a safe way and with the right people. “One thing within the Irish kink scene is that we all look out for each other. Because it is such a small community. Everyone knows everyone. And it's important that we all look out for each other,” Fionn said. “So now, even though I've only been in the scene for essentially three or four years, I even found myself doing that for people who have come in after me.

“We want people to come and feel safe with us. And as I've often said, I never fully understood or felt like I related to the whole ‘chosen family’ idea until I became involved in the fetish and the kink scene here in Ireland,” Fionn shared. “I found that, okay, this is my people, this is my tribe, this is who I feel comfortable with.”

Kris shared a similar sentiment, saying: “Being autistic, my social interactions were very, very poor all the way through life. I never really had friends, couldn't maintain friendships. I just had my husband and I worked away and I kind of accepted the fact that while I don't make friends, that's just the way it is for me.

“This community has provided a huge network of family and friends and just amazing people that all share this common interest. All are so supportive, all are so open and frank and honest. And so that's where I found my chosen family from then on.”

“If people are curious or interested, the scene is there,” Fionn said. “And if you want to come along, we're always welcoming.

“Do it at your own pace. You don't have to try and do everything at once. If you want to come along to an event and just chat to people, you can do that. Or you can go dive headfirst straight into whatever you want, just as long as you're doing it with the full understanding of what you're doing, giving your full, enthusiastic consent and you're getting the other person's or other people's full enthusiastic consent. Go for it. We're here.”