"safeword” and, more commonly, "red." I consider it useful to go with the "public standard" because that means that in the future, you're likely to be attuned to the correct word if you practice BDSM with other partners as well. (It also means that if you ever do S&M in a public space such as a dungeon, everyone in the place will recognize your safeword if you scream it.)
C) At first wasn't that excited about this, but I've grown to love the fact that the safeword "red" also sometimes encompasses "green" -- and "yellow." That means that if I'm in the middle of an S&M encounter, I can say "red" and my partner will stop; I can then catch my breath and say "green," which means "by God keep going!" Or, if I'm a little uncertain about the territory but don't actually want my partner to stop -- if I just want my partner to be a little bit cautious -- then I can say "yellow" (and, of course, I can move to "sreen” if I become really psyched, or shift to "red" if I really want my partner to stop).
Thomas MacAulay Millar:
My spouse and I use the "stoplight system." It's simple, it works, and "yellow" option is really useful for things that are getting hard to handle. Also, a lot of bottoms are either submissives or masochists with more pride and stubbornness than is good for them -- the former out of an overdeveloped desire to please, the latter sometimes out of a desire to impress or even just a pitbull-stubborn urge to push themselves as hard as they can go. Take the personalities that finish an Ironman and collapse and need IV fluids, and put them on a spanking bench with big welts from a prison strap, and you've got someone who won't safeword when ze probably should. In those and other circumstances, giving the bottom an easy option to say, "I'm struggling here" without feeling like they're quitting is a very useful thing.
[Editor's Note: "ze" is the gender-neutral pronoun, and it's in the Glossary. Clarisse tried to use it regularly for a while, but ultimately concluded that it made her posts less accessible to non-gender nerds. ]
Clarisse Thorn:
I know that this probably doesn't sound sexy at all, but it totally can be! Consider the following example: during my last vacation to America, I had an S&M encounter with a dude I'll refer to as Klark. (It's not my fault. He requested the pseudonym.) At one point, Klark was experimenting with hurting me, and I had my eyes closed and was whimpering / crying out in a totally glorious way. (The poor overnight desk clerk. He was only one short flight of stairs away from us.) I think Klark was legitimately having trouble detecting whether I was enjoying myself, though -- understandably, because we had only just met, and I enjoy sinking myself into dramatic masochistic misery -- so he leaned over me and said, in a low dark voice, "Red, yellow, green." Immediately, I gasped back "Green." Because he spoke in a gritty and dominant voice, and the check-in was quick, we were able to maintain the mood -- and it was actually kind of hot in itself.
Which brings me to the other thing: check-ins. Sometimes, you want to check in with your partner. Which can be easy: you can just say, "Hey, how does this feel?" or, as a more precise example, "Give me a rating of 1-10 on how good this feels (or how much this hurts)." But if you want to do it quickly and without shifting the mood, you can do it
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