clear from the context whether it's meant as an umbrella term like "bottom" or as a specific term. The use of "dominant" and "submissive" as the default terms seems to me to have started in the mid 90's, and I've never liked it because of its imprecision. Not all bottoms are subs; some people like to bottom but don't have a submissive bone in them. Some bottoms are wisecracking smartassed masochists only in it to play the pain game and ride the endorphins; some bottoms don't see themselves as giving up power in any way to the top. And I top my fair share, but I certainly don't think of myself as a dominant. I think the change in terminology arose with a small but vocal minority of kinksters who believe that everyone who does BDSM is really looking for a deep power exchange, ultimately even a 24/7 relationship. I still see people make this argument. They're still wrong, and they're still few in number. Using "submissive" and "dominant" when one means to include folks who are just topping and bottoming may be misunderstood; saying "top" and "bottom" is almost always correctly understood as the inclusive term. ("Sadist" and "masochist" are specific terms that shouldn't be pressed into general service either; there are submissives that really, really don't like pain at all and dominants that would prefer never to inflict it.)
Clarisse Thorn: What I love about safewords and check-ins:
1) Hypothetically, mainstream society acknowledges that anyone could say no at any point during sex, but in practice, this is really hard. A variety of forces -- girls socially pressured not to be so-called "cock-teases," boys socially pressured to supposedly "prove their manliness," and everyone anxious to please their partners -- work against people's capacity to say no; and while there is a vague understanding that "no means no," that vagueness is as far as it gets. There's no explicit framework in place for how to say "no," and no understanding of how to continue an encounter (or relationship) after one's partner says no. Even worse, there's an assumed linear progression of sexual activity -- the best example is the "base system," which places sexual interaction on a metaphorical baseball diamond where "first base" = groping and "home base" = penis-in-vagina sex. Have I mentioned that I hate the base system?
So anyway, the biggest moral of the story with safewords and check-ins is that consent does not only happen once. Consent is always happening, and can always be renegotiated or withdrawn. Adapting my understanding of sexuality to reflect this -- even in my non-BDSM sex -- might have been the best thing that ever happened to my sex life.
Thomas MacAulay Millar:
What can safewords do for non-kinky people? Permission communication. In a culture that delegitimizes communication -- especially women's communication of limits or needs -- this is huge. Safewords permission "no." That which permissions the free exercise of "no" also, necessarily, creates space for the free exercise of "yes."
Clarisse Thorn:
2) On a related note: Good sex is not about entitlement. If we acknowledge that anyone can safeword out of any sexual act at any time, then we acknowledge that no one is
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