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BDSM Beginners Kit
BDSM Tips for Beginners
by Lady Green and Jay Wiseman
Note: Greenery Press publishes many educational non-fiction works
dealing with bdsm and other areas of sexuality. Several new titles are
published each year. For more info, e-mail a catalog request to
[email protected], send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Greenery
Press, 3739 Balboa # 195, San Francisco, CA 94121 or go to
www.bigrock.com/~greenery/
BDSM is one of several overall names given to a collection of behaviors
that involve bondage, spanking, domination, and other activities that
are done in a safe, consensual, non-abusive manner and in an erotic
context. BDSM is a form of erotic play that involves significant
physical and emotional risks, and thus requires instruction in order to
do so with reasonable safety. Accordingly, we make the following
recommendations for beginners. Please understand that the tips below do
not provide, nor are they meant to provide, complete instruction.
- Do BDSM only with people you know well and are on good terms with,
and when both of you are in a good mood. Trying to do it with strangers,
or when either of you is tired or upset, dramatically increases the
degree of risk. Avoid significant use of intoxicants. If you're not in
condition to drive, you're not in condition to do BDSM.
- Keep "reality" out of it. Unless both of you specifically agree to it
ahead of time, BDSM play is not a proper occasion to "punish" someone
for a "real world" offense. Unpaid parking tickets, dirty dishes left in
the sink, and so forth get handled outside the BDSM play.
- The more empathy you have, the better you'll be at this. If you
reasonably and safely can, experience something yourself before you do
it to another person.
- Prepare for emergencies. Have needed supplies close by, including a
first aid kit, a fire extinguisher, and flashlights. Take training in
First Aid and CPR at least once a year.
- Play with a "silent alarm" in place. When you play with somebody new
in private, tell a trusted friend where you'll be and who you'll be
with. Make sure, diplomatically, that you tell your prospective partner
ahead of time that you will be doing this, and encourage him or her to
do the same.
- Negotiate what you'll do ahead of time. This is not the time to have
a mismatch of expectations. Handle such matters as sexual behavior,
safer sex precautions, type and degree of bondage, physical and
emotional limits, and so forth before you play. Stay within these limits
while you play. If your session goes well, there's always next time.
Check in with each other afterwards, perhaps the next day. Discuss what
did and what didn't work, and what you might do next time.
- Agree upon a safeword or two. These are special phrases used to
indicate that the activity "really" needs to be slowed, changed, or
stopped. Refusal to honor a safeword is very serious misconduct; it can
even be a crime.
- It's a good idea for the dominant to "check in" with the submissive
several times during the session. (Sometimes submissives find it
difficult to use their safewords, even when they should.) One good
non-verbal check-in is for the dominant to give the submissive's hand
two light but firm squeezes. If the dominant gets two squeezes back, it
means that the submissive is basically all right.
- Avoid toys that have sharp edges or corners. Instruments used for
spanking, whipping, and so forth should be carefully rounded off.
- Start lightly and build slowly. A too-rapid increase in the physical
or emotional intensity of the play is the direct cause of many problems.
- The submissive can use the "one to ten" technique to indicate
they're ready to feel a paddle or whip stroke, and its intensity. "One"
is a feather-light touch; "ten" is a full-power stroke.
- As a rule, strokes from whips and paddles are delivered to fleshy,
muscled body areas such as the lower buttocks and the "lower half of the
upper half" of the back. It's very dangerous to strike your partner over
their kidneys, liver, spleen, or tailbone.
- Use only soft, plain paraffin candles for hot wax play. Harder
candles, such as beeswax candles, have a melting point high enough to
cause burns.
- Spring-loaded wooden clothespins can work well as erotic clamps on
the nipples, the genitals, and other locations. Various clamps found in
office supply stores can also work well. Keep in mind that clamping an
area shuts off its circulation. Experts vary regarding how long clamps
can be left on, but most express their opinions in terms of minutes.
Clamps hurt most when coming off. Self-experimentation is recommended
here.
- Do not attempt to do piercings or other activities that involve
breaking the skin unless you have studied under, or are being supervised
by, an knowledgeable individual.
- Bondage creates dangerous vulnerability. We recommend that you let
someone tie you up, blindfold you, or gag you only after you have first
done at least two successful BDSM scenes with them that involved no
bondage.
- There is never any need to tie some part of your partner's body so
tightly that it "goes to sleep." If this happens, loosen the bondage.
- Do not leave a bound person alone. As a general rule, stay as close
to a bound person as you would to an infant left in your care. (If you
gag them, stay even closer.)
- Another general rule is that you should be able to free a bound
person within one minute of an emergency occurs, even if they have
fainted. Wise BDSM players keep special "paramedic scissors" or similar
items handy to help with this.
- We advise caution when playing with any form of self-bondage. See
point # 18 above.
- After extensive medical consultation, we have been unable to
discover any form of suffocation or strangulation play that is not
unpredictably life-threatening.
Where to Learn More:
There is much more to be learned. We strongly suggest that you contact
your local BDSM club for further instruction. The "Leather Pride" area
on AOL has much to recommend it. If you have access to the internet, we
recommend that you look over the alt.sex.bondage, alt.sex.femdom,
alt.sex.spanking, and alt.sex.wizards newsgroups. A web search on the
phrase bdsm will yield almost too much information.
The following books are some, but not all, of those that contain good
introductory material regarding BDSM:
"Learning the Ropes" by Race Bannon
"Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns" by Philip Miller and Molly Devon
"Sensuous Magic" by Pat Califia
"SM 101: A Realistic Introduction" by Jay Wiseman
"Safe, Sane, Consensual, and Fun" by John Warren
"Consensusal Sadomasochism" by William Henkin and Sybil Holiday
"The Sexually Dominant Woman: A Workbook for Nervous Beginners" by Lady Green
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