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TSR : O&P Wiki : Safe, Sane, and Consensual : ICcode

This article is part of the O&P Wiki hosted by The Slave Register

This is the version from 14 Jan 07, 11:42 PM. The full history of this article will show any more recent versions.

ICcode for "Safe, Sane, and Consensual"

Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) is one of several phrases 
used by a large section of the [wiki=BDSM]BDSM[/wiki] and
sexual bondage communities, who regard SSC to be a watchword for safety 
to describe themselves and their 
philosophies.

The principles are that BDSM activities should be:

[item]safe: attempts should be made to identify and prevent
 risks to health

[item]sane: activities should be undertaken in a sane and 
sensible cast of mind

[item]consensual: all activities should involve the full 
informed consent of all parties involved 

Other people in the BDSM community do not consider SSC to be 
an accurate term for these relationships / activities. The
term [wiki=Risk-Aware Consensual Kink]Risk Aware Consensual
Kink[/wiki] (RACK) has been gaining popularity as a 
substitute description.

For those who dissent, issues generally arise from the 
subjective nature of each term in SSC and the problems this 
creates both within and outside the community when using the 
term as a yardstick to evaluate activities.
Another objection to SSC is that it is redundant. For example, that
genuine consent (freely given informed consent) is an equivalent
principle, since without sanity one cannot be genuinely informed, and
that safety is an illusion in the real world. Instead of only doing safe
activities, we consent to do activities with an acceptable level of
risk. In that view, information about risk is central, not safety, and
so informed consent is sufficient.

Within [wiki=Ownership]ownership[/wiki] and
[wiki=Master/slave]M/s/[/wiki], SSC is often rejected because of its
association with [wiki=Safety Police]"Safety Police"[/wiki] attitudes
which are usually antithetical to ownership relationships. SSC also
fails to address the issue of [wiki=Consensual Nonconsent]Consensual 
Nonconsent[/wiki].

Most people attribute the term SSC to David Stein, based on his essay "Safe Sane Consensual: 
The Evolution of a Shibboleth" in which he describes the coining of the term by a GMSMA 
(Gay Male S/M Activists) committee of which he was a member in 1984. It is important to 
note that all the key concepts of SSC appeared before this. Tony DeBlase in DungeonMaster 
magazine popularized the term “Safe and Sane” SM and various American SM organizations 
including the Society of Janus, TES, and Samois elaborated on this in their own definitions of 
SM in the early 1980s. The term SSC did not achieve widespread notice until its use in some 
of the literature for the SM-leather contingent of the 1987 March on Washington for Gay 
and Lesbian Rights, which GMSMA helped organize. In 1988, representatives from most of 
the major U.S. and Canadian SM 
organizations met at a conference in Dallas. Following two days of increasingly vitriolic 
debate, they formed an organization called Safe Sane Consensual Adults, which two years 
later merged with the National Leather Association (NLA). The NLA, in turn, popularized the 
term SSC in all its publications and its Living in Leather convention and helped it win almost 
universal acceptance by the early 1990s as the key concept that differentiated SM activities 
from abuse and criminality. 

[heading]See Also

[item][wiki=Ethical systems]Ethical systems[/wiki]

[item][wiki=Consensual nonconsent]Consensual nonconsent[/wiki]

[item][wiki=Risk-Aware Consensual Kink]Risk Aware Consensual
Kink[/wiki] (RACK)

[heading]External links

[item][url=http://www.lthredge.com/ds/history.htm]Essays by David Stein
[/url]

[item][url=http://www.leathernroses.com/generalbdsm/medlinssc.htm]SSC 
vs RACK[/url] by Justin Medlin

(This article incorporates text from the 
[url=http://www.londonfetishscene.com/wipi/index.php/Safe%2C_sane%2C_and_consensual]
Safe,
sane, and consensual[/url]
article in Wipipedia.)

This article is published under the terms of the GFDL. People with profiles on The Slave Register can improve this article: see the O&P Wiki help page for details.

 

 
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