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SD! Wiki : Safe, Sane, and Consensual : history
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Safe, Sane, and Consensual
Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) is one of several phrases
used by a large section of the BDSM 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:
- safe: attempts should be made to identify and prevent
risks to health
- sane: activities should be undertaken in a sane and
sensible cast of mind
- 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 Risk Aware Consensual
Kink (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 ownership and
M/s/, SSC is often rejected because of its
association with "Safety Police" attitudes
which are usually antithetical to ownership relationships. SSC also
fails to address the issue of Consensual
Nonconsent.
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. See Also
External links
(This article incorporates text from the
Safe,
sane, and consensual
article in Wipipedia.)
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