Newbie Consent Guide for Pickup Play
Written by: Kai Brave
Foreword
If you are relatively new to the scene and looking for a simple guide to consent for pickup play, this writing is for you! If you're more experienced in the scene and comfortable with the nuances of consent, feel free to read on but please understand this guide is geared towards newer folks. This guide is an opinionated approach to consent and I don't expect everyone to agree with my opinions. I welcome discussion, but let's please keep it cordial and avoid nitpicking. If you find something in this guide to be highly concerning or incorrect, please let me know and I will respond appropriately.
Disclaimer
This is a simple, no-frills guide to basic consent for pickup play and is not intended to cover all aspects of consent or negotiation. Importantly, this guide is not a replacement for proper consent frameworks and discussion about consent. Consent is a constantly evolving framework and dialogue and I acknowledge that our community's definitions of consent have and will change over time. I hope this guide serves its purpose until it becomes outdated or (better yet) not needed.
In the writing of this guide, I will be applying principles from RACK and FRIES models. Furthermore, this guide is structured using an opt-in model for consent, which I believe is the safest model for beginners. OK, now to the real stuff.
Safewords
We have a separate writing on standard safewords for our parties. Please see those definitions here.
Basic first steps
Firstly, I'm grateful that you've found this page and are preparing yourself for a great experience in the dungeon!
What is consent? I'm not going to directly address that with this guide. If you haven't already, please do your own research or see my list of resources at the bottom of this guide. The goal with this guide is to answer the question:
What does good consent look like for a pickup scene?
Simple steps for pickup-play consent
Always negotiate. If you haven't negotiated thoroughly, you haven't consented to anything. Good negotiation is the most basic building block of all scenes. Always negotiate aftercare. Do this before the scene starts.
Everything happening in your scene should be explicitly and verbally agreed to during negotiation. Let me rephrase: If somebody does something to you during a scene that you did NOT talk about during negotiation, that is NOT consent. And more simply: If it is not explicitly put on the table, it is OFF THE TABLE by default.
BE VERY SPECIFIC. When something is put on the table, ask LOTS of questions about that thing. Assume that you and someone else may have hugely different interpretations of the same thing and spend time clarifying that before you start. The best way to describe this is with practical examples (see below).
Everyone involved in the scene MUST be present for negotiation. When something is agreed to, it is agreed to by specific people (explicitly and verbally) and they are the only people able to do that thing during the scene. Or more plainly: don't add or swap people after negotiation.
SEX IS NOT AFTERCARE. Sex can be aftercare! If you negotiate that and mutually consent to exactly the type and method of sex that you’ll be doing and explicitly state that it’s for aftercare. Similarly: touch, kissing, verbal communication, and anything else you can think of is NOT NECESSARILY AFTERCARE. It must be part of the negotiation and happen before the scene starts. More plainly: Do what was explicitly stated for aftercare and nothing more.
Aftercare is NOT part of the scene! If someone hits you with an impact toy during aftercare, that's not consent. Unless you explicitly said, “yes, during aftercare, I want to be hit with that toy”. If you agree to sex during the scene, and someone tries to initiate sex with you during aftercare, that’s also not consent. More plainly: Don't add anything extra to aftercare and do what was agreed upon.
Consent for one scene does not equal consent for another scene! Consent and negotiation are specific to each and every scene. Just because you agreed to do something on one day doesn't mean someone (or the same person) can do it to you on another day or in another scene.
Practical examples of what can go wrong with scene consent
Example 1
(top) Can I kiss you during the scene?
(bottom) Yes, sounds fun!
(top) **during scene - Kisses the bottom on their mouth, neck and shoulders, then begins to move down towards genitals
What went wrong here? Kissing was agreed to! But it wasn't agreed WHERE the kissing would happen. BE SPECIFIC. If someone says, "Can I touch you?", ask all of the questions! Where (will you touch me)? When (will you touch me)? How (will you touch me)? Why (do you want to touch me)? What (will you do when you touch me)?
Example 2
(top) OK, so today we're going to tie you up on the floor
(bottom) OK, great! ** more discussion about how the tying will happen, what ties will be used, typical rope things, let's presume the tying portion of this negotiation is successful and great
During the scene and while tying, the top starts to touch the bottom in a sexually charged way. Let's say hypothetically, this touch happens in non-sensitive areas like shoulders or lower legs.
What went wrong here? They are tying rope together, so obviously there has to be some touch involved. By consenting to tying with this top, did the bottom consent to being touched? Anywhere? In any way? With any type of energy, even sexual? The sexual touch didn't happen on the genitals or somewhere sensitive, so does that make it ok? It's kind of a gray area right?
Absolutely not! It wasn't talked about and the negotiation wasn't specific. Agreeing to being tied by someone does not equal agreeing to be touched sexually, or even touched at all.
A rope negotiation where tying was put on the table means this (from the bottom perspective):
I have agreed to be tied by you.
I have agreed to whatever degree of touch is necessary to be tied by you by virtue of agreeing to being tied. Nothing more.
Any touches (or anything else for that matter) that are not absolutely essential to the tying, because we did not discuss them, I have not agreed to.
Therefore, any touches, of any type, on any places, that are not strictly necessary for tying, are OFF THE TABLE
Example 3
(top) OK, we're gonna do some impact today! Here's the implements I will use and here's approximately how hard I'm going to hit you and where I'm going to hit with them.
(bottom) OK, this all sounds great ** Presume the rest of this went well
During the scene, the top does everything as planned with impact. The top also whispers into the bottom's ear: "Hey baby girl, don't you love this toy?". The bottom says "Yes, I love it, hit me harder with that"
What went wrong here? Everything with the impact went as planned and the negotiation was good. The bottom enjoyed the whole scene with no questions asked. Here's what wasn't on the table: "babygirl". One could say "no harm, no foul", but if everyone played with "no harm, no foul", there would eventually be "lots of harm, lots of foul" due to assumptions about what is and is not on the table for scenes. Use of pet names, honorifics, in fact, ANYTHING verbal you say to a person during a scene, MUST be negotiated.
Here's some problems off the bat with "babygirl" (or any other pet name / honorific):
Potential to misgender the person
Potential to trigger the person (either via misgendering or negative association with that word)
In general, you have no idea how someone interprets / feels about names / honorifics that they use. What might seem "casual" to one person ("babygirl") may be extremely serious for the other person
Example 4
Special note on this example. "Tastings" are not the same things as scenes. But in my opinion, consent can and should be applied equally to "tastings" regardless of how small or insignificant they may seem. I hope this example demonstrates why that is the case.
(top) OK so today we're going to do a paddle tasting.
(bottom) That looks really fun and I'm excited to try it! I've never done paddles before so I'm glad you're helping me explore something new.
(top) OK great! So I'm just going to hit your butt. Can you take off your pants?
(bottom) Sounds good to me.
(top) ** begins the tasting. Let's say for this example that the top chooses a particularly mean paddle and also hits the person full throttle with no warmup as a first strike.
(bottom) ** Immediately goes into shock due to the level of the strike and is unable to communicate any safewords verbally
(top) ** Continues the strikes for a couple minutes and then stops.
(top) So that was your tasting! Would you like a hug?
(bottom) Yes, thank you.
(bottom) ** Leaves the room, and proceeds to cry in the bathroom for a couple hours until a friend finds them and takes them home.
So what went wrong here? The consent was freely given, enthusiastic, verbal, affirmative, and they even negotiated where the hitting was going to happen. Here's a list of ways that this was not good consent:
Was the bottom aware of the level of risk with receiving a paddle? (Apply the "R" from RACK)
They were not aware of the level of risk. They had never done paddles before.
The top also increased the level of risk by choosing a particularly painful paddle.
Was "paddles on the butt" specific enough? (Apply Point #3 from my guide)
Not specific enough. Things that were missing:
"How hard the impact will be"
"Which specific toy will be used"
Was the scene/impact "opt-in"? (Apply the "R" from FRIES)
The top could have given the bottom an opportunity to exercise their right to "reversal of consent" by checking in after the first couple hits
Maybe they would have said something like, "Actually that was really hard, way harder than I was expecting, and I don't think I can continue now"
Due to extremely hard, unexpected impact with no check-ins AND due to shock response, the bottom did not get an opportunity to exercise reversal of consent
For these types of impact situations, I recommend doing "tester" hits. This is for the safety of both people. It's imperative that the top starts at zero and slowly ramps up. Feel free to use my impact pain scale when negotiating this.
Final Word
Thank you for reading and I hope this provided some insight into how to positively and confidently negotiate your pickup scenes. Feel free to leave a comment below with any questions or suggestions and also check out some of the additional resources below. And final thank you to my friends and mentors who helped in the writing and editing of this post.
P.S.
I also really like the RASH model for consent: "Risk Aware Shit Happens"
Resources
Please note - many of these resources are writings on Fetlife. You’ll need a (free) account to view them.
Official Consent Policy by Wicked Jester Presents
FRIES by Planned Parenthood
RACK by Wikipedia