Basic Guide to BDSM Safewords

Written by: Kai Brave

Safewords are extremely important in BDSM. They can serve many purposes, but these are their most important uses during a scene:

• To indicate that something has gone wrong

• To indicate that some adjustment is needed

• To revoke consent

The stoplight system

In the BDSM community, there is a widely recognized system for standard safewords - the “Stoplight System”. While many kinksters may define these safewords in a variety of ways, we strongly advocate for using these strict and clear definitions, especially for “Red”.

• Green - All good, OK, continue on

• Yellow - Pause, check in, ask to continue the scene

  • Many kinksters will use more flexible definitions for Yellow. Please be careful and negotiate the exact meaning of your safewords before beginning play.

• Red - Hard stop on all activity. Go straight to aftercare. Consent is revoked for play for the rest of the evening with any participants in the scene.

  • Red is the unambiguous “hard out” for a person who needs to end a scene. In our view, this definition is the only correct definition for “Red”. Any dungeon or organizer that attempts to redefine Red is limiting the ability of their attendees to revoke consent. We highly recommend against redefining the word “Red” in your personal play as well.

Many dungeons and organizers will adopt a set of “House Safewords”. Most often, the house safeword is:

• Safeword - Same as “Red” with an additional effect: a Dungeon Monitor will intervene and remove the kinkster that has safeworded and take them to a safe space / provide any support they may need