There is no question that BDSM terms have drifted into the mainstream over time. Many of the terms that our Community first coined have since become expressions that are common to all.
For example, while we didn’t invent the idea of consent, it was BDSMers who first forged the idea in the 1980s that mutual, informed consent is the guiding principle of ethical sex and a hallmark of BDSM relationships.
Below, I’ll explain the three key concepts we innovated and how they have migrated into mainstream usage.
Vanilla Sex
Etymologists have struggled with its origin, but despite the wrangling, most sex historians agree that the kink world ca. 1970s gets the credit for using “vanilla” to refer to conventional sex. By the 1980s, the term took hold throughout the rapidly growing BDSM communities and now is in mainstream usage.
A little kink history on that: kinksters founded educational groups in the 1970s (notably The Eulenspiegel Society in NYC). TES, under the leadership of Pat Bond, educated newcomers by explaining that sexual variations were not weird or sinful because everyone’s tastes varied. Kink educators latched onto the trope that “some people love vanilla ice cream, but others love chocolate with sprinkles, or pistachio (etc. etc.)” It was an easily understandable food metaphor to help people see sexual variations as simply another expression of human diversity. The Internet helped core kink education fan out to millions of kinky people, then to other alternative-sex communities, and ultimately into the mainstream.
While vanilla is a term of art for BDSMers, helping kinky people to distinguish themselves from non-kinky, its drift into the mainstream came with a downside. Non-kinky people may take umbrage that it makes them sound dull or lacking in sexual creativity.
Don’t shame the vanillas
Needless to say, using the term vanilla can hurt some folks’ feelings. Don’t shame the non-kinky!
It’s always good to remember that everyone is entitled to pursue the kind of sex that suits them best. That applies to all consenting adults, whether they are kinky, poly, swingers, fetishists, queer, gay, bi, or anything else — including being fully satisfied by a 100% traditional sex life.
Use “Vanilla” as originally intended — to celebrate diversity.
Safe Words
One of the BDSM terms which have entered the mainstream and is now broadly applied to non-sexual situations is “safe word”. For example, parents may give their kids safe words to text if they run into trouble while out of the house. Doctors may not realize it but when they ask patients to rate pain during a procedure, that’s a kind of safe-word system (with 10 obviously being the “holy fuck, this is hell” limit that may get the doctor to slow down or suggest you grab someone’s hand, etc.).
For kinky people, safe words are key to the safe exploration of challenging sexual creativity, including spankings, bondage, whippings, and even mind games. With our focus on safety and consent, safe words are a solid way to elicit feedback from the bottom on how they are doing at the moment and will guide tops to slow down or withdraw sensation.
Read more on how safe words and consent function for submissives. Then learn about Ethical Power Exchange Relationships to improve your kink education on consent.
Consent Models – in Kink and Beyond
The most famous consent model in BDSM is SSC (safe, sane, consensual), a term whose origin can be traced to the early 1980s. Early gay BDSM activists (specifically my old friend and Leather brother, David Stein) proposed its use to clarify the difference between a conscious and deliberate ethical framework for kink, and the kind of unethical and dangerous games that cause trauma and heartache.
By the 1990s, when kinksters aligned on the Internet to talk about “WIITWD” (What It Is That We Do, another term of art in the BDSM world), fierce Community debates emerged about SSC. What did safe actually mean? What the hell did sane mean — was it even fair to judge another person’s sanity? And also, what kind of consent? Was it enough to say yes when someone didn’t fully grasp what they were getting into? Informed consent became the more precise type of consent we were talking about — and, of course, we are still talking about it!
Take CNC, consensual non-consent, one of the more complex and nuanced consent models. For some, it means that while, on the surface, it may not look consensual when a top pushes a bottom beyond SSC, if the bottom has given the top clear, negotiated permission to do exactly that, then this style of play becomes ethical.
Today, we can find a wide range of Consent Models that evolved from SSC. This includes RACK (risk-aware consensual kink), CNC, and PRICK (Personal Responsibility, Informed Consensual Kink).
The Devil is in the Consent Details
The mainstream –and the legal system — still have a long way to go in understanding the complexity of consent models. But they are making huge progress. Numerous non-kinky organizations now offer their own models, such as Planned Parenthood, which uses FRIES, and IDC, which uses FRIES and CRISP. Amazing what BDSM philosophy has generated, isn’t it?
Celebrate The Mainstreaming of our BDSM Terms
Be proud of our trailblazing work! We started by making the BDSM world a better and safer space for ourselves. Today, with the drift of Safe Words and Consent Models into the mainstream, these BDSM terms are now helping all those who hunger for better relationships.
