This is a continuation of my post from yesterday on safewords and control in a scene. Anybody who read that probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I’m also not much of a fan of the commonly used green/yellow/red safeword scheme. I get the utility of that approach, but it again feels too much like taking control from the bottom. I want to give feedback, but the very unambiguous labeling of the colors feels (to me) more like direction than feedback.
Of course that begs the question – how should the bottom give feedback? Obviously talking after a scene is good. And responding to direct questions during a scene also works. But my favorite mechanism is screaming. Or moaning. Yelling. Whimpering. Grunting. Growling. Basically, any kind of proportional verbal feedback that helps the top know where I’m at.
It sounds kind of obvious when I write it down. Doesn’t everyone cry out when they get beaten, whipped or pierced? The key word though is proportional. I always want the domme to be able to trust the cues that she gets from me. I never try and play the stoic hero. I also try and avoid exaggerating my response, even though it’s sometimes tempting to do so as a defense mechanism to avoid escalation of the pain. Occasionally, when a sensation catches me unawares, and I react more from surprise than hurt, I’ll even comment to let the domme know what happened. I never want her to doubt the honesty of my reactions and start second guessing the intensity of the scene. I’m lucky in that I get to play with a lot of great dommes who are experts at judging non-verbal cues, but I always still make a conscious effort to communicate those cues as transparently as possible.
I’ll leave you with an image of someone about to provoke some non-verbal communication. I’m sure screaming will be involved, let’s hope it’s proportional.
The image comes via the Pure Beauty tumblr.
I haven’t been to a professional dominatrix in years and the last one I went to insisted on the color scheme thing. I agree that it just didn’t feel right. Felt like I was in some sort of lab or something. But I suppose I came out alive and without any lasting scars so that was a good thing.
Communication up front and a savvy domme seem to be all that’s needed in my opinion.
RW
I’ve done a few scenes with dommes who used the color code. I treated it essentially as red=stop and ignored the rest. It seemed to work out OK. But if the domme had actually expected me to use green and yellow through the session then it probably wouldn’t have worked so well.
I do think it might be valuable when playing with an inexperienced top and bottom. For example, if I was playing with a non-pro who was interesting in corporal play but hadn’t done it before, then I can see it being useful as a quick way to give feedback. But that’s less a scene and more of a learning curve in my view. Fun to do, but the goal is to learn rather than to play.
-paltego
Apparently I make a pretty broad range of involuntary semi-verbal sounds during play. I asked a play partner after our first time playing what kinds of sounds I made, and her response was “ALL the sounds.” That’s an exaggeration, though, because I haven’t done anything that has really caused me to scream, yell, shout, or sob. But there has been whimpering, whining, murmuring, and yelping. My breathing also communicates a lot.