Negotiating Critical Consent

Abstract

Consent is a core concept of BDSM practitioners’ self-understanding; it is crucial for an activity to be defined as BDSM (Langdridge & Butt 2004: 40). Often it is presented as an uncomplicated given:

While nowhere else in this book we will speak directly on behalf of the sadomasochistic community in total, here we will: We have chosen to do these activities, we have chosen the people with whom we share them, we know what we are doing, and what we are doing is consensual. Period.

(Moser & Madeson 1996: 71)

This quote shows how consent has gained the status of a dogma in the BDSM community, the ‘period’ stating that no discussion is allowed about this. Furthermore, consent is treated as if it were easy to define and establish, but in the work quoted it is not explained at all: it is considered self-evident.