one, for many reasons. Clarisse mentioned that some people "don't use safewords." From the context, she's talking not about people for whom no means no in scene, but people for whom there is no definitive way for the bottom to stop the scene. And perhaps readers can tell from Clarisse's tone that that's... the advanced class. You'll find the safety police in any BDSM space or community that finger-wag about it, and the swaggering more- kinky-than-thous that brag about it. But what does it mean? I can only tell you what it means for me. There are times I give up my safeword: only to my spouse. We've been playing together for about a decade and a half. If I give up my safeword, and that's something we do rarely, it doesn't mean I don't have limits. I have limits! Yes I do! There are things I can't handle, mentally or physically, and things I never want to handle! There are "hard limits,” things I've said I'm just not willing to do. And there are soft limits, things I don't think I'm ready for but I'm willing to bump up against them and see what happens. If I give up my safeword, it means I have limits, but instead of telling her when I've reached them, I'm going to trust her to listen to me and watch me and make that decision. I may say, "I can't, I can't, I can't," and she may decide I really can't. Or she may decide I've got more in me than I believe I do. There's a lot of risk associated with that. But there's a trust in those moments and a closeness that does not go away when the scene is over. Or ever, really. Risk and reward: we set our own tolerances. Some folks may have come across the term "consensual nonconsent." It's one of those terms with multiple meanings. Some people use it to describe any situation where the bottom is saying "no, don't" but has not yet safeworded -- a usage I find less than useful. Others use it to describe roleplays of nonconsensual situations. The last common usage, though, is that which I like to describe using Hunter S. Thompson's