I am Jack's Hungry Tiger

However these consent models aren't all-encompassing, don't address risk, and in the case of FRIES, can actually be demonstrably incorrect (speaking specifically about the E in FRIES, Enthusiastic).

I'm not personally a fan of RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink) or PRICK (Personal Responsibility Informed Consensual Kink), as they are entirely focused on methods to mitigate risk and mostly only see use in kink spaces.

In the case of PRICK specifically, I actually advocate heavily against its use as a consent or kink activity framework because of how it centers the experience on individual responsibility during an activity and how one person can keep themselves safe without regard for the fact that sex and kink activities are generally done with more than one person. PRICK can be dangerous even when you follow its core tenets, and that's not what you want your framework doing.

Recently I learned about the CRISP model of consent, which was created by intimacy practitioners for use on set during film production of intimate scenes like childbirth or sex, and I think it addresses every major point about risk and consent in a neutral, all encompassing manner. And because I'm such a nerd about consent, I'm going to tell you all about it and have taken the liberty of transcribing CRISP from an intimacy coordinator perspective to a sex or BDSM perspective.

The tenets of CRISP are:

Considered: Actively take the time to deliberately consider whether or not to give consent. This includes looking at the practicality of the context of the situation itself (for example the question, "do we have enough time to do a sex?" would fall under 'considered') as well as any external factors influencing the situation such as gender, socioeconomic status, etc.

Reversible: What it says on the tin. Anybody participating in sex or kinky play can, at any time and for any reason, revoke consent and deserve to have their revocation both complied with AND respected.

Informed: Each party must be honestly communicating to one another and has a responsibility AND duty to be informed on the activity they're doing, informed on who they're doing it with, and informed of any relevant medical, mental, emotional, situational, or circumstantial risks. This tenet is necessary for the 'Considered' tenet to be acted upon responsibly and accurately.

Specific: Consent to one thing does not mean consent to something else; consent only applies within the terms it was agreed to by both parties and therefore there should be no ambiguity or vagueness in either party's intentions.

Participatory: Consent is ongoing before and after it is agreed upon, is a constant process of checking in with each other, and no one should be excluded or discouraged in any way from the process of any of the tenets above.

Now that last one, participatory, at first I actually didn't get and found it very confusing. But the more I have come to understand it and think about it, the more I think it's absolutely mandatory to include this in all consent models moving forward. It's the glue that holds any respectable framework together.

It's essentially protecting the integrity of the rest of the consent model. Participatory is basically saying that before, after, or during the process of agreeing to consent, anything done by violating the other tenets of the model, damages the integrity of the entire agreement and voids it. Consent must be re-established to continue at that point. It also states that consideration for consent doesn't stop once it's been agreed to and needs to be monitored for any changes throughout. You have a responsibility and duty to the other person, after all, to not bring harm to them. So you must be engaged, present, and participate in the act with them in order to fulfill that duty and responsibility.

The part that gets my goat is that 'participatory' could even be further extrapolated to mean that consent could be given ad-hoc in the moment so long as the other criteria are met, allowing for the wiggle room that often happens in realistic play encounters between experienced and trust-established partners. This is a longstanding issue that most consent models don't even acknowledge happens because they are far too rigid.

CRISP, however, is flexible within reason that it can allow for improvisation. Knowing where it originated from, which is intimacy practitioners, that flexibility is definitely not the intent, so I will exclude this as being an official part of the model. However I bring this up because I personally think it could very easily be incorporated into that last tenet so that it acknowledges how real people play and how we can continue to affirm consent while we improvise.

I can't properly express how much I am nerding out about this and am such a fan of this consent model. This model allows for all kinds of sex and kink activities to be included and accounted for. That's not always been true for certain activities, especially when it comes to lifestyle dynamics or edge play. But CRISP includes those activities and guides folks on how to start doing and continue doing them safely and responsibly.

Sometimes consent isn't enthusiastic, but it's still perfectly valid consent. Sometimes consent models aren't focused on everyone involved. Sometimes consent models don't address risk at all, or they entirely focus on it to its own detriment. CRISP does all of these things and does them well. It acknowledges that enthusiasm is not inherent to consent, it addresses how to handle risk, and it implements risk management in the overall process for how to determine if consent has been established, is still present, and what factors could contribute to the violation or unwilling manipulation of one's consent. It's amazing!

And I encourage everyone to start thinking in terms of CRISP because of how cohesively it encompasses many different aspects of sex, play, and relationship dynamics and gives people a universal framework that is healthy and respectful to all involved. It's really just putting into words how a healthy sexual or intimate interaction works under the hood and takes away all the mystery or doubt surrounding consent.

tl;dr

There's a lot of bullshit in hypnosis. We need a lot of bullshit in hypnosis. (I define bullshit as "that which, when you stick it in a lab and have bored grad students perform it, does not appear to produce statistically significant results.")

I'm not comfortable with this. It goes against my instincts to say that bullshit is necessary. But hypnosis is not a science, even though it can be studied and analyzed scientifically. At its core, hypnosis is a framework for bullshitting people, and and you can't bullshit people without bullshit.

I mean, you can. A hypnotist who didn't use bullshit -- no fancy induction, indirect suggestions, double binds or reflective language could still hypnotize someone and have them following suggestions. It just doesn't make for great entertainment.

For performative (street/stage/kink) hypnosis, you need the audience to be entertained -- not just the onlookers in stage and street hypnosis, but also your hypnotee. You need a performance. You must assume the mantle of the Hypnotist, and use all the trappings that people associate with hypnosis. At the same time, playing the role of the hypnotist enables you to perform and act in ways that you would not feel comfortable behaving in your daily life. For new hypnotists, using the language and the techniques can act like Dumbo's magic feather as they transition from using scripts but are not confident in their own voice. The performance of a hypnotist and a hypnotee is kayfabe, a shared fiction that everyone makes real.

The law of kayfabe means that regardless of how scientifically valid or transparently meaningless any particular hypnotic technique is, it all has to be treated as real. The flourishes and extra steps involved are all performance first, and trying to break them down individually and determine which bits are meaningful is like trying to break down what turns Dwayne Johnson into The Rock. And whenever hypnotists analyze a stage performance and try to provide commentary on a particular hypnotic technique, it's about as realistic as Jim Ross doing a play by play.

This doesn't stand out so much in a first meet scenario, where neither hypnotist nor hypnotee really know each other. But when you have a well established relationship with a long term hypnotee who is a "high hypnotizable" or even a virtuoso, the nature and value of hypnotic bullshit becomes apparent. Because anything and everything will work. Anything and Everything.

There's a moment in time when you realize that your partner can just do stuff when you tell them to. You can tell them to drop into a trance and they'll drop. You can stick their arm to a wall and it'll stick. You feel like a god. And then you realize that every single hypnotic technique you've learned, every carefully rehearsed abracadabra is as meaningless as a cosmopolitan sex tip. You don't need any of the techniques to get things to work -- and if you can throw it out and everything still works, then it was bullshit. And again, anything and everything will work, no matter how stripped down you get. You could order a full body orgasm like you were ordering a subway sandwich and it would happen.

This breaks kayfabe, of course, and is also deeply unsatisfying to most people expecting a good old-fashioned mindfuck. A climax on its own is empty and loveless, like meat without salt. The hypnotist gave nothing, and the hypnotee feels cheated. This shows the underling scaffolding of hypnosis, and why hypnotic techniques exist even though they don't do anything that a straight-up suggestion wouldn't do -- they are part of the performance.

There's a game called Mornington Crescent. The rules are simple. You can pick them up from listening to people play on Radio 4. You can ask players for the ruleset and they'll happily tell you about the different variations, the Tudor Court Rules or how to put other players in Nidd. There's even videos on how Mornington Crescent has evolved and the new techniques and innovations that the masters are coming up with.

It is all complete bullshit. The way to win at Mornington Crescent is to say "Mornington Crescent." In a game with multiple people, everyone takes turns and the person who says "Mornington Crescent" first is the winner.

Everything that anyone has told you about the rules of Mornington Crescent is both bullshit and part of the game. The bullshit is absolutely vital to making a good game of Mornington Crescent. Kayfabe says that you must act as if the rules exist and they matter because everyone knows that kayfabe is the only thing holding the bullshit together.

It's very easy to win at Mornington Crescent, but the underlying point of Mornington Crescent is to win with style -- playing in such a way that the win is satisfying and feels earned. The guide on how to win at Mornington Crescent says that a win is attached to a payoff function F which depends on the number of moves, and a win on the first move.

So a revised ruleset:

Each player in turn says the name of a London Underground station, chosen freely from the list of all possible stations (without repeating earlier choices, but as there are 270 such stations this is not usually an issue).

The first player to say "Mornington Crescent" is the winner. If this happens on the nth move, then the pay off to the player is F(n).

The payoff isn't in the execution of the suggestion, but in the staging and execution of the scene. There's anticipation and a build up of tension as the game progresses. Every move is an opening and increases the risk of something going wrong. In Mornington Crescent, the risk is that another player may immediately end the game, or claim a rule that would make your win look inelegant, by putting you in Nidd or suggesting that you have to traverse different stations. As in improv, you're not allowed to simply deny or ignore the rule, but must make your own claims to muddy the waters and put them on the defensive. The performance matters.

Hypnosis is like Mornington Crescent. Giving a direct suggestion without build up is like winning the game without performing for it. The hypnotist has to make it a deserved reward, and that means taking some risks.

In a hypnosis scene, the risk is that a phrase or suggestion may not land right and destabilize the scene. Your partner, as the hypnotee, is both judge and co-player. Your performance has to feel real, and the more real it feels, the more they'll respond. Hypnotic suggestions build on each other not just to establish compliance and plausibility, but to increase the payoff function. Hypnosis is a story.

The end result of this is that hypnotic techniques are like the rules of Mornington Crescent. It's all fake, and it's all real, and trying to master a particular technique is a waste of time -- the confidence and style of the performance is what makes it work. Find what plays to your strengths, and focus on what feels right.

Everything about how kink dynamics are discussed in the popular eye makes this clear -- the endless jokes about "sub behavior" and "heehee i'm such a sub i don't care what happens to me ❤️", the mandatory "as long as it's consensual!" disclaimers tacked on whenever someone expresses their approval for kink, the way actual criminal law around kink largely treats it as a crime carried out by dominants against submissives. "Submissive" isn't a role in a mutually pleasurable act, it's just a personality trait you have that means you enjoy being mistreated. The average person is seemingly incapable of envisioning kink as anything other than an extreme extension of vanilla, cis/hetero sex, where a masculine dominant acts upon a feminine submissive who maybe gets to enjoy it too if she's lucky.

That took three decades, and of course I had married someone vanilla. I hated myself for my desires, confident I was the villain. I was the selfish one, the monster, the criminal barely kept in check through conscious effort. I was the one who might "snap" and do horrible things, wasn't that what everyone says?

It's incredibly difficult for me to say this without equivocating, but I wasn't. I was the one who was careful. The one for whom a "maybe" was a "no". The one who needed enthusiastic consent to even get started. The one who denied himself for nearly half a century out of a sense of justice.

Did I have a lot to learn about consent and communication? Absolutely! But I could have learned it a lot earlier and put it to use in relationships.

The DSM took me out in 2013, and that started the real process of coming to terms with myself. That was the first moment I could entertain the notion that not being "broken" was more than just wishful thinking on my part. I wish I could have done this when I was younger. I mistook shame for guilt, and hurt myself badly in the process.

You cannot practice ethical kink while being a conservative. You cannot practice ethical kink while being a racist. You cannot practice ethical kink while being a sexist. A homophobe. A transphobe. An islamaphobe. You cannot be anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, or anti-asylum seeker while practicing ethical kink. You cannot practice ethical kink while being a theocrat, whether it be Christian, Hindu, or Islamic nationalism or zionism. You cannot practice ethical kink while being a fascist. Holding any ideology which dehumanizes others, or allows for their dehumanization removes ones ability to practice ethical kink.

Introductions

It has been a while. I actually have never done much with this blog? It was intended as the platform for a roleplay scenario with @gospodinp on the Torei setting -check it out, it has all the great themes! But we never got around to actually play it out, and I let the place languish, entirely forgetting about it after the ban of sexual content.

I escaped to other lands, where I discovered I don't care that much for the nice pictures or the videos mindlessly reposted: what works for me is actual content. Shared experiences, fantasies, comments offering context or building on scenes depicted or anew entirely. It helps me connect with people into BDSM, grow and learn.

I actually have written quite a bit, sharing my own thoughts on the subject at hand, and who knows. I don't think I will stay if tumblr only has nice pics; it makes me wonder if there are humans behind!

So, to start being a good girl and offering what I claim to want, I offer you all this image of a submissive kneeling, holding a tray and ready to make the afternoon of a Dominant more pleasant.

I relate to that. I am very service oriented, and my submission sings when it is about that, about making the life of the Dominant more pleasant.

Again channeling the picture, the submissive's expression isn't too clear: she might be worried discipline will follow, perhaps because she messed up. While I couldn't have messed anything around here yet, I guess I approach this with the same cautious expression: is there a good community to be found on this place? And also the other way: will I find time and inspiration to contribute back?