2015.
DOMSPACE - TLDR: Unresponsive=Unsafe
By MarcTaylor
Trigger Warning
This writing mentions "Personal Safety/Responsibility" twice (2).
Something you should know about me, I've been topping for 10+ years now and I've heard about and witnessed many different head-spaces. I want to warn you about mine:
DOMSPACE
If you've seen me play or watched any of the MBE feeds the past few years, you may have noticed my collection and affinity for headbands. There's a rumor swirling around out there that I wear them because I'm prone to sweating and it hurts/is annoying when sweat gets in your eyes during a scene. The truth behind the headbands is much darker than you could have ever imagined. The headband is a totem, it's an item I use to unlock a very special headspace I like to call: DOMSPACE. Imagine a brown skinned Bruce Banner without the purple pants. When I go into DOMSPACE I essentially Hulk out, and much like the big green guy in the purple pants I want to destroy everything in front of me, usually whilst yelling "MarcTaylor SMASH!" Unfortunately if you're playing with me at the time that makes you the target. As I transform into this brown skinned monster I become a machine, I find that I loose most if not all control, and my inner Dom (the other guy) just takes over. It's like I'm along for the ride, but can't stop or slow things down. It doesn't matter what or how my partner (victim) and I negotiated, when I'm in DOMSPACE Yellow and Red mean nothing to me and no matter what safe-word is used I can't stop myself from causing pain and ignoring consent. When I'm in DOMSPACE I become unresponsive. Do or say what you want to try and protect yourself, it won't matter until after the scene is finished and the headband is removed. Also, if you ask me about DOMSPACE during a negotiation, I may or may-not mention it, if you don't ask, I certainly won't bring it up. OK, who wants to play?
Ridiculous right?
I was at Shibaricon last week in a class on advanced negotiations. During the class the topic of personal responsibility came up. -Elwood-, who was teaching the class, made a suggestion that if you're bottoming, you must keep one foot anchored in the real world. By all means seek out and find sub-space, or fairyland, or your pain palace, or whatever it is you seek, but please leave part of yourself in the scene to monitor and mention when your fingers start to tingle, or to say yellow if need be. A female identified bottom (look how politically correct that was) argued that she is unresponsive when she plays, and still safe. The male identified top person (I did it again) sitting next to her added, "when you play with her she get's downright unconscious for 3-5 minutes if you're doing it right". The female identified bottom person (3/3) went on to explain, "the Dom I play with has no morals and no conscience, in fact he'd literally keep beating you until he killed you if he weren't stopped. When I play with him I have another Top, who knows me and my body, stand by to tell him when to end our scenes, since I won't be able to." Now, the amazing thing here isn't that with billions of people on the planet the female identified bottom (4/4) who goes mute and can't protect herself in anyway, against all odds, paired up with the top who would "LITERALLY" kill her if he weren't stopped. I mean, holy shit! Cupid must just want to watch the world burn. The amazing thing is this was all said to the class as if it were a brag or a point of pride we should all take note of.
My personal opinion: I'm not the safety police, in fact, I'm probably on the most wanted list. I'm not here to stand on or establish a new moral high ground. If when you play as a Top or Bottom, you go unresponsive and can't communicate in anyway in either direction, I don't want to play with you because I feel that you are unsafe and represent a risk to me and my personal safety and liability. The blanket statement, "I was in a headspace that didn't allow me to communicate with you" is a Hard Limit for me. Red! Red! Red! If you are bottoming with me and you can't say or communicate in any way any of the following: "yellow", "red", "I've changed my mind", "I'm loosing feeling in my spleen", or "can we get pizza when we're done?", I'm sorry but I love pizza too much to play with you. This doesn't mean I don't like you, it just means I like pizza, and my own safety more (also Oxford Commas).
CLARIFICATION: Sarcasm... to Clarify: I don't REALLY go into DOMSPACE, it was simply a satirical literary tool to help illustrate a point.
