Talking About Sexual Consent: Heterosexual women and BDSM

Abstract

Sexual consent is an increasingly important concept for sexual violence prevention. Practitioners of bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadomasochism (hereafter BDSM) advocate strong community standards of active sexual consent to ensure that their practices are clearly differentiated from abuse. In this article, we explore the ways in which heterosexual female BDSM practitioners understand the meaning of and communicate sexual consent within their relationships. Their accounts of sexual consent within their BDSM relationships present sexual consent as synonymous with safe play. Yet, even within a context that demands explicit consent, there are complexities and nuances in terms of how sexual consent is communicated during play. We explore how explicit forms of consent found in descriptions of BDSM sit uncomfortably next to feminist analyses of how heteronormativity can undermine women's autonomy during heterosex.