Well this post has had me thinking for a little bit and so I decided to respond. I agree with you for the most part, but being a bit of a sadist (when it comes to tickling but also in the larger bdsm sense of the word) I can't agree with everything you said. I can not completely relate to what you are talking about because I have never really done any pay to play... but I have known some into that and I understand some of what you speak of. I think the key here (for me) is in the safeword. Since your doing a scene with a relative or complete stranger, a safeword is a necessity , in my opinion. I have seen experienced people with a great deal of trust who don't use a safeword with there longtime partners, people who subscribe to rack and so on. But in a pay a stranger to play with you situation, I think this is almost exactly what the safeword was invented for. If a sub uses their safeword, that should be it... 100% agreed. All non-con fantasies not withstanding that's supposed to be the deal there... signal safeword whatever, scene over. Ok... so that far I'm with you. I also agree that scaring is something that is completely unacceptable without special consent (I've never seen it from tickling, but I have seen it from the inexperienced and overzealous with a cane... if you don't know how to wield it, don't use it on a human being is my advise.) So in all this I think we are lockstep in thinking, but the next point is where we agree in PRACTICE, but I think we might disagree in THEORY.
In my practice, I agree, that it is a dominants job to be careful of his submissive, to respect and read her limits and how far she can go... and so on and so forth. To me, in my life, this is part of a dominants job... to balance your desires with your partner, to work as one. HOWEVER, in practice we know that there are pure, hardcore sadists who like to use women simply as objects and hurt them, or in our special niche to tickle torture them. AND we know, that their are indeed women who enjoy this kind of thing. That get off on it just as much as the sadist does. So "Mr. Tickle Torture Sadist" comes into the club, puts his money down, and wants to torture a ticklish girl... they get him a girl... club safeword is red.... torture begins, it gets more and more extreme, the girl is suffering horribly, she is in complete agony laying there thinking, as soon as this is over, I am going to quit so I never have to endure this again... She suffers, she never safewords she just suffers with it, she quits... a great asset to the community is lost. Ok, now if we start to think about this logically and without an anti-sadist bias what's the problem here. Well first off, let me say from a Dom angle I AGREE, this Dom made some major mistakes... he was probably inexperience, he didn't care about his submissive, and it looks like he didn't go through the proper negotiations about the scene with her BUT "Mr. Tickle Torture Sadist" may very well have been a college kid on his 21's birthday, getting this as a present from his friends (I've seen things like that) and he's never properly explored the lifestyle, maybe it was even his first chance to explore this fetish that he's been living with for years... now as people in the lifestyle, it would be our first thought to blame the Dom, because in the LIFESTYLE a great deal of what went wrong is the dominants fault. BUT this is not the lifestyle... it looks like the lifestyle, it may be part of the lifestyle, but what actually is going on here, is a service industry. And the sub in this scene as well as the people who run the dungeon are the PROFESSIONALS. That makes it THEIR responsibility. Both to educate the girl about the proper use of the safeword, and the girls to use it. If it is made clear to the "Mr. Tickle Torture Sadist" that the safeword must be respected and he goes ahead anyway... even if he's caught up in the moment, sure he is in the wrong, the scene should be stopped, by force if necessary, the person removed from the premises and not allowed to return, BUT if is in this case, the PROFESSIONAL submissive's responsibility, as a part of her profession to use her safeword.
We have to remember that not all people who do bdsm activities chose to make it a major part of their life as some of us do. They don't have the same codes of conduct. For them they are paying for a service. Sure you can say the girl wants to do a good job, but this doesn't alleviate her of personal responsibility. If the same girl went to work for a pizza place that had a 30 minute or its free guarantee, a guy ordered a lot of odd pizzas, she's running late... going a buck 20 down the interstate, and there's a traffic jam... but she REFUSES to use her brakes... she's gonna be a good pizza delivery girl... make the boss happy, make the guy who ordered the pizza happy... she dies in a fiery crash. Who's fault is that. The break was right there... it was her job as a responsible driver to use it.
I will even go further (with the reservation I haven't thought this out its just my first opinion) that this is part of the problem. Unlike in a relationship, a Dominant should feel ABLE to let go and be as sadistic as he desires (within the limits of a scene that should be negotiated... and if the Dom doesn't initiate negotiations cause he/she doesn't know better... one of the professionals, the person in charge of the dungeon or the submissive should do that), knowing he is working with a PROFESSIONAL and she won't let it go too far.
Because yes, I do ultimately believe that grown people have the right to do almost anything they want to or with each other if they are both consenting. Now once the safeword is used consent is withdrawn, but for me even though in the lifestyle it is different between doms and subs, the way I would treat people in my own relationships is very different and I wont get into that here, but in a service business like that, it is not fair to pass off all the blame on the "Dom" just because he decided to play Dom for a day and did it badly, when there were a variety of professional people involved who had a professional responsibility to take care of the safety of all parties.
That's just my opinion. Like I said I am not supporting ignoring safewords, or non-consensual torture or anything like that. I am just saying that there is nothing wrong with being a sadist, or enjoying the "tickle-torture" style of tickling, and of all people it would seem that one should be able to trust a professional to enforce her own limits. And no, this is not how I live my life, but I am into the lifestyle, and I take my role as a Dominant very seriously. Perhaps it is not for the best, but the truth is you don't have to have a licence to call yourself a Dom, you don't have to pass classes, and furthermore you don't have to be a Dom to go to a dungeon and play for a day. For all those reasons I feel that before you go lumping all of "Mr. Tickle Torture Sadists" together in a bad lot, you should remember that there's enough blame for these scenes gone wrong to go around.
) STOP AND CHECK.
Yes, the safeword is the (last word...)
