13 Mistakes To Avoid When Selecting A Safeword
Subs Say The Funniest Things
You know how it goes. You’re attending that excruciatingly boring, semi-obligatory neighborhood party, sipping on that not-quite-premier brand scotch and checking your watch every six minutes to calculate when you can politely slip out, when somebody suggests, as an alternative to Pictionary, a little BDSM. And before you know it, you’re wearing nothing but a leather hood, handcuffs, and nipple clamps, and your hostess, who is taking a few practice strokes with her crop, is asking you for your Safe Word. Well, Bunkie, if you haven’t thought through that answer already, it’s a little late once she straps that ball gag in your mouth.
And, ones Safe Word is, after all, an important choice in ensuring a good time — but not too good a time — being had by all; as the old saying has it,
It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
Then, it’s just fun.
So, as yet another public service, the Heck Of A Guy Blog1 presents
Observations On A Sub’s Suboptimal Safe Words
1. Cognitive dissonance can be problematic. For example, using “More, More, Harder, Harder,” “Green Light,” or “Yes! Yes! Yes!” as a Safe Word may prove sufficiently confusing to evoke a transient but still uncomfortable delay in execution of the the desired response,
2. Homographs are iffy. Your more exacting Doms won’t find “You say tomato, I say tomato” all that amusing.
3. Likewise, homonyms (e.g., plays on “bear” the burden and “bare” your ass) can be tricky. I reference Master Murphy’s Law: Any safe words that can be confused will be confused and its corollary: “Momentary confusion” takes on a entirely different meaning when the “momentary” part occurs during a flogging.
4. Multi-syllabic words most often found in medical or scientific literature or novelty books about word play (e.g., “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” “hepaticocholangiocholecystenterostomies,” “floccinaucinihilipilification,” and the like) are not ideal. Even if you can routinely recall such monstrosities, it’s showing off, and, believe me, nobody likes a smart ass sub.
5. Safe Words that aren’t words (e.g., “833646520034″) fall into the same category as #4.
6. While dramatic and emphatic, exclamations such as “Ouch,” “Damn, that hurts,” and “What the heck do you think you’re doing?” can be misunderstood.
7. The subjunctive mood (e.g., “It’s as though I can’t take any more” or “I wish it would quit hurting”) is typically inappropriate as ones Safe Word.
8. ” 
” It 
didn’t work for Prince and it won’t work for you.
9. AAAA. (”Assiduously Avoid Acronyms, Asshole”). “NGSCB” may mean “Next-Generation Secure Computing Base,” to you, but does your Dom know that?
10. Think twice before choosing tricky proper names (for example, names of towns such as Unalakleet, Alaska or Prem Nagar, India and especially those vowel-deficient designations of Welsh villages such as Cwmtwrch). A good rule of thumbscrews is that if you can’t grunt the Safe Word intelligibly with a gag in your mouth, then it’s not really safe, is it?
11. Using something on the line of “Is that the best you can do, Mistress?” and “You’re such a wuss, Master” is just asking for trouble. (Handy memory aid: Taunts are for Tops; Begging is for Bottoms)
12. Some words and terms just don’t fit. For example,
• “Hamiltonian Federalist Principles”
• “Willing suspension of disbelief”
• “Bernoulli’s Principle”
• Any phrase which includes the words “butterfly” or “unicorn.”
• Anything in the form of a rhyming couplet
• Almost all scripture from the New Testament (yes, even the modern translations)
13. “Fuck You, Master” is probably best left to the very experienced, hard core players.
Footnotes
- Where else are you going to find advice on renting automobiles, a serial love story, poetry used in detective novels, considerations of all kinds of squid, updates on the Kaavya Viswanathan story, notes on treatment compliance, recipes for dishwasher cooking, and kink technique? ~back~
“saddle up” and “let’s ride, little boy” never seemed to be good choices either….
Just choose the old tried and true safe word…RED.
Happy flogging all….
Comment by jenna — June 2, 2006 @ 10:18 am
Glenfiddich.
That word would solve both dilemmas, I believe.
Laugh out loud funny entry!
Comment by Mary — June 2, 2006 @ 8:07 pm