BDSM Glos­sary A-B

BDSM Glos­sary

A

Age play - A type of role play to grat­ify a fetish surrounding age; typ­i­cally daddy/child or mommy/child fan­tasies [see: Infantilism].

Algolagnic - The act of trans­form­ing pain into sex­ual plea­sure. A syn­onym for sadomasochism. [see: Sadism, Sadist; Sado­masochism; Masochism, Masochist].

Alter­na­tive sex­u­al­ity - A sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion that dif­fers from a pref­er­ence for vagi­nal inter­course (with minor vari­a­tions) within a monog­a­mous het­ero­sex­ual relationship.

Alter­na­tive lifestyle - Hav­ing a sex­u­al­ity that dif­fers sig­nif­i­cantly from the “norm” (see: Alter­na­tive sex­u­al­ity) may make an alter­na­tive lifestyle nec­es­sary or desir­able. A sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion less com­mon than the norm may stig­ma­tize the indi­vid­ual push­ing the per­son to seek a more accept­ing sub­cul­ture. An exam­ple is homo­sex­u­al­ity and the for­ma­tion of the gay community.

Anal play - Any sexual or fetish prac­tice con­cern­ing the anus and/or rec­tum, chiefly includes: anal sex, rim­ming, enema play, and anal fisting.

Anal training - Prepa­ra­tion of the anus for anal play.

Anilin­gus - Anal-oral sex. Den­tal dam or plas­tic wrap is help­ful for pre­vent­ing exchange of harm­ful organisms.

Ani­mal play - Role play­ing wherein one or both part­ners assumes the role of an ani­mal, chiefly: puppy, dog, and pony.

Asphyx­i­a­tion play - Restrict­ing air (and/or blood) flow by chok­ing to enhance the sen­sa­tion of orgasm.

B

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BDSM - Bondage and Dis­ci­pline (BD), Dom­i­nance and Sub­mis­sion (DS) and Sadomasochism (SM).

Black light­ning - A com­mon nick­name for a black fiber glass or resin rod that is used as a cane. Denser than rat­tan, it can inflict deeper dam­age and the feel is described as “cut­ting.” [see Cane]

Black snake - A type of single-lash whip that is flex­i­ble all the way to the knob.

Blood Sport - SM practices that result in draw­ing blood. Can include whip­ping or can­ing that breaks the skin, brand­ing, cut­ting, and piercing.

Body fluid monogamy, body fluid bond­ing - A prac­tice of shar­ing body flu­ids only between two part­ners in order to observe safer-sex rec­om­men­da­tions. Com­monly, the part­ners have been tested neg­a­tive for HIV, sometimes also for hepati­tis B and C. The part­ners may or may not play with oth­ers out­side their rela­tion­ship, but only by observ­ing strict safer-sex rules. [see Safer Sex]

Bondage - Any practice involv­ing restraints placed on the body to restrict free­dom of movement.

Bondage and dis­ci­pline, B~D - A clas­sic term refer­ring to sev­eral sex­ual prac­tices includ­ing: bondage, slave train­ing, cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, and dominant/submissive role play.

Bondage belt - A belt, usually leather with metal rings attached, to assist in per­form­ing bondage.

Bondage frame - Any stationary device used to assist in per­form­ing bondage.

Bondage har­ness - A con­fig­u­ra­tion of straps, usu­ally leather or nylon designed to: 1) orna­ment the body, and 2) aid in bondage and sus­pen­sion bondage.

Bot­tom - An SM prac­ti­tioner who sub­mits to bondage, train­ing, role play, cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, etc., but who is not nec­es­sar­ily emo­tion­ally com­mit­ted to his/her dom­i­nant part­ner (top).

Bot­tom­ing from the top - Orig­i­nally a deroga­tory term for a top who allows his bot­tom to run the scene, “bot­tom­ing from the top” has become a valid style of play. Most tops expe­ri­ence some scenes where they pre­fer to take at least some direc­tion from their bot­toms. Some even pre­fer this style of play and may call them­selves sub­mis­sive sadists. [see also, Top­ping from the bottom]

Bottom-space or sub-space - A type of erot­i­cally altered con­scious­ness (EAC) iden­ti­fied with feel­ings of falling into a state of sub­mis­sion. Gen­er­ally, bot­tom– or sub-space may be char­ac­ter­ized by, dimin­ished ego aware­ness, less active cog­ni­tive behav­ior, sur­ren­der­ing of will, and/or inabil­ity to ver­bal­ize. Frequently these func­tions are assumed by the dom­i­nant part­ner who becomes the submissive’s cen­ter of focus.

Brat - A bot­tom who enjoys strug­gling against con­trol or chal­leng­ing the top. Brat­ti­ness has a wide spec­trum from the play­ful “uppity bot­tom” to the smart-ass masochist. Some brats are “test­ing” their dom­i­nant, oth­ers have a desire to be “con­quered and tamed,” while some sim­ply do not wish to be con­trolled. [see Smart-ass masochist]

Brain fade - A state of con­fu­sion and/or inabil­ity to rea­son expe­ri­enced by the sub­mis­sive. This effect usu­ally results from psy­cho­log­i­cal dom­i­na­tion, the mind-fuck, or a deep­en­ing sub­mis­sive state. [see Bottom-space, Sub-space]

Breast bondage - Tying the female breasts with cord, string, rope, rub­ber bands, scarves, etc. as a part of SM or erotic play. May include nip­ple bondage or clamping.

Breath con­trol - Con­trol of breath­ing by the dom­i­nant through use of a gas mask or sim­i­lar appa­ra­tus, by chok­ing, or by cov­er­ing the mouth and nose.

Body mod­i­fi­ca­tion - The gen­eral term for prac­tices that reshape or orna­ment the body for rit­ual, erotic, dec­o­ra­tive, or fetish pur­poses. The prac­tices com­monly include tat­too­ing, pierc­ing, brand­ing, cut­ting, and corsetry.

Bound­aries - Usu­ally refers to lim­its (which see) nego­ti­ated prior to SM play.

Brand­ing - Burn­ing the skin, usu­ally with heated metal, to pro­duce scar­i­fi­ca­tion. Brand­ing can be a part of a scene, rit­ual, or body mod­i­fi­ca­tion. The design often con­sists of sev­eral uncon­nected lines and curves, each requir­ing a sep­a­rate strike with heated metal, bent to form its part of the design. The rea­son for the uncon­nected lines is to assure that ele­ments of the design do not scar into a shape­less mass; human skin heals dif­fer­ently than the hides of livestock.

Bug­gy­whip - A sin­gle thong whip with a rigid core and a flex­i­ble cracker at the end.

C

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Cage, bondage cage - A device big enough to hold the whole submissive.

Cane - Tra­di­tional canes are flex­i­ble rat­tan or bam­boo option­ally hav­ing a leather wrapped han­dle. Mod­ern canes may be plas­tic or fiber glass.

Can­ing - The art of using a cane on a bottom.

Cat or cat o’ nine tails - The term orig­i­nally referred to a whip used by British navy. Now, cat usu­ally to refers to all multi-thonged whips.

Cathar­sis - Pur­ga­tion of emo­tions and or stress through an SM scene may or may not be intentional.

Checking-in - Ask­ing the sub­mis­sive how they are doing, feel­ing, etc. dur­ing a scene. Spe­cific ques­tions get more use­ful answers. An affir­ma­tive response to “Are you ok?” may merely indi­cate that death is not impend­ing, but there still may be prob­lems, par­tic­u­larly with a macho sub. “Would you enjoy heav­ier (or lighter) sen­sa­tions?” is a bet­ter ques­tion. In SM play “is this good for you?” is asked dur­ing a scene rather than the typ­i­cal “was it good for you? “Afterwards. Checking-in should not replace a dominant’s own obser­va­tion and focus; it is another part of the safety net.

Cinch­ing – 1) Wear­ing of a cincher, a gar­ment sim­i­lar to, but less encom­pass­ing than a corset. 2) A bondage tech­nique, for exam­ple, to tighten coils of rope hold­ing the wrists together by wrap­ping the coils between the wrists by one or more “cinch loops” of rope.

Clamp, clamp­ing - Nip­ple clamps, clothes­pins, and binder clips are used to pinch or squeeze a small bit of flesh. The tar­get areas for clamp­ing are nip­ples, cocks, vul­vas, and other erot­i­cally sen­si­tive areas such as the sides of the torso and inner thighs. Weights can be added to increase the rigor.

Clip - [see Clamp, Clamping]

Clean - A code word used to describe a con­di­tion of being dis­ease free. [see Code word]

Cock and ball tor­ture or CBT - Tor­tures are inflicted on these body parts using clothes­pins, clamps, cock cages, weight, and var­i­ous kinds of bindings.

Code word(s) - Word(s) used in per­sonal ads to dis­guise sex­ual pro­cliv­i­ties that may be unac­cept­able to main­stream soci­ety, eg: Eng­lish cul­ture, French cul­ture, Greek, clean, dis­ci­pline, strict, leather, etc.

Col­lar, col­lared - 1) A sym­bol of sur­ren­der worn by a sub­mis­sive. A col­lar is given in a rela­tion­ship as a pro­found sym­bol of a com­mit­ment and bond. A “col­lared” sub­mis­sive is con­sid­ered to be owned (which see) or part­nered with a dom­i­nant player. 2) A piece of bondage equip­ment worn around the throat.

Con­di­tional com­pli­ance - The SM one-nighter, a lim­ited exchange of power nego­ti­ated by a dom and sub for a sin­gle scene or brief period of play, such as overnight, one day, or one week­end. [see Power exchange levels]

Con­di­tion­ing - The term used in psy­chol­ogy for the delib­er­ate process of cre­at­ing a psy­cho­log­i­cal link between a desired response and an unre­lated stim­u­lus. Much of what peo­ple in the SM com­mu­nity refer to as train­ing or slave train­ing uses clas­sic con­di­tion­ing techniques.

Con­dom - A latex sheath used on a penis or toy as a bar­rier to pre­vent the trans­mis­sion of dis­ease or preg­nancy. Nat­ural lamb­skin con­doms are also avail­able, but don’t func­tion effec­tively to pre­vent the spread of viral ill­ness. [see Safer Sex]

Con­sen­sual - Behav­ior or activ­i­ties agreed to by all par­ties involved. True con­sent is informed con­sent and requires a rea­son­ably accu­rate knowl­edge of pos­si­ble risks.

Con­trap­o­lar stim­u­la­tion “Hurts so good!” — A type of phys­i­cal stim­u­la­tion that incor­po­rates feel­ing of both plea­sure and pain.

Cor­po­ral - Activ­i­ties that involve the strik­ing of one indi­vid­ual by another are called cor­po­ral from the term cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment. Typ­i­cally cor­po­ral activ­i­ties include spank­ing, flog­ging, pad­dling, and caning.

Count­ing - The rit­u­al­ized count­ing of strokes received. The sub may be required to thank the dom­i­nant with each count. Exam­ple: “One, thank you Sir. Two, thank you Sir, etc.” A typ­i­cally dia­bolic prac­tice is to start the count over again each time a mis­take is made. Some masochists never seem to get the count cor­rect, even with their shoes off.

Covenant of dom­i­nance and sub­mis­sion - A deeply com­mit­ted sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship between a dom­i­nant and a sub­mis­sive. [see Lev­els of power exchange]

Cross­dress­ing - Dress­ing in clothes of the oppo­site gender.

Cru­ci­fix­ion - Bondage incor­po­rat­ing a sta­tion­ary cross. The submissive’s arms and legs are tied, not nailed. Care must be taken to ensure that the torso is prop­erly sup­ported, oth­er­wise, stran­gu­la­tion may occur.

Cuff, cuff­ing - 1) Plac­ing hand­cuffs, man­a­cles, or sim­i­lar restraints on the wrists and/or ankles. 2) Also refers to the restraints in the noun form. For exam­ple: “That is a nice cuff you’re wear­ing,” or “This cuff­ing is very comfy.”

Cut­ting – I) slic­ing the skin as a part of body mod­i­fi­ca­tion, rit­ual, or scene. Most fre­quently, designs are trans­ferred to the skin as they would be for the cre­ation of a tat­too. Then either scalpels, razor blades, art knives, or other cut­ting tool incise the skin at a depth of 1/16″ to 3/16. Cut­tings can include color by means of tat­too inks or cigar (not cig­a­rette) ash rubbed into the fresh wounds. Care should always be taken to insure ster­ile con­di­tions. 2) The break­ing of skin by use of a cor­po­ral instru­ment. Sin­gle lash whips, canes, crops and oth­ers can cut if used improp­erly. 3) The deep stingy feel of some toys.