Beyond the Traditional Sexual Script: How Consent Is Negotiated in Sexual Encounters Involving Eroticized Pain and/or Power Play

Abstract

Women are disproportionally the victims of sexual assault, and feminist scholars have partially attributed this disparity to consent dynamics within normative sexual encounters. BDSM/kink sexuality exists outside the norm by involving the erotic manipulation of power and/or pain sensations and emerging research suggests it is predicated upon the explicit negotiation of consent. Using a qualitative research design, we explored the way consent is communicated within sexual encounters that involve BDSM/kink sexuality (i.e., eroticized pain and/or power play). Thematic analysis results revealed that participants communicated about consent across three phases of BDSM/kink encounters: prescene, scene, and postscene. Specifically, results revealed that consent is negotiated verbally before the encounter, communicated in an indirect way during the encounter (e.g., via safe words or nonverbal cues), and discussed verbally again after the encounter. Results also suggest that communication of consent changed in a number of ways over time and context, including from explicit to implicit and from thorough to shorthand. These findings are consistent with prior research that suggests that in BDSM sexual encounters consent is actively constructed based on explicit negotiations of various aspects of the encounter before any activity begins. The model of consent in the context of BDSM/kink sexuality revealed in the present study may bolster comprehensive, skills-based sexual assault prevention programming. Specifically, the results in the present study (a) provide a functional model of consent communication, (b) enable a discussion of risk associated with different approaches to consent, and (c) frame consent dynamics within a broader ecological context.