Traffic Light System: Green, Yellow, and Red in Consent
The traffic light system uses green, yellow, and red as simple signals for continuing, slowing down or checking in, and stopping during intimate or BDSM activities.
Risk-Aware Consent: Informed Choice, Boundaries, and Sexual Safety
Risk-aware consent means agreeing to an activity with a reasonable understanding of its important risks, limits, possible consequences, and available safety measures.
Leather Fetish: Meaning, Leather Culture, BDSM, and Consent
A leather fetish is an erotic interest in leather clothing, texture, smell, appearance, or symbolism and may overlap with BDSM or leather culture.
Consensual Power Exchange: BDSM Authority and Submission
Consensual power exchange is a BDSM dynamic in which adults voluntarily establish dominant and submissive roles within defined areas.
Dominant and Submissive: BDSM Roles and Power Exchange
Dominant and submissive describes complementary BDSM roles in which one person takes agreed authority and the other voluntarily yields it.
Submissive: BDSM Role, Submission, Identity, and Power Exchange
A submissive is a person who voluntarily takes a following, receptive, service-oriented, or authority-yielding role in BDSM or power exchange.
Power Exchange: BDSM Authority, Dominance, and Submission
Power exchange is a BDSM dynamic in which one person voluntarily gives another a defined degree of authority or control.
Safe Word: Meaning, Signals, BDSM Use, and Communication
A safe word is a prearranged verbal signal used to slow, pause, check, or immediately stop a BDSM, role-play, kink, or sexual activity.
Dom and Sub: BDSM Roles, Power Exchange, and Relationships
Dom and Sub describes a BDSM dynamic in which one partner takes an agreed authority role and the other voluntarily takes a submissive role.
Sub: BDSM Submission, Roles, Power Exchange, and Identity
Sub is an informal term for a BDSM submissive who voluntarily takes a following, receptive, service-oriented, or authority-yielding role.