So I’m wondering if many published S&M how-to books are written with the kid gloves on because that’s all publishers are willing to print. As one example, Jay Wiseman, author of SM 101 among other books, is pretty adamantly against any type of breath play or choking. Even carotid chokes by people who know what they’re doing; chokes which have been used in Jiu Jitsu for hundreds of years without fatality. Of course I’d never recommend that a beginner try such a thing, but saying that it shouldn’t be done, across the board, is extreme in my opinion.  There is always some element of risk, but that is also less risky than a lot of the things that he does encourage in his books.  But I digress.

I think another part of the reason that many published SM books seem to be conservative (hah!) when it comes to theses sorts of things is that the intended audience for many such books is BDSM newbies, for the most part. You don’t exactly want to tell a newbie it’s sometimes okay to play without safewords; that’s like telling a kid it’s sometimes okay to ingest bleach. While it’s true (there’s a little bleach in your tap water), it’s easy to take it the wrong way and end up doing something dangerous.

But is that perhaps giving the younger generation a bias? Laying down “laws” which, to quote Pirates of the Carribean, are really more of guidelines? It’s not uncommon to see the attitude of, “If you’re not doing it how I think is best, then you’re doing it wrong,” but these days that seems to usually end up coming out as, “If you’re not playing with these certain certain precautions (like safe words), you’re doing it wrong.”