Informed consent
Consent is the word everybody uses and informed is the word doing the work. The gap between the two is where most of the bad experiences I have heard about actually live.
Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.
In short
- Agreement plus accurate information. Knowing what it involves, how it will feel, what can go wrong, and how to stop it.
- It is specific and revocable. Consent to a hand spanking is not consent to a cane.
- It cannot be given while drunk, high, or under pressure of any kind.
- In England and Wales, R v Brown [1993] means consent is not a legal defence to actual bodily harm.
What it means
Informed consent has two halves and people concentrate on the wrong one. Consent is the yes. Informed is whether the yes was based on anything.
To be informed, a person needs to know what is actually going to happen, in what order, with what. They need a realistic idea of how it will feel, which for most beginners means being told that a cane produces a second wave of pain five to ten seconds after the stroke, or that a paddle produces bruising that only appears on day two.
They need to know the plausible ways it goes wrong. And they need to know precisely how to stop it, and to believe that stopping will cost them nothing.
It is also specific. Consent to a hand spanking over a knee is not consent to a cane over a table, and it is not consent to next Tuesday either. And it is revocable at any point, including halfway through, including for no stated reason.
In practice
The practical test I use is whether the person could describe the evening to a friend afterwards and have nothing turn out to be a surprise. If there is a part of the plan I have not mentioned because I think they would be put off, I do not have informed consent. I have a plan I am hoping to get away with.
Three things reliably invalidate it. Alcohol and drugs, because judgement and pain feedback are both affected and neither person can read the situation properly. Pressure, including the soft kind: sulking, wearing someone down, reminding them what they said last week. And an information gap, which is the one nobody notices, because the experienced person forgets how much they know and the new person does not know what to ask.
That last one puts a duty on the experienced person. If you have done this for years and they have not, filling the gap is your job, and it is not satisfied by asking whether they have any questions.
Where the confusion comes from
Treating consent as a document signed at the start. It is a live condition across the evening, which is why the person swinging keeps checking, and why silence is not an answer. Silence means you have to go and find out.
The other error is thinking a thorough negotiation makes you safe. It makes you better informed, which is not the same thing. People discover mid-scene that something they agreed to in a cafe on Tuesday feels entirely different in the room on Saturday. That is not them going back on their word. That is exactly what the ability to withdraw consent is for.
In England and Wales, R v Brown [1993] UKHL 19 held that consent is not a defence to actual bodily harm. Consent matters enormously ethically and it does not make injury lawful. Keeping firmly below the level of harm is the only reliable answer. See is it legal in the UK.
Sources
- R v Brown [1993] UKHL 19. House of Lords, consent and actual bodily harm. bailii.org
Where this page mentions the law, it is general information written from an England and Wales position unless it says otherwise, and it is not legal advice. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own law. If your own legal position matters, speak to a solicitor.
Common questions
What is informed consent in BDSM?
Informed consent means agreeing to something specific while actually knowing what it involves, what it will feel like, what could go wrong and how to stop it. Saying yes is not enough on its own. If one person knew that a cane leaves marks for a fortnight and the other did not, what was given was agreement rather than informed consent.
Can you consent to being injured in the UK?
Not in law. R v Brown [1993] UKHL 19 established that consent is not a defence to actual bodily harm in England and Wales, and that remains the position. In practice prosecutions of private consensual activity between adults are rare, but the legal reality is that consent does not make injury lawful, which is a good reason to stay well short of it.