Why Bottoms Should Make Notes At Kink Classes

I want to present to you my case for bottoms who attend kink and BDSM workshops making notes on the material they learn. I notice a lot of tops with notebooks and pens, but markedly fewer bottoms with the same, and I think those bottoms might be losing out a little as a result.

But before I delve any deeper, a small disclaimer: I go to a lot of rope workshops. And very little else. So this piece will be from a rope bottoming perspective, using rope bottoming examples, but it should still be relevant for spanking workshops, protocol workshops, humiliation workshops, and any other workshop you can conceive of where bottoms might be there, absorbing information and/or being practised upon by their toppy friends and/or partners.

I’ve written plenty about how actually being tied up feels for me, and why I like it, but I think there’s a particular art to attending workshops and classes in a bottoming capacity. I’ll likely never use the information provided at these classes for topping (since I’m dyspraxic as hell and sub-leaning besides), but I like to be more than a willing body for a top to practice on when I’m in any kind of workshop setting.

So I make notes.

They’re not notes that a top could use (at least, not on their own), because they don’t feature any technical details, diagrams or instructions. Instead, I make notes on the things I’ll find useful later, for one or more of the following reasons:

When I’m in subspace, I’m not likely to retain information unless I write it down;
When I’m overwhelmed by being in a noisy room full of people, I’m not likely to retain information unless I write it down;
The physical act of writing keeps my autistic gremlin hands busy in a way that doesn’t look too rude (unlike, say, playing Animal Crossing on my phone), so my autistic gremlin brain can focus on what the workshop leader(s) is/are saying;
They’re both informative and fun to look back over days or weeks after a class or a workshop.

“But Morgan,” you may be asking, “what do you make notes on, if not technical details and instructions?”

I’m glad you asked, dearest hypothetical reader.

I primarily make notes based on gut feeling – things that make my ears perk up, if you will. I start each workshop’s notes with the title of the class, the date on which it takes place and the scene name(s) of the workshop leader(s), and then I outline what we’re actually doing, like so:

Example Workshop – 12.05.19 – Led by Example McExampleface and E. G. Forinstance

Objective(s): full side suspension; gunslinger hip harness; eat as many aftercare snacks as humanly possible

After that, I might make notes on specific ties, both naming and describing them so that I don’t have to Google fancy shibari terminology every time I revisit my notes.

Tie: Tengu (the raptor hands one that makes my boobs look excellent)

The most useful notes I make, though, are usually based upon things said by the demo bottom (who often also doubles as a workshop leader). Demo bottoms provide invaluable tips on which things are the hardest to endure and how you might go about doing so, and they’re not usually tips that tops will take note of. Demo bottoms remind you to stretch and wiggle, encourage you to be a princess if something hurts in the wrong way, and give you straight answers about how uncomfortable or painful something might be. They make the world go ’round.

TIP: keep an eye out for circulation loss/nerve impingement in the hands for this one

Another key thing I include in my workshop notes is something a top simply cannot do on a bottom’s behalf – my initial reactions to all the activities we try. This is especially important for me as I have a hypermobility condition which requires me to be careful with the positions I put myself in (or allow others to put me in), and keeping track of which positions seem to aggravate which joints is key. For instance, if I’m having a Bad Knees Day™, I can use my notes as a tool in considering whether a futomomo is a good idea.

“Morgan, don’t you just remember when things hurt you?” you might be wondering.

No, dearest reader, I do not. If I remembered every position, activity or weather change that ever made my joints hurt, I would have no room left in my brain to remember anything else. I’m always in a little bit of pain, and often in a lot – so I often block it out, and I almost always forget about it afterwards.

Thoughts: that was hot as fuck, very much enjoyed the feeling of being compact & smol. Elbow joints ache, about 4/10 pain, but worth it (and could be fixed w/ ibuprofen and care)

Naturally, bottoms who might be inspired to take notes in workshops as a result of this blog post can deviate from the formula I’ve presented here. If you think you’d benefit more from making notes on the mechanics of something, drawing little diagrams of human anatomy or anything else, you do you. I’m just here to ~~sell notebooks~~ remind bottoms that they’re active participants in kink, and that their insight and learning is as valuable as that of their toppier counterparts.

Blood In A Kinky Context

The mouth of Morgan, a white human with a lip ring, wherein the skin on their lips is cracking and beginning to bleed

Note: This post discusses blood, including menstrual blood and bleeding as a result of self-harm, in the context of exploring my own blood kink. If those are hard topics for you, give this one a miss – and maybe check out some of my other posts on kink instead.

Blood, generally speaking, stays inside of people.

There are two notable exceptions to this. The first is when an injury is sustained which causes bleeding, and this is generally seen as a bad thing. It alarms the person injured and those around them, and the blood is usually cleaned up once the flow is stemmed. The second notable exception is menstruation, wherein a secret kind of blood is kept inside a person’s underwear, disguised with scented hygiene products and disposed of as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Humans are often freaked out by blood (their own or other people’s) because, instinctively speaking, blood signals danger to us. There are additional layers of shame and misogyny attached to menstrual blood, as well as a layer of educated concern about infection transmission attached to any blood at all. Some people faint at the sight of blood, and this is easy to understand.

I am intrigued by the sight of blood, which is less straightforward.

I’ve always been fascinated by the hot, redder-than-red liquid that comes out of me in various contexts. I have a vivid memory, from when I was around eight, of watching my face in a hand mirror as I stretched my bottom lip so that the dry skin on it cracked and a huge, glistening orb of blood rose to the surface. I licked it up and enjoyed the taste, but I knew it was weird at least enough to refrain from mentioning it to anybody.

When I menstruate, I interact with the blood. I don’t just rip my pad from my gusset or dump the contents of my menstrual cup with efficiency and detachment – I play with the stuff. I put my finger at the entrance of my vaginal canal and then taste it. I empty my menstrual cup slowly and with reverence, watching my own viscera paint the inside of the toilet bowl crimson.

And when I engage in self-harm (which happens much less frequently than it used to), I play with that blood too. Once I’ve experienced the sharp rush of endorphins that hurting myself can give me, I soothe myself with the taste and texture of my blood. I let it drip. I am slow to dress my wounds because I enjoy what comes out of them. I recognise that that doesn’t sound terribly healthy, but it’s one aspect of self-harm that I think is more self-regulatory than self-destructive. I am, in effect, stimming with my blood. If I had a pint of it readily available, I could self-soothe without necessarily involving self-injury.

A lot of autistic people have strong aversions to, or affinities with, certain colours. I like any deep, rich ones – blood red, navy blue, Cadbury’s purple – and I especially like when they’re translucent, so I can see the world through them. (I own a red glass and a few samples of lighting gels for exactly this reason.) Combined with the distinctive taste and the variety of textures that blood boasts (runny! A little bit thickened! Unsettlingly gloopy!), it makes sense that I have a sensory, autistic fondness for blood.

But of course, in kink, it runs deeper than that. (Is that a blood pun?) For all of the above reasons, the sight of blood is culturally charged, absolutely buzzing with instinct-driven fear and society-driven taboo. When blood happens during kink, it feels profound. Blood is one of the most intimate fluids you can share with another person. As a submissive, bleeding during a scene feels so vulnerable and so dangerous that it acts as a demonstration of obedience and devotion. When I’m topping, seeing my bottom’s blood is a marker of their trust, a sign that they’re giving their body wholly to me. Either way, it’s as delicious psychologically as it is taste-wise.

My favourite ways to bleed in a scene are “accidentally”. I put that word in quotation marks because it’s never truly an accident; the only dominant partner I have who draws blood in scenes does so knowingly (there’s only so many times you can hit someone with a meat tenderiser without breaking skin), and we’ve discussed fluid transmission and our respective STI status very, very thoroughly. But I love bottoming, submitting, in a scene where someone beats me so hard that I bleed without fully expecting to, so lost in the sensation of getting hurt that the blood is a pleasant surprise at the end. I like bleeding as a secondary outcome to a scene, something my dominant partner is almost indifferent about – I like the sense that my bleeding isn’t terribly important. I think that might come from years of self-harm, when my bleeding was terribly important to my mum, my friends and my doctor, but it’s also a side-effect of objectification. Think, “I don’t really care that you’re bleeding on the sheets; I wanted to beat you, and I did. Now, I’m going to fuck your throat, and then we’re going to put a load of laundry on.”

My own menstrual blood appearing during sex is incidental to me unless I get (or am “forced”) to lick it off some fingers, a toy or a cock, in case you were wondering.

I think what I love most about bleeding in a kinky context is how human it makes me, how mortal, how connected to my body. It’s primal. It’s so natural, and yet so starkly surprising because of how thoroughly afraid of it we are and how infrequently we see it as a result. It’s impossible to ignore – even if you get past the saturated red tone of it, it smells like blood – and it can be oh, so satisfying to endure a scene in which I bleed, to ride out the caveman-brained panic of seeing it and to breathe through and ride the highs of the pain that accompanies it. I love blood in the same ways I love kink: it’s fucked up and delicious, it feels dangerous and intimate, and it’s so, so real and inescapable. It grounds me. Ironically, in spite of my caveman brain telling me that my own blood is a sign of danger, when done right, a bloody scene can help me to feel safe.

Safe, Sane and Consensual vs Risk-Aware Consensual Kink

White first-aid box with red writing on it

If you’re new to the world of BDSM, you may have heard the terms “SSC” and “RACK”, and you may be confused as to what exactly they mean, whether they differ from each other and which is better to use. So let me start at the beginning: they’re names for schools of thought within BDSM regarding, essentially, safety and best practice.

SSC = Safe, Sane and Consensual.

RACK = Risk-Aware, Consensual Kink.

There are other versions of these (such as PRICK, which stands for “Personal Responsibility, Informed Consensual Kink”, and CRASH, which stands for “Consensual, Risk-Aware, Shit Happens”), but they’re not as commonly used as SSC or RACK. You’re more than welcome to generate your own code of ethics and best practice within BDSM, and it doesn’t even need a cool acronym, but the benefit of terms like SSC and RACK is that lots of other kinksters are aware of their meanings, which makes communication with those kinksters that little bit more streamlined.

I have to confess, I am firmly a RACK person. I understand the appeal of SSC, especially to newcomers. We all want to believe that the things we do, in kink and in life, are safe and sane. The first problem, though, lies in the subjectivity of both of those words. Imagine you’re talking to someone from, say, 1600. You explain to them that we have huge metal carriages, called “cars”, that can travel at up to 270 miles an hour, and that even in everyday use they can exceed 70. You acknowledge that sometimes, the drivers of these “cars” can lack skill or focus, and sometimes they lose control of their vehicles. Then you reassure your new friend that we have crossings in place, where cars are legally mandated to stop, so that pedestrians can move from one side of the road to the other. They’re only slightly relieved by this, and they are aghast when you follow it up with, “But some people just nip across the road where there isn’t a crossing at all.”

To someone from 1600, that seems both unsafe and fucking insane, but to us, it’s Tuesday. Our understanding of safety changes from decade to decade and person to person. Some people won’t eat raw cookie dough because they deem it unsafe. Some people will do several recreational substances in a field with their friends, with no phone signal nor sober people onsite. (Not me, of course; I would never). People do things that they think are safe but that others do not, and some people do things that they know to be unsafe, because we’re all blessed with bodily autonomy, no matter how recklessly we use it.

There’s also the issue that some kink acts just cannot be made safe. YouTuber Evie Lupine did a wonderful video on this topic, citing breath play and the use of restraints as being among the things that beginners dip their toes into without a full awareness of the risks involved. SSC suggests that kinksters should only engage in play that is safe, but that takes a lot of activities off the table, or else minimises the risks those activities pose. Implying that things like choking are safe, rather than fraught with risks that can be mitigated, is dangerous, especially for beginners. It’s for this reason I prefer the “Risk-Aware” label.

Then there’s the “sane” issue. First, as outlined above, our understanding of what is and isn’t sane to do varies wildly. I don’t think that skiing is a sane thing to do (just chuck yourself down a snowy mountain! With some sticks! It’s fine!), but other people either disagree, or do it anyway. The implication that some types of play can be insane is troublesome, because the distinction between sane and not-sane is different for everybody and because if there are not-sane ways to play, what does that mean for the people who practice them?

The thing is, I know I am not a sane person by most definitions. I experience mild hallucinations, some delusions, huge emotional responses and more, and the idea that sanity is a requirement for kink is… troubling. By focusing instead on risk awareness, I can participate in kink so long as I comprehend the risks and can give informed and unimpeded consent (unimpeded meaning not affected by, nor primarily motivated by weird brain things). I’m sure people who prefer SSC don’t have any ableist intentions, but in suggesting that kink has to be sane, SSC runs the risk of alienating people who aren’t, strictly speaking, sane themselves.

I don’t judge people who use SSC rather than RACK – I’m sure they have their reasons for doing so, and everyone is entitled to set their own rules regarding how they approach BDSM. But I’m always going to err on the side of risk-awareness over insisting on safety and I’m always going to shy away from insistence upon sanity, and I hope y’all can understand why.