Safe, sane and consensual
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In the BDSM community, safe, sane and consensual (SSC) are common principles guiding relationships and activities.
The principles are that BDSM activities should be:
- safe: attempts should be made to identify and prevent risks to health
- sane: activities should be undertaken in a sane and sensible frame of mind
- consensual: all activities should involve the full consent of all parties involved. Note, though, that legal consent may not create a defence to criminal liability for any injuries caused and, for these purposes, non-physical injuries are included in the definition of grievous bodily harm in English law.
Other people in the BDSM community do not consider SSC to be an accurate term for these relationships or activities. The term Risk Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) is sometimes used as a substitute description. Disagreements generally arise from the subjective nature of each term in SSC when using the term as a yardstick to evaluate activities. It can be argued that the terms in RACK are equally subjective. "How safe is safe enough?" is a legitimate question, as is "How aware is aware enough?".
Most attribute the term SSC to David Stein, who coined it in August 1983 for [1][dead link]. In his essay entitled Safe Sane Consensual: The Evolution of a Shibboleth, Stein states that the term was created "to distinguish the kind of S/M I wanted to do from the criminally abusive or neurotically self-destructive behaviour popularly associated with the term 'sadomasochism'."
