I was going through my archives and noticed this article had not been posted. It's from years ago, so probably does not hold to my current style of writing, but, here it is. (Original posted March 1, 2006)

SSC has become a mantra of the "modern" BDSM community, if it is "safe", we can make it more mainsteam, people doing "safe" things with "sane" people.

Most people in the community preach SSC, but is that the best way for BDSM to be? What about RACK, the newer bastard step child of a phrase that only a few use currently?

"Safe", is all your equipment checked out and in full working order, is the person you are with experienced at what activities you are undertaking, has any chance of injury been eliminated?

"Sane", pretty subjective here, mainly does the person in control of the scene know what is real and what is not, what is possible and what is not, thinking you can do anything you have read about is definitely not sane, but there is a grey area.

"Consensual", are all parties willing participants, lets hope yes, even for rape play or other more extreme levels of play, consent is always a must. This is used in SSC and RACK, no play without consent.

"Risk-Aware", we know there are risks, we are aware of what they are and have discussed them, forewarned is forearmed.

"Kink", I think we all know what is kinky, though there might be degrees of what is kinky to one person vs. another.

The problem is that SSC implies that the activities we undertake are safe, which most times they are, but consider breath play, or other edge play, this is definitely not 100% safe. What about bondage, it is possible being bound could lead to injuries from bruises to something more serious. So is BDSM safe, not really, it can be reasonably safe, but nothing is for sure.

I prefer to consider myself RACK, there are risks, and I am aware of them and still choose to do what I do. With RACK, edge play is acceptable, as are a number of less than safe activities, this does not mean we will be totally unsafe, just that we discuss and understand the risks of what we undertake up front.

Each person has to choose their own level of play, but we need to be aware and know where our personal lines and limits are.

OK, to delve into community a bit more, do we in the lifestyle have a community, yeah, sort of. It might be immature, chaotic ans dysfunctional at times, but it's a community.

But, do you feel you are a part of a community? Well Dr. David M. Chavis came up with a survey method of determining that, it is a set of questions that you score to determine how much a part of a community you feel like you are. It's called the Sense of Community Index (SCI), there is also a second version (SCI-2) that has more questions.

Modified for the lifestyle it would be: (score 1 for each true statement)
Q1. I think my local BDSM group is a good place for me to be.
Q2. People in my local BDSM group share the same values I have.
Q3. Other local people want the same things from the local BDSM group that I do.
Q4. I can recognize most of the people who are in my local BDSM group.
Q5. I feel at home in the local BDSM group.
Q6. Most of the members of the local BDSM group know me.
Q7. I care about what other members of the local BDSM group think of my actions.
Q8. I have influence over what the local BDSM group is like.
Q9. If there is a problem in the local BDSM group the members can get it solved.
Q10. It is very important to me to be a member of the local BDSM group.
Q11. People in the local BDSM group generally get along with each other.
Q12. I expect to be a member of the local BDSM group for a long time.

Subscales for focusing on certain issues:

• Membership=Q4+Q5+Q6
• Influence=Q7+Q8+Q9
• Reinforcement of Needs=Q1+Q2+Q3
• Shared Emotional Connection-Q10+Q11+Q12

While some of these questions will reflect on the individual more than the group, they do give a sense of how much a person feels they are part of the community.

So, what's you score?

Say we had someone who had the following symptoms: Euphoria, content, decreased stress, increased sociability, increased feeling of closeness, reduced defensiveness, introspective, and enhanced tactile sensation. Later, maybe even for days, depression, increased anxiety, increased emotional sensitivity and an "afterglow". What am I describing the effects of?

We have all seen those effects on people, we tend to call it "subspace", "topspace", or "headspace". But those are actually the list of effects of the drug Ecstasy. They have a very similar set of effects, because intense play releases the same chemicals into our blood stream as the drug causes to be released, we just do it without the drug.

So, the effects are similar, out at clubs Ecstasy is used in ways similar to alcohol, to "loosen" a girl up, make it easier to get her to go to bed with the person. How many times have we seen in dungeons someone do an intense scene with someone who then convinces them to come home with them or do another more intense scene than they agreed to before they had all those lovely "feel good" hormones running through their system?

Is there anything we can do about this? Does it need to be addressed? Or is it just another one of those "fend for yourself" issues we seem to have far too many of in this lifestyle?

I really would like for people to comment, I know I am on record as sometimes taking safety "too seriously", but my background is one where I was taught it was better to be over-safe than not safe enough.

This past weekend I attended a large fetish convention in Atlanta. Even during the event I started to feel a bit down, not your typical post-event feeling down, but something else. I noticed a great deal this weekend that many of the new people in the lifestyle are missing a great deal of concern for basic safety. I know, I know, some people are WAY too serious about things, but the other side of the coin is just as bad. I guess living through the AIDS scare and loosing friends to it makes a difference.

And yes the event was a big party type event, so you go in expecting a certain level of high school level stupidity. But I saw knives used in play scenes that I could tell were not properly cleaned, they looked clean to people who don't deal with knives often I am sure. I saw someone with needles all through their arm walking around the crowded dungeon, an accident waiting to happen, how often do people bump into each other in dungeons? I saw people I had seen earlier downing large amounts of alcohol at parties now in the dungeon playing hard. I saw people with dilated and glassy eyes playing. I saw cell phone cameras being used in the dungeon. All in all, I saw everything we preach to people not to do.

I doubt I will ever attend this particular event again, while the classes during the day were great, you could tell less than half the event attendees were in the classes. Most were sleeping in from a hard night partying, resting up for the next batch of parties. I had looked forward to this event, it's rare that my work and this event work out to allow me to attend, and part of me wishes I had not gone now, better to still have the desire...

I am still doing a bit of my post-con decompression, but I know that the bad will out way the good in the end for this particular event. I know from talking to other people all over that BDSM is not taken seriously most places, I guess this event just goes to show a bit more of that going on, with those of us who know better being outnumbered by all the new people who never took it serious to begin with.

In general, a fallacy is an error in reasoning, not an error in actual facts. It's an argument that even though all the premises of the argument are true, the conclusion can still be false. They don't provide enough support to make the conclusion solid, the conclusion may still be the right one, but the logical argument does not back it up.

An example of a fallacy at work is:
Premise: "When I went to SC I did not see any schools."
Conclusion: "There are no schools in SC."

Obviously we know this to be false, but it gets harder to tell with more vague topics and different fallacies, sometimes a logical fallacy can lead people to believe something that others know to be obviously false like "All people who like BDSM are perverts and criminals."

There are many types of fallacies, and more fallacies than anyone would likely list or want to read, I am only going to touch on the common ones, and provide links to where others are detailed.

• Appeal to probability - Just because something can happen, does not mean it will. "Heavy S&M play leads to injuries. Therefore, if you do heavy S&M play, you will get hurt."
• Argument from fallacy - Making the assumption that because someone used a logical fallacy to support their conclusion that their conclusion is false. "I enjoy spanking others so I am a top. But switches spank people too, so you must not be a top."
• Denying the correlative - Either/or arguments, sometimes things can be both or neither. "Everyone is a dominant or a submissive. This ignores the fact that some people are switches, and some people don't take power exchange roles at all."
• False dichotomy - Assuming there are only two possible conclusions. I think everyone has seen examples of black & white thinking, ignoring the shades of grey that exist in the middle. This also gets extended in the lifestyle to an assumption that because there is no "right" or "true" way that there are no "wrong" ways.
• Is-ought problem - Just because that is the way things are done, does not mean it is the correct way.
• Masked man fallacy - A list of semi-related true facts may not lead to a supportable conclusion. "I know about Person A. I don't know about Person B. Therefore person A and B are different people." - In a lifestyle where people use aliases and have multiple names, this can be an easy one to fall into.
• Nirvana fallacy - Sometimes there is no perfect solution to a problem, reality is not perfect, only fantasy is.
• Package deal fallacy - Grouping things may not always mean what you think it does. "Sue really likes knife play, so I know she will enjoy artistic cutting."
• Equivocation - Using different word meaning and contexts to equate something different. "Something has to be done about X. Y is something. We must do Y."
• Proof by example - Using a single example to assume a broad truth. See the example at the beginning of the article about SC and Schools for this type.
• Argument from repetition (Ad nauseam) - The subject has been argued many many times before, and people are tired of discussing it.
• Appeal to ridicule - Representing an argument in a way to make it seem foolish. "You are just a kid/sock puppet, no one should believe what you say."
• Argument from ignorance - Failure to prove something true or false does not make it the opposite. "Since bob has been unable to prove he did not ignore Sue's safeword he must have ignored it."
• Circular arguments - The conclusion is a premise to it's own premise. "Bob has no experience with the whip. No one will let bob use a whip on them."
• Correlation does not imply causation - Just because we see two things together commonly does not mean one causes the other. We see a lot of abuse victims in the lifestyle, however it is incorrect to assume abuse leads to being in the lifestyle.

As you can see there are many fallacies used in arguments, for more you can go to Wikipedia list of fallacies or Nizkor Project - Fallacies.