BDSM Safeword Survey – who uses safewords with play partners

The safeword survey survey asked the question “Thinking of BDSM interactions with your play partner(s) and of safewords…” and then asked how likely the respondent was to use a safeword.

500 of the 533 people in the sample answered the question.

This article looks at the use of safewords with play partners and looks at the differences that characterised respondents to the survey, based on their BDSM orientation.

Switches use safewords more.

I looked just at those people who always use safewords or never use safewords, crosstabbed with their BDSM orientation (Chart 4). Both switches and Tops/dominants said they were more likely to always use a safeword with play partners than to never use a safeword. By contrast, bottoms/submissives stated they were more likely to never use a safeword.

This contrasts with the way people use safewords with their principal relationship partners, where far fewer said they used safewords.

Safewords – and numbers of play partners

I asked respondents how many people they played with in a year. I thought it might be interesting to look at whether the number of play partners people said they had affected the way they used safewords.

Bottoms/submissives

Bottoms/submissives who said they only played with one person in the last 12 months are much more likely to never use a safeword than they are to use one all the time. But bottoms and submissives with low or moderate numbers of play parters (between two and five) said they are more likely to use a safeword all the time than not to use one at all.By contrast those who said played with larger numbers of people may be more devil-may-care and are much more likely to never use a safeword than always to use one.

Switches

 

Switches contrasted sharply with both bottoms/submissives and tops/dominants. Throughout the sample switch respondents stated they were more likely to always use a safeword than to never use a safeword. And, with a couple of exceptions, the more play partners a respondent had, the more likely this was to be what they said.

Tops/Dominants

Tops/dominants with a single plat partner said they were much more likely never to use a safeword than to always use one. But for every other no. of partners the reverse was true. Though the proportion always using a safeword was very much higher than the proportion that never use a safeword, for every number of partners other than one, the levels of safeword use reported were fairly level in comparison with switches – where it respondents reported that the more partners they had the more likely they were to use a safeword all the time.

Data for this article.

The table below shows the numbers of respondents from which the charts above were compiled. Some of the groups are very small.

Thinking of BDSM interactions with play partners and safewords…
	No of play partners	I always use a safeword	I mostly DON’T use a safeword	I mostly use a safeword	I never use a safeword	All
Bottom/Submissive	1	32	18	7	53	110
	2	22	18	7	12	59
	3	10	14	9	7	40
	4	5	7	7	4	23
	5	4	2	4	2	12
	“5-10”	4	6	3	7	20
	“10 or more”	2	2	3	5	12
Bottom/Submissive Total		79	67	40	90	276
Switch	1	12	6	4	4	26
	2	5	3	2	4	14
	3	6	4	4	1	15
	4	3	1	2		6
	5	5		2	1	8
	“5-10”	6	2	8	1	17
	“10 or more”	3	1			4
Switch Total		40	17	22	11	90
Top/Dominant	1	8	6	3	15	32
	2	11	8	4	4	27
	3	11	8	5	3	27
	4	5	1	4	2	12
	5	2	2	1	1	6
	“5-10”	6	4	2	1	13
	“10 or more”	8	6	3		17
Top/Dominant Total		51	35	22	26	134
Total		170	119	84	127	500

Background

This is the third article about the safeword survey I recently conducted. More information about the terms and ideas I use in these surveys can be found here. Information about the demographics of this survey is here.

This article can be compared with an earlier one, looking at how people use safewords with their principal relationship partners.

Related articles

• Safeword Survey – who uses them with their principal partners (belasarius.com)
• BDSM People who like “pain” and safewords (belasarius.com)
• Safewords – new, more detailed poll – Please take part (belasarius.com)
• What is BDSM? (kinxfetish.wordpress.com)
• One In Three Kinksters Reports A Consent Violation (yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com)
• Cleis Press Author Tristan Taormino featured on E! Entertainment TV in “Real 50 Shades of Grey” (prweb.com)