Throw Pillow BDSM: all the props, none of the process

Risk! Erotic spaces invite us to explore responsiveness to risk in a world obsessed with “safe spaces"

There’s no such thing as a "safe space” — at least, not if your definition is that “nothing can go wrong.”

Somewhere along the line, “safe” started to mean sanitized, controlled, risk-free.

If your version of BDSM is risk-free, it’s not BDSM.

But it is what I like to call it “Throw Pillow BDSM.”

These are folks who are hoping to explore their edges—as long as nothing actually feels edgy.

They want intensity without discomfort, dominance without tension, and surrender without risk.

They love the look. They want to be part of the club but they don’t want to be affected.

When reality doesn’t match the fantasy?

An emotional emergency is declared and “safety” is weaponized as a shield against being remotely confronted by human shadow and fallibility.

Projection is taken as absolute truth about the one being projected on.

“Throw Pillow BDSM” isn’t about power exchange—it’s about pain avoidance.

It’s BDSM that’s been softened, like chewed baby food, so it goes down easier. No mess. No complexity. Just sanitized, politically correct kink.

Erotic spaces are not about eliminating all risk. They’re about (1) choosing it consciously, and (2) offering repair if something goes sideways.

What we need aren’t spaces where nothing can go wrong, but where we can be honest when it does. Because it will.

Trying to fit BDSM into a mistake-proof box doesn’t protect people. It creates a false sense of safety, and kills the very energy that makes it transcendent, playful, and healing.

A misread cue.

A name that lands the wrong way.

An edge pushed too far.

These moments don’t mean the space wasn’t held with care or intention. They mean we’re human, with bodies and histories and nervous systems that are complex and ever-changing, who are coming together to share space.

When we become so afraid of making a mistake that we stop moving, stop speaking, stop feeling—we’ve left the erotic entirely. Connection becomes performance. A scene is an empty rehearsal.

So what’s the alternative?

Trust isn’t build on perfection—but presence. It’s about attunement, adaptability, and the courage to create in real time. It’s also the response towards the mistake when a mistake is made. That’s alive. It’s real.

When we play, especially in erotic contexts that involve novelty and risk, our brains reward us hard.

The prefrontal cortex lights up, unlocking creativity and deep focus. Meanwhile, the amygdala (the fear centre) calms down.

Dopamine floods the system, giving us a surge of pleasure, motivation, and connection.

But it goes deeper: play triggers neuroplasticity, which is our brain’s ability to form new pathways.

Play requires unpredictability.

Which brings us to trust.

In BDSM there is inherent risk.

The energy, the charge—it requires the sense of danger, tingling just beneath the surface.

You’re stepping into a space where harm is possible, and that’s part of the tension.

But there’s a world of difference between a misstep and deliberately or repeatedly causing harm, which is bullying, or worse.

Erotic energy, the real potent stuff, comes from responding to what’s actually happening: body language, breath, microexpressions, verbal check-ins, a change in pacing, trying something, pulling back.

It’s jazz, not classical. It’s art, not manufacturing.

Yes, consent matters. I’m not saying erotic spaces should go rogue on boundaries.

Consent anchors us to what we know. Trust allows us to explore the unknown.

Where there is trust, there is play.

And where there is play, there is transformation.

RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink), SSC (Safe, Sane, Consensual), or the latest acronym PRICK (Personal Responsibility Informed Consensual Kink) is not a total defence or guarantee against harm. Rather, it’s the acknowledgement of risk.

Even trauma-informed doesn’t mean “risk-free.” It means consent-aware, nervous system-attuned, and responsive to reality.

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Priestess Francesca—a New York based Dominatrix—and I were sitting on two rocking chairs in her Brooklyn apartment one sunny afternoon in fall. We were talking about the healing potential of BDSM for my upcoming book.

I asked: During a BDSM session, particularly when you're exploring deep traumas, how do you ensure safety?

“I have this phrase: If you consent to the chemistry, you consent to the alchemy,” she said.

Continuing:

There’s 3D consent and 5D consent.

The 3D consent is what we can do here in this physical world to the best of our abilities.

The 5D consent is how you are being alchemized through this—and fucking newsflash—alchemy is death.

Alchemy is death because alchemy is transformation from one form into another.

And, second newsflash, death is not casual.

It’s very similar to psychedelics. I consent to taking this medicine, this plant medicine, which means you’re consenting to whatever it is that that plant medicine is going to deliver. Whatever it’s going to uproot. Whatever it’s going to reveal. Whatever it’s going to kill in you.

BDSM and sex? Same-same, but different, man.”

She smiled, then leaned forward slightly, as she did when she was about to explain something a bit edgier.

“When I’m playing in these terrains, because I know that there is plenty that we don’t know, I have to set up my systems and structures to account for that.

But I’m not trying to avoid any of the pain.

I’m never trying to avoid the alchemy, the transformation, the trigger, the catharsis, the release.

No.

I’m just setting up our systems and structures the same way you would practice a fire escape route before the building’s on fire.

I say this a lot: Remember in school you had your fire drills and you practiced that before you were inside of a burning building?

But very often in sex and relating, because we get tethered to this fucking fantasy that everything is going to be hunky-dory, we don’t actually set up our fire escape, our fire exit plan, where is our first aid kit, where is the fire extinguisher, so that we can get out of this without third-degree burns that require hospitalization.

This is the difference between going into it with a level of maturity and discernment versus sloshing around in it like an ignorant child.

You’re playing with fire on purpose.

People are going to get burnt.

Do you know what you’re doing when the burns start?”

There was a pause to let the words settle. Then she continued.

“Some of the things that I’m always checking for when I’m vetting clients—beyond are you a decent human fucking being—is ‘have you cultivated a level of discernment?’

And it doesn’t have to be perfect.

We’ve all been in sexual situations where we’re like, ‘Oh, I overdid it there,’ right?

Then you clean up the mess.

But if you haven’t cultivated:

- Clarity in your internal compass
- A liberated throat so that you are brave enough to speak it
- A level of solidity in yourself that someone else’s reaction to your truth doesn’t waver your truth...

Then you’re probably not ready to go and fuck around in these realms.”

Francesca sat back in her chair, the weight of her words settling into the space between us.

"How do you see BDSM evolving over the next decade?” I asked. I knew that, with her, even a lighter question like this would get a deep answer.

She tells me that she has a desire to allow people to explore these realms in safer ways—but that doesn’t meant no one is going to get hurt.

"Instead, there’s a level of awareness of what we’re doing, and that the people holding the poles of this art form are prepared to hold seekers through it, are prepared to shepherd seekers through it, are prepared to jiggle the rope through when someone thinks they are lost in the absolute darkness of the pain and the death and the alchemy, and say:

‘Oh no baby, the rope is right here. We are gonna climb our way out of this, I promise. Everything is gonna be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like there’s any possibility of it being okay.’

I have a class on intuitive vetting and boundaries.

I have a repair process that I teach my clients, and I say, if / slash / when this goes wrong, if / slash / when we land on your trigger, if / slash / when you feel a really big ouchy coming up and maybe you want to project all of that onto me—great. This is the repair process we’re going to go through.

When a client projects something onto me, I’m like, ‘Oh, thank God. Oh, thank God.’

Because this is part of the process of getting it out from the deep recesses of your unconscious and getting it out into the world. And I’m the closest thing to you right now.

So project all that shit onto me. I won’t pick it up, but I’ll hold you through that.”

Her hands are resting on her abdomen, as if maybe that’s where she processes that projection.

”There’s no level of certification that can prepare you for being in the midst of someone’s chaotic catharsis, sometimes insane projections onto you, the vilification of causing the pain that they are experiencing.”

She laughed, and her New York accent seemed to thicken with what she said next:

”Who you be on the inside is going to determine how you handle yourself in those moments.

Do you alleviate them?

Do you relieve them from a place of love?

Or do you create more inadvertent harm?

Because how you react in those moments matters.

And then how you react in the moments that follow those moments maaaatters.”

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Let’s touch in once more on the brain:

When we feel safe, the ventral vagal complex (part of the parasympathetic nervous system) gets activated, making social engagement possible.

Our heart rate stabilizes.

We breathe more deeply.

We can connect.

This is the biological foundation of trust.

But if something triggers a past trauma—sudden movements, tone of voice, a miscommunication—the amygdala flares up, signaling “danger.” The body shifts into fight, flight, fawn or freeze, and the prefrontal cortex (the seat of rational thought) starts to shut down. The person disconnects. This is where rupture happens.

So, how do we navigate this in erotic play? Here are just some of the ways:

1. For many trauma survivors, having a predictable framework, like negotiated boundaries, and agreed-upon safe words, creates the conditions for play. Communication goes both ways. If you might be triggered in a scene or by an interaction, make that known. Further to that, what signals might there be that you are triggered? Have a “fire escape plan.”

2. Being able to read your partner’s body, breath, and energy keeps you responsive. This is how trust is maintained in real time.

3. Mistakes happen. The difference between trauma-reinforcing and trauma-healing play is the repair. Can you pause? Check in? Course-correct? Take a break. Talk it out?

Trust is built through consistency and care, not perfection. When those elements are in place, erotic spaces can become not just hot—but healing.

Even with the best negotiation, the clearest consent, and the most attuned partners (which are all important factors), things can still go wrong.

That’s not a bug. That’s being human.

If we expect perfection or we pretend that things will never ever ever ever go wrong, we destroy the possibility of building trust through the experience—and if there is rupture, through repair too.

That’s the process.

Enough with the pillows.