ROUGH BODY PLAY - AKA No, you may not get your Mad On without consequence

 I just recently had a conversation that has me a bit…well…pissed.    Furious, really.

So this rant?   This one here?   Gonna be a bit tart. And unlike my normal rants - it's not going to sit for weeks at a time to cool off and lose some of the piquancy. 

Here’s the thing.    I am getting bloody fucking sick and tired of the phrase, “She knew the risks when she played with me.”

This isn’t a “consent violation” rant.   It isn’t a “poor little female sub” rant.   There are enough of those out there, and those aren’t the story I get to tell – I’m a Hetero Male Dinosaur, not a Victimized Female Submissive.  

But. 

For all you big strong rough body player Dom/mes out there?  There is a difference between rough body play, and being an emotionally unhealthy, imbalanced sadistic asshole.  And I really, really, really fucking wish you would start acknowledging that, and stop buying your own fucking Hype.  

Rough body play (AKA “thug play”, “heavy beating”, “bare hand play”, and “hands on play”) is the skill of causing pain and/or hurting someone without causing permanent damage.  

Let’s rewind that and use a highlighter, because some of you (if you are even reading) are just too fucking thick to get it.

It is the SKILL, of causing pain AND/OR hurting someone WITHOUT causing PERMANENT injury.  

“SKILL”

Skill in rough body play involves practice.  It should also involve training, specific to rough body play (not martial arts, military combat or police tactics).  It should involve a great deal of caring – because if you don’t care, you don’t take the time to learn about muscular anatomy, skeletal anatomy, cardiac structure, and kinesthetics.    It also requires learning how to hit, learning what body parts not to hit, learning about the interconnected anatomical features that come along with most injuries and disabilities, and learning what parts of your body shouldn’t be used on soft (or hard) targets.  

“AND/OR “

Rough body play isn’t about damage.   It’s about pain, physical weakness, and the emotions that they both trigger.  As in, you don’t need to do physical damage to cause pain, if you actually know what you’re doing.   You can hit someone to make them feel hurt, weak and agonized – without breaking bones, tearing ligaments, fracturing jaws, damaging teeth, or spraining joints.    If you can’t – you aren’t a rough body player, you’re a sadistic thug.   And the handcuffs should be on you, not on the girl. 

“WITHOUT”

Yeah – most people miss this part.   Without causing permanent injury.   Without causing unwanted permanent scarring.   Without causing damage that will slowly degrade into joint problems and permanent mobility loss.    So if you don’t have the skill to play without causing damage?   Fuck you, and go home.  Find a qualified teacher, swallow your ego, and go back to Top school.  

Cumulative damage is inevitable – that’s the reality of physical impact.   Enough times falling down a hill will cause cumulative injury – rough play definitely will with enough time.   But cumulative damage can be minimized, healed, or adjusted to.   It is inevitable, but it isn’t crippling. 

Permanent damage is NOT inevitable.    Kicking someone directly in the hip during a scene is NOT inevitable.   Driving an elbow into someone’s ribs without restraint is NOT inevitable.   Breaking someone’s teeth because a hard on tells you to is NOT inevitable.   Causing whiplash with a back hand is NOT inevitable.   Spraining someone’s wrist with a careless takedown is NOT inevitable.  Knife-handing someone in the side of the neck is NOT inevitable.  

What those things are, is STUPID.   CARELESS.   CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT.   And fucking EMBARRASSING to those of us who actually KNOW what the fuck we’re doing.    

And for the record?   Every injury I just named?   I have either personally witnessed them, or have seen the aftermath of every one of them.     And more.   All at the hands of self-identified “experienced” rough body players.  

When you hit someone, you have a choice of targets.   If you are even halfway competent to do rough body play (go look up a guy on Fetlife named Voron – the ability to grasp his writings is a good measure as to whether you come close) then you also have a choice of what body part you hit with.   You have a choice of power, speed and angle of approach, depth, and repetition.   

So as the Top, you have the choice as to whether you cause pain, or whether you cause damage.  

You, as the Top, have those choices.

Your bottom?   Not so much.    She (or he) has the choice to start play, stop play, safe word out (if the Top is actually listening), and to decide whether or not to press charges after they leave. 

Please re-read that last one.   WHETHER to PRESS CHARGES after they leave.   FAR too few bottoms are willing to press charges, in my opinion.   If your play partner breaks your FUCKING ribs during “rough body play”, and plays it off as the consequences of play…he should be in the county big house, getting some “rough body play” of his own.   The kind where he gets a new name, like “sweet cheeks” or “tight ass”.    *grumble*

Yes, even when bottoms do press charges, a good deal of it never gets taken up by the local DA.   The local DA doesn’t see much of it, nor understands it.   If he sees enough of it, the local DA might start listening.   Or if he receives a visit from a coalition of the injured, he might just start listening.   If he sees it on the news, or if you take your story to your local elected district representative (most of whom are generally female, at least in Philly) he will DEFINITELY start listening.  

Final thoughts.   Because I try not to end these rants without some constructive note:  

I said earlier to find a qualified teacher and go back to Top school.    There are not, unfortunately, many “qualified” teachers currently teaching.   There are a few.   But a few cannot possibly cover the entire “community”.    And they tend to burn out eventually.    

The point of rough body play, if any of you care, is the feeling that the bottom gets from being helpless, in pain, and weak.   Your feeling of power should come from that, and from their pain – not from the tingly thrills of reducing a human being to a broken, bleeding mass.   That’s the difference between Topping, and Sadism.   See my rant on Sadism if you don’t get why that’s a bad thing.  

A great little example of why I’m bitter over this – one of the few people I truly respect in this scene is a teacher.   She is old enough to be my mother (or my grandmother, as I have never had the balls to ask her real age).    She will remain nameless, because I don’t believe in dragging others into it.   I will simply say that she teaches classes that focus on the Why of what we do, instead of the How.   She is probably one of the more talented whip players still alive, but she teaches why you whip a person, not how you throw the whip.   She talks about the emotions of a bottom, instead of their sexual practices. 

And because of that, her classes are sometimes nearly empty.   Because most modern Tops would rather learn how to diddle a clit with Icy Hot or crowd around the Kinky T-shirt Sale, than understand what they’re actually doing.  

The quality of what passes for teachers in this “community” does a lot to keep those who are qualified from being willing to teach.    Most of the stable, mature, qualified members of the scene who I’ve met and would be joyous to see in front of students have vehemently denied that they will ever do it.   It’s because of the quality of horse-shit that’s being shoveled in most BDSM classes right now, that they aren’t willing to be associated with most teaching events.   And I can’t say I blame them. 

So, learn to judge what a qualified teacher is.   Learn to judge if your Top is qualified to do rough body play with you.   Set the standards high.    Or don’t, and just keep wallowing in horse-shit until the disturbingly large number of bottoms who have been abused and damaged reaches critical mass and all the Tops wind up in jail, while all the bottoms wind up in therapy.   As always, your choice.  

I’m going to end with these little jewels:   

1.   Having spent (x) years in the Martial Arts?   Does NOT give you an automatic license to do or teach rough body play.   It qualifies you to do your style of martial art, with a partner, or on an attacker.    It qualifies you to compete, and maybe use some cross over technique in your play.    Rough Body Play is NOT Martial Arts.   There is cross over.   There is also cross over between archery and rifle-ry.   But being an archer doesn’t qualify you to use a Barrett.

2.   Having a Black Belt or a teaching certificate is NOT an automatic degree in doing or teaching rough body play.    It qualifies you to wear a dark colored belt in your dojo, and help with classes, under controlled circumstances.   Want to argue?   I’ve got three black belts with multiple degrees and a half dozen of other colors in other styles.   I have certificates in belt-less reality-based combative systems.   I don’t even know what box in the basement they’re in, and I still go to every rough body class I can take - to learn.   A belt is NOT a measure of talent in safely causing pain.   A background in fighting is a measure of talent in causing damage, not avoiding causing it.   And neither a belt, NOR a background in fighting, are a measure of skill and safety as a rough body player.  

3.  Time spent in the Military is NOT an automatic qualifier for doing or teaching rough body play.   Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen spend their time learning a lot of skills.   Unarguably those skills make them better equipped to be disciplined leaders, and strong workers, as well as generally successful people.   Many of those skills are directly combative.   Combat, and rough body play, are two very different things.  Some of the best of the current crop of cops and agents I work with are just back from the sandbox.   But there is a world of difference between a tour humping mountains or leading men in direct engagements, and intimately knowing the muscular anatomy of a human being with limited mobility, or a history of previous injury.  

4.   Time spent as a Law Enforcement Officer is NOT an automatic pass to say you are an experienced “rough body player”.    Yes, we (generally) train daily to cuff a resisting suspect.   Yes, we are constantly trained and re-trained to go hands on empty handed in violent situations – and in situations where we have to restrain without injuring.   That is NOT experience in rough body play – that’s experience in restraint, arrest, and control tactics.    Again, see #1 – cross over is good, but cross over is NOT automatic qualification.  

And as always, please…PLEASE…vet the people you play with, AND the people you learn from.    If they have a problem with you asking for references, walk the fuck away.   

A man is judged by his actions, not his words.   By the company he keeps, not his version of his history.   And if a teacher or a player won’t tell you the names of people who can verify both?  

It’s time to leave.