u/lutholai

Hello everyone! If this isn't allowed on this subreddit I totally understand and will take it being deleted if it needs to be !!

A small conversation I was not a part of on Twitter got me thinking a bit deeper about subspace and consent than I have in the past.

I have never been a part of any sexual situation, let alone in or with someone in subspace. My knowledge is from reading about it, reading stories, etc. from an outside pov.

With this said, I'm not here to judge because I am very interested in bdsm myself and believe I would be submissive.

I am very curious how the kink community, bdsm, and especially subs feel about subspace and consent.

Someone on Twitter mentioned that subspace makes it so someone can not consent. This makes sense to me, and I always sorta saw this but it got me thinking more deeply.

Would this mean that all sexual interactions after subspace would have to be stopped because the sub can no longer consent at all and would be worried about making their dom happy? Or does it just put emphasis on the already very important discussions, negotiations, safe words, etc put in place? And no negotiations and no adding new things to the scene while the sub is in subspace?

I always just assumed it meant that nothing new should be negotiated in an actual bdsm scene when the sub is in subspace. This would make sense to me! The sub would possibly agree to anything a dom says so it's unsafe to do it during the scene (at least that's what I see it as, or how I feel most people do!).

But it got me thinking that if a sub can't consent to changing negotiations, how does the sub consent to the situation itself? Is it simply through use of the safeword? Or is there more to it?

I'd love to hear people's thoughts and get to know what people think on this subject because I'm not an all knowledgeable bdsm person but I like to believe I have a small grasp of it and this made me think a bit more into it.

I know fanfiction, fiction in general, does not depict bdsm correctly all the time and is usually just for the sex and not much else. It takes liberties to make it more sexy/entertaining to the read. so it'd be nice to hear from people in the community instead of people just in fandoms.

Thank you! And again if this isn't a valid post here I apologize :)

small edit before it's responded to: again, this is not judgemental at all! Either way I'm not judging and just trying to understand as someone who has yet to get myself into a sexual situation and who would like to both be safe in a relationship in the future and portray bdsm accurately in fiction if I were to write it, and to know if its accurate in fiction I read. <3

EDIT: thank you to everyone responding !! I would really like to apologize if my post came off as me saying subs can't consent at all. I have always believed that subs can't consent before hand for things that are done during scenes. I had just seen someone post a "people in subspace can't consent" thing on Twitter and was following up on it to fully try to understand, and maybe get context to some of these things! I am not trying to say that subs can't consent, trying to infantilize them, or anything like that and I do apologize if this is how it comes off. I do understand where those thoughts come from but it's just an open discussion to fully understand. Thank you all for being open and telling me how you feel about it!!!!