In this entry, I’ll answer another one of the most common questions I get: what are the meanings of the acronyms SSC, RACK, PRICK, CCCC, TREK and FRIES?
Simply put, they’re a bunch of terms mostly related to the different attitudes some people have towards BDSM (the exception being FRIES). They’re not compulsory, you don’t have to abide by any of them, but some people use them as a way of saying “this is how I play.”
I’ll explain them all; the only thing I won’t go into is explaining consent each time – that’s the only constant and it basically means that everyone involved agrees to what’s happening. It’s also a basic legal requirement!
SSC – Safe, Sane & Consensual:
This is a very popular term amongst newcomers, because it suggests they only do safe things. You’ll often see newbies saying “if it’s not SSC it’s not BDSM” or “BDSM means SSC” or “SSC is compulsory” or other variations – IMO this is because they’ve seen someone else say it, and they’re just repeating it without actually understanding what they’re saying. The problem with SSC, and the reason that very few experienced kinksters refer to it, is that everyone is different. What one person considers to be safe – eg choking – could be considered dangerous by someone else. There’s a good argument that very little in BDSM is “safe” so it really doesn’t make sense to say you only do safe things – even mental aspects of Domination can be harmful. And the same goes for “sane” – is it sane to shove things up your butt? No, yet anal is incredibly popular. SSC is a nice way to make BDSM sound a lot less scary than it looks in porn, but in reality it makes little sense because, objectively, BDSM simply isn’t safe or indeed sane. And if you disagree with that statement, you’ve demonstrated why SSC is pointless.
RACK – Risk-Aware Consensual Kink:
Because SSC is meaningless when you think about it, a bunch of people decided to come up with a better term- RACK. This removes any concept of safety or sanity and replaces it with “do what you want but be aware of the risks,” which makes a lot more sense. It’s a way of saying “yeah I do stuff some people think is crazy, but I know what can go wrong.” The implication is that someone who knows the risks of something will also know how to mitigate them – but you should always check, because knowing what the risks are doesn’t always mean you know how to handle them. However, just like SSC, RACK is also subjective – what’s risky to one person is totally safe to another, and again “shoving things up your butt” is a classic example of something that has risks (tearing, infection, leaking, things getting lost up there) but is frequently considered safe.
PRICK – Personal Responsibility in Consensual Kink (some folk replace “in” with “informed”):
This is the one that, IMO, makes the most sense. It means we take responsibility for ourselves and our actions; we act like grownups. Which really shouldn’t need to be something we say, but here we are. It can also suggest that you’re informed about what you’re doing, or that consent should be informed consent, which I do think is a pretty big deal. Informed consent is the difference between “do you consent to me choking you?” and “do you consent to me choking you which I’ve never done to anyone before so I have zero experience?” Notably, this philosophy does away with any notions of safety or risk, recognising that they’re pointless, and focuses on whether you understand what you’re doing and accept the responsibility for yourself. The drawback is that it’s very difficult to establish if you’re actually informed – did you learn about choking from porn or from a YouTube video or from a blog or from some random on Reddit… As we’ve seen with Wikipedia, just because something is online doesn’t make it true. So unless you’ve done the research and experimentation yourself and established the facts, are you actually informed? And if you’re not fully informed, are you actually able to take responsibility for something you don’t understand?
CCCC – Consent, Communication, Caring, Caution
Because someone always has to be right more than other people, some academics came up with this peach. I’ve never seen anyone mention it in conversation, just in “I am considerably more kinky than yow” dick measuring terms online (which I guess I’m perpetuating here), but since we’re here: it points out that communication is important, but then caring and caution is the same as safety and sanity – who decides what it means? It’s not a constant. I suspect the folk who came up with it think aftercare is mandatory (it’s not) and all scenes should end with a mug of hot cocoa and a My Little Pony cartoon.
TREK – Totally Responsible & Ethical Kink
TREK takes a less cuddly approach to all the others, and promotes the idea that we’re all adults and shouldn’t need to be told how to behave. If we’re mature enough to be allowed to own hurtling metal death machines, we’re probably mature enough to not want to risk jail time for being an idiot in bed. As an added bonus it has two subgenres you can choose between based on which best fits your dynamic:
– The needs of the Dom outweigh the needs of the subby, or
– The needs of the sub outweigh the needs of the Dommy.
BONUS ROUND – CONSENT
FRIES – Freely given, Revocable, Informed, Enthusiastic, Specific
There’s also FRIES (Freely given, Revocable, Informed, Enthusiastic, Specific) which is an acronym to describe all the elements which go towards consent. However, we can’t just leave it there, because some times in BDSM the consent won’t clearly be enthusiastic – but it’s still consent and it’s still valid. Some people do enjoy doing things (in BDSM) they’re not enthusiastic about – they enjoy the feeling of submission rather than the act itself.
Anyway, FRIES is not specific to BDSM, but it’s often something young adults have been taught as a way of explaining consent, so it’s worth comparing to the BDSM-specific terms.
As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s totally up to you if you choose to adopt any of these terms – many people don’t, no-one will (or at least, they shouldn’t) judge you whatever you choose, but now you know!