Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that breaks the skin...

Collarchat.com

Home Login Search

Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that breaks the skin...

View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest

All Forums >> [Community Discussions] >> Health and Safety >> Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that breaks the skin...

Page: [1]

Message

<< Older Topic Newer Topic >>

Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that breaks ... - 7/19/2010 5:35:34 AM

mistoferin

Posts: 8284
Joined: 10/27/2004
Status: offline

If you were preparing for a needle play scene, would you allow people to take the caps off of your needles and fondle the points? Would you insert needles into the skin of your bottom without properly cleansing the skin first? Would you disregard the need for gloves? Proper care, cleansing or bandaging of the site afterward? The answer that most of us would give is “of course not!”.

Yet I have noticed an odd thing over time. When it is not specifically needles or another medical implement I have often seen people fondling or checking out a new and interesting, sharp or pointy toy prior to a scene. People handling the new knife, the rose thorn cane, the grill brush or the cool new implement that is sure to draw blood…testing it’s sharpness on their fingers. These implements are then used on a bottom with no cleaning or “sterilization”. I’ve almost never seen a bottom’s neck, back, ass or skin carefully scrubbed down with alcohol or disinfectant prior to some knife play that gets thrown into the middle of a flogging…or whip play or caning that is at the level of opening the skin.

Now most of us at least try to be diligent about proper handwashing and such…but not everyone is. So if an item gets passed around a room to get checked out, or several people just pick it up to admire it or get a closer look…what are they leaving on it that will soon be introduced into the bottom’s system? Bacteria, viruses, urine, feces, snot…traces of the raw chicken they prepared for dinner? I mean….EWWWWWW!!!!

In a public dungeon or at a party where DM’s are overseeing the activity, I can certainly see them stepping in if someone was setting up to do needle play or cutting and was taking no sanitary precautions. But would they step in when someone pulls out a rose thorn cane or a grill brush in the middle of an impact scene? No, I really don’t think they would…at least I’ve never seen that occur. But wouldn’t there be as much danger to the bottom when an unclean implement breaches the skin as there would be if they got stuck with a contaminated needle?

Is it a breakdown in safety? A lack of understanding? Oversight? Indifference? Do we view implements that sometimes break the skin as being different from tools that are specifically designed to do so?

_____________________________

Peace and light,
~erin~

There are no victims here...only volunteers.

When you make a habit of playing on the tracks, you thereby forfeit the right to bitch when you get hit by a train.

"I did it! I admit it and I'm gonna do it again!"

Profile

Post #: 1

RE: Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that bre... - 7/19/2010 6:58:43 AM

DesFIP

Posts: 25191
Joined: 11/25/2007
From: Apple County NY
Status: offline

Not just fondling. But if they used that crop on someone else's pussy an hour before, then I don't want it near me.

This kind of thing just squicks me. If I played publicly, I would have to have my own bag of implements for the top to use on me. Cross contamination is not cool.

_____________________________

Slave to laundry

Cynical and proud of it!

(in reply to mistoferin)

Profile

Post #: 2

RE: Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that bre... - 7/19/2010 7:26:33 AM

CallaFirestormBW

Posts: 3651
Joined: 6/29/2008
Status: offline

If I'm playing with sharps, they've been autoclaved or chem-sterilized, and are appropriately packaged to show this. NOTHING is opened until I open it with gloved hands, on a prepared sterile field, and then use it. Nothing is left sitting open, and if some ignoramus fondles a piece of my equipment, that equipment can no longer be used for play.

I have been substantially annoyed on several occasions, especially in larger cities with open groups or in places where there are VERY VERY new open groups, when doing public piercing/cutting scenes, when guests came over and pawed all over my sterile field after having been CLEARLY told not to touch -- and, unfortunately, all of the preparations were in vain, because I got too annoyed to set up a new sterile field to continue, or some special piece of equipment was opened/handled that was fundamental to what I'd planned, and now I couldn't use it.

I don't think that most people would walk into a doctor's office or tattoo/piercing shop and play with the scalpels and sharps -- but they seem perfectly comfortable doing it to a top who is preparing a scene, and I just don't understand that.

Calla (oops... hit one of my 'frustration buttons')

_____________________________

***
Said to me recently: "Look, I know you're the "voice of reason"... but dammit, I LIKE being unreasonable!!!!"

"Your mind is more interested in the challenge of becoming than the challenge of doing." Jon Benson, Bodybuilder/Trainer

(in reply to mistoferin)

Profile

Post #: 3

RE: Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that bre... - 7/19/2010 7:46:06 AM

mistoferin

Posts: 8284
Joined: 10/27/2004
Status: offline

Contaminating someone's "sterile" field is pretty clueless...and rude! What I have sometimes seen though is usually more along the lines of the dominant showing off his new toy. "Hey, check this out!"...and then later putting it into use. Or I watch a dominant pull a knife out of a leather sheath and use it on a bottom, then after the scene it might get a quick wipe with an alcohol pad and back into the leather sheat it goes and stays there until the next time it gets pulled out and used.

_____________________________

Peace and light,
~erin~

There are no victims here...only volunteers.

When you make a habit of playing on the tracks, you thereby forfeit the right to bitch when you get hit by a train.

"I did it! I admit it and I'm gonna do it again!"

(in reply to CallaFirestormBW)

Profile

Post #: 4

RE: Thoughts on cleanliness and safety in play that bre... - 7/19/2010 7:58:53 AM

CallaFirestormBW

Posts: 3651
Joined: 6/29/2008
Status: offline

Ok, I'm probably more spastic than most about this, having had paramedic, midwifery, and body-piercing training, so I'm a hard-ass about sterile field where broken skin is going to be happening.

That being said, I've also seen tops who have done things like "testing" the tip of a blade on their own skin -- however, most of them do it as a "mind-game" thing, and then use sterile equipment to do the actual cuts. In the same way, I've seen them "play" with specialized pieces of equipment that were put out as a mind-game, and then do their actually blood-sport with authorized equipment.

That being said, I -do- know of one dominant individual who uses all kinds of strange things for blood-sport, including rose-bush "switches" and barbed wire, and, to the best of my knowledge, xhe doesn't own an autoclave or have any effective way of sterilizing such things -- I won't attend events where xhe's 'demonstrating' or lecturing after basically being shouted down when I tried to bring up the health/safety issues of hir practices at one meeting.

As far as the clean-up thing, most of the folks I play around who -do- use sheathed knives don't use them on PEOPLE. There's simply no way to clean the inside of a leather knife-sheath to allow the blade to remain sterile. I would -hope- that, once the people you saw got home, the blade went into an ultrasonic cleaner and then into an autoclave, but there's no accounting for practices. However, I would -certainly- never let someone who was behaving that way open skin on me or one of my people!

Calla

_____________________________

***
Said to me recently: "Look, I know you're the "voice of reason"... but dammit, I LIKE being unreasonable!!!!"

"Your mind is more interested in the challenge of becoming than the challenge of doing." Jon Benson, Bodybuilder/Trainer

(in reply to mistoferin)

Profile

Post #: 5