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The problem spans from unwanted overtures to rape, say Mayhem and Stryker. “When I start to think of the number of times I have been cajoled, pressured, or forced into sex that I did not want when I came into ‘the BDSM community’, I can’t actually count them,” Stryker wrote in Good Vibrations’ magazine. “As I reflected on the number of times I’ve … been pressured into a situation where saying ‘no’ was either not respected or not an option, or said that I did not want a certain kind of toy used on me which was then used, I’m kind of horrified.”

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One critic, Janet Hardy, author of several popular BDSM books, including “The New Bottoming Book,” tells me, “My general thoughts are that it is tremendously important to build a safe word culture but that bottoms have to hold up their share of that responsibility,” she says. “A bottom who refuses to safeword when he or she has actually withdrawn consent has just turned me into a rapist or assailant without my consent, and that is not OK.”

Hardy, co-author of the bible on polyamory, “The Ethical Slut,” doesn’t deny that sexual assault is a problem in the community, but she takes issue with arguments about the social pressure to not safeword. It has “some of the flavor of the kind of victimhood that we see from some second wave feminists,” she says, “and I don’t want to get too deep into this because I’m going to get myself into trouble, but you know where I’m going with this.”

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Beyond black-and-white cases of rape, there is a cultural disdain for safe words, they say. “When I was a submissive,” says Stryker, now a dominant in both her personal and professional life, “I felt the pressure to not safeword because I felt like that made you a bad submissive.” That’s because she witnessed submissives who used their safe word being criticized as “difficult.” At the “consent culture” event, Stryker asks the audience, “Is it the fault of the submissive who didn’t safeword when they should have or is it the fault of the dominant who didn’t notice that their submissive didn’t safeword [when they should have] or is it the fault, as I think it is, of the community that makes it complicated?”

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

women need to be responsible for not getting into and getting themselves out of bad situations.

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ORIGINAL: SilverBoat

A piece published yesterday in Salon.com, it's in their Love and Sex section, so perhaps not as major news-media public as it could have been elsewhere. Since it will probably get read by many people outside the usual BDSM community, there's some potential for what impressions 'they' get of 'U/us.'

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/real_abuse_in_bdsm/

I've got some comments, but I'd prefer to hold off until other folks have had some time to read and ponder a bit ...

SB

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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Beyond black-and-white cases of rape, there is a cultural disdain for safe words, they say. “When I was a submissive,” says Stryker, now a dominant in both her personal and professional life, “I felt the pressure to not safeword because I felt like that made you a bad submissive.” That’s because she witnessed submissives who used their safe word being criticized as “difficult.” At the “consent culture” event, Stryker asks the audience, “Is it the fault of the submissive who didn’t safeword when they should have or is it the fault of the dominant who didn’t notice that their submissive didn’t safeword [when they should have] or is it the fault, as I think it is, of the community that makes it complicated?”

I take responsibility for when I don't safeword when I should.

Only once did someone give me a hard time for safewording. He said "I was watching you; you were fine." Physically, yes, but emotionally, no. He didn't know me well enough to realize I was on the verge of a panic attack.

It may be a good idea to force a yellow or a red to get the sub past that mental barrier.

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

I take responsibility for when I don't safeword when I should.

Only once did someone give me a hard time for safewording. He said "I was watching you; you were fine." Physically, yes, but emotionally, no. He didn't know me well enough to realize I was on the verge of a panic attack.

It may be a good idea to force a yellow or a red to get the sub past that mental barrier.

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“I felt the pressure to not safeword because I felt like that made you a bad submissive.”

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ORIGINAL: peppermint 

Trust equals trust.  Safewords are symbols of that trust, nothing more, nothing less. 

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“I felt the pressure to not safeword because I felt like that made you a bad submissive.”

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She says she had, "countless more encounters where her boundaries were blatantly ignored."  Sorry, but that does sound like someone who isn't communicating very well with her partners, and certainly doesn't learn from her mistakes.