What is a safeword?

Oh no, I really do have to teach you SM manners.

A commonly ignored safeword here on earth is "No." No means no, it's really simple. For some reason this one syllable utterance is completely misunderstood even by people who already agreed to it's parametres.

If you play with power then "no" gets more complicated because you say it with different degrees, but if you never told each other the safeword you start fucking up.

A bottom has a safeword AND a top has a safeword, because either party can tell when a scene starts going bad. 911 and Omega are two people's particular safewords, and they haven't been respected at all. And they should because they're the stop this fucking scene right now safewords. In fact, for some reason there is a class of people for whom safewords have been completely revoked. I don't know why, it's a pretty dangerous way to play for anybody.

When a scene goes bad and someone keeps pushing past the safeword, you end up with a highly dangerous bottom. That's so irresponsible. And you can end up with a dangerous top if for some reason they don't hear someone saying the safeword. But this is something amateurs don't get, because they don't even understand the basic premise of no means no, the rule from which all safewords deride.

I started calling safeword four years ago but no one believed me..