10 Reasons I Don't Like the Checklist Approach to Negotiation

1. It makes me think of filling out forms at the doctor's office.

2. Every item could require infinite expansion and exploration. If the item is about hypnotic amnesia, you would have to figure out whether some kinds are ok and some aren't, of those kinds are there ways of doing them they do and don't like, etc. This stuff is fractal, and there are always going to be important questions that are left off.

3. Inevitably most of the items aren't going to apply to this particular situation.

4. Likely some terminology will have to be explained, especially for newer people. While potentially interesting, it's a shame to take the time for an item that isn't directly relevant, and it's also a different vibe than negotiation should have I think, to get sidetracked into an intellectual discussion of BDSM terms.

5. It makes me think of 50 Shades of Grey.

6. Items on the list could bring up unpleasant or triggering associations, unnecessarily. There was a good writing about this recently, which I can't find, called "Limits are Weird". The author writes how going over all the things she has an objection to would end up with her curled up in a ball in the corner - not a good mood for play (well most types anyway). To take an example from 50 Shades of Grey (ugh), part of the contract discusses "acts involving needles, knives, cutting, piercing, or blood", and "gynecological medical instruments", both things that are the opposite of sexy for some people. In the hypnosis community we know how sticky words and images can be for the unconscious mind. Why activate these concepts at all if it's not for a particular scene?

7. Checking a box could give the bottom a sense of having committed to a particular act, and so might feel some pressure not to change their mind. It could also give the top a way to dispute a bottom's statement of a boundary violation based on the wording of an item on the list.

8. It could give an inadvertent subtextual message that the bottom is just one on a long conveyor belt of play partners, so much so that the negotiation needs to be automated.

9. You actually need to have it on hand when you play for it to work as a checklist, ideally printed out so that you can physically check things off.

10. Especially if it's very long, I can't see people keeping up the use of it. I mean as checklists, going over every item and making a decision for each. Our negotiation ideals should be things we can reasonably do in practice.

I think the work that Professor-X and colleagues are doing in developing erotic hypnosis consent checklists (as well as other such projects, including one by NEHG members) is incredibly important. These are critical jumping off points for discussion, and give us a sweeping overview of the whole consent terrain. They highlight the many things that absolutely need to be negotiated. Every top, and probably every bottom, should have some version of these lists in their head.

But as someone who is very much in the learning category, I don't believe that checklists can substitute for building my consent skills and knowledge, nor can they protect me from messing up. There's an art to negotiation (in the BDSM sense) that requires experience, and in particular really getting to know your partner, through multiple conversations and through ramping up the play gradually. And my guess would be that what good negotiation looks like in practice is not giving your partner a huge battery of questions at the top, but rather specific tailored questions, at the right junctions.

Therefore the only checklist I plan to use in practice is my 5 item pre-flight checklist, which only helps to avoid obvious bloopers (like forgetting to go to the bathroom before trancing). But I will be reading those BDSM and erotic hypnosis checklists over and over, and trying to internalize their ideas as much as possible.