Extracts regarding safewords
Jon Jacobs, co-author of A Different Loving and his sub, Polly Peachum
"The Topping from the Bottom Myth is the idea, held by a submissive woman, that she is really the one in charge of the relationship with her dominant. Whether through covert manipulation or direct demands, she calls all the shots, and her dominant is simply a figurehead.
The submissive who believes this myth thinks that she controls her dominant in the same way that she's controlled all her conventional partners in the past. If she has genuine submissive needs, then being in control is the last thing she wants, but she believes that this is the only way things can be, and inevitably she is miserable in the relationship.
Of course, some "submissives" do try to manipulate and control their dominants without seeming to. In addition some submissives wind up with non-dominant partners who cannot control them. In such cases, the myth is the reality. The Topping from the Bottom Myth, however, is usually held by sincere submissives who are not trying to control their situations and who have genuine dominant partners who actually control them.
Submissives acquire the misconception that they are in control from a number of sources. One is the Scene, many of whose citizens spend a lot of time spreading this propaganda. Not only do well known Scene personalities intone, in that certain voice that means they are imparting a great wisdom, that "the submissive is always ultimately in charge," but the heavy promotion of safewords, negotiation, and slave contracts in which the submissive makes it absolutely clear what she will or will not do gives newcomers the distinct impression that the powerlessness of the submissive in a power exchange is a sham. "
P.P
"My friends, when you "submit" to or "dominate" someone in a situation where safe words are used and when limitations are negotiated, you are not actually submitting or dominating at all--you are playing at it. "
J.J
"If you go to a play party and negotiate with a dominant what he may or may not do to you and then you "submit" to activities entirely obedient to the terms of the negotiation, you are giving up no power at all; you are controlling the activity from beginning to end, even though you do not always control each specific event that occurs within it.
If you like that, great--I have no bone to pick with you whatever. Just don't pretend that it is what it is not.
If you sign a "slave contract" with a dominant that says what he controls and what he does not, what he is allowed and what he is not, then you remain in control of the relationship to a degree that precludes any genuine exchange of power.
If you have a scene or a relationship that includes a "safe word" whose effect is to stop whatever is occurring when you speak it, then who is really in ultimate control? 'Tis you."
J.J