These protocols and documents reflect best practices that Kink has adopted and refined over twenty years of BDSM production. We’re making them available because we believe they can be used to help any adult content production that seeks to be safe, sane and consensual.
Kink has worked to develop safe and ethical standards for our productions for over twenty years. In that time, the industry has changed dramatically, and in the past few years, the pace of change has accelerated.
Today, there are more producers, creating a wider variety of content, than ever before. Unlike twenty years ago, the majority are small studios, sometimes one- or two-person operations creating content that ranges from vanilla to fetish to hardcore.
At a time where there is less institutional knowledge and less guidance than in years past, the need to ensure that consent is being discussed in our community is more evident than ever - especially as a new generation of producers are making adult videos, not to mention rough sex or BDSM.
That’s why we’re sharing some of our resources, including generalized versions of our consent checklists. We’re proud to have a strong reputation for safe and consent-based production and we want to help everyone elevate processes and ensure performer safety on set.
The documents we’ve published are not dictums, nor legal documents, but starting points for you to customize, adjust, and use to safely create adult content.
Our protocols were created specifically for Kink.com, so we’ve simplified some of the forms so that they could be used more easily by those who don’t shoot BDSM.
We’ve designed the checklists so that they can be customized and used by anyone in production, at any phase of production. Directors can ask performers to fill out checklists when booking a scene or on-set prior to each shoot. Performers can create a form for a director or co-star ahead of a shoot, to inform them of their preferences and limits.
These documents are non-binding, but are a way of starting a discussion — all with the goal of creating a more informed, consensual, and enjoyable shoot.
Consent and boundary violations on set are not acceptable. For issues on Kink sets please visit kink.com/report or email [email protected]
If something happens to you on another set, these organizations may be able to help: