Hard limit

What is a hard limit?

A hard limit (Dutch: harde grens) is an act or circumstance that takes place under no condition, stated before play begins. A hard limit is not up for discussion and belongs to the person who sets it. Only that person can move it, and never during a session.

What a hard limit looks like in practice

A hard limit is usually one line in a table.

On my own BDSM profile there are six, under the heading “Hard limits, the no-gos”. Illegal things: no. Lasting physical or emotional harm: no. Anything with feces: no. Ageplay with diapers: no. Penetration without a condom: no. Above them stands the line that carries the whole: anything can be discussed, nothing is required. Twenty seconds of reading, and you know what will never happen before you have exchanged a word with me.

That is exactly the form a hard limit works in. No paragraph, no run-up. Anyone who wants it in more detail fills in a dom-list, which sets out act by act what can happen, what can happen under conditions and what can never happen.

What makes a limit hard

A hard limit works by subtraction: it takes one thing permanently off the table, so that everything else can be talked about freely.

The Dutch-language encyclopedia entry on the bdsm checklist puts it briefly: a hard limit is something a person absolutely does not want to be involved in, and the agreement is that the dominant party respects that limit. It is not the weight of the act that makes a limit hard, nor how strange it sounds. What makes it hard is that it has been taken out of the negotiation.

Two things follow from that. A hard limit does not have to be defended, because there is no argument that lifts it. And a hard limit belongs not to the scene but to the person: it travels along to the next partner.

What does a hard limit give you?

What a hard limit gives you is calm, and that calm goes both ways.

Letting go doesn’t work as long as you keep checking in the background where this is going. One line beforehand takes that checking away. Concretely:

• The one who receives does not have to guard during the scene against what may not happen; that was already settled while the clothes were still on.
• The one in charge dares to play harder, because there is a wall they may press against without guessing where it stands.
• Regular partners see the list grow shorter from the bottom: the soft limits move, the hard ones stay put.

A hard limit does not force anything. It catches misunderstandings, and good intentions heading the wrong way. Anyone who flatly ignores it commits a consent violation, and there the protection of a word ends.

How people set their hard limits

Almost everyone starts with acts, while the most useful hard limits are often about circumstances.

Three kinds turn up on a Dutch list:

1. An act. “Nothing with feces”, “no needles”, “no anal sex”. That is what people write down first.
2. An area. “Not in my face”, “nothing above the collar”, “no visible marks”: the variant you need if you are back at the office on Monday.
3. A circumstance. No alcohol, no cameras, not at my place. These rarely appear on a standard list and matter most afterward.

That third kind is not strict by chance. Where BDSM has gone wrong in the past, drink or drugs played a part in the majority of cases, and it was almost always about breath play. The literature is clear on this too: incidents of that kind are rare and preventable as long as the community’s agreements are followed. That explains why “playing sober” has the same status for many people as a forbidden act.

In 2015 Jennifer Rehor put sixty-two acts to 1,580 women from the kink community. Scat play ended at the bottom: 6.27 percent had ever done it, 13.73 percent had taken part in it in some form. Little interest is not yet a hard limit, but what occurs least often is what you see most often on a no-go list.

What a hard limit is not

“A hard limit is a soft limit you’re not ready for yet.” No. A soft limit is open to discussion under conditions; a hard limit does not belong in that conversation. Pushing against it during a scene to see if it gives is not play but a test no one agreed to.

“Hard limits are something for the submissive party.” Also no. I have six of my own and they are online. A dominant without a single limit of their own is not a generous player but someone who hasn’t thought about it.

“A hard limit is forever.” That isn’t right either, but the movement goes one way. A hard limit can disappear because the owner strikes it themselves, outside of a session. It never disappears because someone else talks it away.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, in the BDSM world since 1990 and trained as a psychotherapist. What strikes me most about hard limits is that women almost always announce them with an apology.

“This might be strange, but…” Or: “I know it sounds silly.” As if a no-go only counts once there’s a story under it. It doesn’t: I don’t need to know the reason, only that it does not happen.

The second pattern: the less experience, the shorter the list. You can only rule out what you know, so a beginner’s list is by definition not finished. That is why I ask about it again at a second appointment; there is almost always something new on it by then.

What you watch for

• For yourself, write behind each hard limit why it is hard. If you can’t, it is probably a soft limit or just nerves.
• Add at least one circumstance, not only acts: substances, cameras, place, time, who else is in the house.
• Name your hard limits once, briefly and without apology. Giving a reason invites a counter-argument.
• Stop the scene the moment a hard limit is touched, even if it was by accident, and only discuss it afterward in a debrief.
• Don’t play again with someone who has ignored a hard limit. That is the standard advice in the Dutch-language scene, and it exists because the second time rarely ends better.

Learn more about hard limits

On this site, boundary explains the overarching concept, dom-list shows how you put limits on paper act by act, and consent violation gives the figures on what happens when someone goes over one anyway.

Beyond that, Rehor’s study is free to read and useful for seeing how rare an act really is before you put it on your list. How such a list is built up is set out in Dutch at the bdsm checklist.

Where this fits on my site

If you’d rather lay down your hard limits in advance than come up with them on the spot, with me that is the first part of the appointment: the conversation beforehand sets out when that talk happens, and the BDSM date what does and doesn’t happen after it.

Sources

• Sensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaviors of Women from the “Kink” Community. Jennifer Eve Rehor, Archives of Sexual Behavior 44(4), 825–836, 2015 (open access). Supplies the participation per act among 1,580 women from the kink community; scat play sits at the bottom of the sixty-two acts in table 2 with 6.27 percent having done it themselves and 13.73 percent participation in some form.
• Bdsm-checklist. Dutch-language Wikipedia. Supplies the Dutch definition: a hard limit is something the BDSM practitioner absolutely does not want to be involved in, and the agreement that the dominant party respects those limits. This article carries no source citations; it is used here only for the Dutch terminology and not for a factual claim.
• Bdsm. Dutch-language Wikipedia. Supplies the common advice in the Dutch-speaking area: if a hard limit agreed in advance is crossed, playing with that partner again is not recommended. This article too is light on sources and is used here only for the scene custom it describes.

Related terms

• Boundary. The overarching concept; a hard limit is the strictest kind of it.
• Dom-list. The form on which you fill in your hard and soft limits act by act.
• Consent. The agreement a hard limit is the outer edge of.
• Consent violation. What it is called when a hard limit is crossed anyway.
• Check-in. The means of noticing during a session that something is shifting.
• Limit. The list word in which a hard limit is the stricter of two settings.
• No-go. The plain word for it, and usually the first way people put this.
• Squick. The aversion that is not an agreement, and that only holds you back once you make it a hard limit.
• Trigger. The mirror image: something you do not choose that can arise during something you did want.
• Veto. The mirror image at relationship level: not a limit around yourself, but a ban that affects a third party.
• Soft limit. The counterpart, where one condition named in advance does make the act possible.