PRICK

What PRICK means

PRICK stands for Personal Responsibility, Informed Consensual Kink: kinky play in which both participants are responsible for their own choice, and in which that choice rests on knowledge of the risks. The acronym puts the weight on the person instead of on the act. Dutch has no translation for it.

What PRICK looks like in practice

As a shift in who has to answer the question.

With the older frameworks the emphasis is on the act: is this safe, do you know the risk. PRICK turns that around and asks both participants whether they carry the consequences of their own choice. The English-language encyclopedia puts it this way: PRICK stresses taking personal responsibility for your actions, and an informed analysis of the risks.

In a conversation that sounds concrete. Not “is this safe?”, but: do you know what can happen, and can you live with it. Whoever puts a collar on is responsible for the fact that she puts it on; whoever fastens it is responsible for what he does while it is fastened. Two responsibilities side by side, not one sliding from the one to the other.

That is also where the weak spot is. “Personal responsibility” is a fine sentence to clear yourself with: you wanted it, so your problem. That reversal is not what the acronym means, and it cannot stop it either.

Where PRICK comes from

From no one in particular, and that is the most striking thing about it.

SSC and RACK both have an inventor, a year, and a source, and that story is on RACK’s own page. PRICK does not have that. The encyclopedia lists it under “variations” and, for the origin, points to two authorless web pages, one of which is now offline. There is no essay, no mailing-list message, no founding moment.

The name itself is not fixed either. Ayesha Kaak, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University with a dissertation on negotiating consent in BDSM, sets five slogans side by side in her overview of the scene acronyms and spells PRICK out as Personal Responsibility in Consensual Kink. The same letters, a different sentence.

An acronym without an author and with two readings says something about how these frameworks work: they are not rules but slogans, and slogans get rewritten along the way.

Why people use PRICK

Because it is the only one that spells out that the person saying yes is someone in her own right.

The appeal sits in the conversation growing up. Whoever holds to PRICK cannot get by with “he is experienced, so it will be fine”. You have to know for yourself what you are getting into, and that is more freeing than it sounds. What it delivers differs for each person:

• For you, PRICK means you may ask whatever you want, even if it sounds naive, because without that knowledge you cannot carry the responsibility the framework assigns you.
• For the other person, it means “she wanted it herself” is never the end of a conversation; he stays responsible for what he does.
• For the two of you, it makes for a conversation about risks instead of about reassurance.

PRICK settles nothing. It is a four-letter slogan, and D J Williams and colleagues write in their article on the 4Cs that the existing frameworks are useful for showing newcomers the way, but that they have serious practical and conceptual limits. Their sharpest point is about the complacency underneath: consent gets talked about so lightly that its complexity disappears, exactly as with “no means no” and “yes means yes”.

What PRICK does not do legally

Nothing. In the Netherlands none of the safety acronyms has any status.

Article 300 of the Criminal Code makes assault punishable by up to three years in prison, rising to four years if serious bodily harm follows and further for even graver consequences. The fourth paragraph puts deliberate harm to health on the same footing. What that article does not contain is an exception for consent given in advance.

So an agreement between the two of you stays an agreement between the two of you. That every bruise would therefore be a crime does not follow from it either; whether the public prosecutor prosecutes depends on much more. PRICK shifts responsibility within your agreement, not outside it.

Misconceptions about PRICK

“PRICK is the successor to RACK.” No, they exist side by side. According to the encyclopedia, many people do not stick to one framework anyway, and use, say, the one toward outsiders and the other inside the scene.

“Personal responsibility means the other person is off the hook.” Exactly the reverse. PRICK places the responsibility on both participants and makes the steering party’s share not smaller but visible.

“If we agree on the framework, we’re covered by something.” An acronym is not a contract and not an insurance policy. Williams and colleagues name precisely this kind of short slogan as the reason the conversation about consent often stays shallow.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Of the three acronyms, this is the only one I see women use to take something of their own back.

Whoever brings up PRICK has usually already been through someone else deciding for her what was sensible. What is attractive about this framework is not the risk but the ownership.

At the same time I hear the word from the other corner too, and then it sounds different. “She knew what she was getting into” is a sentence I have heard said more than once by someone writing his own share out of the story. That is where personal responsibility stops and plain sloppiness begins.

What you can agree on with PRICK

• Ask what can go wrong before you say yes, and keep asking until you can retell it in your own words; without that knowledge, the personal responsibility PRICK gives you is empty.
• Say out loud which risk you will not take. With this framework that is your job and not the other person’s.
• Agree who does what if something goes wrong, including whether a doctor gets called and what you tell them.
• Never let “you knew what you were getting into” be the end of a conversation. Talk afterward about what happened, even if it went as agreed.
• Write the agreement down when it’s something heavy. Not because it gains you anything legally, but because writing it down takes the vagueness out.

More on PRICK

On this site, 3V’s has the Dutch counterpart of the oldest framework, informed consent explains the I of this acronym along with the legal duty to inform, and negotiation describes the conversation that every framework only sets up.

Beyond this site, the article by Williams and colleagues is the best piece on why those acronyms fall short, and the encyclopedia entry on RACK gives the shortest overview of the frameworks that exist side by side.

Where this fits on this site

Want to know what a conversation like that looks like for a real BDSM date? That is on the page about consent: what I go over with you beforehand, and what happens if you want something else halfway through.

Sources

• Wetboek van Strafrecht, artikel 300. Dutch legislation via wetten.overheid.nl, text in force 1 January 2025. Gives the sentence for assault of up to three years in prison, rising with serious bodily harm and with graver consequences, and the provision in the fourth paragraph that deliberate harm to health is treated as assault. The finding that the text contains no exception for consent given in advance rests on that text itself.
• From “SSC” and “RACK” to the “4Cs”: Introducing a new Framework for Negotiating BDSM Participation. D J Williams, Jeremy N. Thomas, Emily E. Prior & M. Candace Christensen, Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality 17, 2014. Read via the web archive; ejhs.org is offline. Gives the finding that SSC and RACK have been useful for showing newcomers the way but have serious practical and conceptual limits, and the argument that consent is talked about so lightly that its complexity disappears, with “no means no” and “yes means yes” as examples of that kind of slogan.
• Risk-aware consensual kink. English Wikipedia. Gives the spelling of PRICK as Personal Responsibility, Informed Consensual Kink and the description that the acronym stresses taking personal responsibility for your actions and an informed analysis of the risks, plus the finding that not everyone sticks to one framework and that some use the one toward outsiders and the other inside the community. The two sources the entry cites for PRICK are a commercial glossary site and a since-vanished handout, so the origin of this acronym is not documented. PRICK has no encyclopedia entry of its own and no Wikidata item of its own; it appears only as a variation in the entry on RACK. That is why this page carries no sameAs.
• B&D, S&M, D&S, RACK, PRICK, SSC… An entrée of acronym soup and kink. Ayesha Kaak, Australian National University, presentation 13 May 2016, read via the web archive. The author is a PhD candidate with a dissertation on negotiating consent in BDSM. Gives the list of five frameworks circulating side by side (SSC, RACK, PRICK, CCC and the 4Cs) and the differing spelling of PRICK as Personal Responsibility in Consensual Kink.

Related terms

• 3V’s. The Dutch counterpart of SSC, with the inventor and his own look back.
• Consent. The idea all four frameworks turn on.
• Informed consent. The I from this acronym, with the Dutch duty to inform as a comparison.
• Negotiation. The conversation a framework at most announces, and the 4Cs alternative.
• Boundary. Where the personal responsibility from PRICK becomes concrete.
• Hard limit. The part of that boundary that is not up for discussion.
• Edgeplay. The play this weighing is sharpest for.
• Consent violation. What happens when the framework is used to write off someone’s share.
• House rules. The same idea for a whole room instead of for two people.
• RACK. The framework PRICK is a variation on, with an inventor, a year, and a mailing list behind it.
• SSC. The oldest of the three acronyms, and the only one with a traceable document behind it.