Protector

What is a protector?

Protector is someone with experience in the scene who acts as a buffer for someone with less experience, while that person builds up their own footing. A protector does not play with the one he covers and has no say over him: the role is about safety and not about power.

Why the role exists

Because the scene solves its own problems itself, and has to more often than people assume.

Jessamyn Bowling and colleagues put a questionnaire to 2,888 kink practitioners in the United States in Violence Against Women. Of them, 767 people, well over a quarter, reported that they had experienced a consent violation within a kink context. What the participants themselves offered as a solution is at least as telling: more mutual accountability, and precisely the avoidance of the police and of others in positions of power. A protector is exactly that mechanism with a name and a face.

What a protector does, and where he stops

He stands in between, no more.

Lee Harrington and Mollena Williams describe a protector in Playing Well With Others as someone with more experience or knowledge in the scene who acts as a buffer for someone with less, while that person builds up their confidence or experience. In practice that means: reading along at first messages, coming along to a first evening, and being reachable if something goes wrong.

And what a protector does exactly is fixed nowhere. The role is not in the encyclopedic BDSM glossary, which does describe the DM and the munch, and Wikidata has no entry for it. So two people who use the word do not automatically mean the same thing by it. Ask what someone means by it before you lean on it.

A protector is not a certification and not an authority. He has his own taste, his own friends, and sometimes his own interest, and the protection ends exactly where he becomes involved himself. Whoever is offered the role with a condition attached was not offered a protector.

Where this fits on this site

With me no scene is involved: you make an appointment with one person, and that person is me. Want to know how I arrange safety and agreements before we see each other, then that is step by step on the page about the preparation.

Sources

• Disclosing and Reporting of Consent Violations Among Kink Practitioners in the United States. Jessamyn Bowling, Susan Wright, J. Kevin Benson, Sean McCabe, Annelise Mennicke, Jessica Willard, Neha Kissler, Haley Good, Brianna Moody, Russell Stambaugh & Robert J. Cramer, Violence Against Women 30(6–7), 1453–1476, 2024 (DOI 10.1177/10778012221145299). Peer-reviewed study in a journal on violence, and the largest study of the reporting of consent violation within kink communities; author names, volume, issue and pagination checked against Crossref. The publisher releases only the abstract; that was read here and nothing was drawn from the full text. Gives the sample of 2,888 kink practitioners, the number of 767 participants (25.56 percent) who reported a consent violation within a kink context, and the steps the participants recommended: avoiding the police and others in positions of power, and more mutual accountability.
• Kink and BDSM Glossary. Lee Harrington & Mollena Williams, from Playing Well With Others: Your Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the BDSM, Kink and Leather Communities, Greenery Press, 2012 (ISBN 9780937609583). The most-used English-language handbook for newcomers to the scene, written by two well-known kink educators; authoritative on common scene usage and not on research. Edition and year verified via Open Library. Gives the description of a protector as “an individual who is more experienced or more knowledgeable in the scene, who acts as a buffer for less experienced or knowledgeable individual as that person develops their confidence or experience level”, and the distinction with the mentor, who in the same glossary is someone who helps a less experienced person.

Related terms

A protector belongs to BDSM as a community, not to BDSM as play: he exists to give a newcomer time without anything being expected of him.

• BDSM. The world a protector guides someone safely through.
• Mentor. The same distance from the play, but with explaining as the task.
• DM. The guardian of a party, appointed by the organizers instead of chosen by a person.
• Munch. The gathering where a newcomer meets such a person most often.
• House rules. The written version of what a protector guards in person.
• Consent. The subject the whole role turns on.
• Pick-up play. The situation where a protector is called in most often.
• Play relationship. The bond that can grow afterward, and that a protector keeps out of.