What these words mean
Within Measure · consent-sheet.com
The words you meet on a boundary sheet, one sentence each. Where there are numbers, they come from the sheets people have already filled in on this site — not from somewhere else.
This is not a dictionary and not a tutorial. It solves one problem: you see a word on the sheet, you are not quite sure what it means, so you pick something. A sheet filled in that way is not true, and an untrue sheet is worse than no sheet.
Nothing here is advice. "Most people do X" does not mean you should. Your answers only have to be true for you.
Boundary sheet
A list each of you fills in separately before you start: what you will accept, what you will not, and when things have to stop. Then you swap, and compare three things — what you are both fine with, either side's hard limits, and what needs talking through.
It is not a contract and creates no obligation. Marking something "want" today does not stop you calling a halt on the day.
Fill them in separately, not together. People drift towards the answer they think the other person wants.
The four-level scale
Every item on the sheet sits at one of four levels. On the receiving side: want / okay with / curious about / (unmarked =) no. On the active side: do routinely / can do / curious about / (unmarked =) don't offer.
"Unmarked" does not mean "haven't got to it yet" — it is a definite no. That is the underlying semantics of the whole thing: the default is refusal, not permission. Which is why the fourth level has no button — leaving it alone already says something.
"Curious about" gets its own level because "haven't done it but willing to try" and "have done it and want it" are different things, and the other person needs to know which.
Wants rate and acceptance rate
The report only uses these two, so check which one a number is before reading it:
- Wants rate = people who chose "want" ÷ people who answered that question. On the active side the equivalent is the routinely-offers rate. - Acceptance rate = (want + okay with + curious about) ÷ people who answered. On the active side, the can-offer rate.
On multi-select questions the items add up past 100%, and that is correct — it counts how many people picked each item, not what share of all picks it was.
Safeword
A word agreed in advance that stops everything the moment it is said. It exists because in this kind of interaction an ordinary "stop" or "no" is often part of the content rather than a real request to stop.
The most common form is the traffic-light set — green = keep going, yellow = slow down or ease off, red = stop now. In this site's data, 56% use traffic-light words and 24% use a word of their own.
The part that matters is elsewhere: 82% of the receiving side say an ordinary "stop" cannot be taken at face value (42% want the other person to check their state once first, 40% go by the agreed safeword). In other words, the safeword arrangement hands the whole job of "is this real?" to the other person — and only 59% of the active side say they are confident they can tell in-scene resistance from a genuine request to stop.
A gag or a blindfold makes a safeword unsayable, so you also need a non-verbal channel — three quick taps, for instance. Only 42% of people here have agreed one, while 30% want gags and 40% want blindfolds.
Hard limits and soft limits
A hard limit is a no that stays a no. No reason required, and no one is owed a case for it. A soft limit is "depends", "depends on the day", "talk to me first".
On this sheet, anything either side marks "no" is simply excluded — treated as a hard limit. A useful test: if you would feel you had to justify saying no, write it down as a hard limit.
There is also a kind of hard limit that no one's willingness changes — the shoulder blades (the spine and kidneys are underneath), the tailbone, the kidney area; and electrical implements where there is heart disease, a pacemaker, a history of seizures, or pregnancy. These are not negotiable, and both people agreeing does not make them so.
Bratting
Deliberately not complying during a scene: talking back, dodging, squirming, trying to get away, dragging your feet. It is usually not a real refusal but a way of asking for more control to be applied.
The trouble is that the word covers very different things. In this site's data, 88% of the receiving side brat, 74% resist physically, and 68% specifically want to be held down or overpowered and have it continue. On the active side, not one person said they don't do bratting-type interaction — yet 38% wrote that they would rather not deal with physical resistance or struggling.
Both sides are using the same word for different things. This is the single thing most worth asking about beforehand: when you say bratting, do you mean with words, or with your body?
Warm-up
Starting at the lightest level and building gradually, so skin and tissue have time to adapt. Skipping it and going straight to intensity causes noticeably more damage at the same force.
In this site's data, 54% of the receiving side want a full warm-up, and 66% of the active side start at the lightest level every time. The two sides match well here.
Aftercare
The stretch after it ends: holding, reassurance, talking it through, water, warmth, tending to any marks. It is not a courtesy — it is part of the thing.
This is the best-matched section in the whole data set: 84% need holding and 84% can provide it; 82% need talking it through and 81% can provide it. Another 50% want a check-in the next day — the window for aftercare extends past the scene itself.
Sub drop and top drop
The emotional dip that shows up hours or days afterwards — flatness, emptiness, unexplained tears, self-doubt. It is usually explained as hormones settling after an intense experience. It does not mean something went wrong, and it does not mean you regret it.
Both sides get it. On the receiving side it is called sub drop, on the active side top drop — and the second gets overlooked more, because "they weren't the one being hit".
In this site's data, 18% of the receiving side have had low mood lasting more than a day, and 8% have had strong self-doubt or regret. This is also why that "check in the next day" item exists.
Nerve compression
Nerve damage from rope, restraint, or holding one position too long.
What makes it dangerous is that it often doesn't hurt at the time: hours later, or the next morning, you find you can't lift your arm or that a patch of skin has no feeling. So "they didn't say it hurt" is not evidence that nothing happened.
63% of the active side say they are confident they would recognise the signs of nerve compression — which means about four in ten are not.
Related: "holding one position for more than 15 minutes" sits alone at the bottom of the positions section here (net −36). What gets refused is not a position, it is the duration.
SSC, RACK and PRICK
Three frameworks for what counts as acceptable practice, in the order they appeared:
- SSC (Safe, Sane, Consensual). The earliest and simplest. The criticism is that it never says who decides what "safe" and "sane" mean. - RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink). Accepts that some things carry risk by nature and moves the emphasis from "safe" to whether both people actually understand the risk. - PRICK (Personal Responsibility Informed Consensual Kink). RACK plus one more clause: each person is responsible for their own choices.
This sheet is built along RACK lines. It does not rule on which items are "safe"; it only makes sure both people know where the other's limits are before starting.
Informed consent
Consent needs three things, and it fails if any one is missing: knowing what it is, being able to agree, and being able to withdraw at any time.
- Knowing what it is — including the risks, not just the procedure. - Being able to agree — drunk, on medication that affects judgement, under pressure, or deep in a headspace all fail this. - Being able to withdraw — having agreed in advance creates no obligation. That is the whole meaning of "the sheet is not a contract".
Worth noting: in this site's data, only 59% of the active side would cancel after drinking, and 55% after taking medication. Those two damage exactly the judgement the rest of the safety machinery runs on — they are not in the same category as "the space isn't suitable".
Where these numbers come from — 83 voluntarily submitted boundary sheets (50 receiving, 32 active), through 2026-07-29. The sample skews young and came mostly through online channels. It does not represent any wider population and is not medical or safety advice. The full report is at the data.