Anti-Abuse Policy

by December Seas 海涯凝香 • v1.1.0 •

Introduction

Sex work is difficult work.

Not only is it physically demanding, sex work is perhaps the pinnacle of emotional labor: regardless of how the sex worker is feeling—whether we’re going through a rough patch, whether we’re still recovering from past trauma, whether we’re dealing with any of the dozen stressors we all deal with every day—a sex worker is nonetheless expected forget all that, don a certain persona in a scene, and fulfill our clients’ expectations first.

Sex work is dangerous work.

Not because sex or working with sex is inherently dangerous—it doesn’t have to be.

Sex work is dangerous because sex is wrapped up in so many systems of power, shame, and stigma that encourage violence and abuse as solutions. Sex workers face high amounts of violence—even more so if we are marginalized, or multiply marginalized. The broader community generally doesn’t support us, and often uses sex workers as scapegoats.

And sex work can be healing, transformative, fulfilling work.

Sex can hurt us, certainly. But sex can also heal us.

Sex is a way of understanding ourselves and connecting with others through the bodies we all have.

It’s a way of exploring the world—both the world around us, and the worlds within each of us.

It’s a method to discover the quirks that make each of us individual and find out what excites us.

It’s a sensory experience, a release—a reminder that we’re still alive, and that our bodies are capable of great pleasure.

Sex is also something that can be done solo. Masturbating, fantasizing, and creating erotic work are all ways we engage with sex. Sex can be asexual.

Even when sex involves just ourselves, abuse can still apply. If we’re using sex or our thoughts about sex as tools of self-harm, that hinders our ability to heal and further ingrains trauma into our bodies.

We have a phrase to describe how our bodies hold on to trauma: the body keeps the score. But that score is not a ledger of perpetual debt. It’s simply a record, and one that can be revised. By engaging the body in ways that counter the imbalances trauma has caused, we can rebalance body, mind, and spirit, and heal ourselves in the process.

Healing requires introspection and vulnerability. It is not a regimen of superficially masking symptoms. Symptoms are manifestations of a deeper imbalance, an unstable foundation that needs to be fixed first. Only by being open and honest with ourselves can we excavate those foundations and rebuild them.

When we don’t talk about sex and the expectations around it, we leave ourselves open to abuse—both perpetuating it and experiencing it.

This anti-abuse policy, then, is meant to be a starting point for that conversation. It is designed as a dynamic, evolving document for both sex workers and clients. Abuse isn’t dependent on your identity or role in a situation—anyone can experience it, and anyone can perpetuate it. It is about what someone does, not who they are.

My vision for sex is for it to be mutually respectful, mutually pleasurable, and for it to leave us feeling happier and healthier afterward. I want us to walk away from a scene feeling restored.

Sex should be fun!

What is abuse?

Abuse comes in many forms. It can be physical, verbal, emotional, financial, sexual.

Although BDSM and kink can appear to the uninformed to be abuse—whether because of the physical activities involved, words used, or power dynamics on display—kink is not inherently abusive.

Abuse can happen in any context.

Properly performed kink should be anti-abusive. That’s because kink dynamics require an explicit negotiation of power and an exchange of consent to be effective. Their foundation is a mutual agreement of what appropriate use of power means, and the boundaries of where that power applies.

Abuse is a misuse of power.

How do we determine if power is being misused?

We have to first know how to recognize something as power, and then define an appropriate use of it.

These concepts and boundaries can be difficult to define. No definition is going to capture all the possibilities of how people think and behave. Rather than try to list a comprehensive index of possible cases, the following frameworks are meant to be loose sets of guiding principles that you can use to analyze any situation, then make a judgment call that incorporates your own experience and the context at hand.

What is power?

Power is the ability to do something.

For example, electricity powers appliances and allows them to perform their functions. But power also exists within and between people, and similarly affects our ability to do things.

Power has three components: autonomy, agency, and awareness.

autonomy

agency

awareness

Figure 1. Diagram showing autonomy, agency, and awareness as three elements of power.

Autonomy

is the ability to make decisions for yourself without external interference.

Agency

is the feeling that you are able to make meaningful decisions for yourself and manage the outcomes of those decisions.

Awareness

means having access to factual and relevant knowledge to inform your choices.

Power can be wielded in two ways:

D has control over s.

• D has agreed to do something for s.
• D may tell s what to do and expect s to do it.
• D has received power over s.
• D has relieved s.

s has consented to D.

• s has authorized D to do something for s.
• s has agreed to do what D tells s to do.
• s has given power to D.
• s has empowered D.

I have used D and s as symbols to help illustrate the endpoints, but control and consent are not restricted to a person’s identity or role, nor are they mutually exclusive. Submissives consent to dominants and dominants have control over submissives; submissives have control over dominants, and dominants consent to submissives.

The goal is for power to be equivalently exchanged in a mutual cycle of negotiation and agreement.

Equivalent exchange

means that the value of what you are trading away is equal to the value of what you are receiving.

Negotiation

is an interactive, collaborative process of defining our needs, desires, and limitations in a given context.

Agreement

refers to the consensus we reach and compromises we make to achieve a satisfactory trade.

But if any vertex of power is compromised, power can no longer be exchanged equivalently: the value of the exchange is no longer equal, and/or the person’s ability to negotiate and/or agree has been impaired.

What that compromise looks like in practice can manifest in many ways. The following table gives some examples to guide you toward developing an intuition.

Element	When compromised becomes
Autonomy	making decisions under duress someone else makes decisions for you a decision doesn’t go into effect without someone else’s approval bearing the consequences of a decision, but not being able to influence that decision
Agency	some decisions are not allowed as options cannot make certain decisions because of fear of retaliation inconsequential decisions are allowed, but you are not involved in meaningful, impactful decisions feeling as if you have no options, no exit, or no recourse feeling as if you are unable to conceptualize of or plan for a future
Awareness	information is withheld sensory perceptions are altered, blocked, or restricted cognitive capacity is altered, blocked, or restricted perceptions are dismissed gaslighting, lies, and manipulation expectations are not articulated, but punishments are still given for not following expectations

Table 1. Examples of compromised power elements.

Abuse happens when someone tries to control you without your consent, or when you consent to something you believe you can control, but that you cannot actually control in the way you expected to be able to.

Abuse is often a conscious decision, but it can also be something people do without realizing that they are perpetuating abuse. Regardless of whether someone recognizes if what they have done is abuse, the consequences are still real for the person harmed, who may still experience trauma.

Trauma is injury and pain caused by an impactful event.

Of course, everyone has different understandings of themselves, power, and the situations they’re in. Something that one person thought was an honest mistake could nonetheless be traumatic and abusive to another person. Interpersonal relationships are terribly subjective, and none of us are true, impartial observers of truth.

An anti-abuse policy, then, cannot stop abuse. So long as there are people and there is power between us, there will be misuses of power. That is a consequence of having choices: you can choose to make the wrong one.

Because we all come from different backgrounds, people will always have differing opinions on what counts as "appropriate" and "inappropriate" as well. These definitions cannot be standardized for all people. They derive their meanings from the cultures we come from, which will always be heterogeneous.

My priority in creating an anti-abuse policy, then, is to outline an ethics for creating a culture of safety.

What is safety?

Safety culture does not police. Policing compromises our agency, autonomy, and awareness of ourselves by focusing on transgressions and punishments.

Instead, safety culture guards. Guardians understand that safety and trust are things to both cultivate and protect. Rather than focusing on boundaries as things to transgress, guardians understand boundaries as enclosing a space, a community, where a specific set of agreements apply. A good guardian has a keen sense of duty, discerning judgment, and the strength to set aside personal ego while considering the wellbeing of a larger community.

Safety doesn’t necessarily mean comfort. Some things we do to stay safe, like putting on personal protective equipment (PPE), may be uncomfortable. Having conversations about expectations and boundaries is often uncomfortable, because those conversations make us question, challenge, and negotiate values that are deep, personal, and core to us.

Safety is the ongoing practice of optimizing how we do activities. The goal is to maximize good outcomes and minimize or eliminate the hazardous conditions that lead to accidents, abuse, and trauma.

The end goal of safety is for us to accomplish amazing things in a way that is sustainable—meaning that we can continue participating in an activity long-term and feel confident inviting new people to join in.

Safety means different things in different contexts. Something that’s safe in one situation could even be deadly in another. So there is no comprehensive list of what counts as "safe" practices or behavior.

Instead, I evaluate safety based on a framework of three primary elements: respect, pleasure, and health.

respect

pleasure

health

Figure 4. Diagram showing respect, pleasure, and health as three elements of safety.

Respect

recognizes that every person is deserving of compassion, dignity, and esteem, including your self.

Pleasure

is the feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment we get when doing an activity we enjoy.

Health

means balancing the needs of our bodies, minds, and spirits in relation to the realities of our environments and stressors.

These are all big concepts that mean different things to different people. The following table summarizes what I think ideal function looks like for each elements, and examples of what can happen if the element is neglected or compromised.

Element	Conditions
Respect	Optimal conditions Dignity – Self-determination, having personal space, boundaries observed Being understood as who you say you are, rather than having preconceived or external identities imposed on you Held up to and maintains community standards Compromised conditions Bigoted speech that takes away people’s humanity and personhood Preemptively assuming that a person cannot accomplish something based only on their role and identity, rather than on prior performance Violations of autonomy, such as crossing boundaries and having personal decisions disregarded
Pleasure	Optimal conditions Process- and learning-focused – The outcome is not the goal, but rather what you can discover from the journey and the experiences along the way Resilience – A sense of optimism and empowerment in the face of obstacles Compromised conditions Doing things only out of obligation, expectation, or fear of punishment Performing rote activities not matched to your strengths and weaknesses Burnout, unsustainability, lack of energy
Health	Optimal conditions Holistic understanding of mind, body, and spirit as codependent systems Centers the body’s natural ability to heal and recover Achieving a sense of "flow" – Resiliently moving through life circumstances at a serene pace Ongoing practice and refinement of self-care protocols Compromised conditions Focuses on superficial symptoms, such as weight, without investigating deeper causes and foundations of imbalance Searching for "cures": external things that promise fixes and solutions without a commitment to practice or process Pushing past your limits to the point of injury Not doing self-care; self-harming and self-sabotaging Not recognizing injury and trauma to the mind and emotions as pain on par with physical pain

Table 2. Examples of optimal and compromised conditions for the three elements of safety.

Safety is not only reactive. In fact, safety is primarily preventative. The following table compares and contrasts the differences between reactivity and prevention.

Reactive	Preventative
Responds only after an incident has already happened	Anticipates problems and puts safeguards in place; removes hazards to reduce the likelihood that an incident will occur
Ad hoc solutions; bandaids; lack of standardized protocol	Principled set of procedures in a constant revision cycle as new issues, problems, and solutions arise
Relies on precedent; does not prioritize forward thinking or futureproofing	Considers evolving, dynamic contexts; takes a holistic view that accounts for what worked in the past while also leaving room for unforeseeable futures

Table 3. Comparing and contrasting examples of reactive vs. preventative behavior.

The foundation of safety is communicating expectations and constraints.

Expectations

are how people expect us to behave and what people expect us to do.

Constraints

are things we can’t do: restrictions, prohibitions, bans, taboos, etc.

Some of these expectations and constraints may be soft and more like flexible guidelines, while others are hard and don’t have any leeway.

Taken together, a set of goals, expectations, and constraints, as well as the consequences of not meeting those expectations or following those constraints, is usually called a code of conduct. This kind of document can also be termed an etiquette guide, a contract, an agreement… the point is that there is documentation people can access to learn the standards and how to replicate a safety protocol. You can’t expect people to follow the rules if you never post them in the first place!

Code of conduct

This code of conduct applies to this site (december-seas.com) and the work and services I perform as December Seas 海涯凝香.

Goals – Why we do things

We all contain multitudes: We are all multifaceted beings constantly evolving in response to ourselves and our environments. We are complex, and who we are is malleable and ever-changing.

Sexuality is a part of that human diversity of experience. It is a way for us to both express ourselves and to discover things about ourselves.

The goal here is to create an environment that fosters healing, curiosity, self-esteem, and exploration by making sex fun. "Fun" doesn’t necessarily mean that things are happy all the time—a horror movie, for example, can still be fun. But a fun experience is one that nonetheless leaves you feeling fulfilled and restored. You might feel tired or sore afterward, but you don’t feel traumatized, drained, or in pain.

Things don’t always have to go according to plan for something to be fun. Accidents can still happen. But the goal is to be able to bounce back resiliently, problem solve, and maintain and empowered and compassionate outlook as you help yourself and others navigate obstacles: patiently, nonjudgmentally, and in a way that trusts a person to know what’s best for them.

Expectations – What we want to do

Boundaries – Where and when we do things

1. My sex work is limited to this alias only. I have other names I publish under and other businesses, projects, and spaces I’m involved in. I undoubtedly will display my sexuality elsewhere and still welcome conversations about sexuality under my other names. But initiating sex work happens with December Seas 海涯凝香 only.

2. This is a venue for sex work only. While sex is often emotional and tied up with trauma, and we may find ourselves navigating that vulnerability together, this isn’t therapy. I’m not a counselor, nor am I trained to provide that kind of support. We can have fun together as part of our respective journeys, but neither of us is a cure to the other’s problems. If you need someone to talk to for emotional support, Find a Helpline is a great starting point.

3. What happens in a scene, stays in a scene.

   • We will not discuss or bring up any sex work that happens between us in the presence of others without each other’s explicit consent.
   • If we meet in a different setting, we will be discreet and not reveal details of how we know each other, unless we’ve authorized each other to reveal that information.
   • Any relationships or dynamics that we explore in the scene does not extend outside of it. My only relationship with you is as performer & service provider to you, my client or customer. Establishing business contact only makes us acquaintances; it does not automatically make us friends, and does NOT establish an ongoing romantic or sexual relationship between us.

4. No obligation. I reserve the right to refuse service for any reason. If we are in a scene, you may decline anything for any reason as well.

5. I am disabled. This means I have less energy and need more rest time and special care than others. I will sometimes have flare-ups that prevent me from working. I know what’s best for me and prioritize my health when it comes to scheduling. Please be patient and compassionate when waiting for a response from me, and do not question my disabilities or their severity.

Ethics – How we do things

1. Do no harm. I define "harm" as trauma. Sometimes, trauma is a physical injury; sometimes, it is emotional. We may be engaging trauma as a tool of exploration, but we are not trying to make more of it.

   • I reserve the right to decline to perform an activity if I do not feel I have the skills or knowledge to maintain a high level of safety while doing it, or if I feel the risk significantly outweighs the potential benefit.
   • Safe words are for everyone to use regardless of role or identity. Doms have as much of a right to use safe words when reaching a limit as subs do.

2. Only good pain.

   • Pleasure and pain are parts of the same duality: they mutually create each other and are part of each other. Avoiding pain limits our ability to experience pleasure, as pleasure has no sense of scale if there is no pain to compare it to.
   • But pain should be within our limits. It should be a "good pain" that just barely kisses the edges of our comfort zones.
   • If something feels bad, stop. That’s your body and mind’s way of telling you something is wrong.
   • This is not a venue for you to use sex as a tool for self-harm or self-destruction. I refuse to be involved in deepening trauma and harm.

3. Every person has an inalienable right to self-determination, self-autonomy, and dignity. We do not need to "earn" the right to exist as we are. The very fact that we’re human grants us the right to be ourselves. And you are the only one who can define who you are and how you want to live.

   • We cannot know all the intricacies and details of anyone else’s life. We can only rely on what is presented and communicated to us, with an awareness that even that will be an incomplete representation.
   • We respect that every person comes from their own context, and that ignoring that context or imposing our own interpretation of it on someone violates that person’s right to self-determination.
   • We recognize that our own knowledge of the world is limited, and that all of us are ignorant about something. Rather than feel shame over ignorance, we will work to expand our understanding and learn about others.
   • We will assume that people are presenting their identities in good faith and use the names, terms, and phrases that they want us to use for them. We will be descriptive, not prescriptive.

4. Assume ignorance before assuming malice.

   • This does not apply if there is imminent danger.
   • We recognize that to be human is to be in a constant state of learning, and that abuse, trauma, and marginalization often deprive people of knowledge and skills.
   • Rather than punish people for not knowing, we will first assume that someone has made a mistake because they lack the appropriate awareness, then make a good faith effort to educate them and give them room to process that information, form a response, articulate themselves, and remedy the situation.

5. Mutual effort. This is not a unidirectional code of conduct. All parties who agree to it must be dedicated to upholding the standards, understanding their value, questioning and revising them if they fall out of sync with reality, and working on our own baggage and maladaptive behaviors.

   • We familiarize ourselves with the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and how our own maladaptive behaviors fall into those categories.
   • We understand that just because something is a trauma response doesn’t mean it can’t still be harmful. We work to find ways to handle trauma that do not further cause harm to others and ourselves.

Constraints – What we don’t do

1. Escorting. At this time due to my lack of energy and an unsafe sociopolitical climate, I am not available for dates or to accompany you to events.

2. Financial domination (findom). I expect timely payment for goods and services at the rate we agreed to. But I do not want direct access to or control of your money, including but not limited to receiving login credentials, being an authorized user on your credit card, or making and enforcing budgets and financial decisions for you.

3. Intoxication, especially as strangers or during an initial meeting.

4. Body modification, including haircuts. Any changes to the body must be reversible and limited to the scene.

5. Unsanitary activities. If I do not feel that I can maintain a strict level of hygiene, vector control, and disease prevention, I will not perform the activity. This includes but is not limited to bloodplay, sharing toys, unprotected sex without recent STI results, and scat or vomit.

There may be exceptions to these constraints if we can agree on a way to do things safely and minimize risk. But don’t expect an exception right off the bat. Establish rapport by following the rules before you try to break them.

Consequences – What happens if we do it wrong

If someone violates this code of conduct, we will take the following actions in order:

1. Inform the misbehaving person of the expectations and constraints. This is meant to give people a chance to correct mistakes made out of ignorance, grow, and have room to clarify if there was a misunderstanding.

2. Warning issued. The number of warnings issued depends on the anticipated disruption, danger, and impact of the undesired behavior:

Zero warnings	Single warning	Three warnings
Harm has been done	Nuisance behavior with imminent risk of doing harm or creating a hostile environment	Etiquette norm violations and other minor behavioral friction where it may take some time to learn the norms and change behavior, and where giving someone the room and time to adapt would not in itself create a hostile environment

Table 4. Number of warnings allowed based on hazard level of undesired behavior.

3. Ban/block. You will be banned and blocked on this site and my social media accounts. In most instances, you will receive an explanation that describes the offending behavior, but I may also block without an explanation at my discretion.

   • To appeal a ban, you must first wait six (6) months after the ban was put into place, then contact me to explain what you were banned for, when you were banned, what you learned from being banned, why you want to be unbanned, and how you intend to behave if an appeal is granted.

4. Law enforcement. I do not ever want to involve law enforcement and prefer to handle things amicably as individuals. But if danger, harm, and risk escalate to the point where I no longer feel I am capable of guarding my own safety, I may need to involve law enforcement to set and maintain boundaries.

   • We recognize that we are still governed by laws other than those in this code of conduct.
   • We understand "law enforcement" as a broad category that describes agents of the legal system. This includes police, but also court systems, arbitrators, and others who interpret laws and adjudicate over the consequences of breaking them.
   • We recognize that law enforcement agencies and officials often make a situation more unsafe, and are especially dangerous to marginalized people, including but not limited to Black people, undocumented people, trans people, and sex workers. We understand that involving law enforcement may worsen consequences and outcomes for people, and may itself lead to further abuse and trauma.
   • We must also be realistic and recognize when something is outside our capacity to handle and requires us to call outside our circles for help. We recognize that law enforcement has the power to create and enforce boundaries & expectations that may not be in our power to set as individuals, and that these boundaries & expectations can improve outcomes and prevent conflict.
   • We understand that the legal system can be an avenue for people to find recourse for reparations, restoration, and justice, which is why we cannot deny people access to that system.
   • We understand law enforcement to be a last resort to turn to only when other options have failed. We will not weaponize law enforcement against others. We recognize that transparency about the possibility of involving law enforcement allows people to calculate risk more realistically, and does not obligate anyone to involve law enforcement.

FAQs

To be added.

Conclusion

This is a long document. Then again, my goal in writing it was never to lay down some simple do’s & don’ts with punishments, but to create an entire framework for understanding what abuse and appropriate uses of power look like in the first place, so that we can recognize them in any context.

Trauma and abuse don’t happen in isolation. Neither does healing. My hope is for this policy to be a tool that helps us work together to prevent abuse by normalizing a culture of open communication and safety.

Abuse and trauma are not necessary conditions of existence, but safety and wellness are.

Resources

To be added. See also: Resources

Contact

For inquiries about and feedback on this policy, please feel free to contact:

December Seas 海涯凝香
re: Anti-Abuse Policy
115 W California Blvd #9168
Pasadena, CA 91105
<hello@december-seas.com>

Reprinting and redistribution

This Anti-Abuse Policy by December Seas 海涯凝香 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share, modify, and redistribute this work as long as you attribute the original to December Seas 海涯凝香 <<a href="mailto:hello@december-seas.com" title="Email"hello@december-seas.com>.

Changelog

• v1.1.0 | March 1, 2023
  • Redrew power directions and power exchange diagrams for improved scaling and legibility
  • Clarified directions of power diagram with more examples and semantic D/s labeling
  • Expanded definition of power exchange and its components
  • Fixed power diagram and safety diagram display on mobile
  • Expanded law enforcement section to incorporate more nuance
  • Clarified bounds for "findom"
  • Clarified appeals process
• v1.0.0 | February 28, 2023
  • Initial release