Suggesting a safeword for teasing

[nancylebov]

http://tithenai.livejournal.com/321948.html

Because it's genius. Part of my problem is that sometimes the teasing's fine, and it takes trouble and energy to figure out when it's fine, and even if I do figure it out it's not easy to communicate, and would probably be all but impossible for someone to actually practice, because it would be something like "it's okay to tease me if I feel completely secure in the knowledge that you love me and aren't mocking me or seeing in me a deficiency that is beyond my power to fix, and also the teasing must be about something I am not presently tying myself in knots about and further must only occur on Tuesdays when the moon is full and three crows are in sight but one is in flight while two are at rest."

Essentially, it's out of the teaser's control.

So to cement and acknowledge that fact by having an easy, non-conversation-disrupting way of saying "please stop, this isn't fun for me," is wonderful. It frees me from feeling like the oversensitive killjoy who can't take a joke or is too foreign to appreciate good humour at her own expense. It gives me the ability to refer, with a single word, to a conversation that took place in all thoughtfulness and sincerity and security, in which I felt cared for and appreciated. And since the word Andy came up with is itself wrapped up in an inside joke, it's something I feel that much better about – like I WILL have successfully used humour to take the humour in teasing.

I don't have people who tease me (or at least not much, and not enough to bother me) in my life these days, but I really appreciate the idea.

And I'm thinking about how much it cost me to hear "They just tease you because you react. If you ignore them, they'll stop". It was basically telling me that I could never expect kindness once the teasing started. (And it was my fault that I couldn't use my involuntary reactions to control other people's behavior, but I think I've already written about that.)

Link thanks to ellen_kushner.

Comments

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

Also, if the idea becomes widespread, it becomes an excellent way to distinguish "good natured and friendly teasing among friends" from the other kind. A world where nobody can tease anyone ever would be very hard to enforce, and I don't think anyone would really be safer there, but a world where the idea of consent in teasing is one of those things everyone learns in kindergarten will make the nonconsensual teasing a lot easier to spot and deal with.