Zwischenwelten Glossar
Zwischenwelten Glossar
Konsens & Konsensualität
Konsens ist eine klare verbale Vereinbarung darüber, was passieren darf und was nicht. Konsens wird immer explizit und verbal ausgedrückt. Konsensualität ist eine grundsätzliche Haltung. Als konsensueller Raum ist es uns ein zentrales Anliegen, dass sich alle sicher und ermächtigt fühlen, ihre authentische Wünsche und Grenzen auszudrücken. Mehr zum Thema in unserem Blogeintrag.
Safeword
A safeword is a word within a play or community that allows the people involved to know that play must stop immediately. Our safeword is Mayday.
Meta-Kommunikation / Calling In
Damit es möglichst selten zu harten Stops und grossen Verletzungen kommt, praktizieren wir Meta-Kommunikation. Die Idee ist, dass du dich darin übst, deinen Diskomfort (wie auch Komfort) auszudrücken, sobald er entsteht. Es ist uns wichtig, dass alle Menschen in unserem Räume sich soweit sicher fühlen, dass sie sich audrücken können und Zugang zu authentischen Entscheidungen haben. Dies ist eine Übungssache. Sprich wenn möglich jegliche Formen von Dissonanz, Unbehagen, Nein und Stops an. Experimentiere damit, schneller deinen Diskomfort körperlich Ausdrücken, falls dir das Verbalisieren schwer fällt. Übe dich auch darin, Feedbacks nicht als Kritik oder Ablehnung aufzufassen, sondern als Form von radikalem Selbstausdruck.
Sex-Positivity
We see you as a whole person in all facets that make you human, which includes your sexual desires. We invite you not to stigmatize these desires and not to shame the lack of desire being present. Depending on the event or course description, you are allowed to opt into nudity, sexual expression, wildness. This should never be expected, not from yourself and not from others.
Feminism
Our idea of a sexpositive feminist space is a space where people of all genders can experiment with sexuality. This includes different patterns of arousal, sensuality, fluidity and changes in impulses, hormonal cycles and a lack of focus on penetration and ejaculation/orgasm. This does not mean that this is not allowed, but we ask for excellent consent practices.
YKINMKATOK
Your kink is not my kink and that is okay – by entering these spaces you may witness activities that are not your cup of tea. Please stay curious, tolerant and do not make negative or judgmental statements about what is happening. If you are uncomfortable, please seek support from somebody outside the play or a facilitator / assistant.
STI
We do not stigmatize sexually transmittable infections and are aware that many diseases are very prevalent. We recommend that you regularly get tested and honestly disclose your STI status and safer sex needs before every sexual interaction. More info: https://zwischenwelten.ch/vortrag-stds-in-zusammenarbeit-mit-dem-checkpoint-zuerich-und-ig-bdsm/.
Relationship status
People have different type of relationships in their life that bring different relationship agreements and boundaries with them. Monogamous and non-monogamous agreements are equally welcome, and we expect honest and transparent communication regarding these and respecting the boundaries, within everybody is playing.
Gender identity
Gender identity is how you identify: female, male, both or neither. In our society, most people are assigned a gender based on their genitals at birth. Sometimes, this assignment suits the person, sometimes it does not. Somebody’s gender identity cannot be seen by others and has nothing to do with what your genitals look like, sexual preferences, how you dress, or anything else. The only way to find out how somebody identifies, is by asking. At Zwischenwelten, we ask that you respect everybody’s gender identity and never argue about it.
Pronoun
At our events, we ask people what their pronoun is. A pronoun is the word (most commonly he, she or they), which people can use to talk about somebody. Pronouns are gendered, this means that when we say “he”, we assume the person we are referring to is a man, and when we say “she” we assume that the person we are referring to is a woman. That is why in our spaces, we ask people, how they identify and respect this by reflecting it in the pronoun. In general, we recommend that you use pronouns as rarely as possible and simply use people’s names (for example: Sidonia showed us that before instead of She showed us that before.)
Cisgender
Cisgender people are people whose gender identity does match the identity given to them at birth.
Transgender
Transgender people are people whose gender identity does not match the identity given to them at birth.
Sexual Orientation
Sexual orientation is the gender or genders that people feel attracted to. Never assume somebody’s sexual orientation, always ask. There are many sexual orientations, common ones are heterosexual/straight), homosexual / gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual. You do not have to have experience in your preference to know it.
Body-positivity
Body-Positivity means to us that we actively question beauty standards and attraction patterns while respecting our desires and boundaries. People are welcome in our space, no matter what their looks are, and whether they fit a normative average. Body positivity also means that we understand and appreciate the human body in all of its facets and are comfortable and aware of encountering other humans: People have hair growing all over their bodies, People sweat, genitals can excrete different fluids such as lubrication, urine, menstrual blood, People carry around germs and bacteria, they salivate and People have digestive systems. We welcome humans and their bodies in our space, and you are welcome in our space as you are.
Neurodiversity
We celebrate that not all people’s minds and behaviors work the same way. In order to welcome as many people as possible we are tolerant towards varying needs, quirks, language skills, way of expressing oneself and intro- and extraversion.
Racism, Ageism, Sexism, Ableism, homophobia, transphobia
Our society inherently excludes, and disadvantages certain people based on their ethnic or geographical background, religion and language, gender, physical or mental variations. The best way to create an inclusive space for everyone is to actively counteract this by being explicitly inclusive, be curious about people’s needs, and put work into counteracting the system.
If somebody brings an unintentional form of discrimination to your attention, please apologise, ask questions and discuss the incident with the course staff. Please also let us organisers know if we say something insennsitive or discriminateing. Lets help each other grow and make amends for any type of missteps.
Any type of explicit racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia will not be tolerated at our events and will lead to an immediate exclusion.
Anti-racism, anti-ageism, anti-……ism
We acknowledge that we all are part of a society that excludes people and do not pretend that we as individuals or a society are innocent or free of these discriminations. Instead, we try to educate ourselves and learn about these patterns and figure out, how we can help each other.
Privilege
Privilege is a right or advantage that some people have. The thing about privilege is that the more privileged you are, the less easy it is to understand it. For example, heterosexual people do not know the feeling of fearing kissing in public in fear of drawing attention. Privileges are everywhere: Are you conventionally attractive? Are you healthy? Do you have a lot of energy that helps you get through the day? Are you comfortable around a lot of people? Were you easily able to afford the course? Are you white? Do you feel comfortable with the gender you were born with? When was the last time you have received a hug from somebody? Is it easy for you to find sex partners? They are structural and individual. The underlying message for us is: Everybody’s experience is different. We do not aim to victimize or villainize anybody. We want to create awareness, curiosity and healing through community.
Kink/Kinky
Kinkiness is used to describe unconventional sex practices, concepts and fantasies. The term is used because a kink means that it is the opposite of “straight”. Straight or vanilla are terms used to decribe conventional sexual practices.
Queer
Originally used as a derogatory term, meaning strange, queer was reclaimed by the LGTBQ+ community. Queer is a general term for sexual and gender-specific minorities.
BDSM
BDSM stands for ‚bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism‘.