Consent and the Myth of Full Information
On the natural boundaries of informed consent.
· 4 min read
Informed consent is one of the fundamental principles of modern ethics. In medicine, psychotherapy, and BDSM, we assume that a person receives clear and understandable information about the nature of the situation, its risks, and its possible consequences, and that they then freely decide whether to enter it. Well-managed consent does more than define what may and may not happen. It also creates conditions in which a person can safely explore and understand themselves.
This principle is indispensable. What is misleading, however, is the idea that genuinely informed consent requires complete knowledge of a future experience. To predict its actual impact, a person would need to know in advance not only the external circumstances, but also their future bodily, emotional, and psychological responses. This is where the paradox of the first experience arises.
Imagine someone deciding to try shibari for the first time. The rigger can explain the planned course of the session, the method of tying, the physical risks, safety procedures, communication signals, and ways of stopping. They can describe the pressure of the rope, the restriction of movement, or the possible emotional intensity. They cannot, however, reliably predict what the experience will mean for that particular model. Nor does the person being tied know this in advance.
They may be surprised by the loss of visual control, an authoritative tone of voice, or the feeling of helplessness in a particular position. Restricted movement may bring up an unexpected memory or association. Equally, the person may discover a profound sense of calm and safety where they expected fear. Such reactions are not merely additional information about the practice that a more experienced person could have shared beforehand. They constitute new knowledge about that particular person and arise only through the experience itself.
A significant part of the information that is absent before a first experience is therefore not necessarily missing because of poor communication or concealment. Some information does not yet exist. It emerges only through the interaction between the situation and the person, their body, their past, their expectations, and their current psychological state.
This does not mean that informed consent is an illusion. It means that it has natural limits. Consent can be valid and sufficiently informed without being based on complete knowledge of the future experience. What matters is not omniscience, but the quality of the conditions under which the person makes their decision. They need to know what is expected to happen, what the significant risks are, what they may refuse, and how they can stop the process. At the same time, they need to know that their consent does not oblige them to complete the situation.
Such a decision also involves accepting a certain degree of uncertainty. A person enters a situation in which they may discover a previously unknown sensitivity, need, or boundary. This does not mean, however, that they accept every possible reaction or every psychological consequence in advance.
This is precisely why some boundaries become apparent only during the experience, or even after it has ended. During a session, a person may not immediately recognise what is happening within them, or they may be unable to describe their state accurately. Only later may they understand that a particular element was too intense, that at a certain moment they no longer felt safe, or that their apparent cooperation was not entirely the result of a free decision.
Such later understanding does not, in itself, prove that the original consent was invalid. It often means that the person has acquired new information about themselves that they could not have possessed when making the original decision. A newly discovered boundary therefore does not automatically invalidate previous consent. It does, however, change the information on which future decisions will be based.
It is therefore more accurate to understand informed consent not as a state achieved once and for all, but as a process through which self-knowledge gradually becomes more precise. Each experience expands the map of what a person knows about their body, emotions, needs, and boundaries. Future consent can then be more precise because it is based not only on a general description of the practice, but also on one’s own concrete experience.
The first consent therefore cannot be as informed as the tenth without automatically being less valid. Its purpose is not to constitute an omniscient decision, but an honest decision based on what can reasonably be known at that moment.