What does it means Rack?

Acronimo inglese derivante dall'espressione "Risk-Aware Consensual Kink", è un termine che sta indicare, nell'ambito della comunità BDSM, l'insieme delle attività sessuali ritenute accettabili a patto che gli eventuali rischi presenti siano accettati consensualmente da tutti i partecipanti.

Più nel dettaglio, l'acronimo Rack sta a indicare:
· Risk (rischio): conoscenza approfondita dei rischi connessi a determinate attività sessuali
· Aware (consapevolezza): consapevolezza e accettazione completa di questi rischi
· Consensual (consensuale): presenza di un accordo fra tutte le parti relativo alle attività svolte e ai rischi connessi
· Kink: termine che sta genericamente a indicare le forme di sessualità alternative.

L'ideologia connessa al RACK contrasta per certi versi con quella praticata dalla maggioranza degli esponenti del BDSM, ed espressa sinteticamente nell'acronimo SSC, ovvero sano, sicuro e consensuale. In questo caso, infatti, invece di porre l'accento sulla maggior sicurezza possibile da perseguire nell'ambito del sesso, i praticanti la sessualità descritta come RACK ritengono corrette anche attività sessuali prive dei requisiti di sicurezza e igiene previsti dalla formula SSC, purché svolte consensualmente. Viene ad es. in questo senso messo in discussione l'utilizzo della cosiddetta safeword, ovvero la parola chiave che la persona sottomessa può utilizzare a sua discrezione per interrompere una pratica sessuale non più gradita.

Va in ogni caso ricordato che l'adesione di tutti i partecipanti a una attività sessuale, ancorché espressa secondo la filosofia del RACK, non esonera gli autori di eventuali crimini o danni fisici a persone dalle responsabilità penali previste dalla legge.

English version:

Risk-aware consensual kink (RACK, also risk-accepted consensual kink) is an acronym used by some of the BDSM community to describe a philosophical view that is generally permissive of certain risky sexual behaviors, as long as the participants are fully aware of the risks. This is often viewed in contrast to safe, sane, and consensual which generally holds that only activities that are considered safe, sane, and consensual are permitted.

RACK's tenets are best described by a deconstruction of the acronym:
Risk-aware: Both or all partners are well-informed of the risks involved in the proposed activity.
Consensual: In light of those risks, both or all partners have, of sound mind, offered preliminary consent to engage in said activity.
Kink: Said activity can be classified as alternative sex.

While "Safe, Sane and Consensual" (SSC) attempts to describe and differentiate BDSM from abuse in ways that are easy for the non-BDSM public to comprehend, RACK differs from it in that it acknowledges that nothing is ever 100% inherently safe. By acknowledging that what may be safe or sane to one person may not be considered the same to another, the RACK philosophy tends to be more inclusive of activities that others may consider as edgeplay. There is no "safe" or "not safe" within RACK, only "safer" and "less safe."

RACK can also be described as a mindset which pays more attention to perhaps unexpected consequences of BDSM play. Its theory revolves around reasoned, ex-ante commitment, including the possible consequences of riskier play. In contrast, SSC revolves around the end results of play, or the ex-post. It tries to minimize any potential harm despite the risks BDSM players might be willing to partake in. Both philosophies aim to minimize foreseeable harm, but RACK puts more emphasis on individual commitment to possible risk, beforehand, while SSC tries to minimize total harm foreseeable over the longer term. Thus, RACK adherents stress the value of individual prior consent to even risky fun, while the SSC contingent counters that people often do not choose as freely as they seem, they might behave irrationally at times, and so the consequences of rash individual choice perhaps ought to be mitigated from the start.

RACK was coined in reaction to dissatisfaction within the BDSM community regarding SSC. According to David Stein, the man who coined "Safe, Sane, and Consensual S/M" for New York’s Gay Male S/M Activists (GMSMA) SSC was only intended to be put forward as a minimum standard for ethically defensible S/M play, to establish a distinction between play between loving S/M partners and the public perception of sadomasochism which would be more accurately described as abusive behavior. Over time, as the phrase started spreading through the larger community and appeared on bumper stickers and T-shirts, people started to associate "safe" with "risk-free," diluting the message. "Instead of asking people to think about what it means to do S/M ethically, and to make the hard choices that are sometimes necessary (if only between what’s right and what’s right now), many organizations today act as if these issues have all been settled, assuring us that sadistic or masochistic behavior not deemed SSC isn’t S/M at all but something else — abuse, usually, or domestic violence or poor self-esteem."

Fonte: Wikipedia