RACK
Risk-aware consensual kink, a community ethic holding that no kink is entirely safe, so partners must understand and accept the risks of what they do.
RACK stands for risk-aware consensual kink. Partners know the risks, consent with those risks in mind, and the activity is understood as kink. Its starting point is that nothing is fully safe, only safer or less safe. The phrase is credited to Gary Switch, who wrote it partly in reaction to SSC, whose “safe” had come to be read as risk-free. Accounts of its date differ: Wikipedia places his proposal in 1999 on a mailing list of The Eulenspiegel Society, while Louisville Munch dates the article to 2003. The American Counseling Association’s 2020 brief names SSC and RACK as the two consent frameworks most often cited in the community, both centered on consent and risk awareness. Louisville Munch notes that some people use SSC with the public and RACK among practitioners.