You know, I feel ambivalent about some of these proposed questions. All of these would be good things to know, but whether the best way to get the answers is to ask all of the questions, I'm not sure. I want to tread a fine line here - I'm all for safety, I believe in protecting yourself, I know that terrible things happen to people. But. I'm not sure that it is necessary or even helpful to ask things in a bdsm context that you wouldn't ask in a vanilla context. There are plenty of spouse abusers, rapists, people with emotional problems and anger management problems in the vanilla world, and we have to protect ourselves in prudent ways. I think the most helpful is paying attention and trusting your instincts, but whatever else you would do in the vanilla world - run a criminal background check? I'm not entirely sure - I guess it would be wise to do that in a bdsm context as well.

But asking about these things directly seems to me to be counter-productive. A true rapist/abuser/person with issues probably isn't going to share that info with you anyway, and if they're good at what they do, they'll disguise it as long as possible. And the rest are going to be puzzled at best as to why you're thinking of spending serious time with them if you think the answers to these questions might be yes.

Here's an example - I won't drive men in my car. I'd rather go to someone's home, after making a safe call, than take a stranger in my car. And I've been on dates where we met somewhere - not a meet-and-greet, but a real date - and after the theater, or dinner, or whatever, it emerges that I drove and he took a cab. And he'll sometimes ask for a ride. And I won't. And it's awkward. The reason it's awkward is that HE knows he's not planning to abduct me and he can't quite understand why I don't know that also. These are perfectly nice men. I can only imagine how they would take to being asked about mail fraud, or war crimes. And, to be honest, I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to be asked those questions myself.