Bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism, collectively termed BDSM, encompass a range of consensual sexual practices structured around established ethical principles. The cornerstone of all these activities is informed, enthusiastic consent. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), a US-based advocacy organization, identifies two widely practiced frameworks: Safe, Sane, and Consensual (SSC) and Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK). Both require partners to negotiate boundaries before any activity, establish safe words that allow anyone to stop a scene immediately, and maintain ongoing communication. When these safeguards are absent, the activity is no longer BDSM but abuse. This distinction is critical when examining dark romance fiction, a genre that frequently appropriates BDSM imagery while stripping away its ethical infrastructure.

Shantel Tessier directly addresses her depiction of sexual violence in the Author’s Note, stating that The Sacrifice is “not to teach you BDSM” and that “there is no safe word given or used” (xi). While the text employs the vocabulary of kink, including collars, restraints, gags, wax play, and impact play, it deliberately excludes the consent infrastructure that defines ethical practice. By placing a shock collar on Laikyn without her knowledge, forcing sexual acts on her, and deploying physical restraint as punishment and control, Tyson dominates Laikyn through rape and sexual assault, rather than BDSM. Laikyn never negotiates boundaries, establishes limits, or possesses any means to halt what is done to her. The novel uses BDSM aesthetics to serve a power fantasy, and readers should recognize that the dynamics depicted fall entirely outside the practiced reality of ethical kink.

Beyond this departure, the novel portrays violence that no consent framework could encompass. Laikyn’s marriage is coerced under direct threat to her brother’s life when Tyson warns that if she refuses, “Ryat slits his throat” (49), leaving her no meaningful choice. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights classifies forced marriage as a human rights violation in which one or both parties cannot freely consent (“Child and Forced Marriage.” United Nations), and the novel’s scenario fits this definition precisely. The text also depicts reproductive abuse: a medical professional secretly administers fertility hormones in place of contraception, eliminating Laikyn’s bodily autonomy. Later, Luke rapes Laikyn while she is sedated and restrained in a psychiatric facility. These acts are unambiguously violent, and the novel does not frame them as consensual even within its own fictional world.

The Lords’ society further institutionalizes sexual slavery. Women designated as “chosens” are assigned to Lords for sexual use, a system enforced through shock collars, leashes, and surveillance. The International Labour Organization’s 2022 Global Estimates of Modern Slavery report found that approximately 6.3 million people worldwide were trapped in commercial sexual exploitation (“Global Estimates of Modern Slavery.” ILO, 2017). 

While Tessier’s setting is fictional, its normalization of female captivity, coerced obedience, and rape mirrors harmful real-world dynamics. Tessier’s disclaimer is a necessary acknowledgment, but it cannot fully counteract narrative framing that presents violent and misogynistic power structures through a lens of desire and inevitability. Readers should understand that the practices depicted, from forced marriage and reproductive coercion to rape and enslavement, are not extreme expressions of BDSM but distinct categories of violence rendered in the language of kink.