Acceptable or No?

[Flaming_Redhead]

If safewords exist, they must be honored without consequences, else they're meaningless and an inherent trust has been violated.

I agree, but we don't know in what context the safe word existed. If this was a no limits relationship, the safe word may have only existed for the sake of new types of play in which they were both inexperienced.

Also, even in a "no limits" relationship, there are implied limits.

This is true. Usually, the reason for having no limits is that the couple know each other sufficiently well to trust that they have the same basic limits and, therefore, no limits will ever be breached.

I'd have to know the details of the command to determine if I thought the command itself violated those.

Maybe she was commanded to get him something to drink, and she had just painted her toenails.

A caveat to this would be the type of safeword -- I use two: one that means "stop now, too far or something's wrong" and another that's a request to stop or lighten the intensity. I may accept the latter or not at my discretion.

Do you allow them to be used to get out of punishment? You brought up a good point, though. Maybe after 2 swats, she used the "yellow" safe word, and he determined that she could take some more without any permanent damage.