Ah, I see what you were asking now. I would say that images have to be categorized (in terms of the template) based on what the image itself would look like to someone who hasn't read the story and is just browsing the site. And BDSM is explicit, but not noncon to most people (if you're only talking about collars and bondage gear and not an activity that looks definitely noncon to someone who hasn't read the story).

As I said to Morgan upthread, we should probably edit the policy to add a warning to those who find BDSM itself triggering or see it as non con and want to avoid such images that BDSM images with collars, etc., are going into the "explicit" category.