Your Money - Your Loss

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BDSM 101 - Class 03: Leaps and Bounds

Hello class. This is Class 03 of BDSM101. Links to previous classes for this course are listed at the end of this post.

An note about the Laboratory Sessions for BDSM101. All the Labs for this course are self-initiated and self-paced. I urge you to review the class notes before undertaking a Lab, to follow the class instructions as closely as possible, and most importantly to use your head, and to use your common sense, and to try to keep a clear and predominantly sober mind when you take on a new goal, new scene, new Top, or new bottom.

Today I'll be be talking about Bondage. I'll discuss the iconography of Bondage, it's prime role in BDSM play, some simple guidelines for successful Bondage scenes, and the responsibilities for both bottoms and Tops when using Bondage in erotic play.

In Timothy L. Taylor's "The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture" the author illustrates his assertion that polymorphic sexuality has always been a part of human culture, with photographs of Paleolithic stone sculptures of women, made during the Ice Age (circa 26,000 years ago), with their wrists seemingly chained to each other. Similar sculptures represent women with their arms being held by straps tied behind their backs.

I have a hunch that human beings have been tying each other up or restricting each other with inanimate objects and bodily force for as long as we've been human. In fact Bondage itself could very well be one of the initial markers of our humanity, in that instead of the chasing off, or outright destruction of another being, there was a choice to use tools or confinement to restrict and control. Perhaps this was first done with trapping animals with cages or snares, and later was done with people. Perhaps there was an intent to commit violence later (i.e. rape), perhaps instead Bondage was used as a way to avoid further violence, to hold captives to trade later for example, or to restrict the antisocial behavior of another tribe member.

There's one form of bondage that Taylor describes that enabled our ancestors to fully walk upright, and freed the use of the arms from locomotion. That was the baby sling, a piece of leather, that confined an infant and restricted her movement, as well as holding her close to her mother or female relative to aid nursing, or close to her father or male relative to aid bonding. This use of a tool - the pappoose or baby sling - to emulate and echo the enveloped and nurtured environment of the womb points us to an ancient and deep-seated cultural significance, something that perhaps is tapped or alluded to in the particular comfort and euphoria that some erotically bound people experience.

Tying up another being asserts dominance. It hinders the bound one from freely interacting with the world and with time. Bondage can be both a nasty trick and and an act of creation or re-definition. There are all sorts of reasons to bind or confine another person, some benign, some malevolent. Malevolent reasons could include coercion, rape, torture, mutilation, humiliation, and murder. Benign reasons could include ritual protection during epileptic seizure, illness, or intoxication. Bondage is a part of the earliest cultural and religious myths: the trickster gods Prometheus and Loki are chained, the West African Anansi, sometimes depicted as a spider, creates the world and tricks and binds various animals to become the King of All Stories. Other Spider Deities with their particular Bondage talents feature in mythology all around the world as creators or tricksters, like the Oceanian Marawa, the Sumerian Uttu, the Japanese Inari, the Lakota Iktomi, and the Hopi Taiowa.

Bondage is a trick, it's a way to control a Trick, it's a way to create a new role for the bound one, it's a way to recreate for the Binder. The power relationship between the bound and the Binder could not be clearer. The hindrance of mobility and the ability to affect the environment renders the bound powerless. The responsibility and authority for the bound's well being, and the power over life and death now belong to the Binder. Look at that word "authority" . The person with authority is an author, a creator. Who creates and has authority over life and death? a goddess does, a god does. Bondage in its primeval ritualistic nature is playing at being a god.

Bondage is a common ritual in religious mysteries, for example binding hands with cloth or rope is often used in marriage ceremonies. In many traditions, seekers of divine blessings give themselves up for confinement or binding. In the worship of Mithras and Cybele, an initiate was shut up in a chamber beneath a killing floor, where a sacrificial animal's blood would rain down upon them. The Immersion Baptism of different Christian sects requires an initiate to bind herself, with arms crossed over the chest in the attitude of the dead, and to give up her mobility and her will to act, so that the priest or pastor, in the place of God, can take control over her life and death [by drowning] and give her a new birth, a new life, a new role - as one of the saved.

Sounds heavy, huh?

BDSM is about play, it's about taking these heavy cultural associations, these deep dark facets of our histories and our souls, and making something creative and exhilarating and illuminating out of them. As BDSM players we can sometimes treat the meaning and the thrill of Bondage casually and even with levity, but the mechanics of Bondage must always be treated with the utmost seriousness. Bondage is a very serious game. The bottom gives trust and gives up power. The Top takes trust, and takes up power. With Bondage, the Top receives more power than She actually needs. Her standing and reputation depend on what She does with this excess power. If She abuses it, She risks disaffection, perhaps social isolation, perhaps at the extreme end, even Her own incarceration and destruction.

With Bondage, the bottom gives up more power than he actually thought he would. The standing and reputation of the bottom rely on how he reacts to this diminution of mobility and ability to affect his situation. The trust he gives, his capacity to remain still, and compliant will aid the Top to do a much better and ultimately more comfortable and enjoyable job. Novice bottoms should not be gagged or hooded initially, (that should be one of the discussed limits with Tops.) Any use of gags or hoods is really a BDSM201 sort of activity, it's not for beginners.

A Bondage Top must be competent with the method or device that binds or confines. That's why I advise novice tops to learn from an accomplished Dominant as an apprentice. Novice tops can also teach themselves methods and devices, if they're willing to be patient and assiduous about becoming proficient, and if they seriously study the attributes and drawbacks of the Bondage methods that they plan to use. There's a whole continuum of value in Bondage. On one hand there's learning how to use simple velcro straps, and on the other hand there's the study of the elegant and complex Kinbaku-bi (Japanese style bondage.) There's the down and dirty use of a belt to restrain a bottom's arms behind the back, and then there's the very delicate and potentially risky use of the same belt around a bottom's throat. The aforementioned gags and hoods are a good example of devices that can be dangerous if not used or monitored correctly. Only after the Bondage has reached a plateau of stability, with the Top in continual observation of the bloodflow to extremities and the relaxed pace of breathing, should any sort of device be used that could possibly restrict an airway. Any use of such devices needs constant monitoring, a Top must be able to see and hear the effects of such devices at all times at close range.



The Exercise for this class is about the continuum of value in Bondage. In the graph above, the "Orb of Bondage" ;-), there are two gradients: Danger to Safety, and Coarse to Refined. Floating within that graph are 14 points. Each point signifies a type or method of Bondage. The task set before you is to devise and describe 14 different types or methods by their placement on the graph. I'll help you out with a couple of examples:

3. (Highly Safe, Highly Refined): In a Public Place, let's say a symphony concert, I walk the bottom into a stall in the mensroom, and after he locks the stall door, I tell him to take off, fold, and give me his pants, his underwear, and his cellphone. I tell him I'll be back when the 2nd act's done.

10. (Somewhat Dangerous, A Bit Coarse): After using handcuffs to restrain the bottom's hands behind his back, I take him for a ride to the country. When we get there, I use a nightstick to lift his wrists higher and cause his shoulders and head to lower, and then we go for a walk for half a mile. Then I put a black hood over his head, and walk him a quarter of a mile. Then I attach shackles to his ankles. I force him to walk the last hundred yards shackled, and then lead him up a railroad bed until he's in the middle of the tracks. There I force him down on his ass, and use a plastic ziptie to link the chain of the handcuffs to the chain of the shackles. I walk away, pulling out my knife to have it ready. And then we wait to hear the sound of a train.

Complete the other 12 points.


BDSM 101 - Previous Classes:

Class 01: Making an Omelette - Breaking Some Eggs

Class 02: Making an Omelette - Technique