REDIRECTED TO MAYBEMAIMED.COM: Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed

People often draw analogies between things in kink sex and vanilla sex. They do this sometimes out of necessity and sometimes out of a desire to avoid the overhead of defining every term they use, but mostly they do it (as I'm about to do) because it's something they've heard done before.

I've never "flown" in a scene. That is to say, I've never "checked out" or "seen my body from outside itself" or "felt like the pain was sexually pleasurable," or many of the other things lots of people who do what I do and claim similar labels as I claim have often told me about their experiences. Typically, they call this experience flying, and I've usually heard it discussed as though it was the BDSM version of an orgasm.

Well, if flying is the BDSM version of an orgasm and scenes are the BDSM version of sex, then I've never come.

Of course we all know that different people play differently and for different reasons and different goals and it's all good no matter who you are or what you're into or whatever, but whenever this subject gets brought up it makes me feel a little anorgasmic in regards to kinky things.

A part of me is always wondering if I'm just too technically-minded, too focused on comparing experiences with descriptions that I've missed the boat already in the same way vanilla people sometimes seem to me to be so concerned with orgasms and ejaculations that even when they experience them they sometimes didn't know that they had. And then part of me says to myself that it must be practically impossible not to notice something like an orgasm ("oh, you'll know!"), so a kinky scene orgasm should be similarly impossible not to notice, and since I've never noticed one I've probably never had one.

A lot of people talk about flying by talking about how pain, when experienced at a certain intensity, rhythm, and circumstance, makes the rest of their existence kind of fade out and brings into focus only the lovely sensations of the moment. I can understand that very viscerally; one of the reasons I love BDSM (and kinky sex, and sensual experiences in general) is because they help me get out of my head and into my body, for lack of a better description at the moment.

However, these same people tell me that the pain is sexually exciting. That's not something I can relate to. Friends have told me stories about whippings and beatings that have left them wet or hard and rutting in place, making their very thought processes change somewhat dramatically. I wonder what that sort of an experience would be like. It honestly doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, because as I've said before, pain doesn't turn me on.

As a perfect and somewhat humorous example, take a very sexy takedown scene that happened recently. Having been pulled away from Eileen for purposes completely unbeknownst to me at the time, I got worried about her when a friend said they had ended their scene because Eileen seemed "a little ADD at the end." Strange, I thought, Eileen only gets that way when something is wrong. I should go check on her.

I quickly turned around and started walking back toward her when several more friends appeared and stopped me. No, hang on, I told them, I need to check on Eileen and make sure she's okay. Then, when they pulled a hood over my face and quickly grabbed me by my limbs, you want to know what my first thought was? It was:

Oh, this is a takedown. Eileen's probably fine.

This was no surprise to Eileen, who later remarked, I knew your brain would keep working. It did. My second thought was, "In takedowns, the victim gets to struggle. I'd enjoy doing that!" So of course I struggled as much as I could while staying (as) careful (as I could) not to inadvertently kick the wrong person in the genitals.

This illustrates a very typical experience that I have when I play: I'm very often completely conscious of what's going on and very aware of the reality of a situation. When Eileen and I play with knives, I'm not scared that she'll purposefully cut my throat, or gouge my eye out, I'm scared that she'll do it accidentally. (The risk is what's appealing.) When she whips me, I'm often adjusting my position and I'm motivated to do so by the conscious awareness that my back is no longer straight after that last stroke and that it should be made straight again, or that the sound of the whip and the feel of the air it pushed toward me means the whip is approximately four inches in that direction so I should turn appropriately.

Really, and I'd hate to destroy people's illusions of my kinky sex if they have any, but I'm actually extremely unsexy in my head when I play. Rational thought processes are not really that sexy no matter how you try to dress them up. Everything sexy is entirely about emotion.

Getting beaten with a nightstick is just that; a stick and a body. It's all very mechanical and not very hot. However, with some feeling in there, like being forced to the ground and invited to violently show the emotional aspects of aggression by fighting back, then physically losing and giving in to overwhelming force, now that's sexy.

It's very, very hard to get me out of my head. The only two things that have ever succeeded in doing so have been intense pain and intense pleasure (not necessarily orgasmic pleasure), and even these things don't manage to do it for very long stretches at a time. The way lots of people describe flying, it seems as though they experience some kind of emotional or spiritual climax too abstract for words. This is all wonderful, but is far too abstract for me.

I don't deal very well with abstracts. I'm a rather technical person, obviously, so I like things that make sense and which are grounded in rational thought. When people try to explain things to me that they say are based on "auras" or "energies," I usually just smile and nod. I have no problem with these things, most recently evidenced by a sudden interest in my social group with tantric practices, but I'd prefer to keep a critical eye pinned consistently in that direction.

So when I think about flying, in all the experiences I've had the one that comes closest to it has been getting suspended in rope bondage. Because that's when I was in the air, swinging around, and that's what flying means to me.

I recently attended a bondage class by the excellent, and incredibly knowledgeable Lee "Bridgett" Harrington on Speed Bondage. I learned a few great new tricks, a couple of extra ties, and a super-quick rope bondage chest harness. And, god, it reminds me how much I absolutely love bondage.

How appropriate then, that Lady Julia recently linked this article from Fox News stating that bondage may make men happier. The good things from the report:

…says Dr. Richters, men into BDSM scored significantly better on a scale of psychological wellbeing than other men.

“This seems to imply that these men are actually happier as a result of their behaviour, though we're not sure why,” she said.

“It might just be that they're more in harmony with themselves because they're into something unusual and are comfortable with that.

“There's a lot to be said for accepting who you are.”

At the other end of the spectrum – least happy – were men who reported being attracted to men but had never acted on their desire and didn't regard themselves as gay.

Researchers said the study helps break down the reigning stereotype that people into bondage and discipline were damaged as children and were therefore “dysfunctional”.

“We really found that BDSM is simply a sexual interest or subculture attractive to a minority, not a pathological symptom of past abuse or difficulty with 'normal' sex,” Dr. Richters said.

“They've just got a broader and more unusual sexual repertoire than most.”

I have very little to add to this except for yay, a positive portrayal of BDSM in an extremely right-wing, conservative media outlet! That has to be good, right?

Yet there is still a huge misunderstanding of what BDSM is or is not, and the incredible amount of misinformation out there can be damaging. Case in point, from the same article:

“There will definitely be more men and women who have sexual tastes in this direction but won't call it this,” said Dr. Juliet Richters, of the University of New South Wales.

“They might not like sex magazines but they just happen to like being tied up and spanked as part of foreplay.

“Ask them if they're into BDSM they'll say 'Yuck, no'.”

"Yuck no" to being tied up, but "bondage may make men happier" in the same vein? This is misinformation and misunderstanding at its best. Such hipocracy is an earmark of social stigmas. One very good book that I enjoyed a few years back was Bound to Be Free: The S&M Experience by Dr. Charles Moser and JJ Madeson (a 20-year veteran of the San Francisco BDSM scene). They talk about this issue at point-blank range, and is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in some more personal viewpoints.

Naturally, the best attacks on stigmas and misinformation is quality information. Now more than ever, the Information Age is best poised to tackle these issues. That's why this next point is completely unsurprising:

In women, BDSM was most popular among under 20-year-olds…

I am encouraged by reports like this. They validate to the rest of the world what I already feel every time I kneel in front of my girlfriend; that I am stronger through my self expression than I could ever otherwise be.

At one of the BDSM organizations I attend, I volunteered myself to participate at an "introduction to kink" panel presentation for another discussion group that had invited us to speak. When I heard back from the group, I was asked to speak on two things: definition of terms and bondage. Yay! Both topics that I truly love. :)

What follows is the notes I put together in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way over the last half hour or so. They're obviously not very refined or comprehensive because, keep in mind, I kind of wrote them as if I was speaking to the audience and this is supposed to be a mile wide, inch deep overview of what BDSM is about.

Feedback is always welcome.

Definition of Terms

Vanilla isn't so much a definition as an anti-definition. Technically, “vanilla” means not kinky. However, this is actually a complex issue because the effective meaning of that definition depends on the definition of what is (and what is not) “kinky.”

For example, do you consider spanking to be kinky? I would consider that as an activity within the broader set of sexual activities called impact play, which we'll cover a tad more in a little bit, but a lot of very so-called “vanilla” couples engage in spanking all the time. So, you can see how much of this terminology will need to be interpreted as you see fit, by what feels right to you. Suffice it to say for now that when I say vanilla, what I mean is “not as kinky as me.”

If you didn't notice, I also introduced another term there surreptitiously: play. What is play? This one's easy because it's exactly what it sounds like: play is having fun doing something that you enjoy. In BDSM parlance, playing means “engaging in a BDSM activity” such as spanking or flogging or sexual teasing or role-playing, or whatever is of interest to you.

When two people are playing together, what they are doing is called a scene. A scene in this context is similar to a scene in a live-action play (see the fun we have with terms!), where people get together, interact with each other, and then the activity stops. A scene marks the time period from when the play begins to when the activity (though not necessarily the playing) ends.

Defining the beginning and ending of a scene is difficult because scenes can involve more than one kind of play. It's a little bit like the geometry statement “a square is not a rectangle, but a rectangle is a square.” A scene is not play, but playing is a scene. Most people seem to use emotional peaks and valleys to mark the beginnings and endings of scenes; when the emotion or activity has taken on a high intensity, that's part of a scene, and when it has subsided significantly, that's the end. Other people use time as the distinguishing factor; one block of time spent doing one activity is one scene, another block is another.

Then, of course, there's the actors involved in the scene. Typically, there are at least two, and one is dominant (the partner doing the dominating) while the other is submissive (the partner doing the submitting). Alternate terms that have less emotional context attached to them are a top and a bottom, respectively.

Finally, there's a concept called polyamory, which literally means “many love.” Polyamory is not strictly a fetish or BDSM term, but actually a relationship paradigm that is in many ways the opposite of monogamy. In fact, there are entire communities centered around practicing and learning about polyamory that are completely separate from the BDSM world. Where monogamy is committing to be with one romantic and/or sexual partner at a time, polyamory is, for lack of a better word, different. In essence, it means being open to more than one love at any given time.

It's important to note that polyamory is not polygamy, nor is it noncommittal, carelessly promiscuous, or emotionally insensitive. Interestingly, the ideals of polyamory have little to do with the number of sexual partners you may have (or want), but rather focus on the quality of your relationships, a fluid definition of what a successful relationship is, and encourages honesty, communication, negotiation, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence.

Bondage and bondage safety in the blink of an eye

Bondage is a huge subject, and there's no way in hell anyone can cover all the really important bits in five minutes, but I'll give it a shot. As always, if there any questions about this or anything we've spoken about today, please don't hesitate to ask me or anyone else about them. Also, I'll provide a list of resources that you can check out on your own time on my web site (at the bottom of this page).

Bondage is all about physically restricting someone's movement or ability to act. This covers everything from handcuffs, ropes, shackles, gags, straightjackets, to cages, and even corsetry in a way. Anything that can be used to aid in the goal of restraining someone is fair play for bondage enthusiasts, so this also means standard clothing, scarves, belts, plastic wrap, bed sheets, and a host of other objects can be used.

There are three primary (but many more secondary and tertiary) ways you can categorize bondage. These are:

• what object you're binding or being bound with,


• what interpersonal dynamic you've engaged in while being bound and


• what position you're being restrained in.

As I mentioned, many objects can be used for bondage. However, many people have a preference for a specific type of object. Personally, I'm in love with rope and extremely heavy metal shackles, but everyone has an individual preference.

Similarly, everyone's preference for how they like to be tied is different, too. Some people prefer to try and avoid being tied up by fighting against the efforts of their binder, or forcefully capturing and restraining a partner who is acting reluctant. This is often a major facet to scenes like rape and kidnapping fantasies for a lot of bondage lovers. There are many techniques and even martial arts that are specifically designed to teach you how to take someone down and tie them up such as hojujitsu, or Japanese prisoner bondage.

Others see bondage as a means to relax and enjoy a cozy sensation of snugness, or to focus on creating the perfect rope harness or to find the most creative position they can get their partner stuck in. For such people, bondage is as relaxing as a warm, hot bath after a stressful day. Yet others see bondage as a means to some other end. Once you've got your partner bound, that's when the fun can really begin! So bondage really is, to a very large degree, what you make of it.

However, regardless of why do you it or what you do it with, there's some general safety information you absolutely must know. Keep in mind that despite the seemingly benign nature of the play, bondage is one of the more dangerous, more physically stressful and demanding forms of play you can engage in. Yes, it's okay to take a scarf and tie your lovers hands to the headboard, but you really ought to know what you're doing if you get into more serious positions like hog-ties or suspension.

So the first rule of bondage safety is this: never leave a bound person alone. Just don't do it. You never know when an emergency will pop up.

The second rule of bondage safety is always have a fast way to release the bound person available to you. My girlfriend and I always keep EMT safety scissors right with our rope, so they're never far away. Also, if you're doing that, be sure to actually test the scissors to make sure they cut the rope you're going to use before you start playing, for obvious reasons.

Thirdly, be careful of how tight and how long you are keeping someone bound. Essentially, you want to achieve a snug fit that does not cut off circulation to your partner's extremities or cut off their breathing. (And if you're worried about cutting off their breathing that means you've got neck bondage happening, which is one of those things you should never do until you're feeling really comfortable in your ability.)

Good things to remember when you're tying someone up is that you want to be able to slide one or two fingers comfortably underneath their bonds. If you can't, it's too tight. One way to tell that circulation is being cut off is if the bound person's skin feels very cold. A little bit of coolness is okay, as is some tingling, but if your partner reports either of those sensations or you can feel that their body part is getting cold, you need to keep a strict eye on the clock from then on out. Don't leave them tied that tightly for too much longer.

Furthermore, try to avoid tying knots that press directly into veins or arteries or joints, such as on the wrists, elbows, and the back of the knees. These are often uncomfortable for the bottom and indicate a sloppy knot on the top's part. I won't go into knots here because it'd take too long, but there's a ton of information about this stuff in books and on the Internet. Just search or “how to do erotic bondage” and you'll hit a plethora of tutorials.

Finally, but certainly not least, use common sense to avoid accidental injury. In other words, do remember to do things like have your partner holding on to something or lying down if you're tying their ankles together. Especially if they're arms are already bound, you don't want them falling down and breaking their nose by accident. If you want that on purpose, that's one thing, but an accident is just not sexy.

Before I hand it over, I just want to reiterate one last time that this is absolutely, positively, not an all-inclusive guide to bondage or bondage safety. If you're interested in this stuff, come talk to me and do your due diligence. It will probably make the experience a hundred times better, and it may just save you an embarrassing (and costly) trip to the hospital.