Monday, April 30, 2007

Yes, My Lady: Sex & Bondage Go Together Like Love & Marriage...?

My most vivid memories of childhood are when I was bound, unwillingly and nonconsensually: bound to an abusive family, a sexist, racist nation-state, and my own low self-worth. As an adult, I will struggle with the confinement of the institution of marriage and the capitalist production of love. I will feel bound by tradition and familial and societal pressure to wed. Struggle to rid these chains that bind is a common theme in my life, and that in the lives of many Dominant women. However, being placed in bondage will serve as the only method to a sexuality for me as a young adult. How is it years later that bondage will serve as the only form of play in which I feel totally safe?



Like love and marriage, "sex and bondage" is an exercise teeming with convoluted practices and messages. The media often portrays women who are tied down as a victim. If she is shown enjoying bondage, then the character is assumed some sort of freak. Children learn at a young age that you tie someone down so that you may do what you wish to them -- so that you may keep them. Yet, the images that strike me most are the ones of men being tied down by women. Movies like Basic Instinct depict a manic, dominant man who both seeks and fears being restrained by a woman. The face of Michael Douglas's character portrays a struggle with submission as Sharon Stone's character forcibly wraps the silk scarf around his wrists. His bodily movements and facial expressions show a man that does not want to be bound by this woman, but he does not verbally resist. What remains is the silent omission that screams consent. Pure passivity.



Only bondage produces and maintains this type of passivity. By passivity, I do not mean submission. Submission signifies that you have power, which you choose to resign to another. By passivity, I mean you have no will to hand over to the Top. By passivity, I mean that you do not relinquish power. Rather, you act as if you have no power. As the rope, leather, and chains begin to sink into your skin, you don't care who enters you, when, or how.



For some novices of BDSM, bondage is the means to play...in fact; it is the only way that some can submit. Being bound allows a certain freedom to act as if one cannot escape, so one must submit. Bondage allows for a certain insidious negation of responsibility and blatant consent. The bottom can fool her/himself into accepting submission and the dominance of the Top. (The Top is only getting away with this because I am bound...) The bottom can enforce a private, internal illusion that the Top is making them do this. The bondage maintains the illusion and allows the bottom to act out as if they do not truly want what the Tops gives, but is forced to accept. Without the bondage, the bottom wouldn't be able to submit. Thus, for some novices, bondage is the only means to playing...a sort of forced submission.



For many novices of sex, let alone BDSM, we learn to feel sex as a dirty, bad thing. We cannot proudly covet or request sex. It usually requires someone else to "force" us to enjoy sex, to force us to become someone else for a little while, which allows a bound freedom. To inhibit the inhibited frees. This is where bondage enters. Bondage acts as a mediator between an abjected sense of self and sex; that is to say, it allows a person to let go of control over sex, the situation, fluids, etc., just enough to have sex. As My submissive friend Kaylynne says, "I couldn't let go enough to have sex, or to act that way [submissively], unless I was bound -- I needed bondage."



Bondage is a means to receive domination, attention, and/or sex. Many novices see bondage as a form of domination. They believe that they must be bound to be truly dominated. Many novices go through the ropes, actually not enjoying bondage, in order to get what they truly want from the Top: dominance. They learn to associate the two. Bondage and dominance are not the same thing. You can bind a body, but not the spirit. A dominant person will not suddenly submit simply because s/he is placed in bondage. Similarly, a submissive person can submit willingly without a single piece of rope restraining them. It usually takes a novice some time to learn that they need not be placed in bondage in order to be dominated. Similarly, many novice Tops believe they must bind someone in order to control them. How untrue!



As for experienced and cultivated players, many of us no longer mix sex and bondage. Why, you might ask? Well, it's something that only novices do seem to do; moreover, it's something that I no longer need to do. Bondage with sex, or sex with bondage was often our first act of SM. You tie your lover up and have sex. However, time passes, we gain experiences and try many different forms of SM, and suddenly, one finds her/himself not interested in traditional sex anymore. Bondage has replaced sex. Moreover, bondage becomes a new form of sex. One that is just as intimate, trust producing, and sexy as 69, intercourse, or any other form of "vanilla" sex.



Bondage takes on a life of its own. One suddenly begins to crave it like when one hasn't masturbated for a long time. The body aches for it. The loins desired to be pushed, knotted, and covered with delicate, yet strong, beautiful fabric. One longs for the feel of the ropes sliding up and down the body. 'Til finally, nothing is left but rope, leather, chains and bones. Like a good fuck, you continue to feel where the ropes once laid. Sex and bondage. Love and marriage. You can have one without the other.

1 comment:

Richard said...

Well said. Very insightful.