In erotic rope bondage we first have to free ourselves from the tyranny. There are four: The tyranny of the tying person, the tyranny of the tied person, the tyranny of eroticism, and most importantly, the tyranny of the rope. — @Barkas riffing on Peter Greenaway

“Psychoanalysis is about what two people can say to each other if they agree not to have sex.” — Leo Bersani in Homos

There is a misconception in kink and rope bondage circles that to be sex-positive is to always provide space for mixing sex and rope, or sex and kink. I think that providing that kind of space is an important thing to do. But for something to be sex-positive doesn’t mean it has always be about sex all the time. I regularly hear presenters grandstand about how rope bondage is “inherently sexual” for them, and it’s possible to find writing upon writing on FetLife waxing on about how rope is inherently erotic. Those aren’t claims I want to directly to address because I don’t really want to get into the weeds of what “erotic” and “sexual” mean to me or should mean to anyone else. But I’m suspicious of anyone who cavalierly makes such claims. If I want an erotics, it’s a queer erotics that’s much more capacious than what most people mean when they describe their rope bondage as “erotic.”

Instead, I want to address what I think is a blind spot in the way a lot of people tie. As far as I’m concerned there are two ways to structure a rope scene. One is based on the internal logics of the scene itself, the patterns and rhythms that are set up through the process of tying. The other is based on an external goal or an objective in which another part of an experience is used to create formal and narrative structure. If one is tying light bondage for an impact scene, the impact scene is probably structuring what’s going on more than applying rope. The same is true in “bondage for sex.” In both those cases, rope is a means to an end, and the majority of the structure of the scene, particularly the end, is coming from outside the tying process.

That isn’t necessarily a problem. Rope is a great tool for a lot of things. That said, there are some major downsides to only being able to create a scene governed by logics that are by-and-large external to the process of tying. Some of them are pretty apparent. Many people who are looking to be tied aren’t looking for sex or to engage in other play. If someone can’t tie without direct sexual contact or structuring a scene off of sex, then they have a whole portion of the world that they can’t really interface with.

More importantly, it can affect the quality of scenes themselves. If rope isn’t a major focus, then getting tied can become a thing for the person being tied to wait through leading up to the main attraction. It also can lead to dissonant endings. I can’t tell you how often I find people struggling find a way to end a scene and then turn to sex as a crutch, even if it doesn’t fit well with the dynamic of the scene that was at hand. That’s something that has potential to go really badly, even if it doesn’t always. Sometimes it’s alright. Sometimes it’s just jarring or unsatisfying. Sometimes it’s something much worse. Sex is a great way to end some scenes. It shouldn’t be the only tool in someone who is tying’s kit.

The other approach lies following the internal logics of a scene. One of the things I most appreciate about rope bondage is how versatile a medium it is. There are so many different kinds of scenes and, with proper negotiation, it’s possible to flow from one dynamic into another smoothly. One of best parts of rope culture is its openness to discussing how scenes develop in conversation and genres get established, selected, or toggled throughout the course of a scene. Some of my favorite scenes have toggled from desire to shame to abandonment, or from reaching out to care. A big part of learning to tie is learning to pay attention to who one is tying with and recognize the conversation at hand and respond appropriately, based on the what is being created within the scene itself. One of the reasons I find rope to be interesting intellectually, particularly the approaches of the people I’ve learned rope most from, is that rope is really a constant navigation of genre by two people. And, as anyone who has heard me wax about it while drunk can attest, I think negotiating genre is a major part of social and political experience. For me, tying as a process is navigating a simultaneous making and becoming together. It’s a subtle intimacy of sympoetic creation of a scene, a moment, and each other. It’s a place where play can create openings for surprise and care, for subversion and recognition, for looking at how we understand and communicate our own expectations and navigate the expectations of others. If there’s something that ties rope bondage to cat’s cradle and other games with rope, it’s this.

Relying on an outside structure can really easily blind people who are tying to the conversation that’s going on within a scene, and the genre that arises within it. Attention elsewhere, a dialogue can easily become a monologue, a crude imposition of will rather than a site of real interaction and contact. When it comes to sex, this is made all the worse by heteronormative expectations and scripts around sex, where sex usually starts with some foreplay, moves into PIV, and ends with someone’s cock ejaculating. Good rope on the other hand is like good queer sex. It’s various and polymorphous perverse, full of undisciplined potential and pleasures. It’s not only a relation to sexual orientation. It’s a relation to time.

Good rope also takes place across strange and wondrous queer temporalities. It has its own emergent rhythms. It has space to be playful and syncopated. Good rope at its best is structurally symphonic, with movements and long arcing structures, accommodating ambivalence, and tonal variance. It doesn’t have to end in a bang, but can find an ending fit for itself, perhaps a slow, drawn out, intensity.

I mix sex and rope. I do it fairly often. I even occasionally mix standard-script PIV sex and rope, although both are far from my favorite kind of sex and my favorite way to use rope. At the end of the day, I try to make sure it isn’t the end-all be-all of how I tie. Sex is one thing in my rope toolkit, just as rope is something in my sex toolkit. As someone who teaches about rope, I try and make sure the same is true of the people I teach. Once again, it comes down to an issue of empowering students to make their own choices. Someone who ties seriously should be able to lay rope with number of different qualities of touch and kinds of intention. Someone who only can communicate “gropiness” is in for a rough time. Sometimes a scene calls for groping while laying rope. More often than not, I found, that’s precisely the wrong approach. In the same way, sex is there when you need it or want it in a rope scene. Sex can be myriad things and variously expressive in and of itself. But it’s often the easy way out. And it should be one among many options.

I think to grow as people who tie, students often have to take at least a moment to step back and, even if it is outside their comfort zone, approach rope from angles other than sex as it’s hegemonically conceived. What would it mean for rope education to take that call seriously? I want to draw from the Leo Bersani quote and, although we are obviously not doing psychotherapy, begin to think about what agreeing not have sex with someone or turn something into a cruising space enables. Does it make for different kinds of rope scenes? Does learning how to navigate that make for better tops and bottoms? What are the erotics of rope outside of sex? I’m also interested in a broader issue: what happens when we decide to create spaces where sex isn’t the focus. Does it create space for conversations around consent and communication that wouldn’t happen otherwise? Does it make it a space that’s comfortable for a wider range of people? Especially some of us who are queer and trans? I know in my case, at least sometimes, it does.

What I’m looking for here is not sex-negativity. I’m instead looking towards addressing where many of us can improve our rope and why certain social expectations are structurally creating weaknesses for many people. Want to make your rope better? Focus on the scene. Diversify your tool kit. Learn how to communicate in many different ways and genres. Try tying scenes focused on sex. Try scenes entirely without it.

Want to make your space more inclusive? Make room for those who want spaces where tying isn’t always mixed with sex. Consider what you’re willing to sacrifice on the altar of signaling what’s wrongly to be taken as unequivocal sex-positivity. Realize that making things about sex all the time is the opposite of inclusive. It’s a very limiting (and damaging) view of sex-positivity. Even so, I’m not sure sex-positivity is the best frame for rope. I’m hesitant about what always framing rope as some “sex-positive” practice does to it. It seems like a dangerous and harmful distortion to me. A tyranny rope must be freed from, perhaps.