Years ago, long before I started tying, I studied capoeira. I still think about it all the time. Tying feeds off the deep and ever growing curiosity about efficiency and expression I developed in the roda. At some point I got some funding to head to Brazil for three months. So I went. I learned […]

This New Years’ Day, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking we’re just around the corner from one of the biggest changes yet to occur in Japanese rope pedagogy. From everything I attend and read, I feel like the rope scene as a whole is in a bit of a rut. While structured classes and […]

Who can ignore the birth pangs of the new tying? Who has slept through the attacks on the new fangled ancien régime? Who has not been touched by the spreading irritation?  Japanese rope bondage has changed in its transport. Stripped of context, it has mutated. Inserted into Anglo-American sexual politics, it has served as ferment. […]

An old mentor of mine used to compare to me to a late friend of hers, George Trow. Since then I’ve had some phantasm of him as company, and an apocryphal version of a famous quote of his has been something I’ve returned to time and time again. As my old mentor would say it, […]

The last few years of my life have been pretty heavily shaped by my decision to get involved with rope bondage while in the midst of graduate study. I quickly found myself trying to manage having commitments to three pretty disparate communities: an academic community, an activist community, and a kink scene and its associated […]

Once a month on Sunday night I prep for the first class in the intro series. I move through what I’m teaching and feel my body and the patterns out. I start with aisatsu shibari. Pushing my arms forward, I roll my shoulders in and break posture. I bend at the knees and look up and forward. There’s […]

It’s 1:30 am on a Tuesday. My boyfriend is in bed next to me snipping GIFS from Un chant d’amour for a presentation he’s preparing. I’m trying to snuggle him, stuck somewhere between watching what he’s doing on his laptop and dwelling on how it feels teaching rope. As I watch Lucien Sénémaud dance, all […]

A few days ago, I saw a personal ad that someone I know put up online. It ended with something that really rubbed me the wrong way. After listing what they were looking for, they had a list of things that they’re not into, including “humans that can’t communicate.” That gave me pause. And the […]

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 […]

My trip to Japan gave me some new material for classes. The “classes” section has been updated accordingly.