Self-bondage (basically, tying yourself up – usually when nobody else is around) is one of the most controversial areas of bondage – and of BDSM in general.
Motivations for wanting to do self-bondage vary. Most people who want to be tied up would rather be tied up by a skillful, trustworthy top. However, this is not always possible. As one bondage expert I interviewed for this book mentioned: “Men tend to tie themselves up because they do not have a partner, while women tend to tie themselves up because they do not trust their partner.”
The person who desires to engage in self-bondage (and, because it is frequently erotically based, this desire can be very strong) faces a serious problem.
On one hand, they want to end up bound to a satisfying degree, and this often means being tied up to the point where they can’t get loose. On the other hand, they eventually will want to get loose, so they have to try to figure out a way to accomplish that.
To engage in self-bondage is to attempt to predict the future, and that can never be done with perfect accuracy. Self-bondage can be exciting, intense, erotic, and enjoyable, as long as absolutely nothing unexpected happens. Any unexpected occurrence can have severe consequences.
One of the more obvious problems is that being in bondage can reduce the bound person to an infant-like state of helplessness, and there is the rule of “always stay as close to a bound person as you would to an infant left in your care – and if you gag them, stay even closer.”
Unfortunately, there have been many deaths among self-bondage practitioners. I have many such case reports in my files. (I even have a case report of a self-bondage double fatality.) Indeed, even if you set aside cases of suffocation and/or strangulation done either alone or with a partner for erotic reasons (and these practices are not necessarily related to BDSM at all), self-bondage mishaps appear to account for the overwhelming majority of BDSM-related deaths.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no simple way to significantly reduce the danger involved while still preserving the essence of what the self-bound person wants to experience.
Some self-bondage fans recommend “emergency escape plans.” I have seen a number of these plans. None seem reliable enough for me to want to bet my life on one of them. (In fact, one self-bondage enthusiast pointed out that few self-bondage practitioners have actually practiced using their emergency escape plan ahead of time.) I should also note that in the forensic pathology literature, “failed self-rescue mechanism” is a common cause of deaths among self-bondage people. (This serves as an excellent example of the advice to take at least one more precaution than you feel that you need to.)
I confess that I went through a phase in which I did some significant experimenting with self-bondage. The thought of being naked and tied up, even if I had no partner, had distinct appeal. I even found a fairly good “how to do it” article in a bondage magazine and immediately went home to try it out. The technique worked reasonably well. Thoughtful person that I am, I even figured out how to improve the technique that the article mentioned. Unfortunately, the “improvement” worked even better than I anticipated (and, in one terrifying incident I won’t describe here, almost cost me my life).
Self-bondage can be affected by other factors out of the control of the self-binder. Out here in California, one of the things we BDSM enthusiasts must always keep ever-so-slightly in the back of our minds is the fact that an earthquake might strike at any time, with no warning whatsoever. Thus, particularly if we are taking the dominant role, we must always give at least a bit of thought to the question of “how will I deal with this situation if an earthquake strikes?”
At the time I was doing my greatest experimentation with self-bondage, I was living in a building made of standard red bricks. (Such buildings can disintegrate in an earthquake.) A few weeks after I gave up experimenting with self-bondage, a fairly strong quake struck and the building started shaking like mad. Fortunately, I was able to get to a safe place, but I still remember running down the stairs while the building shook and the plaster fell. Afterwards, when I had time to reflect, the thought that I might have been in my room, in self-bondage, in that red brick building when that earthquake struck, occurred to me. It was, as I’m sure you can imagine, an utterly chilling thought.
I’ve had some other self-bondage incidents. Once, a few years ago, on something of a whim, I decided to show Janet one of my self-bondage techniques. I managed to apply the tie without too much difficulty (it puts you into a hog-tied position) but when I came to the final “pull it tight” part that makes escaping from the tie very difficult, I accidentally bumped the room’s electric space heater as I did the “pull it tight” maneuver. Thus both Janet and I watched as the space heater fell over, face down, onto the carpet and began to heat up the rug. I knelt on the carpet, naked and hog-tied, and she sat on the bed, dressed and fully able to move, and we both watched for a moment in shocked horror as the heater began to direct its full force onto the carpet. Fortunately, she was able to quickly and easily correct the situation (thanks, Honey!), but we were both left contemplating the possible consequences of what might have happened if I had been there by myself.
On another occasion, we were visiting a resort. Janet had gone off to soak in the hot tub and I had stayed in our room, reading. We had brought along some rope with the intention of playing later. I finished the book, did not feel like joining Janet in the hot tub, and was generally feeling bored. So I decided to try a small amount of self-bondage.
I had been, from time to time, mulling an idea around in my head on how to improve a certain self-bondage technique that was designed to tie the wrists together (frequently the trickiest part of the process). I also had an idea as to how I would loosen the bondage when I wanted to get loose. Figuring like there was no time like the present, I decided to give it a quick try. Still, I had to be a bit careful. (I still very clearly remembered my earlier scare.)
I decided to tie my wrists in front of me, and to remain fully dressed. That way, if there were an earthquake or something similar, I could simply just walk out the door of our room. Yeah, that would be embarrassing, but I’d still be alive. I also, as a backup, took out my Swiss Army knife, opened out the main blade, and put it on the desktop.
Those precautions taken, I then got the ropes and proceeded to apply the wrist tie. I did the “pull tight” maneuver, and the ropes cinched down very nicely indeed. I had a bit of fun wiggling around in the bondage for a while, but after a time I decided that it was time to free myself. I tried my “escape” technique, and it didn’t even begin to work. Uh oh! I tried again, a bit harder; no luck.
I sat there on the bed, looking at my very securely bound wrists (thank God that they weren’t bound so tightly that the nerves and blood vessels were dangerously compressed), and tried to figure out what to do next. I could, of course, use my Swiss Army knife if I really needed to. (Thank goodness the blade was already out. Whether or not I could have gotten out with my hands in their present state, I wasn’t at all sure.) I could also, of course, if things really got bad, simply walk out of the room and ask for assistance. I decided that things weren’t yet that bad, so I decided to try another approach to loosening the ropes around my wrists. No luck. Well, Janet should be back eventually, right? Right?
And so I sat there for what seemed like a very long time. When Janet finally returned to the room, after what turned out to be about an hour and fifteen minutes (but which seemed much longer) there I waited, still bound. When I looked at her, I’m not sure which was redder – the skin on my wrists or the skin on my face. Long-suffering woman that she is, she released me (it was rather easy for her to do) and after the redness faded slightly from the various parts of my body we went out to dinner.
There is a postscript to this incident. The next day, while we were still at the resort, Janet agreed to stay in the room with me while I tried out some variations on the self-bondage techniques that I had been mulling over. I tried out four different techniques. In all four cases, after I had done the final tightenings, I found that the effect was not quite what I had predicted. In three of the four cases, the bondage ended up being looser than I had wanted, but in the fourth case the bondage was much tighter than I had wanted – so much so that it was cutting off circulation. In all cases, the presence of a second person made these unexpected results easy to correct, but we were certainly left wondering what would have happened if I had tried this while alone – especially in that fourth, dangerously tight, case.
So where does this leave us? What should I, as a responsible SM author and educator (which I certainly hope that I am) advocate regarding self-bondage? What recommendations on this subject am I willing to back with my good name and reputation?
One of the things that makes this hard is that we have no overall statistics regarding who is engaging in self-bondage (interestingly enough, while the common belief seems to be that this is a practice engaged in almost exclusively by men, I have heard from a significant number of women who say that they engage in it). We don’t know how many people are doing it, or how often they are doing it, so we cannot evaluate the degree of risk from a statistical view-point. All we can go by are case reports in the medical and police literature, and by reports from practitioners.
I cannot make myself comfortable with saying something like “Self-bondage is great. Go ahead and do it. Have a ball!” I have simply heard too many stories of accidents, mishaps, and injuries, and even a few reports of fatalities, for me to feel comfortable saying something like that.
I can say the following things:
• The risk level involved in self-bondage seems to dramatically increase if any sort of gag is involved.
• The risk level involved in self-bondage seems to dramatically increase if any sort of ropes are around the bound person’s neck.
• The risk level involved in self-bondage seems to dramatically increase if the bound person is tied to some sort of fixed object such as a bed.
• The risk level seems to dramatically increase if the self-bound person unexpectedly falls.
• Many self-bondage fans have an “emergency escape” plan in place, but they’ve never actually tested it to see if it works. (For example, it may be impossible to open a lock if you have to use oil-covered keys on a keyhole that is located someplace where you cannot see it.)
• Bondage that might not be tight enough to cause the self-bound person’s hands to become numb immediately might still be tight enough to cause the bound person’s hands to become numb after the passage of many minutes or a few hours. This could make escape impossible. (A friend of mine who is a surgeon suffered numbness on one of their thumbs that lasted for several weeks after some self-bondage of their wrists unexpectedly became too tight.)
• Almost all BDSM-related fatalities that I have heard about have involved self-bondage mishaps. The presence or absence of a sympathetic monitor emerges as a major landmark in this regard.
• A self-bondage position that makes it slightly difficult to breathe may be tolerable for up to several hours, but if the bound person is unable to escape, their breathing muscles may eventually tire to the point where they cannot function and the bound person will die of what’s called positional asphyxia (see p. 273). If the bound person is overweight or has impaired breathing, they are at greater risk for this problem.
• Any unexpected event that affects a self-bound person can have major consequences. For example, I was consulted a while back on an incident in which a person who was bound, gagged, and alone (whether he did this to himself or had help was not clear) developed a nosebleed, and died when the clotted blood blocked his nose.
“This new chair I got works great for bondage.”
• People who are in bondage sometimes suffer what can be called a “panic reaction.” This reaction can come on very suddenly and with no warning whatsoever, sometimes for reasons entirely unrelated to the SM play. A panicked bottom in bondage can be very difficult for even the most experienced top to deal with. A panicked bottom who is in self-bondage may not survive.
• Knives may not work well as self-rescue devices. It is very easy to drop a knife, or to have it fall some place where you cannot reach it, or to injure yourself with it. (For example, it can be fairly easy to cut yourself if you are trying to use a knife to cut ropes that are holding your wrists tied behind your back.)
As I’ve mentioned in other places in this book, to engage in bondage or some other aspect of BDSM (or any other aspect of life) is never a simple, binary decision of choosing the safe versus the unsafe. It’s always a matter of “choose your risk level.” Each of us must decide what level of risk we feel comfortable facing. I play at a higher risk level than some bondage fans (and have had the scares and mishaps to show for it), and there are people who play at higher risk levels than I do. Given that these people are informed, consenting adults, I’m not going to say that they are reckless or irresponsible for doing so. Still, they know perfectly well that they may someday face a major mishap.
The core of the problem may well be that the actual risk level of self-bondage is unappreciated. Iinterviewed some self-bondage fans while working on this book, and the ones who have made a real study of it fully understand that there are serious risks involved. One person proudly showed me their “triply redundant” escape mechanisms. As they put it, “If the first one fails, the fact that you still have two more options helps a lot to steady your nerves so that you can make the second one work.”
There is an excellent saying, particularly popular in the Southern California BDSM community, that goes “think with your head.” Self-bondage fans would do well to heed this advice. It seems that many people rush into self-bondage situations without adequately asking some of the hard “what if?” questions. While all bondage involves risk, self-bondage emerges as thebondage practice associated with what is by far the highest number of known fatalities.