Miss True Blue is a rope educator who discovered her fascination with rope in her early forties. She is the founder of VoxBody Studio, a dedicated rope space in Oakland that opened in 2017.

Wren [00:00:22]

Welcome to the Shibari Study podcast. I'm your host Wicked Wren. Today I'm speaking with Miss True Blue. She's a community leader in the San Francisco Bay Area. She's a founding member of BARE, the Bay Area Rope Exchange. She's appeared on vice TV and opened VoxBody in 2017, navigating a closure and reopening through the Covid-19 pandemic. She's a rope switch and an advocate of the idea that rope bondage education should be aimed at both sides of the rope. Welcome, Miss True Blue.

True Blue [00:00:55]

Thank you. Hi. Thank you for having me.

Wren [00:00:58]

You are so welcome. Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of photos that I've seen, I think my favorite one that you've done is you tied this really adorable mango for a fragrance company a couple of years back.

True Blue [00:01:13]

Oh, yeah.

Wren [00:01:15]

And I thought that that was really cute.

True Blue [00:01:17]

That was such a fun exercise because mangoes are tender. They bruise easily. So it was like a real exercise of figuring out how to get proper tension around that mango without liken destroying it. I'm pretty sure that person was doing that campaign in L.A.. So not only did I tie the mango and I think there was a zucchini and a couple other things. Eggplant, I think too. But then I had to ship them down to L.A., like overnight before they like spoiled.

Wren [00:01:52]

Did you find that the consent conversations with the mango and the zucchini were different? Did they all have different meanings surrounding themselves?

True Blue [00:02:01]

Of course, they did. Of course, they did. Every, you know, encounter is different, right? Mangoe's tenderness is very different than a zucchini's boundary.

Wren [00:02:13]

Well, mangoes have kind of been through a lot, so I can see why.

True Blue [00:02:15]

Yeah, I was going to say something about the thickness of the skin of the fruits and veggies. But anyway.

Wren [00:02:22]

The eggplant has like a huge ego, I imagine, right?

True Blue [00:02:27]

Oh, my gosh. Inflated ego of the eggplant.

Wren [00:02:34]

Love it. So your name True Blue. It's from the preface of a Christopher Moore book, Sacre Bleu. And I want to read a little excerpt from that. He says, Blue is beauty, not truth. True blue is ruse, a rhyme? It's there, then it's not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color. Blue can be anything blue needs to be. And I was curious why you chose Miss True Blue.

True Blue [00:02:59]

Oh, that's so sweet to hear that again. Actually, the name for me predates by decades. That book and me coming across that book. It started – I had a beautiful blue and chic-y ten-speed bike back in the nineties in San Francisco, and I rode my bike everywhere. And my bike was called Tuesday Blue. And then I graduated to a 1968 El Camino that was like midnight, metallic blue. It was the most gorgeous color ever. And that became Tuesday Blue. And then I became a burlesque dancer. And my stage name was Tuesday Blue. And I was actually part of the Black and Blue Burlesque Reveal. And that was the name of our troupe. And then I got the tattoo I have on my wrists, true blue, because those felt like two words I could live with for the rest of my life. I like those two words. I like the, you know, the saying or the loyalty that is implied. And then I encountered rope and kink and kind of dove into the scene and needed you know, at that point, I needed my like FetLife name. And so I opted for True Blue. And then I think I encountered the book.

Wren [00:04:24]

That is so cool. And I kind of figured that the book came at the end of it. What was it like being a burlesque dancer?

True Blue [00:04:32]

Oh, my gosh, I loved it. One of the parts of my story for burlesque, which is similar to rope, is that I found these things, quote-unquote, later in my life than other people. Like, I was in my thirties when I got into burlesque and I was in my forties when I discovered my love of rope and kink. So that's definitely a different age bracket than a lot of people. And I felt when I discovered burlesque very grounded in a place of my life where I was like down for the celebration and tease and sharing of sexuality and expression and felt pretty damn grounded and like, I'm doing this for me approach to it where I was out in life and I loved being part of a troupe. I did some solo acts but really for me, it was always about when there was like five of us on stage doing something like really fun, silly, sexy choreography together. That was like what I really loved about it. And I had the opportunity to kind of like run away with the circus. During those years, we were part of a bigger band that kind of had a road show performed on Old Route 66, performed at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, like had some really epic moments.

Wren [00:05:53]

It seems like that's a pretty natural progression to kink and rope bondage.

True Blue [00:05:58]

Yeah, when you're moving forward, you don't really know what it is you're like barreling towards and then you look back and you're like, Oh, that totally makes sense that that's where that went. And the other part that really fits in, in retrospect is I was also a teacher and a librarian, and there's something about the librarian archetype that also makes sense to me that that all funneled into my finding rope and really like diving into this world.

Wren [00:06:28]

When you found burlesque and you said you're ready for it in your life, what was the catalyst that got you there?

True Blue [00:06:35]

A combination of going to a show of all women aerialist performance that I went to in San Francisco, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I want to try this. And there's a circus school in San Francisco. And I started taking some classes there, some like acrobats and static trapeze. And then it was also like the community of people that I was surrounded with at the time who were musicians and performers. I guess this is perhaps similar to what happens with some people with rope. You're doing it for fun and exploration at first, and then you're like, I really like this thing. I want to teach a class or I want to do a performance. And then you start to kind of carve out that part of it.

Wren [00:07:20]

Yeah. It sounds like you've always been drawn to community and fostering community.

True Blue [00:07:25]

Yes, that era of my life, going back to like the burlesque, being part of the show was one of my earlier experiences of like really strong community projects and efforts. So yeah, it's definitely been a thread for me that has carried into rope for sure. I absolutely love that personal and interpersonal rope, but I'm also obviously really interested in like how we create a community space around that and what it means to participate in like a scene or a network or a social network, whatever you want to call it.

Wren [00:08:04]

Totally, yeah. Speaking of community, you founded Vox Body and it is a rope space in the San Francisco Bay Area. I think that it would help maybe to define what a rope space is, maybe what it isn't. What does it offer that isn't provided just at home?

True Blue [00:08:25]

Right. That's such a good question. It's such a simple question too, I'm like, Where do I begin? On a really basic level, it was deciding to commit to a space. Finding the space, signing the lease and commit to opening the doors for folks to come in and primarily do rope. And you know what that means to do rope in a space that is a public space is going to mean a lot of different things. That's going to mean classes. It's going to mean jams and social time, performance events, meet-ups, kink education. And with that is going to come the like necessary framework of how is this space run? Who's helping to program and facilitate the events?

Wren [00:09:15]

What kind of people do you see coming to your rope space?

True Blue [00:09:18]

Well, I will say that we're pretty spoiled in the Bay Area with the depth and breadth of people that are here and want to explore rope and kink. It's kind of inherent in the history of the Bay Area. So I recognize that there's a bigger pool of folks interested in this in the Bay Area than elsewhere. One of the things that I do love about watching people walk in the door is that the age range will really be from early twenties into late sixties, early seventies. And that's kind of an unusual thing to see, like one practice draw that range of age. And we could do a lot better with this always. But I do also think that it draws in quite a variety of walks of life identities, orientations like what people do with their like, their lives otherwise.

Wren [00:10:22]

Are there any intentional things you did to foster that kind of diversity in your space?

True Blue [00:10:28]

I did intentionally sort of want to create a space that someone could walk into that maybe wasn't sure if they were into rope or kink, or maybe was a little anxious or a lot anxious and could walk in and feel comfortable in a way that maybe walking into like a dungeon your first time is going to be like. That's a big step, right? And it's very clear, like you are in a dungeon now. Like you've made that step. So I did intentionally want to leave light and empty walls and pillows and like a snack table. Things that might be like comfort zones that people could walk in and identify and feel like, okay, I can relax a little bit and sort out if this is a place for me. So just even thinking about the physical space is definitely intentional.

Wren [00:11:20]

What are the standout snacks on a VoxBody snack table?

True Blue [00:11:25]

Oh gosh. Well, so I'm just ramping back up with snacks because I haven't really been putting them out a lot because we've mostly been wearing masks since we got going. But in the old space, jelly belly. Jelly beans were definitely a go-to. We definitely had a tater tots area. We have definitely–

Wren [00:11:49]

Don't we all?

True Blue [00:11:50]

Don't we all have a tater tots era. We've definitely had some really pretty charcuterie trays, veggie snacks, Cheez-Its.

Wren [00:12:02]

Wow.

True Blue [00:12:03]

Yeah, always the dark milk, chocolate, peanut butter cups and the milk chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's. Those are like an always.

Wren [00:12:14]

I love on your website how have VoxBody is a safe(r) space. And I think that's a really cool distinction. So just calling it a safe space.

True Blue [00:12:23]

Yeah, that's definitely something that I learned along the way. And it is such a small change, but it carries a lot of weight and that is such a subjective thing. Whether a space is safe for one person to the next and that it's always a work in progress. We're learning as we go. So I think it indicates the process of being back.

Wren [00:12:46]

Absolutely. And you think it has more power in the influence of the space, is that the hosts or the people coming into it?

True Blue [00:12:54]

Oh, my gosh, I love that question. I want to answer both right away is what my gut wants to say. Also recognizing that I am the person that runs the space and has created the space and opens the doors to the space. So I already know that my influence and my presence there is like I recognize a power dynamic there and it is not the space it is unless anyone who walks in the door participates, comes back, turns around and welcomes in another new person and kind of show them around. We're really this time around, we opened in February, we've been really echoing the idea of community cultivating community. And so like what are the things that I can do as the person that runs the space or the people that are like the VoxBody volunteers or who work on certain teams or on certain aspects of the space. Like what are the ways that we can put it in the hands of anyone that walks in the door like, This is how we're doing this here. This is what we're doing here so that anyone can then turn around and like be representative of that. To your question, I love it and I want to say like both either, or, and. And I would be curious how a person who walks in the door would also answer that question.

Wren [00:14:21]

I think it is a 50/50 thing. I think that makes total sense.

True Blue [00:14:25]

Yeah.

Wren [00:14:26]

You hosted a class during COVID called Calling You Back In group and rope jam. And that's really fascinating because it's described as a hybrid discussion rope jam. I thought that was really cool. What did – what does that class aim to accomplish?

True Blue [00:14:41]

Yeah, we did a few of those right as I think we had signed the lease for the new space, but it wasn't open yet. But there was this anticipation of, Okay, we're coming out of two years of doing things online and not having in-person community. And now we're gearing up to come back into a space. And so we wanted to have some discussion around that. Like on a very personal level, like where are you at with like maybe you've been doing rope by yourself in your home for two years now.

Wren [00:15:20]

Yeah.

True Blue [00:15:20]

And like where is the part of you that is going to walk back into a space and do it in a public space to witness and be witnessed and partake in like a community experience. So we kind of wanted to generate some discussion and reflection on that. And there's also been this really interesting thing in the last few years where I think a lot of people have discovered or started doing rope in the last few years, which means primarily online and like I don't know about other towns and cities and places that there are so many more people doing rope right now in the Bay Area than there were in like February 2020.

Wren [00:16:03]

Yeah.

True Blue [00:16:04]

So that's really cool and exciting. And I think I'm also like super curious what all the variables are that fed into the fact that a lot of people are discovering rope right now and it's also like low key, worrisome. And you've been doing this inherently risky, vulnerable practice in your home by yourself, perhaps without any feedback from a teacher or anyone that could assist you. How's your rope? How are your consent practices? Where have you gotten them from and how is that going to translate into now we're going to come back into a community space together.

Wren [00:16:46]

That's a phenomenal answer. And I think in closing, if you could leave us with a couple of things that people in their local groups can do to foster community, foster consent-based dialogs and things, since there are so many new people, that would be amazing.

True Blue [00:17:02]

People will write to me and ask about this from like different pockets of the world that don't have established rope communities. And I think the first thing is just start small, do an event, or invite fill-in-the-blank people to your home to do rope. If that's like five or seven or ten people, whatever you can house and start there. And if that goes well, then plan another one. And if that goes well, then maybe plan a third and start to kind of articulate what are we doing here? Like what's the framework and how do we want to engage in this space together. And so start to build not just the events but the guidelines for like how are we going to do this together? I think that a lot of people are so hungry for community and events and spaces to exist and they, you know, want to go 0 to 100 and I think their like frustratingly Libra mom answer is like, Take your time and build it slowly and see because it is a space. If it is a community space, you want to kind of offer something and then see how that works for people that might walk in the door and do it. Did they respond to it in the way that you were hoping they would? And do they want more? And then you can build and build from there. Commit to the fact that if we are doing rope, then yes, it means let's learn the technique. What are the patterns and what are the knots and what are the frictions? But also like commit to the fact that this is a learning journey and communication and consent practices, anatomy, body mechanics, these are all these avenues that you're going to want to go down. So cultivate those as much as you cultivate. Look at this cool new tie I learned. And you don't need to reinvent the wheel either. There are a lot of consent resources out there. There's a lot of spaces that are articulating and re-articulating what that means for them and spending some time kind of poking around and seeing what other groups and spaces have done as their policies or the way that they run a space.

Wren [00:19:19]

Totally.

True Blue [00:19:20]

Yeah.

Wren [00:19:20]

I want to thank you so much for talking with me. This is very insightful and I'm happy to hear that VoxBody is doing great after COVID and everything.

True Blue [00:19:29]

Thank you so much. It was – time flew by.

Wren [00:19:33]

Can you tell us where people can find you?

True Blue [00:19:35]

Well, you can literally find us in Oakland, California, because that is where we are located. Online, our website is voxbody.com. We're on Instagram @VoxBody, Twitter @VoxBody, on FetLife @VoxBody_Studio.

Wren [00:19:52]

Blue, I want to thank you again for chatting. You're a wonderful person and I can't wait to see you soon.

True Blue [00:19:56]

I will see you soon. I'll see you next month, yeah?

Wren [00:19:59]

Yes, I can't wait.

True Blue [00:20:00]

Yay. Thanks so much for having me and for doing this. I really appreciated the conversation.

Fuoco is a rope educator, circus performer and aerialist. As an educator, her focus is on body mechanics and developing more comprehensive education for rope bottoms.

Wren [00:00:18]

Welcome to the Shibari Study podcast. I'm your host, Wicked Wren. Today I'm joined by the one and only Fuoco. Fuoco's background is extremely fascinating. She's a professional circus performer and has been in the rope scene since 2012. She's a feminist, a performance artist and an educator, to name a few. As an educator, her classes focus on equipping bottoms with tangible teachable skills. She runs an online zine with Gray called Cut the Leash.

Fuoco [00:00:47]

Hello. Hi. Okay. Nice introduction.

Wren [00:00:51]

Thank you so much. Well, you are such a multi-skilled human being.

Fuoco [00:00:57]

Thank you.

Wren [00:00:58]

You're welcome. So two things really excited me about our interview today. One, I was reminded about the rope bondage drills for the apocalypse you did during COVID, which honestly feels like a different life time.

Fuoco [00:01:13]

Oh, my God. Right. I remember being like, Okay. Two weeks of lockdown. 14 Instagram videos to keep people entertained.

Wren [00:01:23]

Yes.

Fuoco [00:01:23]

Also like 14 days where I won't be allowed to work and should probably try to make a little bit of extra money.

Wren [00:01:30]

I love it.

Fuoco [00:01:31]

Yeah, life changes.

Wren [00:01:33]

Well, it definitely can be engaged during COVID. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Fuoco [00:01:39]

It kept me engaged. It kept my pretty vanilla roommates engaged.

Wren [00:01:43]

I love it. I also stumbled across your resumé, which is fascinating because most people under additional skills just list excel. But you have fire breathing.

Fuoco [00:01:56]

I do breathe fire. You know, I think actually now I have fire eating. I eat fire. So the distinction being that I will put like a flaming torch in my mouth, but I won't hold fuel in my mouth. So when you see people like put a little puff of fire in their mouth and extinguish it, that's what I do. But when people like breathe like a dragon and like this giant flame puffball comes out of their mouth, that's actually, like, real scary. I don't do that.

Wren [00:02:24]

So what is the life of a big professional circus performer?

Fuoco [00:02:28]

Nowhere near as glamorous as what anybody thinks it is. I actually am a professional circus performer. I went to school for Circus. I did a three-year full-time program and that was like a life in and of its own, where you're just 8 hours a day training. You're training in your main disciplines. I study aerial hoops and hand-to-hand like I do handstands on other humans. But then I had classes and like handstands and acrobatics and juggling. I'm really bad at juggling. Like my juggling coach fondly refers to me as his greatest disappointment. Oh yeah. At this point now, the life of a professional circus performer having left that is like a balance of taking odd non-circus jobs to make money while also taking like circus jobs that pay the bills but don't make you feel like an artist while also trying to find time to like, do your pull-ups and make your art and like so that you can afford to take the jobs that do make you feel like an artist or, you know, take the jobs or just create the work that makes you feel like an artist. It's all a hustle.

Wren [00:03:38]

And you've talked about being drawn to spaces where performance art and politics intersect.

Fuoco [00:03:43]

Yes. Yeah. My master's degree – I came to circus later in life. I've met so many people who started when they were 12 and this is just what they've done for their entire life. But I did my undergraduate and gender studies. I did a master's in human rights. I've been involved in a lot of activism around sexual violence and sex workers rights for a really long time. More recently, involved in sort of renters organizing and tenants unions. I feel like there is a place in the world for artists who are just making art because art is beautiful and necessary and part of a politics of joy. But personally, like for me to invest in an artistic project for its own value, right? Like not the thing that's going to pay my rent or keep the lights on, but something that is like the art that I care about. I do want that art to be a part of activist projects be like in conversation with movement work. Yeah, this is a really big question. What is–?

Wren [00:04:46]

Yeah, totally. So you have so many varied interests. Like you've said outside your career, you run and write for your zine, you build and teach classes. You're an activist. I'm really curious what a day looks like for you. How do you segment your creative time with the more straightforward time and the more training time?

Fuoco [00:05:05]

Yeah, I have tried really hard in my life to actually like – I'm trying right now. I think to deconstruct the notion of career. I just read Work Will Not Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe, and I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to read it. And then if you do read it and want to like slide into my DMS and chat with me about it, I'm all for that. But so that's all I'll just say that like my daily activities fluctuate on a semi-regular basis and there's always in my day something that I'm doing that needs to pay the bills and then something that I'm doing that I think is contributing some good into the world and then something that I'm doing, like for me and my own joy and my own body nourishing all of those things and that fluctuates. So right now I wake up and I work as an editor for a website and I often wake up and train with my acrobatics partner and then do some work for my 9 to 5, which in practice is more like a 10 to 3, and then do something that's maybe a little bit more creative, like working on a zine or most recently in the evenings I've been working on writing this Choose Your Own Adventure book.

Wren [00:06:21]

Yeah.

Fuoco [00:06:22]

But all of those things shift. Like sometimes I'm editing a lot less and I'm training circuits a lot more and it's because the circus is going to be paying the bills for the next few months. And in moments when my schedule shifts, I try to make sure that I tend to the other activities too.

Wren [00:06:39]

Do you have any specific structures that you've put in place to keep the other plates spinning while you're working on one?

Fuoco [00:06:47]

Absolutely not, no. I think that's life project. I'm talking about finding this balance but I'm really bad at it.

Wren [00:06:56]

Same and this is a very selfish question because my life is similar when I have all these different things going on and I was curious that you figured it out.

Fuoco [00:07:04]

No, I will say that having an organizer and scheduling in my organizer that like on this day I'm actually working on my creative project that I'm not going to book a lesson or I'm not going to like go off and train has been really helpful for me. And then the other thing that I love to do is in the last year or so, started my day with morning pages. Are you familiar with morning pages?

Wren [00:07:25]

Yes, I love them.

Fuoco [00:07:27]

Three pages of just like scribbles, a stream of consciousness writing three pages. I find that clearing my brain of that noise creates a lot more space for like, balancing the other things.

Wren [00:07:43]

Agreed. I have a five-minute journal that I used to.

Fuoco [00:07:46]

Nice.

Wren [00:07:47]

And I really liked that.

Fuoco [00:07:48]

Yeah, it's remarkably helpful. It doesn't sound like it's going to be until you do it and then you're like, This is life-changing.

Wren [00:07:54]

Yes. And in the beginning, it's awful.

Fuoco [00:07:58]

Totally. Yeah. I agree.

Wren [00:08:01]

I want to talk a little bit about an essay that you wrote in 2015 and you recently updated it. The essay is called On Bottoming Responsibility. And I would encourage everyone to read it and I'll only get in the show notes below. It's truly amazing.

Fuoco [00:08:16]

Thank you.

Wren [00:08:17]

You're welcome. And you essentially say that a bottom's responsibility to injury or incident is equal to the top's responsibility in the situation, and that if a bottom doesn't know that something is wrong and injury occurs, the top definitely didn't know that something was wrong. But the burden of blame generally falls more on the top. And this is due to how we initiate bottoms into the scene.

Fuoco [00:08:41]

Yeah. Oh, you're really good at summarizing all of that. That was excellent.

Wren [00:08:45]

You know, it's easy to summarize something that's written super great, you know?

Fuoco [00:08:51]

Yeah, I largely still believe this, but every once in a while I have a couple of posts on FetLife that someone will like or they'll leave crumbs on it. And then suddenly, like, I log in and there's 50 notifications of someone liking it. And I'm like, Oh, do I still like what 2015 Jenna had to say about that? Yeah, you know, like responsibility is a weird word. Responsibility gets coded for like blame, especially when we're thinking about injury and when we're thinking about injury as sort of failure. And we do think about injuries as failure because we expect a sort of clean track record from the people that we play with to feel confident in their abilities, which is its own problem. So yeah, I do wish that we – and I think that we're moving towards things that were really, really present in communities when I wrote that was I would meet tops and riggers who were introducing new bottoms into the scene, talking to them about rope as this sort of like transcendental experience where like you're going to go into sub space and leave this planet, shoot off to the stars and I'm going to take your life into my hands. And that is the appeal of this thing that we do together. That dynamic is what makes rope so intriguing. And I find all of that to be immensely icky and–

Wren [00:10:11]

Be real with your fantasies.

Fuoco [00:10:11]

Yeah, and I will say that I don't think that descriptor of like – I think that we've come so far in terms of bottoming education and just rope being a lot more visible and different ways of doing rope being a lot more visible that I don't think that that discourse is so prevalent. And I do think that we've also come a lot farther in sort of valuing people who can say like, Oh, I made this mistake and I learn from this mistake and here's how I've learned and grown from this mistake. Whereas in 2015, like causing injury or experiencing injury, like there was just a lot more shame around all of it.

Wren [00:10:48]

Totally.

Fuoco [00:10:49]

Yeah. Actually, let me say one more thing about that writing because this is the thing that really irks me when this writing like, pops back up and goes viral again. I don't really want to amend the writing. I'm like, happy for it to be a relic of my thinking at the time. But I receive some criticism or critique of the writing where someone – I don't know if they used the word neoliberal, but if they didn't it was implied or maybe we talked about it in a message exchange after the fact, and I really took it to heart. Also, at the core of that writing is this idea that you can sort of like hyper-optimize yourself as a bottom to like mitigate risk and that this hyper-optimization seems to happen very much so at the individual level. And what I would love to add to that writing or just to like the thought and the discussion around it is like a lot of the responsibility towards risk mitigation can also happen at the community level. And so like a lot of our responsibilities as individuals are to like participate in community and a lot of our responsibilities as community is to fold individuals in ways that like make education more accessible and make vetting more accessible and your capacity to do all of these body checks and mental checks is bolstered by your capacity to, like, trust the people that you're sharing space with.

Wren [00:12:11]

You even said in the essay, Imagine if the community as a whole was as nervous as bottoms jumping into suspension as they were about riggers suspending people. So, I mean, it's a community issue. It's not just bottoms because like you said, we romanticize the idea of someone taking us into this different place. You don't have the tools to even audit that experience if it's healthy or not.

Fuoco [00:12:37]

Totally. Auditing is a great way and you have the tools in your own body and they're like educational resources available to you as a bottom to help you make decisions in the moment about like how things are feeling for you, how your interpersonal interaction is going, like how you're choosing or deciding to manage your headspace in that moment of being in rope and all of these things. There are things that can help keep you safe. If bottoms knew from the get-go that those resources that the education was available, that that level of self-knowledge was in the way that rigger know, here's a checklist of things that I need to learn before I can safely suspend someone. Like there is a similar sort of checklist of things, skill sets that bottoms can develop that will help them feel more confident in their abilities in rope and like, not their abilities to achieve some crazy position or endure a suspension for a long time. But just their ability to discern who is the right rope partner for them, their ability to discern if what's happening in the moment is something that they are able and happy to sink in to or something that they need to zoom out of and talk about.

Wren [00:13:47]

Yes, I feel like teaching bottoms the correct questions to ask would be a really good thing.

Fuoco [00:13:54]

Yeah. Well, and I also think that like, that's going to show up really differently from community to community. And so I think that there's a whole variety of skill sets too that we can – and maybe this is part of what I'm getting at when I talk about community. Like there's this checklist that I just reference. There are these skill sets that we construct and name and maybe develop pedagogy around. Largely to protect people from the reality that many of us do rope with strangers or in communities with people who are not necessarily vested in our well-being. And I guess that's maybe more what I'm trying to get at when I talk about neoliberalism, right, is there's like another world. Not just where like community says, like, Oh, here's your checklists. I'm skeptical of you, too, because you haven't gone through your checklist. But a community where, like, we don't necessarily have to, like, know all the right questions or be experts at negotiation because there's a cultural change in how much we expect to establish trust between people.

Wren [00:14:56]

I don't really love the word community, honestly. And yet you wrote another amazing essay called We're Not Ready for Accountability, and I'll link it again. And in that, you said, our community is woefully unequipped to actually succeed at accountability. We're a group of people who often see each other as more of commodities, people whose time, bodies and skills satisfy our kinks. We don't really have a framework to talk about community outside of going to the same events, but this is where community ends and it's likely that our definition of community is void of the sort of care required to make this work. And that is so true because the word community kind of gaslights us into thinking there are more structures in place to keep us safe.

Fuoco [00:15:42]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these essays, I don't think that I've talked about them in such close succession with each other. But they are really or rather, at least the conversation we're having right now around these two essays is the same one. I completely agree with you. Our sense of community is the way that the word is used is gaslighting. Absolutely. And I'm definitely not the only person to have raised skepticism about the word community. And I think actually nowadays this skepticism is maybe more commonplace than not, or this critique is more mainstream than not. But I don't see the necessary conclusions that I think should follow that critique being implemented, which is, okay, we've identified that our quote-unquote community does not actually function as community in the way that we would need it to if we were talking about it in terms of accountability and repairing harm.

Wren [00:16:39]

Exactly.

Fuoco [00:16:40]

And accountability and transformative justice practices are like their generative practices, their practices of building their practices of replacing carceral systems and punitive systems. And we as a – no one can see my air quotes. But as I continue to use the word community, you can sense that it's an air quote. We as a community really invested in transformative justice for its capacity to help us, not ban people. We're really interested in transformative justice as a mechanism for repairing harm, which makes sense because a lot of harm happens in our communities. But I think we're less interested in the lessons of transformative justice around, like what it would mean to build actual true, not in air quotes, community – like the building, the generation. In order to replace and overthrow carceral and punitive systems, that tremendous amount of trust and care needs to be infused into spaces where it is not been. And there are a lot of really, really valid reasons why it's hard to infuse trust and care into community like capitalism and the demands of all of our working lives and the scarcity that we all experience make that really, really hard. And also just the way that rope spaces are run, right. At the end of the day, somebody in your community pays rent on a space and has to make hard choices about how or how not to believe survivors and how – people who have been harmed and like what sort of policies to implement about banning people. And these questions directly interface with their own ability to pay the bills and to keep the lights on. So I think that the lessons of transformative justice actually push us away from like right now in this moment, figuring out how we necessarily even like repair harm at a community level or how we sort of rehabilitate. That's the wrong word. But like how we support people who have consistently caused harm. Like I think that the lessons of transformative justice should actually be pushing us in the direction of how do we form worker-owned cooperative rope spaces, how do we make it such that any person who enters community with us is also aware of the values of those communities is signing on to those values. Like how do we create spaces that are financially sound enough or well-resourced enough that we can both sell tickets to rope education while at the same time be able to offer spaces like book clubs and potlucks and like doing the actual work of community building and that prerequisite to any of the harm repair that we're so interested in.

Wren [00:19:19]

Yeah, it would be easy if people said, I want to harm you and then they did it. It's a very binary thing, but it's hard because most people don't mean to cause harm.

Fuoco [00:19:31]

Yeah.

Wren [00:19:31]

You also said rehabilitate, which I think is a great word because when you just cast someone out, they just find a different community to offend. And it is a lot of rehabilitation of saying that didn't go great. This is what should have happened, you know.

Fuoco [00:19:47]

And it's like it's a collective rehabilitation, too, though. I think the reason I shied away from that word is because it assumes that are sort of people who know more, who can like pick you.

Wren [00:19:58]

Definitely.

Fuoco [00:19:58]

And show you the light as opposed to just sort of like we're all unlearning systems of oppression and we're all unlearning forces that have hurt us and that push us into harm. So like we are rehabilitating our community members alongside the work that we are doing for ourselves and the rehabilitation of all of ourselves to resist this world we live in.

Wren [00:20:20]

Absolutely. So I want to talk a little bit about bottoming from a physical aspect since we talk so much about the mental and emotional side.

Fuoco [00:20:29]

Yeah.

Wren [00:20:29]

And I have a couple things I want to hit on. I'm a person – I've always been very physical, so when I came into rope, I thought that I knew more than I did know about my body, if that makes sense. And that was very difficult for me to unlearn. And I'm still trying to figure out what feels really good in the box tie for me. Things like that.

Fuoco [00:20:50]

Maybe the thing that has been most helpful for me in shifting my expectations of my like physical self in rope is I've gotten over the idea that rope is inherently good for my body or that my athleticism will serve me in rope. I think back to my early days in the bondage scene and people were talking about training for rope, or how the fact that I studied circus was such a boon to myself as a bottom. And I think because of that and I wonder if you relate to this experience, like I think folks who come into rope with movement practice and with attunement to their bodies expect that rope will feel like another movement practice. Expect that it will feel sort of like differently nourishing but still nourishing to their bodies. And so like actually what I've landed on that makes sense for me is like rope is not inherently nourishing to my body. Like, rope is like spiritually nourishing to me. Rope is interpersonally nourishing to me. And I put my body through a bit of shit to experience the like things about rope that are nourishing. But so that that was really helpful. Like changing my perspective from like what is like the best way to like, actively bottom through this? How does my athleticism support me here to sort of – what's the sweet spot of like not putting my body through too much shit while still getting all of the like emotional benefits that I'm here for.

Wren [00:22:17]

For the happy chemicals and stuff.

Fuoco [00:22:19]

Yeah, that makes sense.

Wren [00:22:23]

Something that I've heard you talk a little bit about is core support in rope. When to use it, when not to use it.

Fuoco [00:22:30]

Yeah, there is like a somewhat easy answer to this I think. Or for me, like the easy answer is when your spine feels compromised, like there are a lot of moments where in rope we move past a range of like all of our joints have ranges of passive and active flexibility. And what that means is that like my ability to move my joints through range of motion is less than your ability to move my same joints through a range of motion, right? Like I can lift my leg to a certain extent, but if you were physically manipulating my leg, you can move it farther. And so most rope happens in our passive ranges. Most of the ties and the positions that we experience – at least most of the times that we feel like really, really tightly bound or perhaps even like a little bit compromised. Part of what we're experiencing is just that we're like outside of our range of motion that we can support. This is part of, I think, discerning like what is the right amount of shit that I will take for my body to –

Wren [00:23:31]

Absolutely.

Fuoco [00:23:31]

The right amount of shit that I will put it through. And then so within that, being in your passive range can feel like an activation through your tendons or ligaments. Like you feel like you're hanging through connective tissue rather than hanging through muscular support. And I get particularly worried about this when I feel this in my spine or when I'm experiencing like that sensation, like your core protects your spine and it can protect your spine inflection and extension and twisting. And so find yourself in moments where your spine feels like it's moved past a range that is good. A bit, of course, support can be helpful. Learning about your core is like its own weird, lifelong journey. Like I feel like I'm constantly finding more. More of my insides.

Wren [00:24:21]

I wanted to talk a little bit about teaching tangible bottoming skills, because I think a lot of the bottoming education is very esoteric. It's very conceptual. But you talk about teaching tangible things. What are some tangible things that bottoms can take from this or educators can add to their toolbox maybe?

Fuoco [00:24:40]

Sure. So tangible things that I like to teach are how do you more accurately assign language to the sensations you're feeling to be able to communicate more effectively with people who are tying you. Not tangible in the sense that you can like touch it, but tangible in the sense that it's not an esoteric skill.

Wren [00:25:00]

Well, it's actionable.

Fuoco [00:25:01]

Yeah, absolutely.

Wren [00:25:03]

I think it's huge.

Fuoco [00:25:04]

Yeah. My specialty in my sort of niche is about like, I know a lot about bodies. I know a lot about how bodies work. And for me, my own process of learning about my body has happened in combination. There's been a multitude of inputs that have helped me gain a knowledge of my body. And some of those inputs have been doing and feeling, and some of those inputs have been like actual study of anatomy and looking at skeletons and looking at joints and naming muscles, doing sort of targeted exercises to feel specific muscles, and then putting those muscles in the context of a certain sort of movement pattern. And so that's a lot of the tangible skills that I teach bottoms as well. Like when we're in a box tie, we're in internal rotation. What are the muscles that contribute to internal rotation? How do you feel if they're turned on? How do you feel if they're in stretch? What does it mean to you in terms of how rope should be laid on your body when you feel one thing or another? I think that for a long time, bottoming education sort of took the form of the rope bottoms roundtable, which is a very important and validating format. And I think just sharing your experiences with others and hearing that they have similar experiences can also be really, really helpful. But there are other skills that we can be teaching.

Wren [00:26:20]

And speaking of box ties, you're writing a Choose Your Own Adventure book about box ties, right?

Fuoco [00:26:25]

I am. It's so close to being done. I'm so excited.

Wren [00:26:29]

Yeah, I can't wait.

Fuoco [00:26:31]

Okay, so here's my mini rant on this.

Wren [00:26:35]

Let me hear.

Fuoco [00:26:36]

All of our rope teaching, even in classes where we say, You must come partnered. We're going to teach to tops and bottoms. The way that we teach people to do rope is very rigger-centric. When you walk into a box tie class, what someone will be taught is the harness that that instructor thinks is going to make that rigger, like most likely to have success with the most number of bodies. And then if you are one of the bottoms who has a body, you know, one of the 75% of bodies that is suited to that box tie, like that'll be okay for you. But if you're a bottom, who actually needs to be tied in a really different way or whose body suggests a different sort of harness, you'll be left behind. And maybe the fact that like your specific anatomy would be better suited to a different sort of box tie will be like named by your teacher. Hopefully, it will. Hopefully, you're pointed to somebody else who can teach you and your rigger a better harness for you. I dream of a day where we start teaching box tie from the perspective of, If shoulders do this, then apply the first wrap like that. And if shoulders do this, then the first wrap could go on like this. And that's like sort of what I'm trying to do with this Choose Your Own Adventure book. It's like a giant project and as I write it, I have to keep being like, You can't do everything in this single zine that your self-producing, Jenna. Slow your roll. But hopefully what it does, like hopefully somebody who buys the book will get to choose their own adventure. They'll get to start from a place of like, How does my body work? What does my body need? What do those things suggest about what sort of like rope application would be best over top of my anatomical form? And then like, necessarily like, okay, well, what are the names of the box ties that most closely approximate that? Because that's the sort of shared language we have right now for box ties. And no, having access to that language will be helpful for somebody who's trying to seek out a specific sort of form. But yeah, I would love to move away from like the OS box tie or the Naka box tie. You know, like, no shade to Naka. Sorry, Naka.

Wren [00:28:57]

You heard it here first.

Fuoco [00:28:57]

Oh, my gosh. No, no shade to Naka. But, yeah, I've got to move away from, like, learning these sort of, like, named harnesses and patterns as the way that we start to teach people to tie and actually just teach people to tie on bodies.

Wren [00:29:12]

Well, it sounds like our next podcast is going to be all about box ties.

Fuoco [00:29:16]

Yeah, probably. And I just want to say too I am also totally here for the bottom, who is utterly disinterested in box ties. I think that's rad. There's like a tiny, teensy little section of the book that talks about folks who just don't want to be in box, but maybe do want to feel loads supported across their arms instead of just across their chests and sort of how you can achieve that without just defaulting back to a chest harness.

Wren [00:29:43]

I look forward to your book. You're on Instagram @fuocofet, and on FetLife @Fuoco.

Fuoco [00:29:52]

Thought I'm like very rarely on FetLife. So if anyone wants to reach out or please reach out. Like I'm happy to chat with people and anybody who–

Wren [00:30:02]

Yeah, you seem nice.

Fuoco [00:30:03]

I think I'm nice.

Wren [00:30:04]

Yeah.

Fuoco [00:30:05]

Anyone who wants to get in touch, should get in touch with me on Instagram. It's much better.

Wren [00:30:09]

And you also have a Patreon. It's https://www.patreon.com/jenncio.

Fuoco [00:30:13]

Oh, yeah. And it's really new. It's largely sort of like public-facing geared towards the circus community. However, all of the benefits of that Patreon can be transferred to rope folks. There's like pretty big discounts on private lessons and I'm happy for those private lessons to be rope-focused and not just circus-focused. Even though the language of the Patreon doesn't necessarily say that explicitly.

Wren [00:30:37]

Beautiful. I'm also going to steal the phrase rope folks. It's great. It just rolls off the tongue.

Fuoco [00:30:43]

It does.

Wren [00:30:44]

Well, I want to thank you for being here. You're amazing. And I look forward to talking to you soon.

Fuoco [00:30:50]

Yeah, you too. Thank you so much.

Wren [00:30:52]

You're welcome.

Lief Bound is a full-time rope artist and teacher in Los Angeles who makes rope inspired art and has a puppy named Bamboo.

Wicked Wren [00:00:25]

Welcome to the Shibari Study podcast. I'm your host Wicked Wren. Today I'm talking to my friend Leif Bound. Leaf is a full-time rope artist and teacher in Los Angeles, makes wonderful rope inspired art and has a lovely puppy named Bamboo. Welcome Lief.

Lief Bound [00:00:42]

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Wicked Wren [00:00:45]

You're so welcome. So you've said rope is like a good glass of wine. It's as intimate as you want it to be.

Lief Bound [00:00:52]

That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I've honestly said for a long time in my rope journey, because it is something that I would have, I could share rope with, like a lover and I can share rope with a friend. And it doesn't have to be anything more than intimacy. And intimacy is  a broad spectrum of things.

Wicked Wren [00:01:18]

Definitely. And speaking of intimacy, your partner, Icky, and you have been together for a long time.

Lief Bound [00:01:24]

Yeah. We're actually coming up on three years. August 8th is our anniversary. I know, I know. Very cute. 08/08. Wow.

Wicked Wren [00:01:32]

Wow.

Lief Bound [00:01:33]

It's almost like we picked a cool date around the time that we got together, so it sounded cooler than it really was.

Wicked Wren [00:01:42]

I love it. I have a lot of questions about you and Icky's relationship, but before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit about the beginning with you. You said one of your first experiences of bondage was being tied up with a jump rope as a kid.

Lief Bound [00:01:55]

Yeah, that is true.

Wicked Wren [00:01:58]

And then you entered the scene when you're 18 and you felt like you didn't fit in and you saw that you weren't tall and you're not white, and no one really cared about you in the back of the room while you were, you know, struggling to keep up. How do you think that things have changed in the past ten years?

Lief Bound [00:02:12]

Well, when I first came into the scene ten years ago, it was very stereotypical. Cis man top, cis woman bottom. And the bottom didn't have an opinion and the man didn't really care about the experience of the bottom. And I even came into some classrooms where the educator basically would say that females are submissive, like they don't have a dominant quality. Like, that's where we were at ten years ago, where we thought that femmes were only submissive. So it was very hard for me to be in a room because I was either one, one was better than the other. The first option was I was completely ignored and I didn't get any help. Or the second option, which was my least favorite, is I got over, over help. Like the educator, over the man but the man would come up and be like, Let me show you how it's done. And back then, this was before I transitioned, so I was like presenting as a woman. And so, like, that was just really gross and weird, too. And it's actually what really inspired me to become an educator is because I wanted other people like me, other people that were not a cis man to feel empowered and to feel like they could do the thing and to be respected in a classroom setting versus belittled or ignored.

Wicked Wren [00:03:43]

And you said that in teaching, you will overexaggerate the consent talks with Icky.

Lief Bound [00:03:50]

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We kind of like in classes, we've been together for three years, so we know each other pretty well. But for the sake of classes, we definitely will overemphasize, like, Can I touch you here? Even though this is my partner of three years, I definitely know I could touch them there. But it's good to model for people like what good consent looks like.

Wicked Wren [00:04:11]

Why is it important to model for people what good consent looks like?

Lief Bound [00:04:15]

Icky and I in private worked really hard to have the consent that we have or in the practice in the way that we trust each other. And I think that if you don't see that hard work, it looks like it magically happened, which good consent and a good trust building does not happen overnight or magically. It is carefully talked about over a long period of time.

Wicked Wren [00:04:38]

Can you give maybe one or two tips to move in that direction?

Lief Bound [00:04:45]

Oh, my gosh. Yes. One of my biggest things and this goes for like literally kissing someone for the first time all the way to negotiating for a hardcore scene is ask. Can I do this? Even if you're like looking into that person's eyes and you know that they want to kiss you and you know you want to kiss them, just saying, Can I kiss you before you engage in something intimate builds that trust immediately. So that's my first bit of advice. My second is to be okay and say thank you to a no, because when someone tells you their no, that is trust. They are trusting you with a no. And that is almost just as good as a yes.

Wicked Wren [00:05:28]

No's are almost more important than yeses.

Lief Bound [00:05:31]

Absolutely. When someone tells me a no, I actually trust them way more than someone's like, Yes, do whatever you want.

Wicked Wren [00:05:36]

There are a million different kinds of yeses. There's yes, maybe.

Lief Bound [00:05:40]

Mm-hmm.

Wicked Wren [00:05:40]

Yeah. Yeah. So with Icky, since you two have been together so long and you have a rope relationship, how do you juggle real life and rope and keep that fresh, not bring real life into rope?

Lief Bound [00:05:56]

Absolutely. I will say, like, it's hard. When you are in a long-term dynamic with someone, especially if that person is also your live-in partner, it is hard. When you've got bills to pay, you've got a kid/dog at home, you have other things to worry about. It's not that life is always this sexy, magical dynamic. And Icky and I are also switches. So there are times where I'm topping and there are times where Icky is topping. Because it's chaos in our house and we love it that way. So for us, Icky has a rope collar that they wear when we do rope things where Icky is bottoming. That could be a scene at home. But when we are at a convention per se traveling, they are wearing that collar the whole weekend because they are my rope bottom that whole weekend. So sometimes they wait for an hour for a scene and sometimes they wear it when they are in dynamic. And that helps a lot to kind of put it on a container. It doesn't have to be a collar, but just like maybe some sort of intentional ritual to separate, 'Hey, babe, I need to get groceries' from 'I would like to tie my, you know, my rope bottom'.

Wicked Wren [00:07:04]

Yeah. Can you elaborate on the chaos of the switchy dynamic?

Lief Bound [00:07:09]

Oh my goodness, it is chaos. I consider myself a bottom -eaning switch, which means that most of the time, for most things and most people I would like to bottom. But there are a few things, kinks or people that I really want to top. So for me personally and the way it works, rope almost all of the time I would like to top. There are a few people and circumstances where I do want to bottom for rope and I love bottoming for rope, but it comes few and far between. But when it comes for like impact or needles or other kinks, I would like to bottom. Yeah, yeah. And for Icky, Icky is actually the kind of almost complete opposite, which is really great when we met because it works because they are a rope bottom, but they are like an impact in needle top. So when we work together and got together, we fit into each other's lives really beautifully. It doesn't always work so perfectly. But for Vicki and I, we just kind of went, Oh, oh, that works.

Wicked Wren [00:08:11]

Yeah. How did Covid affect that?

Lief Bound [00:08:16]

Oh, so it affected it a lot. It affected a lot of things. Being in isolation, especially as two people that practice kink so publicly was really hard. One of the things that we discovered the hard way is that Icky is a true exhibitionist. So that means that when they are in rope and people are watching, they are able to be more present and they are able to take more pain and they're able to enjoy it more because the knowledge that someone is watching them, it excites them. They're a performer. They have a dance background. Same with me. I'm a performer. I have a dance background. So we really like a crowd. And when we were in private, there was actually a lot of anxiety that we had to work through where things that used to be so easy for Icky in rope would suddenly like they were, it was too painful and they needed to come down.

Wicked Wren [00:09:15]

I've experienced the exact same thing as a rope bottom.

Lief Bound [00:09:17]

Really?

Wicked Wren [00:09:18]

Yes, fully. And hearing that actually gives me a lot of, I don't know, comfort.

Lief Bound [00:09:23]

Absolutely. Yeah, no, pictures on the internet are deceiving. Sometimes we snap a picture and they're literally up there for literally under a minute. It is tough. The up-line, snap, snap, takedown. So it can be deceiving the Icky is like a tank or Icky can take all the things. Actually, Icky is not a tank at all, and they have very specific needs and very specific settings where they can sometimes maybe do the really hard things. But most of our rope is really gentle.

Wicked Wren [00:09:49]

Yeah. Wow. That's really awesome to hear. How has that journey impacted you now that you can go out and tie in front of people? How has that formed it?

Lief Bound [00:10:00]

It gives us a perspective and it makes us really appreciate the times that we can be in community. Because I know there are people out there in the world that don't have a community that they can go to at all. And if you're struggling with rope in private, you might be similar to Icky and I where being in community and being in front of other kinksters that are enjoying watching what you're doing does something for you. I think it's also helped us navigate. So basically our solution to the pandemic because it was really long, right, or it still is really long. What did we do to solve that problem is we had to create an audience in the private, essentially. Like we had to create like some makeshift audience for ourselves. So a camera became the audience. So we would set up a camera and we'd be recording. And it definitely doesn't slap the same . It's not as exciting as like, strangers watching you in a dark dungeon.

Wicked Wren [00:10:56]

Yes.

Lief Bound [00:10:57]

But having some sort of onlooker, even if it's a digital camera, helps create that audience.

Wicked Wren [00:11:04]

Going back to hearing a yes, hearing a no, when you're in public and playing with someone, ayes could be very different than being in private.

Lief Bound [00:11:14]

Absolutely. I'm at the opposite of Icky. In private, I will be bottom for more things than I will in public.

Wicked Wren [00:11:21]

That's so funny.

Lief Bound [00:11:22]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like the intimacy of knowing that only one person is watching me that I love. I can be more vulnerable and do more salacious things. Whereas like in public, I feel like I'm Lief Bound, I have to be a certain way and I feel this pressure to perform a certain way and do a certain thing. So I don't feel like vulnerability is as accessible.

Wicked Wren [00:11:46]

And you've said that rope is where you found your power?

Lief Bound [00:11:49]

Absolutely. Before I picked up rope as a top, I was a bottom for everything. Yeah. I really thought like, I was like a little femme bottom. I was like, I just, like, that's all I want. I'm just a little bottom.

Wicked Wren [00:11:59]

You're telling me you're a fem bottom?

Lief Bound [00:12:00]

I was at the time.

Wicked Wren [00:12:01]

I don't believe it.

Lief Bound [00:12:02]

I was a woman once. It happens, it happens.

Wicked Wren [00:12:04]

I'm going to cut this part out.

Lief Bound [00:12:07]

(Hysterical laughing). That's totally fine.

Wicked Wren [00:12:08]

That's a joke, I'm not gonna cut it out.

Lief Bound [00:12:11]

Cut it out, edit it in post. So when I picked up rope and I started tying, I found because I am five feet tall, I am quite small and anytime I would try to overpower someone before I found rope, it was literally impossible because everyone's bigger than me. And when I found rope, I found a way for me to not only overpower someone but lift someone, manipulate someone in ways that I didn't think were possible. And it made me feel strong.

Wicked Wren [00:12:38]

Do you think that had a lot of carryover?

Lief Bound [00:12:42]

I think so. I really think so. Yeah. It finally felt like something clicked and it finally felt like I was really good at something. It might be vain to say, but like, I really feel like I am supposed to be doing rope. Like that is the thing that I was meant to do.

Wicked Wren [00:12:57]

I love that. You just started A House of Bound.

Lief Bound [00:13:01]

I did.

Wicked Wren [00:13:02]

Tell me about it.

Lief Bound [00:13:03]

In feeling, in my heart that rope is the thing I'm supposed to do and in capitalism, you need a brand. So I had thought a long time, I'd always had dreams of opening up a studio. I took a lot of inspiration from True Blue, who opened up VoxBody and other incredible, you know, rope places around the world. But I wanted a space where I could have my own studio and I could have my own place where rope education could happen in a bigger grand scheme rather than me just going to cons and teaching a class here or there. And House of Bound actually comes from queer culture and house and ballroom culture. Yeah, so if you've seen Paris Is Burning, which is an incredible documentary. If you're watching this podcast and you're queer and you haven't seen Paris Is Burning, it is literally a part of our history and a rite of passage to watch it. It teaches you about the ballroom scene in the 80s in New York City. And not only that, but all the other things that queer people face in the 80s in New York City. It's basically queer people creating family. That's what it is. House of Bound is my family. House of Bound is who I hope one day, I will have people that will maybe take on the Bound name, right? Like I'm Lief Bound. Maybe I'll have some children someday. Maybe I'll become a father, I'll have some rope children, and they'll go out into the world. That's like big, big dreams, though. You know, I would settle for just having a place where people feel safe to come learn rope.

Wicked Wren [00:14:38]

Why is it so important for queer and trans people to have the community like House of Bound?

Lief Bound [00:14:45]

Because we're not safe or respected in most rope spaces. I mean, even in Los Angeles, California, which is seen as a very progressive place, I have been in the middle of a rope scene at a local dungeon. Like two years ago, so eight years into rope and someone stopped my scene to ask me if I knew what a safe word was. So, like, because I am not a cis man, I am immediately, my skill level and my integrity is questioned in non-queer only spaces. Unfortunately, that's just the truth. People look at me and say, Oh, I can't know what I'm doing because of the way I look or the way I'm perceived by other people. So having a space where it's not queer only, but it's queer-centered.

Wicked Wren [00:15:29]

Yeah.

Lief Bound [00:15:29]

Or basically queer-made, right?

Lief Bound [00:15:32]

Yeah.

Lief Bound [00:15:32]

It just functions differently, like and that's what I want. I want someone to look at my rope and judge my rope. I don't want them to look at me and judge me.

Wicked Wren [00:15:40]

Okay. Question. If you were put in charge of a fictional rope association, what would be the first rule you would put into place?

Lief Bound [00:15:50]

I think that there is no wrong way to do rope if no one is getting injured. I think that there is a lot of this way is the best way or this way is the true way of doing something. And to be honest, if the bottom and the top both come out of a scene feeling good and no one is injured, it is good rope.

Wicked Wren [00:16:12]

Yeah. You've spoken about photo rope versus real rope and saying how there's nothing wrong with photo rope. There's just not a real representation of a scene or something like that.

Lief Bound [00:16:23]

It's almost like a photo of someone dancing where you see someone in that full split in the air and their foot's in their mouth. But you don't know all of the steps it took to get to that shape. And that is the magic of rope. It's all the steps before that photo was taken. So if you've only seen photos of rope, you're seeing the, almost the height of the rope. But that's not where the magic is. The magic is in the details.

Wicked Wren [00:16:51]

Talk to me a little bit about you and Icky's dynamic over time and how it shifted.

Lief Bound [00:16:57]

Yes, it's shifted so much. I think that all long-term relationships have to be flexible for them to last. That is, there's this gorgeous, incredible quote that I'll never remember the entirety of it, but the gist of it goes, loving someone for a long time is going to a thousand funerals of their former selves. And in that means that things that Icky and I shared at the beginning of our relationship are no longer present in our current relationship or have shifted drastically. And that is something that there's been some mourning, right? There's been some miss. I miss certain parts of what we had the beginning of our relationship. But there are new things that are forming right now and things that have been staples from the beginning that I cherish way more than the few things that have gone or changed. And being flexible is a big part of being in a long term and I'll just say rope relationship, in general. Bodies change as Icky, and I change. The things that we could do when we were 24 and got together are not the things that we can do when we are 30. And I think also the concept of aging in rope is not something we talk enough about. It's such a young person's game that we don't talk about our aging bodies and how it affects us. So Icky and I actually all the time. And that's the other thing is talk about it again. I talk all the time about our dynamic, how things are going. We check in and we don't just assume things are the same or have changed. If you feel something's off, talk about it. Like don't sit there and go like, Oh no, oh no, something's changing. Just confront things and talk about it and be flexible.

Wicked Wren [00:18:43]

It sounds very intentional.

Lief Bound [00:18:45]

It is, yeah. I think Icky and I got together and we're very intentional people.

Wicked Wren [00:18:50]

Well, what is next for you?

Lief Bound [00:18:53]

I will be in Detroit in August at a really cool convention called Smirk. I will be going to Salt Lake in December and I will be going to Austin. I am sure you will see me around Shibari Study every now and again. And I'm also in Los Angeles, available for private sessions and lessons whenever you want them.

Wicked Wren [00:19:20]

Amazing. And you're on Instagram.

Lief Bound [00:19:23]

Liefboundropes with no spaces for now. We'll see. I also have a backup.

Wicked Wren [00:19:27]

Check-in next week.

Lief Bound [00:19:28]

Right? Exactly. Lief dot bound. We have a whole podcast on censorship. The best way to reach me is through House of Bound dot com. I have an email form on there and you can also check out my Etsy where if you search House of Bound with no spaces in the search bar, I will pop up and you can get tutorials as well as some really cool art I've been making lately.

Wicked Wren [00:19:51]

The art looks so amazing.

Lief Bound [00:19:53]

Thank you.

Wicked Wren [00:19:54]

You're welcome. Well, thank you so much for being here. You're the best. You always make me smile.

Lief Bound [00:19:59]

You're the best, too. Thanks for having me. And having amazing conversations with me always.

Welcome to the Shibari Study podcast. I'm your host Wicked Wren. Today I'm talking to my friend Leif Bound. Leaf is a full-time rope artist and teacher in Los Angeles, makes wonderful rope inspired art and has a lovely puppy named Bamboo. Welcome Lief.

Lief Bound [00:00:42]

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Wicked Wren [00:00:45]

You're so welcome. So you've said rope is like a good glass of wine. It's as intimate as you want it to be.

Lief Bound [00:00:52]

That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I've honestly said for a long time in my rope journey, because it is something that I would have, I could share rope with, like a lover and I can share rope with a friend. And it doesn't have to be anything more than intimacy. And intimacy is  a broad spectrum of things.

Wicked Wren [00:01:18]

Definitely. And speaking of intimacy, your partner, Icky, and you have been together for a long time.

Lief Bound [00:01:24]

Yeah. We're actually coming up on three years. August 8th is our anniversary. I know, I know. Very cute. 08/08. Wow.

Wicked Wren [00:01:32]

Wow.

Lief Bound [00:01:33]

It's almost like we picked a cool date around the time that we got together, so it sounded cooler than it really was.

Wicked Wren [00:01:42]

I love it. I have a lot of questions about you and Icky's relationship, but before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit about the beginning with you. You said one of your first experiences of bondage was being tied up with a jump rope as a kid.

Lief Bound [00:01:55]

Yeah, that is true.

Wicked Wren [00:01:58]

And then you entered the scene when you're 18 and you felt like you didn't fit in and you saw that you weren't tall and you're not white, and no one really cared about you in the back of the room while you were, you know, struggling to keep up. How do you think that things have changed in the past ten years?

Lief Bound [00:02:12]

Well, when I first came into the scene ten years ago, it was very stereotypical. Cis man top, cis woman bottom. And the bottom didn't have an opinion and the man didn't really care about the experience of the bottom. And I even came into some classrooms where the educator basically would say that females are submissive, like they don't have a dominant quality. Like, that's where we were at ten years ago, where we thought that femmes were only submissive. So it was very hard for me to be in a room because I was either one, one was better than the other. The first option was I was completely ignored and I didn't get any help. Or the second option, which was my least favorite, is I got over, over help. Like the educator, over the man but the man would come up and be like, Let me show you how it's done. And back then, this was before I transitioned, so I was like presenting as a woman. And so, like, that was just really gross and weird, too. And it's actually what really inspired me to become an educator is because I wanted other people like me, other people that were not a cis man to feel empowered and to feel like they could do the thing and to be respected in a classroom setting versus belittled or ignored.

Wicked Wren [00:03:43]

And you said that in teaching, you will overexaggerate the consent talks with Icky.

Lief Bound [00:03:50]

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We kind of like in classes, we've been together for three years, so we know each other pretty well. But for the sake of classes, we definitely will overemphasize, like, Can I touch you here? Even though this is my partner of three years, I definitely know I could touch them there. But it's good to model for people like what good consent looks like.

Wicked Wren [00:04:11]

Why is it important to model for people what good consent looks like?

Lief Bound [00:04:15]

Icky and I in private worked really hard to have the consent that we have or in the practice in the way that we trust each other. And I think that if you don't see that hard work, it looks like it magically happened, which good consent and a good trust building does not happen overnight or magically. It is carefully talked about over a long period of time.

Wicked Wren [00:04:38]

Can you give maybe one or two tips to move in that direction?

Lief Bound [00:04:45]

Oh, my gosh. Yes. One of my biggest things and this goes for like literally kissing someone for the first time all the way to negotiating for a hardcore scene is ask. Can I do this? Even if you're like looking into that person's eyes and you know that they want to kiss you and you know you want to kiss them, just saying, Can I kiss you before you engage in something intimate builds that trust immediately. So that's my first bit of advice. My second is to be okay and say thank you to a no, because when someone tells you their no, that is trust. They are trusting you with a no. And that is almost just as good as a yes.

Wicked Wren [00:05:28]

No's are almost more important than yeses.

Lief Bound [00:05:31]

Absolutely. When someone tells me a no, I actually trust them way more than someone's like, Yes, do whatever you want.

Wicked Wren [00:05:36]

There are a million different kinds of yeses. There's yes, maybe.

Lief Bound [00:05:40]

Mm-hmm.

Wicked Wren [00:05:40]

Yeah. Yeah. So with Icky, since you two have been together so long and you have a rope relationship, how do you juggle real life and rope and keep that fresh, not bring real life into rope?

Lief Bound [00:05:56]

Absolutely. I will say, like, it's hard. When you are in a long-term dynamic with someone, especially if that person is also your live-in partner, it is hard. When you've got bills to pay, you've got a kid/dog at home, you have other things to worry about. It's not that life is always this sexy, magical dynamic. And Icky and I are also switches. So there are times where I'm topping and there are times where Icky is topping. Because it's chaos in our house and we love it that way. So for us, Icky has a rope collar that they wear when we do rope things where Icky is bottoming. That could be a scene at home. But when we are at a convention per se traveling, they are wearing that collar the whole weekend because they are my rope bottom that whole weekend. So sometimes they wait for an hour for a scene and sometimes they wear it when they are in dynamic. And that helps a lot to kind of put it on a container. It doesn't have to be a collar, but just like maybe some sort of intentional ritual to separate, 'Hey, babe, I need to get groceries' from 'I would like to tie my, you know, my rope bottom'.

Wicked Wren [00:07:04]

Yeah. Can you elaborate on the chaos of the switchy dynamic?

Lief Bound [00:07:09]

Oh my goodness, it is chaos. I consider myself a bottom -eaning switch, which means that most of the time, for most things and most people I would like to bottom. But there are a few things, kinks or people that I really want to top. So for me personally and the way it works, rope almost all of the time I would like to top. There are a few people and circumstances where I do want to bottom for rope and I love bottoming for rope, but it comes few and far between. But when it comes for like impact or needles or other kinks, I would like to bottom. Yeah, yeah. And for Icky, Icky is actually the kind of almost complete opposite, which is really great when we met because it works because they are a rope bottom, but they are like an impact in needle top. So when we work together and got together, we fit into each other's lives really beautifully. It doesn't always work so perfectly. But for Vicki and I, we just kind of went, Oh, oh, that works.

Wicked Wren [00:08:11]

Yeah. How did Covid affect that?

Lief Bound [00:08:16]

Oh, so it affected it a lot. It affected a lot of things. Being in isolation, especially as two people that practice kink so publicly was really hard. One of the things that we discovered the hard way is that Icky is a true exhibitionist. So that means that when they are in rope and people are watching, they are able to be more present and they are able to take more pain and they're able to enjoy it more because the knowledge that someone is watching them, it excites them. They're a performer. They have a dance background. Same with me. I'm a performer. I have a dance background. So we really like a crowd. And when we were in private, there was actually a lot of anxiety that we had to work through where things that used to be so easy for Icky in rope would suddenly like they were, it was too painful and they needed to come down.

Wicked Wren [00:09:15]

I've experienced the exact same thing as a rope bottom.

Lief Bound [00:09:17]

Really?

Wicked Wren [00:09:18]

Yes, fully. And hearing that actually gives me a lot of, I don't know, comfort.

Lief Bound [00:09:23]

Absolutely. Yeah, no, pictures on the internet are deceiving. Sometimes we snap a picture and they're literally up there for literally under a minute. It is tough. The up-line, snap, snap, takedown. So it can be deceiving the Icky is like a tank or Icky can take all the things. Actually, Icky is not a tank at all, and they have very specific needs and very specific settings where they can sometimes maybe do the really hard things. But most of our rope is really gentle.

Wicked Wren [00:09:49]

Yeah. Wow. That's really awesome to hear. How has that journey impacted you now that you can go out and tie in front of people? How has that formed it?

Lief Bound [00:10:00]

It gives us a perspective and it makes us really appreciate the times that we can be in community. Because I know there are people out there in the world that don't have a community that they can go to at all. And if you're struggling with rope in private, you might be similar to Icky and I where being in community and being in front of other kinksters that are enjoying watching what you're doing does something for you. I think it's also helped us navigate. So basically our solution to the pandemic because it was really long, right, or it still is really long. What did we do to solve that problem is we had to create an audience in the private, essentially. Like we had to create like some makeshift audience for ourselves. So a camera became the audience. So we would set up a camera and we'd be recording. And it definitely doesn't slap the same . It's not as exciting as like, strangers watching you in a dark dungeon.

Wicked Wren [00:10:56]

Yes.

Lief Bound [00:10:57]

But having some sort of onlooker, even if it's a digital camera, helps create that audience.

Wicked Wren [00:11:04]

Going back to hearing a yes, hearing a no, when you're in public and playing with someone, ayes could be very different than being in private.

Lief Bound [00:11:14]

Absolutely. I'm at the opposite of Icky. In private, I will be bottom for more things than I will in public.

Wicked Wren [00:11:21]

That's so funny.

Lief Bound [00:11:22]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like the intimacy of knowing that only one person is watching me that I love. I can be more vulnerable and do more salacious things. Whereas like in public, I feel like I'm Lief Bound, I have to be a certain way and I feel this pressure to perform a certain way and do a certain thing. So I don't feel like vulnerability is as accessible.

Wicked Wren [00:11:46]

And you've said that rope is where you found your power?

Lief Bound [00:11:49]

Absolutely. Before I picked up rope as a top, I was a bottom for everything. Yeah. I really thought like, I was like a little femme bottom. I was like, I just, like, that's all I want. I'm just a little bottom.

Wicked Wren [00:11:59]

You're telling me you're a fem bottom?

Lief Bound [00:12:00]

I was at the time.

Wicked Wren [00:12:01]

I don't believe it.

Lief Bound [00:12:02]

I was a woman once. It happens, it happens.

Wicked Wren [00:12:04]

I'm going to cut this part out.

Lief Bound [00:12:07]

(Hysterical laughing). That's totally fine.

Wicked Wren [00:12:08]

That's a joke, I'm not gonna cut it out.

Lief Bound [00:12:11]

Cut it out, edit it in post. So when I picked up rope and I started tying, I found because I am five feet tall, I am quite small and anytime I would try to overpower someone before I found rope, it was literally impossible because everyone's bigger than me. And when I found rope, I found a way for me to not only overpower someone but lift someone, manipulate someone in ways that I didn't think were possible. And it made me feel strong.

Wicked Wren [00:12:38]

Do you think that had a lot of carryover?

Lief Bound [00:12:42]

I think so. I really think so. Yeah. It finally felt like something clicked and it finally felt like I was really good at something. It might be vain to say, but like, I really feel like I am supposed to be doing rope. Like that is the thing that I was meant to do.

Wicked Wren [00:12:57]

I love that. You just started A House of Bound.

Lief Bound [00:13:01]

I did.

Wicked Wren [00:13:02]

Tell me about it.

Lief Bound [00:13:03]

In feeling, in my heart that rope is the thing I'm supposed to do and in capitalism, you need a brand. So I had thought a long time, I'd always had dreams of opening up a studio. I took a lot of inspiration from True Blue, who opened up VoxBody and other incredible, you know, rope places around the world. But I wanted a space where I could have my own studio and I could have my own place where rope education could happen in a bigger grand scheme rather than me just going to cons and teaching a class here or there. And House of Bound actually comes from queer culture and house and ballroom culture. Yeah, so if you've seen Paris Is Burning, which is an incredible documentary. If you're watching this podcast and you're queer and you haven't seen Paris Is Burning, it is literally a part of our history and a rite of passage to watch it. It teaches you about the ballroom scene in the 80s in New York City. And not only that, but all the other things that queer people face in the 80s in New York City. It's basically queer people creating family. That's what it is. House of Bound is my family. House of Bound is who I hope one day, I will have people that will maybe take on the Bound name, right? Like I'm Lief Bound. Maybe I'll have some children someday. Maybe I'll become a father, I'll have some rope children, and they'll go out into the world. That's like big, big dreams, though. You know, I would settle for just having a place where people feel safe to come learn rope.

Wicked Wren [00:14:38]

Why is it so important for queer and trans people to have the community like House of Bound?

Lief Bound [00:14:45]

Because we're not safe or respected in most rope spaces. I mean, even in Los Angeles, California, which is seen as a very progressive place, I have been in the middle of a rope scene at a local dungeon. Like two years ago, so eight years into rope and someone stopped my scene to ask me if I knew what a safe word was. So, like, because I am not a cis man, I am immediately, my skill level and my integrity is questioned in non-queer only spaces. Unfortunately, that's just the truth. People look at me and say, Oh, I can't know what I'm doing because of the way I look or the way I'm perceived by other people. So having a space where it's not queer only, but it's queer-centered.

Wicked Wren [00:15:29]

Yeah.

Lief Bound [00:15:29]

Or basically queer-made, right?

Lief Bound [00:15:32]

Yeah.

Lief Bound [00:15:32]

It just functions differently, like and that's what I want. I want someone to look at my rope and judge my rope. I don't want them to look at me and judge me.

Wicked Wren [00:15:40]

Okay. Question. If you were put in charge of a fictional rope association, what would be the first rule you would put into place?

Lief Bound [00:15:50]

I think that there is no wrong way to do rope if no one is getting injured. I think that there is a lot of this way is the best way or this way is the true way of doing something. And to be honest, if the bottom and the top both come out of a scene feeling good and no one is injured, it is good rope.

Wicked Wren [00:16:12]

Yeah. You've spoken about photo rope versus real rope and saying how there's nothing wrong with photo rope. There's just not a real representation of a scene or something like that.

Lief Bound [00:16:23]

It's almost like a photo of someone dancing where you see someone in that full split in the air and their foot's in their mouth. But you don't know all of the steps it took to get to that shape. And that is the magic of rope. It's all the steps before that photo was taken. So if you've only seen photos of rope, you're seeing the, almost the height of the rope. But that's not where the magic is. The magic is in the details.

Wicked Wren [00:16:51]

Talk to me a little bit about you and Icky's dynamic over time and how it shifted.

Lief Bound [00:16:57]

Yes, it's shifted so much. I think that all long-term relationships have to be flexible for them to last. That is, there's this gorgeous, incredible quote that I'll never remember the entirety of it, but the gist of it goes, loving someone for a long time is going to a thousand funerals of their former selves. And in that means that things that Icky and I shared at the beginning of our relationship are no longer present in our current relationship or have shifted drastically. And that is something that there's been some mourning, right? There's been some miss. I miss certain parts of what we had the beginning of our relationship. But there are new things that are forming right now and things that have been staples from the beginning that I cherish way more than the few things that have gone or changed. And being flexible is a big part of being in a long term and I'll just say rope relationship, in general. Bodies change as Icky, and I change. The things that we could do when we were 24 and got together are not the things that we can do when we are 30. And I think also the concept of aging in rope is not something we talk enough about. It's such a young person's game that we don't talk about our aging bodies and how it affects us. So Icky and I actually all the time. And that's the other thing is talk about it again. I talk all the time about our dynamic, how things are going. We check in and we don't just assume things are the same or have changed. If you feel something's off, talk about it. Like don't sit there and go like, Oh no, oh no, something's changing. Just confront things and talk about it and be flexible.

Wicked Wren [00:18:43]

It sounds very intentional.

Lief Bound [00:18:45]

It is, yeah. I think Icky and I got together and we're very intentional people.

Wicked Wren [00:18:50]

Well, what is next for you?

Lief Bound [00:18:53]

I will be in Detroit in August at a really cool convention called Smirk. I will be going to Salt Lake in December and I will be going to Austin. I am sure you will see me around Shibari Study every now and again. And I'm also in Los Angeles, available for private sessions and lessons whenever you want them.

Wicked Wren [00:19:20]

Amazing. And you're on Instagram.

Lief Bound [00:19:23]

Liefboundropes with no spaces for now. We'll see. I also have a backup.

Wicked Wren [00:19:27]

Check-in next week.

Lief Bound [00:19:28]

Right? Exactly. Lief dot bound. We have a whole podcast on censorship. The best way to reach me is through House of Bound dot com. I have an email form on there and you can also check out my Etsy where if you search House of Bound with no spaces in the search bar, I will pop up and you can get tutorials as well as some really cool art I've been making lately.

Wicked Wren [00:19:51]

The art looks so amazing.

Lief Bound [00:19:53]

Thank you.

Wicked Wren [00:19:54]

You're welcome. Well, thank you so much for being here. You're the best. You always make me smile.

Lief Bound [00:19:59]

You're the best, too. Thanks for having me. And having amazing conversations with me always.

Ms. Reemah is an Atlanta-based queer Black Domme, rigger and rope bondage educator who says that rope is her love language. She’s been active in the kink community since 2017.

Wren [00:00:21]

Welcome to the Shibari Study podcast. I'm your host, Wicked Wren. I'm convinced Ms. Reemah Is involved in everything under the sun. She's a member...

Reemah [00:00:33]

(Laughing) It's a lot.

Wren [00:00:33]

You're a member of The Sisterhood of Black Fem Doms in Atlanta, Georgia. You're an organizer for Rope Bite Atlanta. You're a rope track coordinator for Southeast Leather Fest. And you're, just saying, you hold degrees in psychology, clinical mental health counseling and business administration. And you're currently a board-certified therapist and you're working on your doctorate.

Reemah [00:00:56]

I am. While traveling the country, trying to make sure that we're representative of POCs also in rope. Yeah.

Wren [00:01:03]

Where did this hunger for learning come from?

Reemah [00:01:07]

I wanted to understand how people, like why people do what they do or like. How come people from different backgrounds go through different, like come out differently, right?

Wren [00:01:19]

Yeah .

Reemah [00:01:20]

Because I have my own, like quite a bit of trauma. And then even just realizing that a lot of other POCs, you know, in general have a lot of trauma. But we're not working through it. We're not talking about it. I've actually had some conversations and I may do a seminar about it. About how in the black family in particular, mental health isn't a thing, and I'm not doing it as well. Mental health. What. My parents not knowing what psychology was. They said you're majoring in what..? You're going to get a Ph.D.? What's a Ph.D.? It was like, Well, you're not getting an M.D. failure. And it was just like, no, Ph.D. is where I want to go. Because there's so much research that hasn't been done within my community. There's a lack of awareness within the community. And just seeing because I've worked with kids, I used to be a child investigator for child abuse and the crimes against children, and I worked with older adults, I worked with young adults and being able to track it through the lifespan and just seeing how trauma comes up, which is untreated mental health and how that impacts the person in the long run. It's like, damn, we got to do something. I'm not one to sit and say, This is a problem. This is a problem. We do nothing and still sit on my ass. I'm like, This is a problem. Hey fam, what can we do to fix this?

Wren [00:02:41]

You spoke about family earlier. I know that your dad's a traditional Nigerian, and when he came to your house, he saw your pole in your living room and your mom asked...

Reemah [00:02:51]

Oh my goodness.

Wren [00:02:52]

Why you don't have a dining table? And you said, Because I have a rope rig.

Reemah [00:02:56]

Yes. So in my old apartment, when you walk through the door, large pink pole in the middle. And then you walk into the kitchen, it was like Thanksgiving and I had cooked. And you walk into the kitchen, you have the kitchen to the right, and you had my rig to the left. My mom saw me for years. You don't want a dining room table. I have such a nice one. I could build one for you. And I was just like, No, I'm a ... She was like in your dining room? And I was like, Mom, you know what's in my dining room and I'm not moving it. So he comes in and he's like, Ah-ah, this table is nice so what is this? And he hangs on and he's there because he's about my size, maybe a little bit bigger. He hangs on it and swings, Oh, this is good. And he's like, What? What do you use it for? And I started laughing and I looked at Mom and I said, I hang people on there. And he's like, Ah, what did she mean by that? So I was like, Oh, Dad, you need to mind your motherfucking business. We came to get the food and you asking so many questions and I was like, Hello, don't ask questions you don't want answers to. Because I'm going to tell you. And he was confused, don't ask no more questions.

Wren [00:04:05] Was there ever a time where you didn't feel like you could be your full self in front of your family?

Reemah [00:04:12] Uh. Yeah. Coming out was, it wasn't a problem, it was a process. Because I'm close to my sisters, I told them first and they'll say, Sure, whatever. And even though Mon was like the first one, she took me to my first Ugain Prize in middle school and high school. She ain't even know. She was like, I had to go see my friends and you all are coming. It's gonna to be great. And we're like, What is this?

Wren [00:04:45]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:04:45]

And it was like, This is great. This is so much fun. We're like in a ... It was amazing. But still knowing our traditions with mom being southern, Dad, being Nigerian is like, Oh, this is not really a thing. And we just got over this big thing of me changing my career to mental health. So it was like, Damn. So I decided to pick the year that it was Mother's Day and her birthday on the same day and was like, Oh, this is perfect. I've got to come out. Not only that, you're going to meet my girlfriend in a few hours.

Wren [00:05:23]

I love it.

Reemah [00:05:25]

So now on Mother's Day, I'm like, Hey, mom, can I tell you something? She's like, Ah, shit. But there were some kickback of me just coming out. Like some family members were really upset for whatever reason. Unfortunately, there was like, some aunts who was upset because I was always around their kids. I thought that was the weirdest and most hurtful thing because it's like, gay is not contagious. But what the fuck does that have to do with anything?

Wren [00:05:58]

Yep.

Reemah [00:05:58]

What does that have to do with anything? But it's just like, okay, well, that's your discomfort because I'm gonna keep on. I'm gonna keep on because I'm happy. And then I started getting into kink and delivering rope to my mom's house, and she was like, Why the hell you got a box full of rope. And she just looked at the rope and looked at me and I just smiled. And she was like, Ooh, my kids are into some interesting things. And I say, Yeah, just let me know when you're ready.

Wren [00:06:26]

And this is about like 2017, right?

Reemah [00:06:31]

Yes.

Wren [00:06:32]

When you started your kink journey, you wrote I am brand spanking new to kink life. I did not have a role because I'm not sure where I fall. However, what and who a dom represents deeply resonates with how I operate and wish to function in relationships.

Reemah [00:06:46]

Oh, you went way back.

Wren [00:06:47]

Well, that's so striking to me because in kink there's so much ego and that statement has so much humility in it.

Reemah [00:06:55]

Yeah, that's what I've been told by my submissive. We've been together since 2019, and he says all the time, You're so respectful. You're so considerate. You treat me like a person. Even though, we have this master-slave owner property dynamic, I just always find that interesting. Maybe that's how I came up, like I was trained by the elders of Black doms of Atlanta, who's been in the community 20-30 years, and now they're in their 50-60s. So. That's pretty much who I was raised by. So it's like at the end of the day but also that mental health component you're still a whole person.

Wren [00:07:39]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:07:39]

Regardless of what road you take, you still have autonomy. I'm still not going to come out disrespectful unless I say in my negotiations. Unless that's something you want. Like that's a big part but also someone who has trauma in addition to the training is like, I don't want to be triggering. I don't want to perpetuate anything that looks like trauma or abuse. So I like to be very cognizant of that.

Wren [00:08:03]

You've spoken about having trauma come up with different submissives and things.

Wren [00:08:08]

Yeah.

Wren [00:08:09]

What do you do when something's not going right in a scene or as planned?

Reemah [00:08:16]

Uhm, I check in throughout my entire scene. Regardless of what I'm doing, I'm always asking, How are you feeling? Are you okay? And getting my partners to realize it's not just a physical feeling. Like if we're doing well, I'm not just talk about those wraps on your arms. Like, where are you mentally? Are you still here? Present with me? Because I did do it in passing with someone and she had a history of physical abuse and domestic violence in a relationship. And one of the toys, one of the leather toys reminded her of a belt. So she was triggered from that. It took her back and it was just like, where are you? I feel like I'm sitting in the corner. I'm trying to hide. And it was like, okay, let's stop and like just work on some grounding. Like, you're here with me, you're here with your sister, you're in my living room, open your eyes and just kind of reorient. But we immediately in the same. Even I think ourselves, my partner had just got overstimulated with like the sounds and whole lot of people. Because we don't do a lot of public play. So it was just like, let's stop. And I try to encourage them like I need you to red when you need to call red. If you are feeling overwhelmed or it's too much, it's okay to call red. Because I know you're amazing. You're strong. It's okay. It's not a reflection of you. Actually, you calling red are our limits is strength in itself. I care about my people.

Wren [00:09:45]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:09:45]

I just care about my people.

Wren [00:09:48]

It's so strongly ingrained in bottom to be strong and.

Reemah [00:09:52]

Push through.

Wren [00:09:53]

So how did that experience change maybe your intake process or maybe you know how you're starting relationships with submissives?

Reemah [00:10:02]

Oh, I ask about traumas. I asked about mental health. In our relationship romantic kink don't matter. I ask about trauma and then I describe my definition of trauma because apparently people think it's like a big thing. And I'm like, no, anything negative that happens to you that sticks with you for a long period of time, that's just trauma.

Wren [00:10:22]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:10:22]

If you can think about something that still comes up today that happened when you were seven that's trauma.

Wren [00:10:27]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:10:27]

Or it could have happened yesterday. That was it could be trauma. I ask about trauma. I ask about triggers cause I am a sadist. I tend to play a heavy risky type of shit. So it's like if we do something, how would you feel and going to depth as to what that looks like. And I go through the line of some of the common things I like. If we do hair rope, if we do neck rope. I have one partner and she's like, Absolutely not. We're not doing neck rope. You're not going to hang me. I say, You know what? I feel that because that's how I feel about the color of my rope. So cool. And we even have conversations about that. I ask about mental health diagnoses or anything that they feel they struggle with emotionally or mentally. And I like to go pretty in depth during my check-in. Regular stressors, even before we start tying. What's your stress looking like? I feel like it's more personal. Like it's past just top and bottom dom. It's like, Hey, we're people coming together about to do this thing. Let's just make sure as individuals we're all right.

Wren [00:11:35]

It's so fascinating to hear those through the lens of being a therapist and having all the background that you have. I read that when you got into BDSM, you had a partner that asked you to slap her, and you did and you liked it. So you went to therapy and asked the therapist. And the therapist was like, that's BDSM.

Reemah [00:11:55]

Yeah.

Wren [00:11:56]

I feel like that's a missing link in kink in general.

Reemah [00:12:01]

Yeah, unfortunately, I feel like people are not even replacing kink with therapy because there was no therapy in the first place. But they're using kink as therapy, and I think that's strongly misguided. It can be used in conjunction with therapy or supplements. But also it's like if you're not going to have these open conversations with your therapist so what you're engaging in is kind of, What are we doing? What? There's been false information out there about, Oh, I can help heal your trauma through well.. And it's just like, What's your license? What's your education? How are you, how are you going to try and just help me understand it? How the hell are you doing it? If somebody could explain because I need answers.

Wren [00:12:54]

Can you talk about some things that people can maybe be aware of that they weren't aware of? Because I feel like a lot of the times people don't do these things on purpose. They're just doing them because they think that they can help but in actuality, they are not.

Reemah [00:13:09]

I was a mediator for quite a few of these instances of the submissive or the dom telling the submissive that they know what's best for them. They don't have a voice, they can't speak, they can't tell what's actually going on with them and is detrimental for the submissive or bottom. And my perspective is it should always be collaborative. What is the negotiation process look like? How do you actually know that everyone's been satisfied and fulfilled? If everyone involved doesn't have a voice. And if you're engaging in something that is detrimental to their mental health, you need to stop that shit. Just stop it. Okay, you may like it. Maybe you need to get another partner who's into that shit too. But with this person, you need to stop. Not force down or try to coerce them or persuade them to do it. Just, just stop. It's okay to stop. If you care about a person, stop. If you don't, to get out of kink because something's wrong there.

Wren [00:14:09]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:14:10]

I feel like the foundation, the foundational basis of kink is communication and consent. And I think that's the part that gets lost.

Wren [00:14:19]

I feel like it's even lost in teaching. A lot of teachers will criticize rather than encourage, you know, and it's feeding their ego rather than actually helping.

Reemah [00:14:31]

Yes. I mean, ego in the rope community is like, I need to simmer down. Okay. Simmer down. I've had people in my class that were like, Oh, you're first person to actually ask your bottom questions and have them speak up. And I'm like, See, that's still the damn problem. My classes are bottom-focused. How am I going to know what to do if I'm not asking my partner what's going on? What they need.

Wren [00:14:56]

What do you think is missing from rope education?

Reemah [00:15:02]

Bottoms. Like speaking up and I don't know what it is, and it's not because my partner is like, No, I don't want to do a class by myself. It's like, Okay, okay.

Wren [00:15:11]

Yeah.

Wren [00:15:11]

Well, let's sit down. Let's create a class because you're going to have a designated part. I'm not talking the whole time. So if we teach this concept, what are some things you feel like will be helpful for both tops and bottoms to know? Bringing them in and making them part of the actual development of these classes and then having them speak. I'm not gonna teach a whole class and my bottom is not talking or giving any type of feedback. Because how are other people going to know. They just want to get into that thing and find out. I mean, we do prevent so much trauma and prevent injuries. If we become more bottom-focused because. Because it's happening to them. So in a way, what are we doing to protect them?

Wren [00:15:54]

I really love how you said trauma before the physical injury because I find that that's the easiest thing to get.

Reemah [00:16:01]

Right. And I tell people and they're like, oh, do you want to know the submissive is like and I'm like, Uh-uh, I don't want the additional responsibility. Because I have to go to class and take care of my partner. So I already have.

Wren [00:16:14]

Others say, I know that you take it very seriously. You have your submissive serve your friends and your family and...

Reemah [00:16:21]

Yes. Yeah, it's.. I'm very family-oriented. I mean, even my poly style is kitchen table. We actually have a family. My key partners, romantic partners, we all go out to eat once a month and just kick it and chill. That's important to me. It's like community, like that's community to me.

Wren [00:16:42]

And you've had to actively build that community, correct?

Reemah [00:16:46]

Yeah. And even when people ask, Well, how can I get more POCs. It's like you have to do active outreach. You actually have to message people, call people, walk up to someone and just say, Hey, I'm Reemah, what's your name? How are you? That shit you've done, what's cool. Or What happened this March, would you like to come? We would love to see you. Like I should be an inclusive, but even specifically for my family, I do interviews, I do questionnaires, background checks, like I'm asking people about you. I'm checking that, I need references that I actually can contact, if I can get in contact like a job.

Wren [00:17:33]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:17:33]

No references, did not respond within 48 hours, we're not gonna be able to move forward.

Wren [00:17:38]

Yeah. If your friends don't know about these people, then there's probably a reason. Or they're very, very new. And if they're not being honest about being very new, then that's a red flag.

Reemah [00:17:48]

We have no problem with new people. It's like, Okay, well let's get on some education and I tell them all the time, I'm like, Listen, education, that's how we service our community because coming out of Covid, a whole lot of shit is popping off. Like consent violations, just people out here doing unsafe things because they had a lack of education for like two years. So it's like, yeah, what's going on here? That's our service.

Wren [00:18:19]

You said something that was really amazing to me and you said that you added Ms. to your name to add presence to yourself and that it's really hard for you in the beginning to be served because you're so independent.

Reemah [00:18:38]

Ohhhh, where did you do find that? Yes, I was struggling. Oh, my God. Uhm, so I'm the oldest of six. Again, traditional Nigerian and Southern, so I'm in a position where I'm always taking care of everyone else. Even as a therapist, the focus is the clients. Take care of other people. So for, like, the first two years, I was struggling with actually being served because I would just do things myself. And they're like, Ma'am, that's what I'm here for. And it's like to do what?

Wren [00:19:16]

You're just like, I'm fine.

Reemah [00:19:20]

Yeah. And it was like I had to redefine, reconceptualize where I feel like service is. And it was like anything to make your life easier. And that's my definition. It was like, Oh, well, I need you to go to the store for me.

Wren [00:19:33]

I love that.

Reemah [00:19:33]

Oh, okay, this is great. I need to do to wash the dishes. And then it was like anything, and it just became more comfortable and actually helps take stress off me. Even my submissive, he was like, I want to help decrease your stress. What can I do to help with that? And I was just like, Oh, well, there's quite a few things you could do.Now that I think about it. It was like redefining those things. We put it into terms of stress and help when as opposed to something that is removing my independence or challenging my ability to be self-sufficient. That's not what's happening. I know everybody. My momma knows I could do this shit. But it would be easier if I had help and this kind of just in general, like if I had additional help with support, I feel like with most people, things would be easier.

Wren [00:20:27]

And the only reason that happened is because you're open to communication with your bottom.

Reemah [00:20:32]

Yeah. So then when I had it, he was like, Why won't you let me help you? And I'm like damn.

Wren [00:20:36]

Yeah.

Reemah [00:20:42]

Why? Help me do what?

Wren [00:20:43]

You're like, I got it. I'm good to go, babe. I don't need this.

Reemah [00:20:47]

Yeah.

Wren [00:20:48]

Well, Ms. Reemah, you're amazing. I love talking to you. I learned so much. You're currently working on your doctorate, correct?

Reemah [00:20:57]

I am. Yes, 2024. I just did like the preliminary stuff of kind of getting the intro to what I want to do. And I was so happy that it was well accepted. Oh, my gosh. I remember sitting in my interview and I'm just like, I'm only studying queer people. I'm not flexible on that. That's a non-negotiable. And they were saying, they're looking at me like someone's mouth dropped. And someone was like, Well, how would you have access to that population? I said, I am queer. So everyone I know, yeah, that is not the hard part for me. I say, honestly, the hard part is finding those who is not into kink and identify as heterosexual. That's the difficult part. That's what I need y'all to help me with.

Wren [00:21:45]

Well, I'm sure there's no research like that out in the world.

Reemah [00:21:48]

And which is why I want to do it. Because there's so much misinformation. But like actual empirical based research? No.

Wren [00:21:57]

Where do people find you?

Reemah [00:22:00]

Instagram is the one I check most frequently. Leoreemah. I check FetLife periodically, Ms. Reemah. And then my email is leoreemah@gmail.com And that's it. I check that often.

Wren [00:22:15]

Well, I want to thank you again for being on and talking here.

Reemah [00:22:20]

Thank you for having me.

Wren [00:22:22]

Oh, my God. You're so welcome.

Reemah [00:22:24]

I appreciate it.

KMDD is a switchy rope lover, photographer and kinky smut creator. She’s an ardent self-suspender, having learned to tie herself after falling in love with bondage as a model.

Wren [00:00:18]

Welcome to the Shibari Study podcast. I'm your host Wicked Wren today. My guest is KissMeDeadlyDoll. Doll has been involved in New York's rope scene for over ten years. She's taught internationally. She's an avid self-tyer and as a photographer, she creates some of the weirdest, most ethereal photos I've ever seen. Doll, I'm so happy you're here.

KMDD [00:00:42]

I'm so flattered. Thank you so much for having me.

Wren [00:00:46]

You're welcome. So I know something about you that is fascinating. You went to fashion school, right?

KMDD [00:00:55]

Indeed, I did. I like to call it the root of all evil.

Wren [00:01:02]

Did you say it's the root of all evil?

KMDD [00:01:03]

Yeah. I have, like, tattoos based on it. Like, all my tattoos are based on it, and I call them the root of all evil.

Wren [00:01:11]

What are your tattoos?

KMDD [00:01:13]

One is a dress form. The other is kind of a gothic sewing needle that people often think is like a wizard wand, but it's not. It's a sewing needle. The other one is like a shoe lass so that's fun. Yeah.

Wren [00:01:29]

What were like some of the things that you made?

KMDD [00:01:34]

I've made it all. All kinds of things. Like I started an apparel with, like, a specialty in tailoring. So, like, I did a lot of coats and, like, suiting. And I have a fascination with corsets because I like being crushed and suffocated. But, you know, that's like a whole other thing.

Wren [00:01:55]

Do you think that maybe you got into corset-making things because of your kink interests?

KMDD [00:02:03]

Oh, most definitely. Most definitely. I have like such a fantasy when I was growing up about like, well, it's probably not appropriate to talk about here, but it definitely had things to do with corsets and like not being able to breathe very well and that kind of like tight bondage feel and then like of course, getting off. So there is that kind of stuff.

Wren [00:02:28]

I love it.

KMDD [00:02:29]

Yes.

Wren [00:02:29]

Do you remember the first time you saw that?

KMDD [00:02:32]

I mean, I can't really think of like a movie or any kind of thing like that, but I definitely read my mom's, like, dirty graphic novels from the seventies, which were all very much kind of fourth fantasy damsel, like inappropriate 70 things. So, yeah.

Wren [00:02:55]

Does your mom know that now?

KMDD [00:02:58]

I don't know if she does, cause I would kind of sneak them into my bedroom.

Wren [00:03:04]

I love that. I know that you got into rope the same way most of us do where you went to a club, and then you saw it happening, and you're like, Wow, I want to do that, right?

KMDD [00:03:15]

Yeah, exactly. That was, it was like an epiphany. You know, sometimes when you just see something and you're like, Oh, this is what I've been searching for in my entire life. That was like me for rope. Not as a top, but like more as a bottom. Like, I just saw it and I was like, I want to be in that. I want someone to do that to me.

Wren [00:03:37]

Yeah. You started tying yourself, right?

KMDD [00:03:40]

I did. At that particular time, when I was starting to explore stuff, I didn't have a partner that knew how to tie, and I wasn't all that interested in tying with any of the people that were in the scene doing rope at that time in New York. So I was like, okay, I'm going to figure out how to do this on myself.

Wren [00:04:00]

When you look back at that time, what were some of the resources that were available, you know, to learn from?

KMDD [00:04:06]

Uph. Not many. Not many. We're definitely very fortunate to have sources like Shibari Study. Not to like drop the name here, but uhh - 

Wren [00:04:22]

I mean they're paying for the thing so... 

KMDD [00:04:25]

Totally. There is maybe a few tutorials on YouTube which looking back on, weren't necessarily things I would recommend today. And I was fortunate to find a little rope share that this person was hosting and I would go and this girl would kind of practice on me just like simple floor stuff. And then I would come home and try to remember and like recreate it on myself. So that was also a way that I started doing stuff.

Wren [00:04:56]

And looking back at that time ten years ago, learning. What do you think you tell yourself that you know now?

KMDD [00:05:05]

Hmm. Like most people who tie themselves, I was very eager to be suspended because that's like the fun part, in my opinion. As a self-suspender. And yeah, I probably did a lot of stupid things that were not necessarily safe that I would probably not recommend now. But you know, sometimes we take chances with ourselves and sometimes very stupid things and we learn from them.

Wren [00:05:35]

That's such a common thing in rope bondage. You get excited, then you have a lot of experiences very quickly. What are some things that you think we can do to kind of educate, you know, people that are just getting into the scene? You go out and you're saying yes to a lot of things without really knowing all the implied power dynamics.

KMDD [00:05:56]

Totally. It's hard. Of course, location plays a big part in that because I think those of us who do live in big cities and maybe there's a little bit more of a scene there that you can find and maybe go to like a jam or a share or some kind of class first and be like in a public setting. There is definitely an advantage to that. But of course, if you're in more rural areas where you have less access to those kind of things, it can definitely be hard. And (sighing).

Wren [00:06:29]

It's a really hard problem to solve.

KMDD [00:06:30]

For sure. Looking back on the way I used to be, I would say like take more time to have coffee with someone or like meet in a public setting first to get a feel for them before being like, Yeah, I'm going to come to your house and you're going to tie me up. Yeah, all right. But of course, there's never any guarantee or also ask if you can bring a friend with you that can like, come and watch. If someone has good intentions, that shouldn't be an issue.

Wren [00:07:02]

Yeah.

KMDD [00:07:03]

If I was seeing someone for the first time and they were like, Hey, can I bring my partner with, I'd be like, Yeah, sure. Then come watch. Totally chill.

Wren [00:07:10]

So much of rope bondage is on the internet now. It gives us kind of a false sense of security with seeing the same people over and over in the same photos. How have you seen the internet kind of change role bondage since you've been in it?

KMDD [00:07:25]

Uh, uhm... Yeah, it's really changed a lot. I mean, I think I started sharing stuff more on Tumblr in the Tumblr days, which is like the Wild West of social media. And then moving to Instagram was so different because there is so many more rules and restrictions. Yeah, and at first it was fun because we could share more and now it's just getting harder and harder and rope has become so much more... Hip. And I don't know if that's a good word, but it's kind of like a trend, right? And so people see it and they don't always understand the risk that's involved with it. Or sometimes when people are in pain and they're processing, they do look very ethereal and like otherworldly. Relaxed. But it's like, no, they were trying to breathe at that moment. So I think people don't always realize how intense it can be. It doesn't have to be, but like sometimes it is.

Wren [00:08:36]

Yeah. I really like what you said, that there's these factors that are in juxtaposition between what's actually happening. How do you find your photos are differing between sessions that are more aesthetically based and then sessions that are more about connection and rope and things like that?

KMDD [00:08:55]

Mm-hmm. I don't do a lot of the tying for photos kind of thing. Most of the stuff I post are either from private sessions, and that's still more focused on the person's experience that I provide. And if I can step out to snap a photo, I will. Doesn't always happen. Like, really depends on the person and how things are going. And then with the partners I tie, that's a little more like low-key. Maybe I have a little more time to set up some kind of lighting or some kind of vibe because I tie with them all the time and I know a little bit more like what they can take. And I know I trust that they can communicate with me in those moments. And it takes,well , it takes me a while to build up that kind of trust with someone where I feel like confident in their communication skills. Yeah. And I just trust them. And then we have lots of fun.

Wren [00:10:00]

Yeah. You know, you said it takes time.

KMDD [00:10:02]

Mm hmm.

Wren [00:10:03]

That's really, really important. Figuring out that you don't have to do everything on session number one.

KMDD [00:10:09]

Totally. And it's also nice to, like, have sessions where there are no photos, and it's just, like, very focused. I've always been so photography based. I would even venture to say it's a little bit part of my kink because it was like part of how I explore kink and explore myself. So I like it being a part of it.

Wren [00:10:35]

I love that. Looking through your Instagram, you have so many photos and so many videos. You know, you have like I think, over 1300 photos on Instagram. What haven't you done that you want to do?

KMDD [00:10:52]

Mm. I guess when I think of photos, I have less interest in creating like rope photos per say and more just interested in creating scenes or like fantasies. I'm really into like, exploring lighting. I love playing with lighting and I'm doing more video stuff these days, which is also interesting and so much harder. But yeah, like for rope stuff, I'm not really trying to create this big art statement. I just want to like, capture the person's experience when they're in the moment.

Wren [00:11:29]

Well, it's so funny because the way you tie is just so fun. You like muster the bottom and you make sounds and you're goofy and we laugh. And it is really hard to represent that in photos. So I have a question.

KMDD [00:11:44]

Okay.

Wren [00:11:45]

When you're a self tying, it is hard to replicate the same things other people can do to you, maybe in degrees of pain or pushing yourself. How do you get around that? How do you do the same thing that other people can do to you?

KMDD [00:12:04]

I mean, I guess it depends on if that's the experience you're trying to give yourself as a person that's a self-suspender. I mean, I know a lot of people self-suspend for different reasons. My reason is definitely because I'm a masochist and I like to suffer. For me, self-suspension is partially making it hurt and pushing my endurance level. So like, how long can I go? How many kind of transitions and shapes can I make? Can I figure out a way to, like, get all the way to the floor without having to stand up? Can I tie something while I'm already suspended for the next move instead of like, tying it on the ground? But then also giving yourself those moments where you can be like, Oh, this position is hard, and I'm just going to twist into it to make myself sit there for a minute. Those are the kind of things I think about.

Wren [00:13:07]

Do you find that you test yourself in other ways, too? Like, do you have any hobbies that you like to test your endurance maybe with or fresh air?

KMDD [00:13:17]

I love the feeling when you finish something and you're like, Damn, I survived. That was really hard and I made it. That's the feeling I want to have after. It's like, Wow, I survived that. That was awesome. I recently started doing HIIT workouts because I'm a masochist.

Wren [00:13:41]

Oh, I wonder how many people in HIIT workouts are actually masochists. I just don't know.

KMDD [00:13:47]

Yo, I think so many. Cause HIIT workouts are like the fucking worst.

Wren [00:13:52]

They're very bad.

KMDD [00:13:54]

They're so bad.

Wren [00:13:56]

I feel the same thing about, like, hikers and things because the thing I really like is the food after the hike or the beer after the hike. That's awesome to me.

KMDD [00:14:06] Right?

Wren [00:14:06]

Yeah, that's my issue with self-suspending as I never feel like I can do the things to myself that other people do to me.

KMDD [00:14:14]

Yeah, it's definitely harder. I don't bottom so much anymore, but sometimes I feel like I can do meaner things to myself than other people will do to me. Yeah.

Wren [00:14:29]

Is there anything you have coming up they're excited about?

KMDD [00:14:34]

Oh, I do have a trip. I think you think you already know.  I'm going to go to San Francisco this year for Folsom, so I'll be hanging out and then I'm going to go down to L.A. for a couple of weeks and hopefully work on some fun, dirty things.

Wren [00:14:51]

We cannot wait to see. What you make your brain is is amazing, right?

KMDD [00:14:58]

Is it?

Wren [00:14:58]

It is. It's verified. Amazing. Your Instagram is KissMeDeadlyDoll, your Twitters KissMeDeadlyDol with one L. Is there nowhere else?

KMDD [00:15:08]

My website link is on Instagram where you can find all my other other other stuff.

Wren [00:15:15]

That's what the people want. They want the other other.

KMDD [00:15:17]

You know, I mean, I'm always like, you should check it out because like, it is like pretty hot.

Wren [00:15:24]

Link trees is like, This is a sensitive link. And I'm like, I know what I'm doing.

KMDD [00:15:28]

You're like, No shit. That's what I'm here for.

Wren [00:15:32]

Thank you so much for being on and yeah, I can't wait to see you and talk to you too.

KMDD [00:15:40]

Thank you for having me. Bye.

Gorgone and Anton are the founders of Shibari Study. With 10+ years of bondage experience, Gorgone is the heart the company and Anton the conceptualizing mind.

Wren [00:00:02]

Hello friends, and welcome to the first episode of the Shibari Study podcast. I'm your host Wicked Wren. The goal of this podcast is to get closer to the people in our scene and explore intersections that aren't possible to grasp from photos online. And with that said, we have two of the best guests a podcast host could ask for. Sīn (Gorgone) and Anton, the founders of Shibari Study. How are you two?

Anton [00:00:47]

Hi. Nervous. Can we swear on this?

Wren [00:00:51]

I think, well, let me ask with the founders of Shibari Study and see what they say.

Anton [00:00:56]

We're swearing on the podcast.

Sīn [00:00:57]

Yeah, I think we can swear on the podcast.

Anton [00:00:59]

All shits aside, I'm a little bit nervous. This is the first podcast I'm ever doing.

Wren [00:01:03]

Oh, my God. Well, look, you own the company. So I think that the bar is kind of like where you set it. You can do anything you want on this podcast.

Anton [00:01:10]

I love that. Otherwise doing amazing, thriving. How are you?

Sīn [00:01:14]

Yes. I'm really good. I'm excited to do this interview together and kind of like, I guess dwell a bit in the past. Because time goes so fast and things grow sometimes in a way that makes us forget how it started. So I'm actually excited that we're going to be talking a bit about like the whole project, going back.

Anton [00:01:36]

I'm going with Sīn. It does go back, yeah.

Sīn [00:01:37]

Yeah.

Wren [00:01:38]

That's amazing. So Anton, I hear that in addition to Shibari Study, you also deejay, correct?

Anton [00:01:47]

Do I deejay? No, I don't deejay. I'm really into music and photography. 

Wren [00:01:52]

Well, you do make music, right?

Anton [00:01:53]

Dibble and dabble. I've got my record players right in front of us here. But am I a DJ? I would never consider myself one. Throw stone here in Berlin, you're sure to hit a deejay.

Wren [00:02:04]

I thought you produced the music, for some reason.

Anton [00:02:07]

We have synths and I do make music. But I'm not a musician. No.

Wren [00:02:12]

Okay.

Anton [00:02:14]

Would you consider it otherwise?

Sīn [00:02:15]

Hell, no, he's not a musician.

Wren [00:02:21]

Well, everyone—

Sīn [00:02:22]

No, he does like kind of semi-collect vinyls and gets very excited about like digging out tracks and records. And he will play once in a while, but it's just, like, for friends and just like, at home. Basically.

Anton [00:02:37]

Yeah. When the after-hour moment starts, that's...

Sīn [00:02:40]

He's an after-hour DJ.

Wren [00:02:42]

Let's go with that.

Anton [00:02:44]

Exactly. There's a big difference.

Wren [00:02:46]

Well, I'm so sorry. I'm going to revise all the documents that I set out. Anton is an after-hours deejay only.

Sīn [00:02:53]

Yes.

Wren [00:02:55]

Sīn, you talk a lot about daydreaming and manifesting throughout your life. Have you always been a dreamer?

Sīn [00:03:02]

Yes, definitely. I mean, I grew up as a single child in the middle of nowhere countryside, so I spent like most of my time with animals and just running around in nature. So I guess I kind of developed this very strong inner world but also inner monologue. And I – yeah, I always – I don't know, I think it's like a superpower and also an absolutely horrible thing but I'm constantly thinking about how things are and how they could be better. And I try, whenever I can, to turn this more like self... I don't want to say 'self-harming' but almost like self-harming, like intrusive thoughts, I tried to turn them into more inspiring directions. And rather than just like feel bad about what I think is missing or what I think is lacking or what I think is flawed, I try to start picturing in my head a rough idea of what I would want. And then I found out that if you start doing this very consciously, it really helps actually manifesting a lot of things because it changes your— it changes the inner monologue and it changes the way you act them out in the world I guess. So, yes, I still do it.

Wren [00:04:34]

Do you remember the first time you changed that narrative in your head as a kid? Like, what were some of the first things that you did that with?

Sīn [00:04:43]

As a kid, I don't think I ever managed to do it. As a kid, it was more just like this lonely self-talk and self-judgment and it made me feel more isolated than anything else. As a teenager, it got even worse, and I felt very alienated from pretty much everywhere and everyone. But then growing up— I mean, I have to say, actually, it's going to sound like I'm making this up and it's super cliché, but one of the first times I started seeing like potential for my weirdness to become actually like a strength was really when I discovered shibari. And it kind of, I don't know, like all of a sudden, like finding this strange underground, you know, like activity with a bunch of super weirdos who seem to somehow have made a sort of big family together and people actually creating things from a place of, I don't know, like... I don't know. I don't want to speak for others, but I feel like one of the – at least when I started over a decade ago – I felt like one of the big common thing between all people involved in kink was this desire to kind of channel the chaos and channel the pain and make something positive out of the violence that lived inside of them. And this, all of a sudden, I felt like, "Oof, okay, here's like a channel." There's like, you know, it felt like all of a sudden I was drowning in the super agitated sea and feeling like "I don't know how to swim this," and then all of a sudden I felt this like, undercurrent that, like, had a direction and I could even influence this direction. So I would say that the first time I felt like I could go in my head and build a fantasy that I can actually then act out in the real world.

Wren [00:06:58]

You've said that your mom kind of told you to go out and do stuff. When you came back, did you tell her that you found this community? Like, how did your family respond to that?

Sīn [00:07:08]

So when my mom, like— I always had a very, very open relationship with her, we were always very honest to each other and even the few lies that I kind of fostered as a teenager, I always kind of came out to her pretty soon afterwards. So I never lied to her about what shibari is and the things that I liked about it. Even at that time, in the very, very beginning, I was doing like pretty hardcore stuff, actually very explicit, and I had a whole bunch of pictures and videos published. You know, I was like 19 or 20 and I had these like, it was not exactly like porn, but it was definitely like very naked bondage with pretty intense violence. And she knew that. She always said, "I don't want to see, I don't want to see those things. I don't want to see those images. If you have like nice, beautiful, more like arty stuff to show me, I would love to, but I don't want to see the hardcore shit." But so to her, I never lied. And she really knew. And I think, first of all, like parenting me through teenager hood, I think was like if she survived this as a parent and managed to kind of stay out of my way and trust me that I will land on my feet. Like bondage for her was like extremely, like easy and reassuring to deal with. She was like, "Oh okay, that's not like direct self-harm, so let's go with that. Sounds okay. It's also a positive outlet." It was hard for her to see it but she could understand that I was doing something with my body. I was doing something that involves socializing and empowering myself. And I think she actually felt pretty good about this, and she saw that my social life and my mental health and my happiness, my general happiness, was improving, and that's all that mattered to her. And after, I don't know, about six months or half a year of – maybe, I think a year or half a year, I don't know – pretty soon after I found shibari and started diving really hardcore into it, so I quit art school to start really traveling around and meeting people and doing this. And at some point I started feeling really bad that I had my mother paying my rent because I was supposed to be studying and then I was not studying. I was just going around getting tied up by a bunch of people. So I talked with her and I was like, "Hey, listen, I'm going to find a job." And then I found this job in  an outlet store that was like five days a week, and, you know, that's it, all year round. And when I told her this, I was really proud to be making the right decision. Then she kind of freaked out. She was like, "No way, you cannot do this. I know this is not for you and you're going to, you're really going to go crazy with a life like this, and you're not going to be able to travel anymore for shibari if you work five days a week. So how about I support you for one more year and if you don't find a way to become financially stable with this, then we'll talk about it again? But please give it a try." And that's one of the most amazing things that she's ever done for me.

Wren [00:10:32]

It sounds like your mom really encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit?

Sīn [00:10:36]

She encourages... I think if it shows itself as an entrepreneurial spirit, then she will support this, if she has the financial capacity to do it. But she's really just generally someone who supports people when she feels— like, she's a very intuitive person, I think. She's a psychotherapist and she's suffered a lot in her own life from not being able to find herself and express herself. It came really late to her. And I think she's very sensitive to this in general, when she feels that someone might have found what's their actual path and what's their talent or what will just make them happy and she can support this, she really wants to. And in this case, it meant supporting like my – I mean, at the time it wasn't an entrepreneurial career. I mean, 12 years ago, a 19-year-old who was half a year into getting excited about bondage...  when I told people, I think I can make a job out of this, like everybody was laughing at me.

Wren [00:11:40]

Yeah.

Sīn [00:11:41]

People who were not into bondage were like, "What the hell? This is just a crazy phase and she's going to get over it." And people who were into the bondage scene were like, I mean, there's like a handful of people all across the world who make a living only out of this. And they're all like old-school, old generation men who tie.

Wren [00:12:04]

Absolutely.

Sīn [00:12:05]

Like where do you think you're going as a 19-year-old bottom? I don't think she supported any entrepreneurial ventures. She was just supporting her child...

Wren [00:12:16]

That's really beautiful.

Sīn [00:12:17]

...that just started to show, you know, like signs of like happiness and excitement and passion.

Wren [00:12:26]

It sounds like everyone needs someone like your mom in their life. That's really amazing that you have her.

Anton [00:12:31]

Yes.

Sīn [00:12:32]

She's really, I mean, I don't know. She's really incredible with this.

Anton [00:12:37] Your mom is special. I will forever be indebted.

Sīn [00:12:40]

Yeah, she really, she really changed my life as her child. But I think Anton always speaks about her as, like, she really changed also his life by then later, when he stepped in, supporting the entrepreneurial aspect of it. And she's like really committed to help, in general.

Wren [00:13:02]

Anton, if you could summarize Sīn's mom in one word, what would it be?

Anton [00:13:10]

The only feeling that comes up for me and the only word is gratitude. One word to summarize 'maman'? That's a hard one. She's beautiful.

Wren [00:13:21]

What is your origin story? Where did your spirit come from? You're a dreamer as well.

Anton [00:13:28]

Mine?

Wren [00:13:29]

Yeah.

Anton [00:13:34]

Born and raised in Berlin. My dad's from Canada. My mum here from Berlin. And, I don't know, being raised in Berlin right after the wall came down. There were so many different influences and it was really it was a really, really fun time. There was so much - it was such a new city and there were so many niches that you can diddle and dabble in. And none of these, none of these scenes were very established like in all of the other cities. So anything you did, anything you were passionate about, you could find your community for it and really like climb the ladder very quickly there. If you were in Paris, New York or London, all of these niches are so established since so many decades that it's impossible to reach as a nobody. But that - I don't know - that freedom, that energy of change was really formative for me, too. Yeah.

Wren [00:14:27]

And what niche were you exploring at that time?

Anton [00:14:31]

Wow.

Sīn [00:14:34]

Me. We both have a turbulent past.

Anton [00:14:37]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Let's start around the time that I met Sīn. It was more of a - I was traveling and partying. And trying to study. It took me - I graduated high school, barely, but then it took me six years of traveling and doing god knows what until my mom was slowly beginning to worry, to say the least. And I was like, okay, mom, look, I'll do something. And then I was, introspectively I was like what do I like, what am I into and it was really just plants and insects, right?

Wren [00:15:21]

Wow.

Anton [00:15:21]

I'm much, much like Sīn. My biggest talent.. I'm not great at anything, really. But what I can do is bring order to chaos. And I'm I see potential and I'm really into like, like ordering like people's talents and technologies in order to make things like systems. And I think that was that was the perfect match. So Sīn brought the intention, the philosophy, the experience, and I brought the vision and also the need, to be honest, like Shibari Study as it is now, was borne out of the need to learn bondage, which... Yeah.

Wren [00:16:02]

Wow.

Anton [00:16:03]

Which we then did through Shibari Study. Yeah. And with the help of maman.

Wren [00:16:09]

She's kind of like the third founding member of Shibari Study, wasn't she.

Anton [00:16:13]

She was the only founding member.

Sīn [00:16:14]

She's basically the only founding member.

Anton [00:16:15]

My goodness. Yeah. Yes, yes. She's the all-seeing godmother.

Sīn [00:16:20]

Well, I know who I need to get on the podcast soon.

Sīn [00:16:23]

Yeah.

Sīn [00:16:23]

You can hook me up. That'd be great.

Sīn [00:16:26]

She's actually like, it just made me think that it's been a while that she's asking to be a model for one of our shooting. Like she's never been tied. And she asked me a few times. She was like you know what? Like I really don't get it. I respect it and I don't judge it but I really don't get it. So maybe the best way for me to understand why I don't like it or actually find out that I like it would be to try. So she's asked me a few times to tie her, and every time I'm like uh, yeah. Like I'm kind of excited but also like do I want to do that? But also would I trust anyone else tying my mom?

Wren [00:17:03]

Yeah. So that was my question.

Sīn [00:17:06]

And then why not? Why not do it for one of your shootings where it's like very chill and casual. And we almost made it but for some reason then it didn't happen. And ever since, like, I don't know, we should actually... Yeah, let's do it.

Anton [00:17:18]

It'll come.

Sīn [00:17:20]

We should actually do it. She still asks for it regularly.

Anton [00:17:22]

2023.

Sīn [00:17:23]

That is one of the coolest things I've ever heard.

Sīn [00:17:27]

That would be really cute actually. Maman on the website.

Anton [00:17:30]

I love that.

Sīn [00:17:31]

It was really cute. So when did you two meet?

Sīn [00:17:37]

Oh wow.

Anton [00:17:38]

That was a while ago. When was this? It was four years ago?

Sīn [00:17:42]

It was early 2018 like spring of 2018. I had just moved back to Berlin after an extremely brutal ending of a previous relationship. And I kind of like crash-landed in Berlin.

Anton [00:18:00]

Without your horse.

Sīn [00:18:01]

With nothing. With just one suitcase, basically. And I just crashed at like friends' places and I was really a wreck. Like I was very lost and I was just very tired. I had also come out of like about eight years of like solo traveling and teaching and burnouts after burnouts and then this very, very extremely failed relationship that really like broke my heart into a million pieces. So I was kind of like in, I don't know, like some sort of like wreck mode where I was just desperately looking for anything to get me excited again. But I was way too tired to teach. I was trying to slow down the traveling. And I had recorded like maybe five tutorials, like maybe some of the people listening here who were like really, really old, like followers of Shibari Study. They probably remember like those videos were like out there for some people to acces but it was like self-produced, like super low quality and it was only like five of my original harnesses because I didn't feel like legitimate to teach anything else. And it was also very experimental, basically, to like just put bondage classes online. So I wasn't sure it was going to work. But I had this and still like one residency in Paris where I was teaching once a month. So I was pretty tight on like, you know, money and energy. And then I met Anton. We met in a cafe where he was working. He was working there as a barista. And then slowly I stopped paying for the coffee. And then he started sitting at my table a little bit longer. And then eventually we went out for drinks once, and then we stayed together for three years.

Anton [00:19:50]

Three years?

Wren [00:19:50]

Oh, my God.

Sīn [00:19:52]

And pretty early on, like, a lot of shit happened. Like basically the one residency I had in Paris, the venue shut down. I was basically the kind of like godmother of this place. And then it turned out that the founder and like leader of this community committed a certain number of sexual assaults on very young new models. So I kind of pulled out and most of the staff pulled out in the venue just closed. So that was also over. And at the time we were like, I don't know, in the first few months of the relationship with Anton and he saw me like freaking out. And I was like, okay, I need to pick up this online classes thing. I'm exhausted by the community. I'm tired of all this shit coming out all the time. I'm tired of not being able to trust like community leaders. I'm not planning on becoming one and I'm tired of traveling alone. And I need to settle somewhere in the world where I can build actual connections and relationships and, like, stabilize myself. But I cannot do this. I'm extremely chaotic. I have no, I always have, like, I think, powerful ideas. But I have, I cannot, like I can barely open my mail and pay my electricity bills. So building a company, founding an actual company and making all of this happen by myself, I really couldn't see it happening. So he just kind of naturally jumped in and started helping me out so much that we were both like, working 14 hours a day on our laptops, just like trying to plan things and self-produce in our tiny little one-room studio apartment and edit. And we were doing everything by ourselves. And after a while, I told him like, I mean, you can't continue helping me out like this just for nothing. So if we build this company, then let's build it together 50/50. And if anything happens to our relationship, then at least it will be both our baby, and you will continue to be committed to it. So very quickly, actually, like I think half a year after we were together or something, we just found Shibari Study together.

Anton [00:22:05]

It was quite quick, yeah.

Sīn [00:22:07]

It was pretty quick.

Anton [00:22:07]

The first year or so, I think we were traveling.

Sīn [00:22:09]

Maybe one year.

Anton [00:22:11]

You were still teaching a lot. I was trying to do my little gigs here and there. But I guess it all came down - in the beginning, because like Sīn was saying, it was just are few harnesses on the platform and I really wanted to learn bondage. I was in all of these workshops.

Sīn [00:22:28]

But I didn't want to teach you.

Anton [00:22:30]

I did not want you to teach me. No, no. So I was left with a question how do I learn bondage, shibari without having to ask Sīn directly to teach me all the basic knots to begin with. So I went online. I was looking for some... how do I teach the tk, how do I learn TK, how do I do the single-column, the double column. And there was no real good information out there. And then I also thought like this platform, like the problem that I have, like most people have in the beginning, there's a huge, huge hurdle for someone to have a curiosity for bondage but then that hurdle of actually going to an in-person class as a newbie, it's connected to so many fears and stuff. That is a big one to jump. And to make that a little bit more accessible and also for me to learn myself, I was like, hey babe, we need to shoot an entire beginners course. So we set up the studio. We were living in a one-room apartment and we blacked it all out, setup a couple of lights.

Sīn [00:23:34]

I resisted that one.

Anton [00:23:36]

You really resisted that.

Sīn [00:23:38]

I really resisted that one.

Anton [00:23:39]

That was the beginning of everything. Really diversifying the content.

Wren [00:23:42]

Why did you resist it?

Sīn [00:23:44]

Because it felt like such a huge responsibility to teach beginners content online. And for a really long time, I had said, like, I will not teach beginners stuff and I will not teach advanced stuff on Shibari Study for a really long time. That was kind of like my - that's what I had decided and what made me feel like it was the safest thing to do and the most reasonable. But then Anton convinced me that it could actually be much safer and much easier for a lot of people to just learn these things at their own pace and not just like go to a class, see a bunch of things, get overwhelmed and go home and have nothing to review the techniques and practice by themselves. So there was this aspect. And then I also realized there are so many awful teachers out there and there are so many places where people just don't have access to proper education. Like rope education. And they just end up - because they don't know better - they just end up in these really terrible, you know, whatever, kind of self-proclaimed teacher environments and they also learn dangerous things and they can't even review it afterwards. So if they forgot - like I noticed as an instructor that if you teach like ten ties to people over a weekend, they might really remember one. And the other nine, they've seen it, they've done it with your help and supervision. But as soon as they go home, it's gone. You know, people are always like can I make a video, you know, while you teach. Can I take pictures? Going to make a video so I can review it at home? And I was like, wow, that's also not such a safe thing to do because you just recorded that thing that was taught in a candid way. So it wasn't taught in a way that specifically is made to be reviewed. You know what I mean?

Wren [00:25:44]

Yes.

Sīn [00:25:45]

Maybe I gave some specifications while I was teaching that they didn't record or maybe they recorded with the wrong angle or whatever. So I started to also rethink this and, you know, feel like, okay, maybe if I really put a lot of thoughts into this and we curate it and produce it and like if I make the curriculum in a very specific way and then we release it in a platform where people have like unlimited access to the information so they can go again and again and again, then it actually might be as safe as in-person education, not as a standalone. Like, I still really believe that it's important to have both. But it will at least give people some standard. So when they go out there and look for in-person education, if the teacher makes no sense or the teacher doesn't explain things properly, like I think one of my best qualities as a teacher is to dive really deep into the why and how and not just like do it because I said so. And I think that was like - that's something that's valuable to people when they go and look for in-person education. So I started rethinking this and eventually accepted to do the beginner course. But I think it took me like half a year to plan. Like I dragged it. I was like, I really need time. I need to feel very confident with what I'm teaching and how I'm teaching it, and that the curriculum evolves in a way that will really take people through everything they need to know so that they can do those basics safely and autonomously.

Wren [00:27:17]

It sounds like there's a huge responsibility that goes along with making beginner courses.

Sīn [00:27:21]

Yes. Absolutely. I mean, there's a responsibility that goes along with just teaching anything that's like high risk, whether it's in-person or online.

Wren [00:27:31]

Shibari Study in many ways is an act of rebellion against a system that's in place for a long time. What were some of the fears that you had early on, like you said, that you were - you didn't want to teach beginner stuff. You didn't want to teach advanced stuff. How did that play into it?

Sīn [00:27:47]

I mean, I think these were more like internal fears and I just had to review the reason why I was worried about this and eventually find out that they were valid worries. But there were ways around it. There were ways to make it actually safer and even like very beneficial and very complementary with what existed already. But if you're talking about a system that I was kind of rebelling against, I think I just felt like the groundwork of trying to shift many paradox of the bondage community. And I mean, you know, the bondage community doesn't exist in a vacuum. It still reflects like our world and our societies and the global system. And it felt very male dominated. It felt very stereotypical, you know, hetero-stereotypical. It was, you know, just like when I started, it was 99%, maybe not but at least in what I experienced of like older men tying very young new bottoms. And I felt like that's just not fair. And it's not... people talk about how it can be empowering but I felt like it was... The empowerment was really very limited. It just kind of like enabled people to choose to live those experiences but always in a way that continued to repeat probably their past traumas or their general like, you know, social trauma and social limitations. And we were a few people trying to change that. I wasn't the only one but we were a few handful of people really trying to like, push for like, you know, female or at least like non-male riggers and trying to become more, you know, respected and become more skillful and talented to the point that we could start teaching and performing and like, you know, representing a different approach to bondage and people who were trying to also bring different disciplines into it and different intentions and make it more like, you know, more spiritual or a bit more like political or, you know, like so on and so forth. But I mean, I think you can ask this to anyone who was part of this movement, quote on quote. It was exhausting. And we got really damaged also on the way. And it felt like, okay, we're creating a little bit of a different type of representation, but at what cost? And we're not really changing the roots of the problem because most of the people who would want to access education can't. Because it's too expensive. I mean, if you go to a a weekend workshop with, you know, like a renowned instructor, it's an enormous cost.

Wren [00:30:52]

Absolutely.

Sīn [00:30:53]

And you have to travel and you have to, you know, it's super expensive tickets and then, you know, okay, that's it. Then you had access to that one course and you go back to maybe a community where there's nobody who's in the same mindset and then you. So another very big motivation for Shibari Study was also to like really make high quality education, not just in the way it's recorded, but the actual content and later on varied content by bringing other instructors and to make this accessible to as many people as possible. Like, I don't think we can... Like, we cannot say that a space is always safe. We cannot say that it's accessible to everyone but we tried to make it as accessible to as many people as possible, and I felt like that was actually a much more powerful tool to do that and to try to open up this community and like create like deep change at the level of the people practicing, not just the level of the people who are already talented and skilled and renowned.

Wren [00:31:58]

Definitely.

Sīn [00:31:58] And really build like a whole other kind of current.

Anton [00:32:04] Yeah.

Wren [00:32:05]

There was an interview where you were asked what were some of your funny mistakes that you made and you answered none of them were funny in the beginning and that really hit me.

Sīn [00:32:18]

Yeah. I mean, being a, you know, female-bodied, very young person diving into this world with like, I had a lot of ambition but I also didn't know anything. I was barely like, you know, super young adult. So you're you're barely formed. Like your thoughts and your knowledge of yourself and the world around you are not very sharp yet. I was very naive. I was very influencable. I was very damaged and I made choices and I allowed other people to make choices for me that were incredibly damaging and traumatic and really not funny at all. Like if we're talking about mistakes, like, woops, I dropped someone one time. Even this is not fun. Like, I don't think I, like none of the mistakes I made that hurt other people or that hurt me were ever funny. Like, it's a pretty high-risk discipline. It can be very, very beautiful and very helpful and very empowering and just brings so much joy and pleasure. But like everything high risk when you do make mistakes, both physically or emotionally, they're profoundly, you know, impacting.

Wren [00:33:34]

Yeah. Taking the rope side out of it, looking at only the Shibari Study company side, when you open the website right now, it looks like you're navigating a five-star hotel website. It's amazing.

Anton [00:33:49]

Oh, stop it, Wren.

Sīn [00:33:52]

Thank you.

Wren [00:33:52]

Let's say if I'm going to suck up to anybody, these are the people to do it to. But I have a feeling that it wasn't always like this. How different was it? And, you know, what were some things that you were worried about in the beginning that didn't really matter that much? You know, like making mountains out of molehills kind of thing.

Sīn [00:34:12]

I think Anton can take over from here and like talk about the general aesthetics and organizational process of the early Shibari Study under my solo governance.

Anton [00:34:24]

Yeah.

Wren [00:34:26]

What was it like when you came in?

Anton [00:34:28]

Chaos. Unstructured chaos with so much potential though. It was already, Shibari Study already had some really good following before, but it was not navigable. I don't know. I think it plays into the whole accessibility part of Shibari Study. The website needs to be incredibly diverse. It has to be inclusive and definitely navigable. Now, at this point, we've already created a pretty extensive library of courses and classes and different approaches and instructors and even like rope philosophies, if you can put it that way. And also to make it accessible. It has to look good. Though I mean, it started only with video tutorials and then we went to live classes that we stream on a good week two or three times a week. We're bringing out all these new features and this all has to fit under one roof and it's bringing structure into it. I love that.

Wren [00:35:33]

A couple of years into the formation of Shibari Study, a global pandemic happens. How did the lockdowns shape Shibari Study?

Anton [00:35:45]

So this changed everything because then, I mean, it's been years that I haven't really been in an event. And I don't know, I think if we're talking just more generally without talking about Shibari Study specifically, but how the pandemic impacted the bondage scene from what I see online and what I hear when I still do meet people who are in the community and talk with them is, you know, I think it did both some good and some bad. Like the bad, the negative effects obviously, were that, as Anton said, the whole point of this practice is to connect with other people physically and emotionally and like very directly. It's really like a tunnel through, you know, the walls and all of a sudden people couldn't do this. They couldn't meet their partners, they couldn't go to events, they couldn't socialize. So for people who are really into the community and socializing aspect of shibari who love to go to rope jams and meet new people like, you know, like-minded people and fellow kinksters. I think that was really, really tough and really difficult. And I don't think that Shibari Study and other online platforms, that do exist, could bridge that gap. Like we could still provide knowledge, but we couldn't do anything about the lack of physical connection. But I guess what it did in a more positive way is that I am pretty sure it allowed a whole new generation of people who were curious and interested to start in a way that, as frustrating as it might have seemed to them, really help them build some knowledge before they went out there and met new people and trusted them with their bodies and hearts. And by the time they could again, like go to jams and meet people, I feel like all the time they had to spend online on different platforms learning probably, actually helped them build like a lot more of a clear idea of what they want and maybe what they don't want and how they want to approach it. And I think maybe for some people who were already active, it gave them the opportunity to also like sit back, slow down, relax because I think pretty much everyone new to anything but I feel like especially with shibari with this sort of like kind of addiction that it triggers in the very beginning, a lot of people, especially bottoms become very, very greedy and bulimic very quickly. I was definitely one of those. And it's a lot of very young people. So if you start and you discover shibari, you know, later in your adult life and you probably already have a partner that you trust and know that you're starting this with, I think you're pretty okay. You know, even if things go wrong, you already have like a foundation of trust and love. But for a lot of very young people who just kind of jump into this very excited and still naive, you get yourself into really tricky situations and it doesn't necessarily go wrong, but it can go wrong very quickly.

Wren [00:39:02]

Absolutely.

Sīn [00:39:02]

And I feel like the pandemic forced everyone to slow down. And as bad as it is and as bad as it was, I think there was also this positive aspect to it.

Wren [00:39:15]

That makes total sense. I was the same way where I got into it and went very, very quick. If I could tell myself anything, it would be slow down. But I don't know anybody that's been able to slow down. Do you think it's possible to tell someone that's just found rope bondage, hey, take it slow.

Sīn [00:39:31]

I mean... Wow.. Well, I mean, you can you can tell people to slow down. I think everyone was told to slow down by someone else who's been doing it for a longer time and was like, hey, maybe you want to, you know, take baby steps. I think it comes down eventually to people's nature. Some people are more like wired for like self-protection than others. And these people will listen. But if you're a bit more, you know, impulsive and like, have these very intense drives, shibari will definitely kind of activate this. It provides so many positive things that it's difficult to see how easily you know, how slippery of a slope it can be. But I do think that maybe the most positive thing that not Shibari Study but the online, the general like online world around kink and bondage has done is provide so much, like stories, there's so much things that are out there of like stories of people that went through something difficult, public call-outs, public like takedowns of venues and certain community leaders who were extremely toxic. People sharing their experiences. People being much more transparent. There's not really any gatekeeping left. There is maybe a little bit in certain like, you know, schools or groups of people. But mostly I feel like everyone has kind of like agreed to go for that, you know, like let's share as much as we can. And there's so much knowledge out there and there are so many people willing to share their mistakes. And share what happened to them, but also share what they have done to others. I feel like there's more accountability and this is more accessible now.

Wren [00:41:28]

That makes total sense.

Sīn [00:41:29]

So maybe, the combination of all this being out there just a click away and people in your direct surrounding being like, hey, slow down, probably has brought more people to reflect than ten years ago or 15 years ago.

Sīn [00:41:47]

Where are we going with Shibari Study? What is on the horizon? What's happening?

Anton [00:41:52]

What's happening? Shibari Study, we've got the podcast now, obviously, which is a great feature that we're really excited for. And then there's the blog, which we're working on. We've been working on the blog for more than a year and we're hoping for it to finally be out there in the world that we can share all of this great content that's being written.

Wren [00:42:11]

What kind of stuff is being written?

Anton [00:42:13]

Oh, goodness gracious. It it ranges. It ranges. I've got a spreadsheet, so it's probably at least 50 lines of great, great topics. It goes from how to start with bondage, how to be a bottom without without experience and how to navigate tying with somebody new. It goes from different knots, the approaches of different TKs. We've got the different styles. We've got the history of shibari. We're hoping to release all of these articles in the very beginning, and then we're going to grow from there. It's really exciting because this is one of the few features that we can really put out there. And it's free information that we're really bringing out there. And it's really exciting to finally have reached a point where we can create this information hub that everybody can find and finally access.

Anton [00:43:07]

Yeah, that's really exciting.

Sīn [00:43:09]

 I feel like the last year, you were kind of like setting up the ground for a bunch of new things like even the Discord channel that you kind of, I don't know, like went so fast. Like we were having a team meeting and we're like, how can we actually, like, foster an actual community where people can, you know, exchange and like, share their progress? It's sometimes so difficult on Instagram or like social media for people to share kink-related like images or even like text.

Anton [00:43:41]

And also ask questions.

Sīn [00:43:43]

And ask questions and have a better access to like teachers responding to them. So I think now is kind of the beginning of us realizing that. Shibari in itself as a product was something that we had achieved, like we've recorded. I don't know how many videos are on the website now, but I think it's something like around 700 videos. There were so many different teachers, like this was kind of our goal from two years ago. It was to like move away from just this is a website where you will find classes from Gorgone, to this is a website where you can find just general bondage education from different perspectives, even have like the same things being taught by different people from different angles. So that was kind of the previous goal that I think we've pretty much achieved. There's still a lot we want to do to bring even more like variety to the content and also more like diversity in the approaches and the teachers and bottoms being represented. But we've pretty much achieved the grounding of this goal. And we started to feel like it's not really enough if we want this to be complete. And I don't know. I feel like at some point we basically had kind of two choices. One choice was how do we continue producing content online that would be free and just also different formats in order to bring like also different perspectives and different information. Because we've had people that, I don't know, I believe were like wonderful teachers, but not necessarily of the technique. But like in terms of the history or just general like reflection around those topics. But that didn't feel like they had any like technical content they would want to teach on video. So one option was this like let's go for just different formats online and the other option was, I guess, at some point maybe we should open a venue. And pretty much immediately as this thought came up, we were like no. Like this, like that would be very destructive to the general ecosystem. And also it's just not what we want to do. And it would come with this sense of like, you know, Shibari Study instructors like, you know, when people say... If we talk about someone teaching on our website as a Shibari Study instructor, it just meant, it just means they have taught something on Shibari Study. But we're not affiliated. They're not representing a specific style or school of thought. And that's something that was very important for me at least. Curating the content is to really give people freedom to teach whatever they would teach anyways. And you know, it would come with this whole thing of maybe like certificates and something rigid. And we really didn't want to do this. So we completely shut down this idea and decided to really stay and, you know, in our line which is online and then just expand from there. And like from this point on, basically Anton and the team came - like they came up with the Dischord idea and the podcast idea and the blog idea and whatever will come next. But I think the future plans of Shibari Study are to try, I don't know, maybe now I'm speaking for myself but try and not change it too much, actually. Just like continue to follow our original mission, which is just providing as much education as we can and make it accessible to as many people as we can. That's really the core mission of Shibari Study. How can we just spread the knowledge and that's it? And then people will do what they will do with it. And our only responsibility is to facilitate the transmission of this knowledge. So I don't know. I think it's important that we find a balance, that you know, there's enough growth that the project sustains itself but without starting to just look for new ways to expand. And I think that has been also a really interesting aspect of this entrepreneurial journey is, I mean, obviously it is a capitalistic venture because it is an entrepreneurial venture. It's a project that we were growing. And as it grows, it generates more profit and more reach and the community is growing. So how to find the balance with this fact and accepting it, which that's something I resisted also a lot in the beginning. It made me feel very conflicted because it goes against some of my values. So understand that this is what we're doing, but then really still try to infuse it as much as possible with our values that are to not go nuts on this basically and try as much as possible to never like lose sight of what the original mission is and get too greedy or too crazy. So I think Anton has been working mostly with the team on improving what we have and just make what we had from the beginning just better. Look better, bigger catalog, you know, more diverse format of delivering that information but not divert from this. So I don't know. I don't think there's a crazy future for Shibari Study basically, just an improvement of what we have now.

Anton [00:49:31]

There's no crazy future. And like, the formula is set. Once the blog is out, that's it. That's Shibari Study as it is and will continue to be. I think what people have to look forward to now is great content. It's performances. We shot two days with Kinoko-san. Great, great instructor this time.

Sīn [00:49:53]

I think our job from now on is just to continue inviting the right people.

Anton [00:49:57]

Bring good people on board.

Sīn [00:49:58]

Exactly. That's pretty much it which is already a challenge in itself because I personally wouldn't trust just anyone to teach on our platform. We're pretty selective and it's a difficult selection because there are so many criterias. Like we want it to be technically, you know, high level. We want it to be also like great humans that we love and trust. And we just like who they are and how they want to present, whether presenting. So there's like a, you know, like kind of a human skill aspect. There's a technical skill aspect. There is do they want to do this. There are also a lot of people were like, no, I don't want to be a Shibari Study instructor. That's not the way I want to teach. And of course, we respect that. There are people who feel like they're running out of content or insecure to teach their content in this way. There are just so many aspects that basically our biggest challenge that will always remain a challenge is continue to create beautiful content with beautiful people and try to not produce crap content just because we need to create content. So I guess this will remain forever the number one challenge of this project.

Wren [00:51:17]

I don't think anybody has ever taken the word crap content and Shibari Study and put it together. I mean, nothing you two made has been anything but spectacular.

Sīn [00:51:28]

Thank you so much.

Anton [00:51:28]

Thank you.

Wren [00:51:28]

Thank you two for spending the day with me. I learned so much from both of you. Seriously. You're both inspiring things.

Anton [00:51:38]

So good to catchin up.

Sīn [00:51:39]

Thank you so much, Wren.

Wren [00:51:41]

You're welcome.

Anton [00:51:42]

It's really good chatting.