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University of Chicago to offer ‘Intro to Rope Bondage’

Source: Thecollegefix.com.

USA – CHICAGO – University of Chicago’s annual Sex Week is in full swing, with the seven-day extravaganza including an “Introduction to Rope Bondage” class and a “Taste of Kink” workshop.

The two X-rated events, slated for Sunday, are only for students 18 and older, and the kink course even includes a trigger warning: “implied violence, knives, electricity, blood mentions, cutting mentions,” the agenda for the kink workshop states.

The intro to rope bondage class invites students “curious about tying people up” to come learn more, while the kink workshop will allow students to explore “violet wands, wax, paddles” and more items, the agenda states.

The two workshops are among 20 different events that make up “Sex Week,” which runs Jan. 30 through Feb. 5. Other events include: “Dirty Talk and Fantasy,” “Sex and Pain: From Ow to Wow,” “Writing and Editing Sex,” “Masculinity in Iran,” “Bible Thumping” and “A Consumer’s Guide to Sex Toys.”

The week also includes porn-related events: a film screening of “Hot Girls Wanted,” a documentary on the amateur porn industry, and “The World of Porn,” a discussion on the porn industry.

The climax event is the university’s “Lascivious Ball,” described as “a night dedicated to fun, free expression, and celebrating sexuality,” organizers state.

“Our goal is to provide a space, perhaps an excuse, to start a conversation about everything related to sex and sexuality, and hope that this openness about any other everyday topic continues far beyond the week,” organizers add.

This year’s Sex Week follows similar agendas from years past. Last year the University of Chicago’s “Sex Week” included events on everything from enchanting love candles and BDSM tutorials to a talking dirty how-to and a “sexual pain” workshop. In 2014, students were given the opportunity to experience what it feels like to be sexually flogged and electrocuted.

See more larger photo’s: www.thecollegefix.com.

Inside the Strange, Sexual ‘Female Supremacy’ Movement

Source: Broadly.vice.com.

UK – LONDON – Female supremacy is the belief that women are inherently superior to men, and we should build a society that reflects that. Most of the people who espouse it, perhaps unsurprisingly, are really into BDSM.

When Madame Caramel, a 39-year-old professional dominatrix living in London, first picked up my Skype call, she appeared momentarily distracted. “Sorry, when my Skype is on, all my slaves start messaging me,” she said. Her hair was wrapped elegantly behind her head, and her smile, broad and warm, radiated as I asked her what female supremacy meant to her.

“Patriarchy has to end. For us to survive, women have to lead,” she said. “The way men have done it for over these years… it’s not correct. If the women lead the way, there’s a much bigger chance there’s not going to be any wars, any problems. Men think with their cocks. They’re easily manipulated.”

Put more simply, female supremacy is the belief that societies should be women-run, and that men, being inferior, should defer to women always. This ideology isn’t all that new, though it is extreme: In the 60s and 70s, radical feminist theorists such as Andrea Dworkin, Monique Wittig, and Mary Daly argued for societies in which women ruled, though most of these imagined utopias were separatist in nature. Most infamously, Valerie Solanas argued in The SCUM Manifesto that contemporary society was totally irrelevant to women, and thus “civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking” women had to “overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.” (She later told the Village Voice that the group she envisioned in the text—the Society for Cutting Up Men, the eponymous SCUM—was “just a literary device.”)

“The male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage,”

Solanas wrote in the introduction to the SCUM Manifesto. “To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease, and males are emotional cripples.

Though Madame Caramel shares a longing for a matriarchal society and keen awareness of Man’s mistakes, she practices female supremacy on a micro level—in her personal relationships. For her, female supremacy exists between two people who agree on a set of rules, all centered on this one: the woman makes the calls. She’s in a loving dominant-submissive relationship with her partner of four years, who proposed to her last year in Luxembourg Garden. Her ring is huge.

“The way we decided that this relationship could work for me was if I were in charge of everything,” she said. “It’s so much better when you take the responsibilities out of the man. My partner is a highly intelligent man—he’s there for me for whatever I need—but the control is all mine. I buy the furniture I want. I buy the car I want. I travel to where I want. He just has to follow and enjoy the ride. He loves it.”

Female supremacy is not for everyone, Madame Caramel says, even though it’s the best way to live and play and fuck. The underlying idea—that women are supreme—structures her relationship with her partner and with her slaves, of which she has two types: paying and lifestyle. The former pays for hour-long or overnight session, while the latter offers something a bit more intimate. Her lifestyle submissives—”and this is when my female supremacy takes over”—pay her money so she can maintain her extravagant lifestyle, yet the relationship is not transactional; she says she feels a deep love for them. They’re the ones who treat her like a goddess, the ones she trains to give her oral properly, the ones who recognize her pleasure is paramount.

Sadie Synn, a lifestyle and professional dominatrix who has been in the BDSM community for four-and-a-half years, makes a similar distinction between lifestyle and more professional, paid client relationships. “There will be lifestyle relationships that will be female supremacy relationships, where the man is a slave,” she said. “I’ve known individuals in relationships where they give their pay checks to their wife: She’s their domme, they don’t own anything, they do a lot of chores around the house. The woman makes all the decisions. When you get into the dominatrix side, that’s where it becomes much more a performance. Where lifestyle dommes really take it much more to heart, on the pro-domme side it can be much more of a show.”

Synn is a trans woman, which gives her a unique perspective on the female supremacist ideology. “Ironically, I started off in the community as a male submissive, or a male slave,” she recalled. “A lot of that had to do with my own personal transition; I was really attracted to femdom.”

Synn started taking hormones in 2014. As estrogen levels increased in her body, she says, she noticed how much more she was able to feel. She started to believe that testosterone had “emotionally muted” her. This sense of heightened emotional intelligence, as well as her increased involvement in the BDSM community, cemented her female supremacist views, which she says land on the more accepting side of the spectrum.

Intuitively, the ideology makes sense to Synn, who considers herself an intersectional feminist. “For me, it’s about recognizing the value of feeling more emotional and how that can lead to rational thought. If you look around, what percentage of crimes are done by men, what percentage are done by women?” she said. “It’s obvious that men still act like animals because of testosterone. A lot of our political figures do stupid shit. You typically see women act better. They run things better. I’m just going off of those observations. Women do things better.”

Outside of the BDSM community, the idea of female supremacy is not widely propagated, not even among radical feminists, as one might reflexively assume. The philosophy is intimately informed by the slave-master dynamic and dominatrix culture, teetering between fetish and worldview, if you can even disentangle the two. Complicating matters, the discussions surrounding female supremacy exist almost exclusively on the internet and private spaces; there is no “voice” for the movement, which can make its aims difficult to pinpoint. The Facebook group “The New World Order of Female Supremacy” has just 110 members and is somewhat puzzling—both admins are men. The description of the group reads as follows:

“Our movement supports the idea of world peace through gynarchy, government by women.”

On our groups, all women are presumed to be strong women. They are addressed as Mistress. Sissies are presumed to be servants of the female members. Men are presumed to be servants of female members and sissies. We welcome good quality images of women, and anything else that will not upset Facebook terms of service.

To what extent would these two men—and the group’s other 108 members—advocate for “gynarchy” and government by women in real life?

According to Sue Storm, a fetish educator and host of the podcast In Bed with Dr. Sue, who worked as a professional dominatrix for forty years, most online female supremacy advocacy is “a façade.” “It’s all to make the money,” she told Broadly. “Out of all the women that say they’re female supremacists, only two to three percent are actual female supremacists.”

“It’s obvious that men still act like animals because of testosterone.”

She used to identify as a female supremacist, she added, but has grown disgusted by the bickering and bullying among young female dommes, which she feels has made the true realization of female supremacy impossible. “The whole femdom sisterhood is garbage. We are not evolved enough,” she said, noting that the rise of financial domination, or “findom,” has led to younger domes adopting female supremacist personas in order to attract subs willing to lavish them with gifts and money. “Most women who get into this business are doing it for quick bucks, so there’s a lot of infighting. It’s rare to see two women who aren’t fighting. How is that supreme behavior?”

In July 2013, a 30-year-old polyamorous dominant who goes by Domina Jen wrote a blog post entitled “Why I No Longer Believe in Female Supremacy,” in which she expressed similar reservations about the nebulous movement. While she still believes that “females are biologically and physically superior to males,” she wrote, she is uncomfortable making essentializing generalizations.

“I don’t want respect just because I’m a woman,” she wrote. “That feels fake and empty. I want to be respected because of my actions, because of who I am. There are countless women who are weak-willed, weak-minded, self-serving, and cruel. I’ve known too many women who do not deserve any kind of respect. And the idea of those women being in charge of anything or anyone is fucking terrifying.”

“Do I think that women need to rise to power? 100 percent. Do I think we’re supreme above all others? Absolutely not.”

Dr. Sue, too, is decidedly anti-female supremacy, but needs for men to get it together. “Do I think that there’s a hierarchy and that men have screwed everything up? Hell yes. White men have been the bane of everybody’s existence. Do I think that women need to rise to power? 100 percent. Do I think we’re supreme above all others? Absolutely not. There is no better race, there is no better gender, there is no better anything. We are all the same. And we need to all care for each other that way.”

And yet, there is something alluring about a consensual, loving relationship that is structured by the model of female dominance. Every Friday, Madame Caramel and her fiancé celebrate what they call “FemDom Friday.” She sleeps in, while he gets a bit of work done and then begins the preparations: setting out the outfit she chose the night before, cooking, drawing a bath, pleasuring her. Her fiancé devotes the entire day to her needs and wants. It sounds idyllic.

Madame Caramel plans on retiring in April, after 14 years as a professional dominatrix, so she can spend more time with her soon-to-be husband. “Although I have other lifestyle slaves and will continue to give them attention, my focus right now is on my partner,” she said. “Because I want to train him even better to the best of my abilities. There are some things that he cannot do properly yet—like baking. And I love cakes! He cheats. He buys that Betty Crocker. No, no, no, no. I want it baked from scratch.”

See more larger photo’s: Broadly.vice.com.

LINKS:(TIP)

Website: Madamecaramel.com.

Twitter: Twitter.com/madamecaramel2.

EL James, movie dominatrix: how the Fifty Shades author cracks the whip in Hollywood

Source: Telegraph.co.uk.

USA – HOLLYWOOD – When EL James thrust her Twilight fan fiction into the laps of erotically-malnourished readers in 2011, spurting all kinds of wonky metaphors and baffling inner monologues into the literary world, she created a monster. But it wasn’t until the reclusive author had her smash-hit Fifty Shades books adapted into films that she exposed a little monstrousness of her own.

Fifty Shades Darker, the sequel to 2015’s whips-and-chains blockbuster, plunges into cinemas next week, but it will be the first film in the franchise to be entirely dictated by EL James herself, the author having carefully removed every element of its predecessor that made her face (as the author might put it) angrier than the colour of the Communist Manifesto.

For while Fifty Shades of Grey earned surprisingly strong reviews, particularly for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s directing, a hotbed of tension erupted off-screen, spurred on by an author with an incredibly specific vision for the adaptations of her books and a cast and crew powerless to stop her.

James, real name Erika, was positioned in a sweet spot from the very beginning, the rampant success of her Fifty Shades trilogy granting her unique power when it came to selling off the film rights. While it’s not unusual for multiple studios to pursue bestsellers, the sheer buzz of James’s trilogy had at least 10 studios and dozens of Hollywood producers on their knees, begging the author to sign over her material.

James subsequently executed her dominance over negotiations, the author informing prospective studios that she must have full veto power over the film’s director and writer, its cast, marketing materials, sets and locations. After immediately walking away from a $3 million offer from New Regency Films, and later a $5 million offer from Sony, James partnered with Universal Pictures and Focus Features for an undisclosed sum – reportedly seduced by Focus’s back catalogue of prestige adult drama, something she felt mirrored her novels.

While Universal producers Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca knew they had a bountiful property at their fingertips, they also weren’t stupid — what only semi-worked on the page needed a vigorous tune-up before it could be adapted for the big screen.

Their safe word turned out to be Saving Mr. Banks, or more specifically its screenwriter Kelly Marcel. Despite the Emma Thompson starrer being about as sexy as a saggy girdle, Marcel knew about characterisation, and was considered the perfect writer to flesh out the novel’s protagonists.

Marcel has revealed that she was drawn to the novel because of its bare bones story, even if much of what the characters actually said to one another was atrocious. “I wanted to remove a lot of the dialogue,” she told the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast in 2015. “I felt it could be a really sexy film if there wasn’t so much talking in it.”

Universal executives sparked to Marcel’s ideas for the screenplay, which included a non-linear narrative full of sexy flash-forwards and unexpected spanking.

“I wanted to remove a lot of the dialogue. I felt it could be a really sexy film if there wasn’t so much talking in it.”

Kelly Marcel, screenwriter

“I very much wanted to do something different with the screenplay, and when I spoke to the studio and the producers and made that quite clear, they were very enthusiastic about that and kind of loved the things I wanted to do,” she continued. “I didn’t want the story to be linear; I wanted it to begin at the end of the film, and for us to meet in the middle. So you start with the spanking, and you have these sort of flashes that go throughout the film.”

But once Marcel and James bashed themselves together, spending a week tirelessly scribbling in Marcel’s London home, they rapidly came apart at the seams. James was unhappy with Marcel’s altercations to the source material, and reportedly wanted more sex — she was already unhappy that the novel’s infamous “used tampon” scene wouldn’t make the cut.

“When I delivered that script was when I realised that all of them saying, ‘Yeah, absolutely this is what we want!’, and, ‘You can write anything you like and get crazy and artistic with it’ — that was utter, utter bulls—,” Marcel continued. “Erika was like, ‘This isn’t what I want it to be, and I don’t think this is the film the fans are looking for.’”

Meanwhile, casting for Christian Grey hit a bump. The studio’s pick, Ryan Gosling, quickly passed, along with James’s personal choice for the role: somewhat inevitably, Twilight’s Robert Pattinson. James also vetoed both Matthew Bomer and Vampire Diaries star Ian Somerhalder, deeming neither talented enough to portray her protagonist. Eventually James and the studio settled on Sons of Anarchy actor Charlie Hunnam, but he was reportedly eager to have the Christian character reworked.

“I know that Charlie had a lot of notes,” Marcel has said. “I know that he felt that the character of Christian wasn’t there for him in the way that he needed him to be.”

To placate Hunnam and in response to the Marcel/James fallout, studio bosses welcomed a third party into the metaphorical bedroom. Following a suggestion from Taylor-Johnson, Universal hired playwright Patrick Marber to polish off the script, reportedly to improve characterisation. Marber, best known for writing Closer and Notes on a Scandal, was good friends with Taylor-Johnson, having worked with her on a short film titled Love You More.

“The producers said it was wonderful. ‘You’ve saved our asses, you’re a hero’. And then I was fired.”
Patrick Marber, playwright

But once the new script was thrust her way, James reportedly erupted. According to the Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye, James despised Marber’s rewrites, screaming “Nothing he has written is in my book!”, and threatened to disown the film on her Twitter account if his polish wasn’t tossed. Within days, Marber was discharged from the project.

“[The producers] said it was wonderful. ‘You’ve saved our asses, you’re a hero’. And then I was fired,” Marber told The Independent. “I felt a bit sad because I thought I’d written a good script. But I totally understood. If you take on a rewrite job – it’s whore’s money and don’t expect them to love you for being a whore.”

Reportedly, as a result of the drama, Hunnam tensed, sighed and pulled out of the project. Jamie Dornan came on board in his place, and a final, James-approved, script rolled before the cameras.

But as shooting began, James reportedly paid daily visits to the set, micro-managing everything from set design (she immediately scrapped Taylor-Johnson’s more arty ideas for Christian’s “playroom”) to costumes (double-breasted suits “weren’t sexy”).

She also overruled much of the cast and crew when it came to the film’s final line. When Anastasia Steele succumbs to Christian Grey’s spank frenzy at the novel’s climax, she utters “Stop” and flees. But Taylor-Johnson’s preference was for Anastasia to whimper “Red”, which is otherwise used as a ‘safe word’ between the couple.

“It ended on a really smart note and Erika wouldn’t allow it,” an insider told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s just a bummer.”

“Erika feels so protective over the initial novel, and the way fans are going to react to [the film],” producer DeLuca told Vanity Fair. “She’s the keeper of the flame, really, for her fans…. [But] a picture is worth a thousand words, so sometimes what works in a novel doesn’t work in a movie, and vice versa. There were some spirited debates.”

Meanwhile, Taylor-Johnson was eager to add elements of artistry to the film. But barriers seemed to be placed in front of her at every turn, particularly when it came to her artistic magnum opus: a lingering shot of erotic jellyfish.

“We went to a beautiful aquarium and there were these jellyfish. They’re so sexual, jellyfish, when you look at them in tanks – just the way they move, the fluidity,” she told The Guardian. “So there was a scene when we go into Anastasia’s world and her head, and we just had these jellyfish on the screen. It was beautiful, very impressionistic. Everyone went, ‘What the f— are those jellyfish doing there?’”

“I wasn’t happy to let them go. I could see they weren’t going to work for a wide audience, but I could also hear Sight & Sound magazine going, ‘The jellyfish were amazing’, and because I care about the Sight & Sound review, I was hanging on to them for dear life.”

“After a while,” she continued, “the studio realised ‘OK, we’ve hired a slightly anarchic artist. How are we going to rein her in a bit?’”

“It’s very difficult to come on as a director and to be handcuffed that way,” Marcel has said, “and not be able to fulfill your creative vision because there are certain restrictions on you.”

“I kept trying to remind myself that they hired me for a reason,” Taylor-Johnson recalled to Vanity Fair. “Some people said to me, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t quit.’ I was like, ‘Why would you think I’d quit?’ I never quit anything. Not without a fight.”

“[James and I] battled all the way through. She’d say the same. There were tough times and revelatory times. There were sparring contests. It was definitely not an easy process, but that doesn’t mean to say that it didn’t come out the right way.”

In the end, Taylor-Johnson has suggested the pair reached something of a compromise, even if her quotes have a slight tinge of exasperation to them. “I truly believe I’ve done absolutely the best job I could possibly do under so many circumstances, and that I could stand next to it and feel proud,” she told The Guardian.

Marcel has still not seen the film. “My heart really was broken by that process,” she told Bret Easton Ellis. “I don’t see it out of any kind of bitterness or anger or anything like that. I just don’t feel like I can watch it without feeling some pain about how different it is to what I initially wrote.”

While stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan were contractually obligated to come back for two sequels, Taylor-Johnson and Marcel were only signed up for one film. They made it clear they were not interested in returning, not that James was flustered. As pre-production geared up on Fifty Shades Darker, it became increasingly clear that James herself wished to write the film’s screenplay.

I truly believe I’ve done absolutely the best job I could possibly do under so many circumstances, and that I could stand next to it and feel proud.

Sam Taylor-Johnson, director

“There’s an Erika who is fun, fancy-free, and enjoying her success a lot, and the Erika who is obsessively controlling the property,” a friend of James’s told Vanity Fair. “She truly believes that she has to control it because of the fans, because she’s the only one they trust.”

Universal, unwilling to allow a novelist with no screenwriting experience anchor their blossoming franchise, sought a compromise: they subsequently signed up screenwriter Niall Leonard to adapt the sequel. While his credits, among them BBC soaps Ballykissangel and Monarch of the Glen, don’t exactly scream “spank me with a riding crop”, Leonard’s pre-existing connection to the Fifty Shades phenomenon is decidedly intimate in nature: EL James is his wife.

Reactions to the upcoming sequel remain under tight lock and key, leaving a lingering mystery as to whether it will conjure the same surprisingly positive reaction that greeted its predecessor. But regardless of quality, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey’s hyper-controlled production indicates that as much as her novels describe Christian Grey as the tortured, spanking dominant, it’ll be EL James who eternally cracks the whip.

See more larger photo’s & video: www.telegraph.co.uk.

Comment tom verhoeven (BDSMradio.EU)
Mmmm let me be one evening te slave from EL James

Bondage, lace and models in pig masks – inside LA’s most exclusive sex parties, where a ticket costs £1,500 and ‘Gwyneth Paltrow even visited’

Source: Thesun.co.uk.

USA – LOS ANGELES – Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog Goop has promoted the parties – which women can attend for free, if their pictures are attractive enough.

WE’VE all heard of the swanky sex parties taking place in Britain, but Los Angeles’ erotic elite have stepped things up a notch.

Hollywood’s filthy rich residents are paying £1,500-a-night to attend the high-end Snctm sex parties, which Gwyneth Paltrow has apparently visited in the past.

Dominus members of Snctm sex club pay £60,000-a-year for access to private rooms at the parties, and a ‘network of sex experts’.

Men normally pay £1,500 and can get a discounted rate of £1,200 per event if they bring a female partner. While women don’t pay to attend – but must apply by submitting a full-length photo for vetting.

New York Post reporter Heather Hauswirth went inside LA’s most exclusive sex party, to find out what really goes on behind closed doors.

It’s not exactly your average party. Heather observed: “Around us, a mostly female crowd of models, young professionals, actresses and assistants strut about in couture lingerie, much to the delight of older male guests in tuxedos.

“One 20-something blonde crawls on the carpeted floor wearing red lace and a face mask with a leather pig snout and ears.

“Other pretty young things wear metallic pasties and black badges that read ‘Eat me’ or ‘Touch me’ on their décolletage, while holding silver platters of bite-size brownies and parfaits.

“A man who calls himself the ‘Bunnyman’ and wears a black leather mask and rabbit ears demonstrates various Japanese bondage techniques on an aroused woman sitting upright in a plush, gold-painted chair.”

See more larger photo’s & video: www.thesun.co.uk.

Comment tom verhoeven (BDSMradio.eu)
For £60,000 we make 20 year BDSMradio.EU

Mariah Carey destroyed by fans as she strips to bondage gear: ‘Escorts have more class’

MARIAH Carey has got seriously sexy for her new music video.

Source: Dailystar.co.uk.

UK – The 46-year-old Heartbreaker star is seen in a clip for new song, I Don’t, wearing an array of raunchy ensembles.

This includes a bondage-style leather bodysuit, which is slashed to reveal her underwear underneath.

Mariah can also be seen in laying on a car bonnet in a white lace bodysuit, complete with suspenders and stocking.

She pulls a number of seductive poses to the camera as she smoulders into the camera lens.

However, instead of being impressed, fans destroyed the star for her sexy image throughout the clip, which was posted on Instagram.

One wrote: “Please put some clothes on. We miss classic MC.”

Another added: “Totally agree Mariah Should dress her age, she sure don’t act like it.”

A third went in even more, scolding: “Escorts have more class! Very disappointed by the Mariah’s World also. You’ve showed your true colours.”

That particular follower also said that Mariah’s ex-fiancé James Packer had a “lucky escape”.

The comment comes as it appears Mariah appears be referencing her ex in the new song.

She is heard singing: “Coz when you love someone/ You just don’t treat them bad”.

Mimi also says that the thought she could “trust” the lover she is singing about.

It is thought that James ended the couple’s engagement as he didn’t want his privacy breached in her reality show, Mariah’s World.

It was also claimed that the investor couldn’t handle Mariah’s lavish spending habits.

Despite the backlash, some were still big fans of the diva’s new vid.

One wrote: “She’s back.”

While another added: “loving it.”

Another enthusiastic fan continued: “So beautiful… Keep your head up Momma.”

See more larger photo’s & video: www.dailystar.co.uk.

Comment tom verhoeven(BDSMradio.EU)
Wowwwwwwwww

In pictures: the Japanese art of rope bondage, as practised in Hong Kong

Source: Scmp.com.

CHINA – HONG KONG – Subay, a 20-something Hongkonger, has been visiting Japan for several years to learn shibari – the art of using ropes to restrain and bind – from masters of the craft. She says the practice isn’t necessarily about sex, but about trust, humility – and shame

Subay is part of a small underground group in Hong Kong practising shibari, the Japanese art of rope bondage. It may sound saucy and there’s certainly a kinky element to it, but there’s more to shibari than the more commercialised expressions that have gained attention recently.

Subay – a Hongkonger who prefers to go by just one name and is in her mid-20s – has been going to Japan several times a year for the past three years to take private lessons with rope masters, or nawashi, in Tokyo.

Her first time came during a vacation with her family – she slipped off for a three-hour private class. Her family is still in the dark about her hobby, just as they didn’t have a clue when she got involved with the local BDSM community when she was 18.

“In the BDSM community I just knew about very Western bondage – metal cuffs and restraints. I was involved with a couple who were into shibari and when I started out I was a rope model. I wasn’t thinking of learning this,” she says.

That all changed when an American rope master visited Hong Kong to teach a workshop. But before we get into that, it’s worth putting shibari into its historical and cultural context.

The Japanese have a strong “wrapping culture” – just think of the way they wrap gifts exquisitely, or of the ancient tradition of wrapping trees in winter to protect them from the cold.

Shibari can be traced back to hojojutsu, a method of restraining captives and a form of torture. That form of tying, carried out by samurai hundreds of years ago, involved tying the neck and other areas to restrict prisoners. Another form of punishment involved tying up a prisoner “like a shrimp to restrict the diaphragm so he couldn’t breathe” and putting him on parade.

“Japan has this fascination with tying. Even hojojutsu is not only about punishment and restriction – when they tie criminals there is a certain aesthetic, artistic form to it. If you look at some pictures you will see hojojutsu always involves some kind of diamond shape,” says Subay.

Hojojutsu then morphed into the erotic bondage form called kinbaku – which literally translates as “the beauty of tight binding” -–in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From there it became increasingly popular and made its way into Japanese manga and S&M magazines.

“In the 1920s, more photographers started to do erotic photo shoots that involved bondage. Slowly they were doing it and re-engineering the hojojutsu form into more of an erotic form of tying the women,” says Subay.

The word shibari came into common use in the West at some point in the 1990s to describe kinbaku. Shibari was once strictly an intimate, private activity, but that has changed over the past 20 to 30 years as Japanese culture has made its way West. And along the way the rope-tying art has morphed again, moving away from its private roots to become more of a performance art, although Subay says it is sometimes more akin to a circus show.

To understand shibari as it is practised in Japan, you need to understand something of Japanese psychology. Western society and psychology is very much based around guilt, your personal, emotional guilt, says Subay. But for the Japanese, who have a greater sense of belonging to a group, the keyword is not guilt but shame.

The people who like to pretend they’re dogs

“So when a woman is tied she feels that kind of feeling of shame – psychologically this is very important. The Japanese is very much about shame and exposure and also about embarrassment and humiliation. For some people, torture is the kind of punishment they find beautiful because it is like suffering for the sake of suffering for your partner. It’s the connection, the intimacy, the bond with your partner,” she says.

Back to the American rope master who visited Hong Kong to give a workshop – Subay was keen to attend and hoped that he would use her as a model and suspend her as she’d never tried suspension.

“He said, ‘Oh you are not pretty, you are so heavy, why should I tie you?’ I was so upset,” recalls Subay.

So she took matters into her own hands and learned how to tie herself up, and also how to do a self-suspension. This involved tying herself on the floor and then hoisting herself up by a rope attached to a ceiling hook, which took a lot of core strength.

She began hosting shibari events, but finding a suitable venue was a challenge. Although aerial yoga studios are well equipped for shibari – the ceiling hooks are well suited for suspensions – the issue was with the surveillance cameras in the studio, as most participants were keen for privacy. For this reason she rented her own private studio for a couple of years, but has had to close it recently because of the high rent.

In January last year she hosted Hong Kong’s first shibari festival and invited rope masters from Japan and Taiwan to give workshops. There was a screening of the shibari documentary Jyowa, private tuition and jute rope on sale.

“It was a turning point for shibari in Hong Kong. I think the reason it was so popular was because I posted it on Facebook and the poster got a lot of attention on social media,” she says.

Subay’s rope bondage performances can next be experienced at the Idolize Strange event being held at XXX Gallery in Tai Kok Tsui on February 17. At this event, which will combine shibari performances with electronic music and an exhibition/sale of works by cult Osaka artist Shigetomo Yamamoto, audience members can sign up to get tied or suspended free of charge by Subay.

Let’s be clear – shibari is not about sex, as in intercourse. It is an erotic art, but doesn’t necessarily culminate in the sex act. Subay says she has a “vanilla boyfriend” who isn’t into the scene, but supports her doing it.

“In shibari, it’s more about the fantasy and imagination that you give to the girl. When a girl is completely naked, the bubble has burst. But if you keep teasing her, giving her hints, then it’s going to be more erotic and arousing for the girl,” says Subay.

It’s this element, like an extended foreplay, that Subay most enjoys about being tied up, although these days she is more likely to be the one tying someone up than being bound herself.

“It’s like freeing yourself through restraint. You need to give a lot of trust and confidence to your partner and when you surrender your trust and body to someone it’s a very strong emotion,” she says.

Subay says the shibari scene is changing so fast she doesn’t know what it will be like seven or eight years from now, but she hopes to help break stereotypes about body image.

“A lot of people seem to think that if you are not the fittest model then you cannot be tied. This kind of thinking still exists in Hong Kong – that if you are very strong then you can be suspended for an hour and you are a good model. That’s stupid,” she says.

And the most important lesson she has learned from her shibari experiences? Humility, something she says she learned in Japan.

“A lot of people in the shibari community seem obsessed with power and leadership. They want to be recognised, but that’s not what shibari is about. I don’t aim to be anybody. If I can help people then that is great, but I don’t need people to call me a rope master,” she says.

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