Introduction

Since about 2012, I’ve been social networking with other male bondage enthusiasts. Back then, Bound Guys wasn’t only a website for porn, but a place where this kind of niche community was able to interact with each other by reading each others’ profiles, posting pictures of ourselves and our rope work, sending private messages, chatting, and getting to use message boards for various purposes. However, as smartphones and app-based social media became more widespread and convenient, Tumblr became a popular platform for the male bondage and bondage-curious communities since it allows pornographic posts, but also allows wide-ranged access for every kind of Internet niche in a way that reflects Instagram and Pinterest. Eventually, Bound Guys underwent some changes and the male bondage social network just became a porn site, leaving the kinky social networking to places like Tumblr and Recon. While the old Bound Guys was a good place for me to start exercising my kinky mind by starting or contributing to discussions on the forums and posting my first bondage fiction stories, Tumblr became a platform where I really put my thoughts and experience with bondage to work and noticed results. Even though Tumblr is largely visual and built around images, short videos, links, and GIFs, it is still a blogging site. Even though most users just reblog other’s posts or post original content to advertise their porn websites or share their personal bondage experiences, my commentary has gotten a mostly warm reception by people commenting on how effectively I manage to articulate things they have thought about without being able to find the right words.

Granted, I believe that a lot of the times, my followers probably roll their eyes when scrolling through their feeds for something to get off to and come across my long-winded rants and pedantic critiques about things in the fetish world that don’t even have visual aids. However, as somebody who has tried researching analyses or discussions of the type of bondage that I know and love, all I typically run into are either people’s personal stories about their own bondage experiences or extremely academic psychological studies that only discuss bondage in the context of hardcore BDSM. Not only was it difficult to find any in-depth discussions or analyses of the type of bondage I like, but a lot of the things that I came across outside of Tumblr focused solely on heterosexual bondage. So, even though I think that my Tumblr followers probably get sick of having to scroll past my extensive, mostly text-filled posts, a good amount of people in the male bondage community seem to crave something more.

As a member of this community, I soon learned that even though the male bondage I saw in movies and TV shows was extremely arousing to me, I wasn’t really into the stuff that mainstream culture considered bondage in the sexual context. Most of the times in mainstream media, bondage would only be considered sexual if it consisted of nudity, leather, and rubber ball gags, which is usually used for either a comedic effect when a vanilla guy was in over his head with a secretly kinky girl or as a way of demonizing “perversion” by showing monstrously queer people using bondage gear to overpower straight protagonists. Even though I enjoy these scenarios to an extent, they aren’t really the type of place I go to whenever I’m turned on by bondage. For example, just seeing Jim Carey tied up in a suit, gagged with masking tape, and manhandled by burly gangsters in The Mask (1994) was enough to get me going at a young age, and I have been drawn to the like ever since. When I discovered porn websites like Captured Guys, Bondage Jeopardy, and Bound Guys, I immediately felt at home because those kinds of websites validated the type of bondage that I liked because they showcased different types of men tied up in ways that were similar to the tied up men on TV and movies. However, unlike the men on TV, the guys being tied up was the focal point of the photo sets and videos on these websites. After learning that there was a wider community out there that was into this version of bondage and interacting with some like-minded men, I eventually became interested in why this was so appealing to me and this newly discovered community. So, Tumblr became my platform for exploring this and this piece is, in a sense, a compilation of my better posts about my version of male bondage.

Why Male Bondage?

Something I find appealing about male bondage is the shift of symbolic power dynamics that occur. In cartoons and old movies, the damsel-in-distress archetype of a victim being tied to a train track with the hopes that some hero would save them was always designated to a woman, but male bondage places a man in that typically feminine position. Traditionally, it is usually the women who are valued based on their looks and ability to care for their husbands and children, while men’s value comes from their ability to provide for and protect their families. Therefore, it isn’t normal for gender and power roles to be switched. And when these roles are switched, it definitely isn’t normal for the dominant woman or submissive man to be considered attractive because dominant women are typically thought of as domineering and crazy and submissive men are considered weak and effeminate. However, the world of male bondage is one of the few places that seems to openly appreciate challenging and playing with the traditional dynamic, especially when it involves the helplessness and humiliation of men.

Men, especially men in suits, have held a great amount of symbolic value in our culture because they appear to be confident, intelligent, and affluent, which often communicates power to most of us. In most contexts, the man in a suit is the one with the most authority and privilege because unlike average Joes, he puts time, money, and effort into his appearance; however, when a woman or men in wife-beaters and Dickies get the upper hand on him, the suit that once made him seem powerful makes him vulnerable for submission. His suit can be used against him because when a stereotypical thug subdues a dapper gentleman, he can be feminized as a “pretty boy” for putting effort into his appearance. When wearing a tie, it can be used as a leash that asserts dominance over Mr. Well-dressed Executive. When removed, his tie could serve as a decadent gag or wrist restraint. If his captor chooses, s/he can easily access his vulnerable torso by undoing a few buttons and his crotch by unzipping his slacks. Therefore, when a suited man’s symbolic power is out of the picture, he has to rely either on his physical strength to attempt fighting back or on breaking out from his restraints, or on his mental strength to endure his submission like a man or attempt strategizing his way out of his situation. This forces the symbolically educated, civilized, and stylish man to act on his primal needs because his status can’t save him anymore. Thus, what I find most interesting about suits in male bondage is that they flip that symbolic association of power on its head because when that confident, intelligent, and affluent man is bound and gagged, all of that power is gone. The tied up man in a suit loses: confidence due to humiliation from being overpowered, his ability to reason when he is gagged, and his accessibility to something that could get him out of almost every bind that he finds himself in, his money. The thought of men, symbolically powerful figures in most cultures, being submissive is an enormous turn on for me.

Men are typically seen as strong and assertive in most contexts, which makes their loss of power when they are tied up all the more satisfying. I really love seeing a guy’s defiant reaction to being bound and gagged because it illustrates how he is completely helpless and submissive, but he isn’t accepting the submissive role that is imposed on him, typically by another man. Since, in the previous paragraph, I demonstrate how my type of male bondage challenges traditional power dynamics of gender and social status, why the context behind particular types of men getting tied up is important, and how the clothing that tied up men wear symbolizes the challenging of power dynamics, as well as the context behind his captivity, I divided this piece into three parts to give each key element of male bondage enough thought. The first section gets into depth about how male bondage plays with different types of power dynamics. The second section explains how story and context play a significant role in male bondage because elaborate explanations about who the tied up man is and why he is tied up sets the stage for how the man will respond to his restraints and whether he is in a state of perill or if he was subdued to be kept out of the way. If the man is in danger, he may be more desperate to get loose and fight those who are posing a threat against him. However, if the man is tied up as a way to be kept quiet and out of the way, his struggling might be for the purpose of getting noticed by a potential rescuer. The third section focuses on the role that clothing plays in male bondage because a man’s attire often relates to his status and authority, as well as the context behind his bondage situation.