Masochist’s perspective on bondage

So bondage is one aspect of BDSM I’ve always had a complex relationship with. Some bondage is very hot to me and some does nothing for me. At times I’ve felt like 70% of bondage is a male fantasy of fucking a helpless person. And I’m not knocking that that can be a hot fantasy but it never did much for me. Then there’s bondage with the intent of causing pain, and I know a lot of masochists are into that; obviously it’s a dangerous thing that takes a LOT of knowledge to do without doing permanent damage to the tied person. It just doesn’t do much for me either.

But I saw something a while ago that made it very clear why I like some bondage. There’s a video from the 80’s of a trans woman or maybe a male crossdresser (it’s unclear) being stripped down to panties and control top hose, tied up to an overhead spreader and ankle spreader and flogged all over the front back and sides with a fairly mild leather flogger by a dominatrix. It’s not a punishment dynamic, the submissive is clearly enjoying it masochistically and the domina is clearly doing it for the sub’s enjoyment of the pain, though there is still a soft D/s dynamic.

Before beginning to cuff the submissive, the dominatrix says “this is called a spreader. It’s so you can’t, _or don’t have to_ get away.”

And that was like an lightbulb for me. It explains everything about the bondage that I like. Sure, it’s hot to feel helpless, but the part that’s more psychologically thrilling to me is the idea that a masochistic submissive might _want_ to get tied in order to take a punishment that they would involuntarily flinch away from if untied. And there’s also a submissive angle where you might want to get tied in order to take your punishment like a good girl even if you would involuntarily try to get away or fight.

Obviously you still have a safeword for if a hard limit is or is about to be crossed. But the idea that tying can help you expand your soft limits is so hot… part of the thrill of kink, and the reason for safewords, is that kink can take you into the zone where your body is saying “no” and maybe even your mouth is saying “no,” but you actually want it to continue because the pain is so pleasurable. Otherwise we would just ideally build a kink culture where doms stop when we say “no” or “stop” instead having safewords.

Do any other masochists here experience bondage the same way, as a way of letting you experience things that you want, but your body would recoil from?

Absolutely. I’m not into BDSM or even the D/s dynamics because I’m a total masochist for pain. Not to say I dislike pain - it has it’s time and place. However, I love the intense vulnerability of restraint and exposure. Not that I’ve ever practiced in real life (though it’s been attempted - unsuccessfully - and I’ve fantasized about it often). I’m not into being “tied up and punished” - I’m not even really into the idea of being “punished” only because it goes so uncharacteristically against how I generally behave and who I am as a person.

I love the idea of bondage and rope play because it requires an incredible amount of trust and intimacy between partners. I don’t want someone to tie me up and have their way with me, per se - I want to be tied up and sexually pleasured because the person I’m submitting to knows what I want, knows how to coerce it out of me, and the only way I’m going to reach that point is with a lack of control over my own self. (For example, realistically, I know that I can orgasm multiple times, I know I can squirt. I will never, ever achieve it if I don’t have another body controlling it for me. I, alone, cannot push myself past my body’s own subconscious responses to “Ok, we had one orgasm, we’re satiated and good for now!” But someone else, another body, absolutely can)

This same concept is also the same reason that restrained fantasy medical exams appeal to me so much. Again, it’s not the pain or humiliation of having something done (though, again, pleasurable pain and/or discomfort can absolutely have it’s time and place in such a scenario) - it’s the vulnerability and total lack of control over my own body and how it’s handled/coerced/manipulated by another person - presumably all done for the sake of being a healthy woman.