The lexicon of the Shibari space has more points than a tortoise shell tie, read until the end to see how this artform is tethering previously hidden spaces to the device you carry in your pocket. The dungeon door is open and is transforming views on the multifaceted kink world in an organic manner that is more holistic than the heteronormative holly wood films on the subject, think 50 shades.

Anything that pertains to sex, no matter how obscure, is usually met with moral panic. Western sex saturated society, is long shrouded in guilt, ignorance and taboo’s yet I’ve noticed in my exploration of this niche that Shibari brings to the fore new societal discourse that address these taboo’s. ‘If sex and the sexual are as important as these inhibitions insist, then academics and practitioners ought to reflexively study their meanings, embodied manifestations, implications and links to other spheres rather than shy away from these topics, thus confronting detrimental sexual stereotypes.’ (pg.19)

If you’re up to speed on my blog bonanza on my big knotty niche, then you’ll recall I ended my last post with an epiphany that the D&D lords like themselves a bit of Shibari. But of course they do, it’s role playing, fantasy and based around a ‘scene’. The media framed D&D as escapism to the extent that individuals would forget how to cope with reality and media and scholars viewed links between D&D and deviance, such as criminology and satanism.

The world of kink has been previously seen through a deviant lens but the population of social media with perspectives and expressions that disintegrate this view is negating a cultural shift. That what is accepted as normal and healthy sexuality is not determined by nature but changes with the values and norms of a particular society at a particular place and time.

As my ethnography evolves, this bound medium appears to unravel our uptight past and offer a doorway of education and acceptance through our cybernetic media relationships. People who practice shibari are shifting the narrative, even describing the process as ‘therapeutic’. And of course it is not at all surprising that letting go of freedom can produce very liberating effects.