What We Don't Know About Bondage Injuries - And The Study That's Trying to Change That

This article was written based on my conversation with researcher Jess Helmer.

One of the main objectives, main values of Obedience is education - and we can’t educate without research backing what we’re saying. So someone has to sit down and conduct the research - and as a non-academic entity, Obedience is here for it, here to spread the word. This time, I had the pleasure to speak to Jess Helmer - a rope switch and self-tier of about four years, as well as a PhD student in Quantitative Psychology (i.e., the statistics part) at Georgia Tech. She has also been involved in research on kink and health for about four years now. In that time, she has noticed the need for more studies on the injuries people experience when practicing bondage - and, subsequently, for resources which help mitigate or treat those injuries. We met to discuss her ongoing study in which you can be a part of! More on that at the end of this article.

You can participate by filling out this survey. 

How Researchers Define Bondage - and Why the Definition Matters

The estimate range is that about 20 to 90 percent of the population participates in bondage - but that range comes from a handful of studies that asked people whether they'd participated in various kink behaviors, and they got really widely varying participation rates. Helmer’s new study, supervised by  medical professional Dr. Jessica Yih, is different as it focuses solely on bondage. 

Bondage can be considered a pretty broad category, especially as defined by Helmer’s study: using any sort of physical restraint for play, sexual experiences, or artistic expression. This includes rope bondage, leather restraints, handcuffs, and other activities that restrict mobility. It even purposefully includes artistic expression, because some people do bondage purely as an art form — and even if it's less of a kink activity for them, that doesn't mean the risks are any less. And there is a gap in the resources available to the mass audience when it comes to risks that bondage carries.

Why Existing Bondage Safety Resources Fall Short

There are lots of resources on injury out there, and many were founded on people's personal experience — which is always limited, but you do genuinely learn things from experiencing restraint, noticing things, and talking to people. There's a lot of collective knowledge about what tends to be safer and what tends to be riskier.

However, a lot of the available resources aren’t consistent between each other, are drawn from knowledge outside a bondage context or focus solely on nerve damage. The fact that they exist and are sometimes prepared by medical professionals is great, and for now they're the best that's out there. However, just by the nature of there being no research conducted specifically on bondage, there's a lot of uncertainty about what's actually true for it and how grounded any of it is. And the risks are very real. 

The Real Risks of Bondage: Beyond Nerve Damage

The injuries, defined as “a time where symptoms or adverse effects continued after the duration of the bondage experience, and either impacted their day-to-day life or prevented them from participating in bondage as usual — which includes choosing not to participate in bondage over concerns about worsening”, are the main focus of this study. It follows the results of two studies by The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance (TASHRA) on kink and health: their National Kink Health Study in the U.S. in 2016, and International Kink Health Study 2022. Helmer described attending a presentation on the results that showed a bar chart of people who'd reported injuries broken down by activity — impact play and all these different practices — and bondage had a bar that was way longer than all the others. It doesn’t mean “don’t practice bondage, it’s too dangerous” - but it should give a pause as to what can be a hazardous result of this form of play.

The nerve injuries are often the first type you become aware of when you're learning bondage safety. It's likely an indicator that nerve injuries are one of the most common types people experience, says Helmer - although it could also just be that they're more memorable. A part of the concern is that nerve injuries can have severe day-to-day impact which really makes them worthy of the attention. Them being focused on so much is not a bad thing but we also need to expand to other types of potential injuries as well - such as falling in suspension or pulling a muscle as a top, and also including smaller ones people don't notice as much.

Why? Because of cumulative damage. You can tie the same thing the same way ten times with no noticeable issues, and then on the eleventh you've got numbness or mobility loss. So there's cumulative damage from nerves — but Helmer thinks there could be other potential sources of cumulative damage that just aren't as obvious: to our joints, to circulation, for example. This study is supposed to be a stepping stone in researching bondage in more depth and over time.

Who Can Take Part in This Bondage Safety Study?

The study is interested in adults who practice bondage. If you’ve been self-tying - you’re welcome to participate in it as well. And you don’t have to worry about identifying data being collected. The researchers prioritised anonymity - especially because kink and bondage still carry stigma, and it’s a real concern for a lot of people in the community. They made sure the platform wasn't recording IP addresses or geographic information in the data. They also tried to be hands-off with demographics, because in a smaller niche community, the more of them you collect, the easier it becomes to identify someone — so they kept demographics light.

What the Survey Asks - and Why It's Designed to Protect Your Anonymity

Apart from questions about sustained injuries, you will also be asked about your bondage experience. The study takes into account how long people have been doing bondage - more specifically, when they started, because it's easier to think about when you started than to calculate how long it's been. There is also a space to indicate a rough estimate of how often you participate in bondage per month.

You can participate by filling out this survey. 

You sharing your experience (as well as the link to the study with your fellow restraints enthusiasts) is much appreciated.

What This Research Could Mean for Kinksters and Medical Professionals

A lot of people have very real concerns about being open with a mental- or physical-health provider - and a provider doing their best to create a welcoming environment,  even preemptively demonstrating that they'll be nonjudgmental and supportive, that they just want what's best — matters, especially that there have been a lot of not-great experiences kinky people have had with medical professionals (as demonstrated in the aforementioned TASHRA kink health studies). Therefore, part of the goal of this particular study is to inform medical professionals as well as kinksters. However, Helmer stressed repeatedly that this is a beginning, a stepping stone - and a much needed one at that, to more in-depth, specific research on bondage. She wants to be very clear about what remains uncertain and doesn’t want to extend the claims beyond what they can support. 

To explain, for those of you out there interested in academia: this study has no strong experimental design required to demonstrate causation, and is very observational. They won't say "this creates this" or "this directly increases your chance." All they can provide are associations, and that's a starting point which should be picked up by them and other academics to further our understanding and increase our overall safety and wellbeing when playing with restraints. 

Nevertheless, they will be creating resources - which we will be happy, as educators, to share on our Instagram. The resources aim to be as transparent as possible - taking into consideration that, the world we live in might use the information as a trampoline for narrative about dangers of kink.

You can participate by filling out this survey.

If you’re interested in the progress and results of the study, make sure to follow its account on Instagram: @bondage.research.

‍