Practical meaning

Outside of the subculture, bondage is one of the best-known practices from the spectrum of BDSM varieties and is often combined with other practices. The techniques used range from playful use within non-BDSM related sexuality to professional use and demonstration by Japanese bondage artists. Bondage can be the prelude to erotic role play, used as the sole practice within a session, or used as an aesthetic element outside of a sexual act or session.

Studies

As with many studies of human sexual behavior and sexual fantasies, not all available research is reliably scientifically sound. Due to the proximity of sadomasochistic practices to bondage, statistical separation in surveys and studies was rarely made.

In 1995, psychologists Ernulf and Innala published an analysis in Sweden of the behavior of members of the bondage-related newsgroup alt.sex.bondage. The majority of the contributions (76%) were from men, the active role in erotic bondage was preferred by 71% of heterosexual men, 11% of heterosexual women and 12% of homosexual men. 29% of straight men, 89% of straight women and 88% of gay men reported being tied up. A third of the respondents engaged in sadomasochistic practices related to bondage or understood these practices to be related.

In a 1996 survey of US college students by a magazine, 24% of respondents reported having sexual fantasies involving bondage, led by homo- and bisexual men at 40%, followed by lesbian and bisexual women at 32% , while the number dropped to 24% in straight women and 21% in straight men. 48% of lesbian and bisexual women, 34% of homosexual and bisexual men and 25% of all heterosexuals had practical experience with bondage. As late as 1985, studies in the US found that about half of all men consider bondage play erotic, but only 11% of the average male and female American population had experienced bondage, according to the 1993 Janus Report on Sexual Behavior.

There are many reasons why people let themselves be tied up. In the extensive physical passivity, some people feel free, can concentrate on their inner being and come to rest, as one participant in a study on motivation describes: Some people have to be tied up to be free be in order to be free"). Other people feel powerless, struggle against the bonds and sometimes also feel a masochistic pleasure in the limitations and pain as well as the symbolic degradation or the unavoidable access to erotic stimulation by the partner.

The reasons for active people to tie up their partner are mostly to enjoy the erotic subordination of their partner and the subjectively perceived power imbalance and its visualization. For the sadomasochist, bondage is often a means to an end, for example to keep the tied person defenseless and fixed for subsequent sadomasochistic practices. Optics and haptics can also play a role, and shackles based on aesthetic perception are common.