I'm not a Safe Rigger

Recently, someone, whether accidentally or purposefully, implied to a friend and bottom of mine that I am an unsafe rigger. At first, I was angry. How could I be unsafe? Don't I take all of the precautions that I should as a responsible top?

But the more I've thought about it, the more I'm realizing that I am not a safe rigger. I do rope that tends to be relatively high risk. If something were to go seriously wrong in my scenes, they could go catastrophically wrong. Here's the thing though. I know that what I am doing is high risk. I know what things could go wrong. I know what I can do to help prevent catastrophic failure during these activities.

And most importantly, my bottoms give informed consent. Every single scene I do has risk associated with it. Every single scene you do has risk associated with it. We choose to do these things because we accept that something could go wrong and are okay with the consequences of something going wrong. It just so happens that I'm a rigger willing to accept a somewhat higher level of risk in my scenes than a lot of people.

There is a current trend that I'm seeing that any time a bottom gets injured, we look for someone or something to blame, or worse, it gets called a 'consent violation', suggesting that while the bottom consented to the activity, they did not consent to the potential of something going wrong. This type of 'consent violation' removes some of the seriousness associated with people that intentionally harm others by ignoring limits. 

I have a bit of a reputation for being difficult to approach and not willing to tie very many people. There are a number of reasons for this but one of the biggest reasons is that I do high risk bondage and will only play with bottoms that can give consent not only for the activities but the risks and possible consequences associated with them.

If you are a bottom looking for rope that you have no chance of ever getting injured, I'm not the right top for you. I am human. Every single rigger is. I have been lucky so far in my time tying to have not caused anything worse than some tingles in someone's hand but I hold no illusions that someday I could make a bigger mistake. I take every precaution not to injure people but even that isn't always enough. It's not enough for me and my bottoms to just be aware of the risks. We do what we can to lower the risks and then accept that even with every precaution in the world, something could still go wrong.

The rope that I do is not safe and I am okay with that.