Rope Philosophy
Rope for me is a tool. It is a tool that I use to express myself to another person. In that frame, I use it for a variety of things: pain, pleasure, fun, silliness, aggression. It is just an extension of my hands and how I feel about the person that I tie. Being mostly self-taught, I pull my influences from many places in my style. To me, this is a point of pride, not a point of shame. While heavily Japanese-influenced, my ties are uniquely my own and designed around achieving the functions I need out of them. I love to tie suspensions with transitions so most of my ties are designed to hold up to that type of abuse. Rope is a big part of who I am and the way that I view rope defines how I tie.
Teaching Philosophy
I am a language teacher by trade. This is the single greatest influence when it comes to how I teach rope. I treat rope as a language and have found great success when I teach as such. Classroom participation and student growth are the two most important things to me, meaning that I am constantly re-evaluating how I can improve my classes to increase gained by all students in my classroom, tops, bottoms, switches, and everyone in between. It is vital to me that I do not separating topping and bottoming education as two distinct domains and therefore include both in all of my classes along with my other two domains of rope: communication and risk reduction. In all of my classes, you will find all four domains covered to hopefully give a more well-rounded educational opportunity.
Consent Philosophy
Consent is a complex topic but I think putting my philosophy out there is very important. I approach consent and play from a mindset of caring. It is much easier to deal with consent topics for me when I decide to truly care about the well-being of the person that I am playing with. I generally use an inclusive model of consent, meaning what we discuss the things that we like and the areas where there are overlap are the things up for grabs during play. Sensitivity to power dynamics is very important and something that I strive for greater awareness about but also hold the people that I play with to the high expectation of communicating with me honestly. I am not a mind reader and have no way of knowing what is or is not okay without them communicating that with me. I expect that when consent is changed, withdrawn or given, that my partner will let me know immediately and I give them the same respect. I also desire open communication after play. Problems arise. And when they do, how they are handled generally says more about the person that the problem in the first place. So, I ask that my partners communicate with me before, during, and after play to ensure that everyone walks away happy and wanting more.