Ep110: The Sociology of Rope Communities: An interview with researcher -Ropeology-

“My main motivation is to improve the literature. People need to know what we do is okay…. hearing all the ways people experience pleasure in rope, whether it’s athletic, or meditation, or grounding, or that complicated pain-pleasure, I just love that.” @-Ropeology- Fox and Mya love to deepen their understanding of rope. When they came across Zoey (@-Ropeology-), a BDSM researcher who also does rope, they knew they wanted to talk to her. Zoey is keen for rope and BDSM to be understood better by those who do academic research on it, and in this interview, Fox and Mya talk to her about her findings, particularly around rope bondage practice and community, and the sociology of rope, as well as getting to know more about Zoey’s personal rope journey. In the episode, discover: ◦ Zoey’s personal rope practice as a switch ◦ What the current academic literature says about rope ◦ How rope sub-culture is experienced and how people feel about rope ◦ Zoey’s research on community and how rope connects people beyond their local physical city and country ◦ How Fetlife is used by the rope community versus other platforms like Instagram ◦ How members of the rope community often go through a change cycle in their experience of rope ◦ The pros and cons of practicing rope in public community spaces versus private spaces ◦ The way that people talk about the “complicated pleasure of rope” ◦ Her ideas on future research