Bunny

What does bunny mean?

Bunny, literally a young rabbit, is the everyday short form of rope bunny: someone who likes being tied up. Wiktionary describes a rope bunny plainly, as a person who enjoys being bound with rope. The word is a pet name, and not everyone in the rope world uses it.

Why do some people avoid the word bunny?

Some people avoid bunny because it sounds playful. Someone who sees rope as a skill you practice for years wants no word that casts the receiving side as something cute that mostly just hangs there. Hence rope bottom as the alternative.

For a lot of people the playfulness is the very reason to use it, though. There is no right or wrong choice; there is only the question of which word the other person uses about herself. You just ask.

What should you watch for in rope?

The receiving side carries the most risk in rope, and that risk is concrete. A research group described ten people with sixteen nerve injuries from Japanese rope work in Cureus. In ninety percent of the cases it was the radial nerve in the upper arm, and nearly all injuries came right after full suspension. Recovery ran from two minutes to five months.

So the rules of thumb are unremarkable but firm. The encyclopedia names two that always hold: never leave someone who is tied up alone, and check hands and feet for numbness or cold, because that points to pinched nerves or cut-off circulation. Say so the moment you notice it, even if the scene is going well right then. If you are the one hanging in the rope, that is what I watch during a BDSM date, so you only have to feel.

Sources

• Acute Radial Compressive Neuropathy: The Most Common Injury Induced by Japanese Rope Bondage. Cureus, 2023. Provides the ten cases with sixteen nerve injuries, the share of the radial nerve, and the recovery times.
• Bondage (BDSM). Wikipedia. Provides the rule that you never leave someone who is tied up alone, and the check of hands and feet for numbness or cold.
• rope bunny. Wiktionary. Provides the lexical description of rope bunny as a person who enjoys being tied up with rope.

Related terms

• Bondage. The practice a bunny ends up in, with the risks and the rules of thumb.
• Bottom. The broader term for the receiving role, beyond rope too.
• Restraints. The cuffs that do the same job as rope, but spread the pressure differently.
• Rigger. The opposite role: the person who lays the rope and carries the load.
• Rope bottom. The sober word for exactly the same spot in the scene, plus what that side needs to report herself.
• Rope bunny. The full written-out word, and the four centuries of language history that explain why it lands so differently.