Rigger

What is a rigger?

A rigger is, in the rope scene, the one who ties: the party who lays the rope, carries the load, and takes the binding off again. The word comes from shipping and is a trade term, not a rank. Unlike the Japanese titles nawashi and bakushi, no tradition or path of study is attached to it.

What a rigger does during a scene

Everything that can go wrong is his job. A rigger chooses the binding, spreads the pressure, keeps an eye on how the tied party is doing, and makes sure the rope can come off before it has to.

That starts with reading a body and ends with scissors within reach. A common way it goes: first a few wraps to feel how someone reacts, then the actual binding, asking along the way whether fingers still feel what they should, and finally unpacking in reverse order with time for aftercare. Whoever suspends builds another layer around that: a suspension point, a descent, and someone watching along.

Something like that is not a one-way street. Gabrielle, one of the twenty-three rope practitioners Zoey Jones spoke with for her dissertation at Carleton University, puts it this way: “I like rope that has the conversation, back and forth between the rigger and the bottom. … I really don’t have any interest in doing rope if there’s not at least a little bit of connection.”

Where the word comes from

From ships. Etymonline dates rigger to the 1610s in the sense “one who rigs ships”, formed from the verb rig that from the late fifteenth century meant “to fit a ship with rigging”. From 1912 it also covered aircraft and from 1949 oil rigs.

The nicest find is in the verb itself: rig, according to the same dictionary, may go back to the Indo-European root reig-, “to bind”. Whether that is right, no one knows for sure, but the word the rope scene chose for itself would then have meant, at its source, exactly what it does with it.

In construction, rigger is also a trade with rules. The American labor-safety agency OSHA prescribes in its crane regulation that loads over people “must be rigged by a qualified rigger”. Anyone who hangs a load on a hook has to be demonstrably fit for it. In the rope scene that requirement does not exist, and that difference is exactly what the word does and does not mean there.

Why people call themselves a rigger

Because it is about skill, not authority. Whoever chooses the word says: my pleasure is in the technique, in what rope does to a body and in solving the problem that a binding is.

What it gives runs both ways. For the rigger it is a skill that visibly grows, with a practice that is never finished. For the tied party it is someone who carries the responsibility for what she cannot see, because she lies with her arms behind her back and has no view of her own circulation. For couples it makes a shared project both can keep learning in for years.

The word says nothing about someone’s hands. Zoey Jones notes in her glossary that rigger “in some contexts … may imply more expertise, experience, or status than ‘rope top’”, and it goes no further than that. A suggestion of status, not measured skill.

Rigger, rope top, or nawashi

“Rigger is a higher rank than rope top.” No. Jones describes the rigger as “a person who ties, sometimes synonymous with ‘rope top’”. The difference is an emphasis: rigger on the craft, rope top on the role in the scene. People also wear them at the same time; one of her participants calls himself, without irony, rigger, rope top, Master, Dominant and semi-sadist in one breath.

“A rigger is the Western nawashi.” Not that either. Nawashi and bakushi are Japanese titles that point to a tradition and a generation of stage performers. Rigger points to a shipyard. The same work, a completely different origin.

“A rigger is automatically the dominant party.” No. Tying and leading often coincide, but not always: there are riggers who run a scene the way the tied party orders it.

What I see myself

I don’t call myself a rigger. I work with rope, I’ve taken courses for it, and I tell you beforehand what does and doesn’t happen with me, instead of you finding out halfway through.

The people who tie best talk least about their bindings. They ask. How is your hand, can you move your thumb, is this tight or is this tíght. Anyone who shows his portfolio right away and doesn’t ask what you can handle today has flipped the roles around. And the question that always comes back with women isn’t “how beautiful will it be” but “how fast can it come off”. That is an excellent question, and the answer should sit within a few seconds.

What you may ask of a rigger

• Ask where the nerves run before you let your arms be tied. Khodulev and colleagues describe in Cureus sixteen nerve injuries in ten people after rope bondage, ninety percent of which involved the radial nerve, each time right after a full suspension.
• Ask how the rope comes off and where the scissors are. A rigger who doesn’t have an answer to that right away is not the rigger for your first time.
• Agree on how you say something when you can’t talk. A gag, a hood, or plain fright makes a safeword useless; set out a sound or an object you can drop.
• Start on the ground. Floorwork and groundwork give everything suspension gives, without your weight hanging from a point.
• Judge on questions, not on photos. A tidy end result says nothing about how someone reacts when your hand goes numb.

More reading on riggers and rope

• Shibari lays out the tradition, the styles, and the risks; that is the page to read before you look for a rigger.
• Floorwork shows what all is possible without a suspension point, and why many practitioners stay there.
• The dissertation by Zoey Jones is free to read and gives twenty-three practitioners the floor themselves on how they see their role.

Where this fits on this site

Want to try rope and first know how far it goes, then we settle that beforehand. On the page about the BDSM date you can read how a talk like that goes.

Sources

• Pleasure, Community, and Marginalization in Rope Bondage: A qualitative investigation into a BDSM subculture. Zoey Jones, dissertation in Sociology, Carleton University, Ottawa, 2020. Qualitative study with 23 in-depth interviews among rope practitioners in Canada and the United States; full text read. From it come: the glossary entry “Rigger: A person who ties, sometimes synonymous with ‘rope top’. In some contexts, ‘rigger’ may imply more expertise, experience, or status than ‘rope top’”; the entry “Rope top: A person who ties another person with rope”; the participant who describes himself as “a rigger, rope top, Master, Dominant, and semi-sadist”; and Gabrielle’s quote about rope as a back-and-forth conversation between rigger and bottom.
• rigger (n.). Online Etymology Dictionary. From it come: the dating 1610s with the meaning “one who rigs ships”, the formation as agent noun on the verb rig, the extension to aircraft in 1912 and to oil rigs in 1949, and from the entry rig (v.) the dating “late 15c., originally nautical” and the possible derivation from PIE reig- “to bind”.
• Acute Radial Compressive Neuropathy: The Most Common Injury Induced by Japanese Rope Bondage. A. Khodulev, A. Klimko, S. Charnenka, V. Zharko & N. Khoduleva, Cureus 15(5), e39588, May 28, 2023. Peer-reviewed case series. From it comes only the injury picture: sixteen nerve injuries in ten people, all acute and right after a full suspension, with the radial nerve in ninety percent of cases.
• 1926.1425. Keeping clear of the load. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor. Binding workplace regulation for hoisting in construction. From it comes only provision (c)(3), “The materials must be rigged by a qualified rigger”, which here serves to show that the word rigger outside the scene denotes a qualified trade and inside the scene does not.

Related terms

A rigger works within shibari and is the Western trade word for the tying party.

• Rope top. The same work, but the role word instead of the trade word.
• Nawashi. The Japanese title, and what the suffix 師 marks there exactly.
• Bakushi. The other Japanese title, built on kinbaku instead of on nawa.
• Bonding. The verb the Dutch scene uses for what a rigger does.
• Partial suspension. The in-between form most riggers lift their first weight with.
• Rope bottom. The other end of the rope, and the work that goes with it.
• Rope bunny. The same as rope bottom, but the word not everyone is happy with.
• Suspension. The work a rigger chooses the suspension point for and has to be able to calculate the load of.