Rope top

What is a rope top?

A rope top is the party who ties and leads in a rope scene. The word is built from rope and the BDSM word top, which names the giving role and says nothing about power or technique. Opposite the rope top stands the rope bottom, the one who is tied.

Why it is a role word

Because top is about giving and not about being in charge. The encyclopedia entry on top, bottom and switch puts it briefly: top and bottom refer to the giving and receiving roles, not to who is literally on top, and a top can be but need not be a dominant. The distinction drawn there: a dominant exercises power within a power exchange, a top applies sensation within a scene.

That opens a door many people do not expect. A service top, by the same entry, is someone who applies sensation or control, but exactly according to the bottom’s instructions. So a rope top can tie what she orders, at the pace she sets, and still be the top.

What the role does to you

It does something measurable. Fourteen experienced BDSM practitioners were randomly assigned to the top or bottom role by James Ambler and colleagues; their report of it shows that topping was associated with flow, measured on the Flow State Scale, while bottoming arrived at a very different state. So the top role is not the boring half of the scene; there is a high of its own attached to it.

Where that high comes from is known. Ambler cites the sociologist Staci Newmahr, who wrote that tops reach flow “through mental focus, particularly when engaged in activities that require intense concentration, such as knife play, needle play, and advanced bondage”. Rope work is on that list because it claims your whole head.

Flow comes from a task that sits just within your reach, and that means a rope top who takes on too much loses both the high and the safety margin. Your own concentration is no proof that things are going well for her. Keeping asking stays the work.

Where this fits on this site

If you want an evening where someone else steers the rope scene and all you have to do is feel what happens, that is what I do. The page on the BDSM date shows how we agree beforehand on how far it goes.

Sources

• Top, bottom, switch. English Wikipedia. An overview entry on the role words; used here only for the conceptual boundary and not for claims about effect or safety. From it: “Terms top and bottom refer to giving and receiving roles, not to who is physically on top in a particular sexual act”; the description of top as “a dominant partner in BDSM play or a partner who applies stimulation to another, and who may or may not be dominant”; the distinction that “the dominant exhibits control within a power exchange dynamic, while a top applies sensations within a scene”; and the description of the service top as someone who applies sensation or control “at the bottom’s explicit instructions”.
• Consensual BDSM facilitates role-specific altered states of consciousness: A preliminary study. James K. Ambler, Ellen M. Lee, Kathryn R. Klement, Tonio Loewald, Evelyn M. Comber, Sarah A. Hanson, Bert Cutler, Nadine Cutler & Brad J. Sagarin, Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 4(1), 75–91, 2017 (DOI 10.1037/cns0000097). A peer-reviewed experiment; the full pdf was read via Science of BDSM. From it: the design with fourteen experienced practitioners randomly assigned to the bottom or top role, with the top role described as “the person providing stimulation, orders, or structure”; and the outcome that topping was associated with flow, measured with the Flow State Scale.
• Rethinking Kink: Sadomasochism as Serious Leisure. Staci Newmahr, Qualitative Sociology 33(3), 313–331, 2010. Ethnographic research. From it comes the line that tops reach flow “through mental focus, particularly when engaged in activities that require intense concentration, such as knife play, needle play, and advanced bondage” (p. 328). That line was read in the account by Ambler et al., not in the original; the reference was checked via Crossref.

Related terms

• Service. The wider word for what a service top does, with the origin of the term.

A rope top is the leading half of a rope scene within shibari.

• Rigger. The same work, but the trade word: knots, load, and suspension points.
• Dominant. The word rope top is often confused with, and why they are two things.
• Top. The bare role word this is the rope variant of, with the three-way split.
• Bottom. The other side of the same word pair, apart from rope.
• Floorwork. The way of working most rope tops start with and many of them stay with.