Gags

The whispered allure of "bound and gagged" has been etched into our cultural consciousness, but what makes gags such a powerful element in power exchange? In this deep dive into the world of gag play, Edge explores the intricate psychology, diverse varieties, and crucial safety aspects that every kinkster should understand.

Gags create an unparalleled psychological impact by removing one's ability to speak—transforming a person through objectification and control. Beyond just silencing, they serve to dehumanize in the most erotic way, shifting headspace and reinforcing power dynamics with remarkable efficiency. Yet contrary to what many assume, the purpose isn't silence at all. The muffled moans and desperate sounds that emerge around a properly placed gag create an auditory landscape that heightens arousal for everyone involved.

From traditional ball gags and equestrian-inspired bit gags to impromptu solutions like bandanas and clothing, the world of gags offers endless possibilities to explore. Edge covers luxury options like Silencilicone alongside DIY alternatives, explaining how different materials create distinct sensations and psychological effects. The discussion doesn't shy away from practical concerns—exploring the four primary safety considerations (vomiting, breathing, saliva management, and muscle soreness) while offering concrete strategies to minimize risk through positioning and communication.

Whether you're a seasoned player or curious newcomer, this comprehensive guide provides both technical knowledge and psychological insight. Edge's personal journey with gags adds nuanced perspective, revealing how preferences evolve and acknowledging that while gags occupy an iconic place in BDSM imagery, they remain entirely optional. Discover how this seemingly simple tool creates profound experiences of submission, control, and sensory delight when wielded with knowledge and care.

Chapters

• 0:19 Introduction to Gags
• 2:10 Edge's Personal Experience with Gags
• 6:52 The Psychology Behind Using Gags
• 11:50 Types of Gags and Materials
• 19:10 Using Gags: Techniques and Eroticism
• 23:27 Gag Safety and Risk Mitigation
• 34:49 Personal Updates and Leather Journey

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Let's talk about gags, that you are an adult. Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather kink and BDSM. My name is Edge, my pronouns are he, him, and I'm your host. In this episode we're going to be thinking about gags. Now, in some ways, this is kind of revisiting the earlier episode we did on bondage. But, to be honest, someone on Twitter I don't call it that someone on Twitter had asked me to do a video series on gags and I finally got around to doing that. I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty good content. Let me just make a podcast episode about that. So this is sort of a bonus-y kind of episode to the podcast driven by my other social media work. So I'm hoping you enjoy it. And because it's this sort of bonus episode and because I just recently did the first episode of the fourth season, this is kind of it. I don't have any other segments planned. No one has sent in questions for Ask Edge, so we're really just going to be talking about gags and I'll talk a little bit about my own history with gags on top and bottom, and then we'll go deeply into everything I know about gags which isn't everything to be known about gags on top and bottom and then we'll go deeply into everything I know about gags, which isn't everything to be known about gags, but perhaps will give you a starting point. So you know, usually I say, wow, that's a really great episode, let's get started. I don't know, I think this is a pretty good episode and I'll let you be the judge, but one way or another we are going to get started. So here we go.

Speaker 1: 2:10

If you follow this podcast for any length of time, then you may possibly recall that I started my kink journey in bondage. I was a bondage boy, or perhaps more accurately a bondage bottom, and I was all about the bondage. It was really, at that point, my only fetish or kink, and I pursued it relentlessly and I found someone who was very good at it and then I drowned in the experience. I just had as much of it as I could take and then a little bit more. So as part of that, I've spent a lot of my early years gagged with a variety of kinds of gags and I will say part of me really likes a gag because it feels part of the bondage experience. But I have a relatively small mouth make of that as you will and my jaw gets very sore very easily when I am gagged. And now even worse, because I know this about myself if someone is going to gag me, it triggers this kind of anxiety beforehand, right. And so I'm even less likely to be able to enjoy being gagged because I am creating this self-fulfilling prophecy of what's going to come.

Speaker 1: 3:26

So, even though my early history was very much about bondage and all forms and all intensities, and although I've spent a lot of time gagged, and although, yeah, I like gags Gags are great who doesn't like a gag? But I've never had the same passion for gagged as I had for bound. If we think of bound and gagged as a set unit, I was always better on the bound side than the gagged side, and that really comes down to my anatomy. Similarly, I mean as a dominant person now, I don't use gags a lot, and it's curious now that I'm actually saying all this out loud, I'm wondering if I'm not taking my own partial dislike of gags and then reprojecting that out as a dominant person. I don't think so. I think it's really more about the fact that I am a very verbal person and I like verbal interchanges with the person I am using, because a lot of my play is about getting inside the head and I like to use a mouth in many ways. I like to kiss and I like to put things in mouths and if there's a gag in your mouth I'm not going to be able to do that. So I actually have the playrooms well equipped. I have several gags but they don't get used a lot and generally it really kind of requires a boy who wants to be gagged.

Speaker 1: 4:49

Gagging is rarely my go-to Like oh, I don't just pull a gag out of the supply closet and go at it, and that's really, in a nutshell, my experience with gags top and bottom. I was like and that's really, in a nutshell, my experience with gags top and bottom. I was like well, you know, that's not my most passionate passion, even though it occupies a central territory within what was once my primary fetish. But yeah, I'm like okay with gags. I'm okay with gags. Now I'm kind of wondering would I let someone gag me? Now? You know that the idea of me submitting to someone feels far away. I think it would have to be a very specific kind of person with a very specific aesthetic and stylization and presence and power. And yeah, I suppose if I found that person, then I don't mind having a saw, a jaw, a sore jaw, if that person wanted me to be gagged.

Speaker 1: 5:49

But in general I think my history with gags is history and I think my future with gags is if a boy needs to be gagged I will gag him. But you know, it's interesting. We'll see how things shift. Like I've discovered a lot of. I've rediscovered fetishes. Just recently I rediscovered some toys that I hadn't used in a while. The whole center point of my play has often shifted. I used to be very into bondage. That used to be the center. Cigars used to's not linear. So maybe I'll be all about gags at some point. We will find out. But that's my story about me and gags.

Speaker 1: 6:39

You know I'm very much about the sort of deep psychology of the things we do as kinksters because, practically speaking, I'm an overthinker and so before we get into the sort of logistics of gags, let's think about why. Why do we use gags? And the first reason why is because it is, culturally speaking, part and parcel of the bondage experience. We don't just talk about people being bound, we talk about people being bound and gagged. The big fetish porn magazine of bondage when I was growing up was not called Bound, it was called Bound and Gagged. And in popular culture when we see images of the hero, the hero's rarely just bound, the hero is bound and gagged. So this becomes a sort of set experience. These two things are yoked together and because they then infiltrate our subconscious minds, our desires, our early thoughts when we latch onto certain fetishes, that these two remain yoked together for a lot of people in their erotic imaginary. So there is that kind of psychological, pre-psychological right. It's not even something you're really thinking about, it's just something a kind of set cultural expectation that comes that has to do with being bound in gag.

Speaker 1: 7:57

But there are a lot of other reasons we use them that are a little more practical. Gags are really good for volume control a little more practical. Gags are really good for volume control If you're in a space where you need to be mindful of how loud you can get because of your neighbors, or if you have a person you're playing with and they're self-conscious and concerned about being too loud, then obviously a gag can be really useful for that, because it is good at muffling speech and sound. Gag can be really useful for that because it is good at muffling speech and sound Returning a little bit more to the psychological, what I think is that gags are really good at dehumanizing. We tend to think of speech and communication as uniquely human trait, so that when you take that away from someone, you turn them into more of an object and for some men that objectification, that dehumanization is really hot. They become this thing, they become this it, they become this object to be used and controlled. So that's one thing that gags can obviously do.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Related to that is issues of control. Right, if I'm the dominant person and I'm taking control of you, part of what I'm going to control is your speech, and sometimes that happens through protocol, through my expectations of how you're going to address me, what you're going to say when you're going to say it. But also controlling whether or not you can speak at all is very powerful. So if I am silencing you I'm making air quotes, silencing you with a gag that I'm controlling your speech in a very powerful way that really reinforces the dominant submissive dynamic that we're working on For some men, again, switching from the psychological to another register, probably the more corporeal people really enjoy the feeling of fullness in the mouth.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Feeling of fullness in the mouth, or, if it's a gag that's like a tape gag that goes around the mouth, then they enjoy the visual impact, the smoothness. So there are sensory elements to being gagged that have to do with that fullness of the mouth, that sort of being filled with something that has a lot of deep-seated, satisfying resonances for people. Or if it's a gag that goes around the mouth, like a tape gag or a cloth gag wrapped around the mouth, then it's about that smoothness, which is another kind of visual register. I will say that, connected to control, connected to humanization, connected to all these things we're saying, gags are also really good at activating or reinforcing headspace. If you need someone to transition into submission, gag can be an important part of that kind of ritualistic transition. And related to some of the things we were just talking about are the visual aspects, Like a gag can look really hot and that goes all the way back to the part and parcel, the bondage experience, that it is a hot look to be bound in gag. It also has to do with that sort of the sensory inputs that you get from being gagged. It can be really hot for either party to look at it. I also, you know, when I did this content on the social.

Speaker 1: 11:06

Someone said they like using gags to train a gag reflex, and I suppose that is entirely possible. That's not a purpose I've used because I feel like that has a little bit more risk involved, and we'll talk about that in a second. But there are any number of reasons why to use a gag, and some of them are purely psychological, in terms of really getting someone into a certain headspace of submission, of being controlled, of being objectified. Some of them are very sensory and corporeal, in terms of feelings of fullness or this visual aspect or the smoothness, and some of them are really practical, if you think about something like controlling someone's volume within a scene. And those are all the reasons why gags are appealing and why we use them. So let's think about the types of gags Now.

Speaker 1: 11:55

The truth is that anything you can put in or around the mouth is functionally a gag, and that includes parts of the body such as hands, feet, genitals, including cock, including balls, butt. It includes items of clothing, including smelly socks, dirty jocks, filthy underwear, hankies, gloves, ties. But as fetishists, we have sort of created certain kinds of gags. One of them is a bit gag, and this is a sort of I don't know how to explain it, it is a bar. It is a bar that is often rubber, can be metal, can be leather, but it really comes from an equestrian context. The bit gag is the part of a bridle. It comes from the bit that the horse would bite down as part of the bridle. That is part of controlling the horse. So these gags are really easy to find and they're not as effective at actually being gags because they don't really fill a lot of the mouth. It's like biting down on a stick really.

Speaker 1: 13:06

But big gags I find really useful for drooling and production of a lot of saliva. I find that those tend to create a lot of saliva. The other kind of gag that we have invented as fetishists is the ball gag, which is literally what it sounds like. You take a ball, you put a hole through it, put a string through that and there you have a ball gag, and these will come in all colors, all sizes. The ball may be made of different materials. The strap may be locking, leather, cord, nylon, all sorts of options. There as well, ball gags are fairly effective and really are resonant. I think they've operated more in popular culture and therefore tend to be a little more resonant, and they are also very good at producing a lot of saliva.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Finally, we have the plug gag, and this is kind of what it says. It's a gag where there's a sort of plug, and these are often going to be penis-shaped and sometimes it's just like a round piece of leather with leather-covered foam or something like that. But the idea is that it's a plug that fills your mouth. It plugs your mouth. It's not that complicated. Those are the sort of three main fetish categories for gags sort of three main fetish categories for gags. When I posted this series on the socials, one person did point out that pacifiers are another option, although that's probably more in the ABDL community.

Speaker 1: 14:35

The other thing is that there is a new kind of luxe miracle gag, and I'm pretty sure I always get the pronunciation wrong because even though they created a great product, I don't know if they created the best name for it. I think it is pronounced Silensilicon. I always called it Silensicon, but I think it's actually Silensilicon and these are sold on Etsy, but I do think they started on Etsy. They do have their own website now and they're not cheap, but essentially it is silicone molded to a mouth and there's an actual insert. You insert your tongue into a central portion. This is an amazingly effective gag because it really does entirely fill your mouth in a very comfortable way. It really does entirely fill your mouth in a very comfortable way.

Speaker 1: 15:26

I tried one. I was playing with a guy who had one. I tried it. It's hot. The one he had interestingly didn't have any strap, it was just sort of the gag portion. So I mean you could literally open your mouth and spit it out. I do think that now they have gags with straps and then obviously, if you were to have the one without the strap, you could do some sort of cloth or tape covering around the mouth to hold it in. They're not cheap, but they are incredibly effective, incredibly sexy and incredibly comfortable. So I think Silicone, if I am pronouncing that right I think they are really positioning themselves as the kind of Rolls Royce of gags. I'm just sort of suggesting that I don't know, I need to get one. I need to get one, but they're pricey, but I need to get one.

Speaker 1: 16:20

It's also worth noting we've been really focusing on gags that go inside the mouth but, as I've referenced a couple of times, there are gags that also go around the mouth and some people have a very specific fetish about tape gags, specifically duct tape. Now, I think for them, part of the fetish is the ASMR-like sound of ripping duct tape from the roll. It has a very specific frequency and vibration that I think resonates for people on an erotic level. However, duct tape, even though it sounds great coming off the roll, even though there is a whole sub-fetish around duct tape duct tape is not really made for skin, certainly not made for mustaches or beards, because it is incredibly sticky. It is incredibly sticky and so you don't want to put duct tape directly on mustaches, beards or skin.

Speaker 1: 17:20

When I queried people on the socials about this, I had a lot of really good responses. One person talked about freezing the duct tape to reduce the tackiness, but in general, what people talked about is doing a layer of a sports tape or a microphone tape or a layer of cloth and then putting the duct tape over that, so that you get the full visual impact of the smooth, shiny duct tape. You get the audio sensory of the ripping of the duct tape, but you don't have to deal with the damage it will do to skin or hair. That's also to say, then, that although people also have a very specific duct tape fetish. Many other tapes that are less sticky are used, including sports tape. Some people use what's sold as bondage tape. There's microphone tape, there's gaffer's tape Someone had mentioned a kind of clear vinyl splicing tape, I think.

Speaker 1: 18:15

And then, in addition to all these tapes, there are wraps. Vet Wrap is really good because it's very porous and it sticks to itself. It comes in all kinds of colors and it's a little bit like an ace bandage, but not quite as elastic, but very effective at wrapping. In fact, it's really great for mummification as well. So there are lots of ways to get these smooth around the mouth, look that don't require duct tape. There are lots of other kinds of tapes and there are lots of other kinds of cloth you can use. Oh, it's also worth mentioning that a lot of these sound really expensive, especially with something like silicone.

Speaker 1: 18:53

But I think one of the hottest gags is I take my hanky out of my back pocket, I tie a knot in the middle of it and then I stick it in your mouth. Hankies really make fantastic gags. I tie a knot in the middle of it and then I stick it in your mouth. Hankies, really make fantastic gags. I will say that. So also don't feel like you need to invest tons of money. The nice thing because you can use almost anything as a gag, particularly items of clothing.

Speaker 1: 19:19

That means you probably are walking around with several gags on you at any point in time and, just as some people really clue into the duct tape as a sub-fetish, you're going to find people who have a crossover right, so they're really into feet and socks, so a dirty sock gag is going to do something for them. They're really into sports gear, so a jock gag is really going to do something for them. They're really into suits, so having a tie as a gag is really going to do something for them. They're really into suits, so having a tie as a gag is really going to do something for them. So that there are other ways to sort of incorporate very affordable. You know these are gags you already have in your closet probably, but also have specific extra resonances for people based on their other fetishes. So you know you don't have to spend a lot of money if you wear the same pair of socks for a week. In fact, that is going to be a better gag for a foot fetishist than a ball gag, which isn't going to have an erotic resonance for the foot fetishist. So those are some of the types of gags and I really don't think this is even an exhaustive list. I'm sure there are many others and I hope some people will point them out to me and I'll do an update on another episode.

Speaker 1: 20:28

Now, how do you use a gag? You put it in or around the mouth. I mean, basically that's what you do To use a gag. You put it in. However, there's using a gag and then there's using a gag. So there are a lot of ways to heighten the eroticism based on how you put in the gag or what you do once the gag is in. One of my favorites, even though I don't gag people a lot, but when I do, what I always do is I have the gag in one hand it's usually a plug gag with a little penis plug and I kiss them passionately, we make out, we make out and then, as I pull my tongue out, the gag goes directly in and I love that transition from the eroticism of the kiss, which is intimate and tender, to the hard control of being gagged, and I think it's really hot. I rarely lock on a gag, but similarly, if I have someone lock on a gag, I will put the lock through the hasp and I will have them close it as a way of signifying their greater submission to me.

Speaker 1: 21:30

You can do other things Like. You can try to make them speak with a gag. You know, I will do things like well, if you don't want me to beat the crap out of you, you just have to say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, and then they try so hard to say that and then we all laugh. It's lots of fun and you can make them drool with the gag. You can really heighten up some of the aspects. So if it's really about the objectification, you can really heighten that up. If it's really about volume control, you can heighten that up. You can lean into the gag through these different methods. That really places the gag a little more centrally in their erotic imagination at that moment in time In general.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Here's the thing I would say, though. We think gags are about keeping people quiet, but in truth it's anything but Like. For me, the point of a gag is not for you to be quiet, but for you to make sound, because when you are gagged, the moans and the grunts that are muffled are just deeply, deeply, arousingly, stimulatingly erotic. So keep in mind, the whole point of being gagged is not to be quiet. The whole point of being gagged is to make really sexy sounds and those become really sexy for both parties. So if the person being gagged has thoughts of being dehumanized or objectified, their moaning, groaning, whatever, reinforces for them that they can't speak like a human anymore. For the person who's doing the gagging it's just hot. It's hot to hear someone have these muffled groaning, moaning sounds are just hot. That's all I'm going to say. So using a gag logistically is as simple as putting it in or around the mouth. But using it in the scene is really about leaning into those aspects of the gag that are most erotically resonant for the parties involved.

Speaker 1: 23:28

So let's think about safety. Now. Gags are pretty safe, right, we're gagged all the time. So I know of no cases in my 35 years of playing. I know of no cases where someone died from being gagged. Now I know people who died from being bound, gagged, and then the intersection of drugs and the intersection of being left alone. I know a lot of people who have died while playing by themselves. So the risk factors have always been incorporation of drugs in the scene or playing all by yourself. Those are the highest risk factors, not gags. Generally speaking, I've never, ever heard of anyone die from being gagged. That's not to say there are not safety concerns for us to be mindful of, and mindfulness is going to be the big theme as we go through these.

Speaker 1: 24:20

Generally speaking, there are four big areas of safety you want to be aware of or mindful of Vomiting, breathing, saliva soreness. Vomiting is probably the greatest risk. So if we're thinking about a gag, which is either keeping the mouth closed, if it's a gag that goes around the mouth, or is filling the mouth, if it's a gag that goes in the mouth, then if the person who is gagged vomits, that vomitus does not have an easy exit and there's a much greater risk of aspiration, which means that the vomitus gets into the lungs. If that happens, that can be really damaging and possibly life-threatening. So the greatest risk possible is that you have someone gagged and they vomit and that vomit ends up in the lungs.

Speaker 1: 25:14

There are ways to minimize this risk. Obviously, you want to not play with someone when they're feeling nauseous. You want to make sure that you check in with them before you gag them about their overall physical body state and you also want to be thinking about positioning. So the most dangerous position when it comes to something like this, if you have them gagged and laying on their back, because then gravity is not helping. If you have them laying on their stomach, if you have them sitting up, then if the vomitous, if they do vomit, some of that vomit can come out the nose, it can come out around the sides of the gag. I know this doesn't sound pretty, but it is very practical. But if they're on their back and gagged it's a much, much greater risk that the aspiration is going to occur.

Speaker 1: 25:59

The other thing that's going to be really important in mitigating this risk is to have some sort of signal, nonverbal signal, that the person being gagged can use to indicate, hey, something's wrong. So if they start to feel nauseous, they can give this signal. But also if they start to have any other problems in the scene, you might use a hand signal, might use a foot signal, whatever it is. Obviously it can't be verbal because they're gagged, but it's a way of alerting you before this problem becomes a problem. Now again, I don't know of. I've never heard of a case of someone actually aspirating because they were gagged, but maybe that's because, as kinksters, many of us or all of us know that this is a danger and we remain mindful of it. So I'm giving it to you so that you may remain mindful of it.

Speaker 1: 26:48

Breathing Nasal passages are funny. They like to block themselves randomly at any point in time, and if a person is gagged and their nasal passages become stuffy or blocked, then breathing is going to be more challenging. I don't really think someone's going to suffocate, like not be able to breathe at all, because you can always breathe some around a gag. You can always breathe some even if your nose is stuffy. However, I do think that what happens is if you're having trouble breathing because you are gagged and your nose is stopped up, then you risk a kind of panic, because if you feel like you can't breathe, that can become a panic situation, and we never want panic in a scene because it increases the risk of someone harming themselves or others. Not just that they could harm themselves, they could harm me when I go in to try to help them.

Speaker 1: 27:44

So in the old days, back when I was a bondage bottom, we used to use Afrin, which is a nasal spray, to make sure our passages were clear before going into a bondage scene. Now, that's not really a great strategy, because nasal sprays have a rebound effect and, depending on how long the scene is and how long it's lasting, you could actually end up a little bit more stuffed up than you started. But it was certainly something we thought about is what I will say, and this is again a place where positioning matters. So if you have someone just like, the most dangerous way to keep someone gagged when it comes to vomit risk is on their back. The most dangerous way to keep someone gagged when we think about breathing issues is having them on their stomach. In general, if you have someone in a hog tie or just tied down on their stomach, anything where their body weight is on their chest, that means the diaphragm, which is the muscle which allows us to breathe, now has to essentially lift the entire body in order to get air into the lungs. So if it's doing that work and then, on top of that, you're gagged and your nose is stuffy, then there's a much greater risk for serious problems. So be mindful of positions when people are gagged. If they're on the back, be extra careful about vomitus.

Speaker 1: 29:00

If they're on their stomach, be extra careful about breathing problems as part of this, let me say that at this stage of my life I would never leave someone gagged overnight, and that's me. I know there are people who love it. In fact I have friends who actually love being hooded, sleep sack, gagged, thrown in a closet and left overnight, and that's great for them. For me that doesn't work. I have very different risk tolerance at this age and there are ways to minimize concerns if someone is gagged overnight, including using a gag which has a tube in it through the center so that there's still the feeling of fullness in the mouth, there's still volume control, there's still the inhibition of speech, but there is also a clear breathing passage through the mouth in case the nose becomes stopped up. And you can use, obviously, a baby monitor for them to try to get your attention. I'm a pretty deep sleeper. I don't know if they'd be able to get my attention, but there are ways to mitigate those risks and that's okay and if people are really into it, I certainly hope you pursue it with an awareness of the risk. But for me I'm just not interested in keeping someone gagged overnight, in part because I'm not really interested in keeping someone gagged. I should probably note that.

Speaker 1: 30:20

So the next issue besides vomitus and breathing is saliva, and this is an issue that goes both ways, depending on the gag and depending on the body. You might either end up with too much saliva or not enough. Now, too much saliva is hot, right, like people are going to be drooling. We love that being drool, drool, drool. You can do a lot of stuff with the drool. You can use it as lube. You can just sort of do a lot of stuff with drool.

Speaker 1: 30:45

However, there is a possibility if they're doing a lot of drooling, they can end up choking on their saliva Increasingly. I choke on my own saliva, just like walking down the street, and so it's totally. It happens, right, it happens even when I'm not gagging. This isn't necessarily life-threatening, but it could be a little panic-inducing. It would cause a lot of coughing. That could be not great when someone's gagged. So again, be mindful of position that have them in a position where the drool can more easily flow out, whether that's seated slightly leaning forward. That would reduce the possibility of them being able to choke on that saliva.

Speaker 1: 31:37

All the saliva in the mouth and anything porous, including certain foams, but anything made out of cloth bandanas, socks, jockstraps, underwear, all of that. Now that will lead to a very dry mouth which can be very uncomfortable. It's not really a health risk or safety risk as much as someone's not going to be able to be gagged for as long if their mouth is entirely dry and then, like your mouth, sticks to the gag, it just becomes uncomfortable. It is just not good at all. Now, for many gags, what you can do is pre-moisten them with a quote-unquote fluid of your choice. So classically, for example, the bandana gag, I would take the bandana, cut out my back pocket, tie a knot in the middle and then moisten it with the fluid of my choice. Before I used to get in their mouth and tie a knot in the back. So if you have it pre-moistened, then it really sort of mitigates a lot of those issues.

Speaker 1: 32:28

All right, so the next issue is muscle soreness, and again, this is not life-threatening either, but keep in mind that, depending on someone's anatomy that a gag, and depending on the size of the gag, depending on their anatomy, depending on how much sleep they've had that day, that their jaw can get very, very sore if it's being essentially pried open for a significant amount of time. As I mentioned in the opening. This is a big one for me. This is a big one for me. I grind my teeth at night, which means I have these weirdly overdeveloped jaw muscles and then having them stretched by a gag in my mouth. It can be a lot. So not a huge safety risk, but something to be mindful of.

Speaker 1: 33:10

So let's review there are four areas of safety concern. So let's review there are four areas of safety concern, four primary areas of safety concern when it comes to gags, vomit, breathing, saliva and muscle soreness, and those are actually in order of severity. The most severe issue you can encounter is someone who vomits while gagged. The next level of severity is someone who's having breathing issues and then saliva issues and then soreness. Generally speaking, I don't think you're going to have someone seriously harmed by being gagged, but part of that is because you now know of some of the risks and can think about how to mitigate them through positioning person in a certain way, by signaling, by preventatives and being really watchful of some of these things that could happen. Final note about safety We've talked about putting a gag in a mouth. We've talked about putting a gag around a mouth. Critically, you never put gags in the throat. Now this is primarily an issue with something like a sock or any sort of cloth gag that you think is going to be hot. To just shove and shove and stuff and stuff and stuff into their mouth, into their mouth is great. If you stuff it and it goes into their throat, not only could it trigger this gag reflex, which then you have all the vomitous issues, but if you get anything stuffed into the throat, that person is going to suffocate and die. So gags go in the mouth, not in the throat. A couple other sort of final notes about gags in general, and these are a little bit more personal for me. So a couple of times I've been playing with a boy. I had him gagged and he pushed the gag out with his you know. He, like opened his mouth wider and pushed the gag out to say something to me. I'm going to ask you, please don't do this, don't do this. There are very good reasons to push the gag out in a scene If there is an emergency, if you have an emergency concern about your safety, or if the person who gagged you is violating limits, or you have to immediately communicate to them some pressing health concern like oh my God, I'm going to puke. I need to take this gag out. Great, push the gag out, but in the normal course of a scene. Please, please, do not push the gag out. For me, as a dominant person, it is deeply deflating because it is a rejection of my control. It shatters the illusion and the fantasy of the control I have over you In general. If you're playing with me, keep this in mind. If I put it on, I take it off. If I put it in, I take it out. If I put it on, I take it off. If I put it in, I take it out. So, unless it's an emergency, please, please, don't break the illusion by pushing a gag out. Wait for me to take the gag out. Try to speak, indicate point at your mouth, whatever, so that I know you need the gag out. But please, please, don't, oh my God, and never, ever reach up and take the gag off yourself, Please. That would be really earth shattering to me and we will probably not play again simply because I feel like that's such an impolite thing to do Again. If it's an emergency, lots of good cause to do that. If it's not an emergency, not a good cause. The last thing I'll say about gags is gags are not required. They are not required. So if you're not into gags, that absolutely has zero impact on your identity and validity as a kinky person. As I've said a few times, I don't tend to use gags. I don't tend to like them because I like mouths and I like to use mouths. However, I played with a couple of boys who feel more empowered to be loud if they are gagged. Now, to be clear, my playroom is fairly soundproof. I've got a couple neighbors, but I mean it's like concrete walls and cinderblock walls, and then the neighbors I do have really aren't home a whole lot. So I have a pretty soundproof place and the boys I play with know this. So I have a pretty soundproof place and the boys I play with know this. But there's something about being gagged that gives them permission to be loud in a way that me telling them, me giving them permission to be loud, does not work. Them being gagged, that works. So if you're not into gags, that's okay. No-transcript. Since I have a little bit of time left in this episode and since I'm not really doing interludes per se anymore, I thought I'd take a moment to just sort of talk about a little bit of what's going on in my life, some of the big things for me. I've been doing yoga. Now this I've been embracing as a healing modality because of some other stuff I discovered I'm not even talking about physically healing, but I'm just talking about some sort of deep healing, and so I really came to yoga as a form of healing, but it's also just good as a body practice. I think it enhances my weightlifting, I think it enhances my posture, my overall health and well-being, and so I've been doing yoga. The other thing which I think people would find really surprising is I've started doing hand embroidery. I was looking for a new joy-making skill and in the playroom here I have several pieces of art on the art wall that are actually embroidery and they're so hyper-masculine and they're so hot and they're so beautiful and I always loved this combination of a very sort of traditionally feminine art form embroidery with these very hyper masculine images. And so I got to a point of so much boredom and so much desire for joy making that I ordered some basic embroidery stuff from Amazon and I started doing it. You know the challenge for me has been from Amazon and I've started doing it. You know the challenge for me has been I was able to do one piece that I'm just thrilled with. I gave it as a as a gift. The only way I've been really able to make these patterns is by tracing, using my iPad as like a light box. So there's a photo I put on the iPad, I put a piece of fabric over it and I trace the part I want to embroider and that's just not. It's not giving me the level of detail I need. So I did this one piece. That's really beautiful and I have ideas for other pieces, but I've not been able to really nail the pattern. So I'm going to have to look into. There are a couple other ways to get to a pattern, to move from photo to pattern and hand embroidery, and I'm going to have to explore some of those. The third piece of news in my world is I got new langlets. I have a pair of blue competition breeches with yellow stripes which really fit me better, I think, than my original competition breeches, which is good and bad. Like it fits this body better. This body is sort of on the lean side, so if we do some of my usual little weight gain, those breaches may be out of reach. My original pair of competition breaches are just kind of a little more forgiving of my body fluctuations. That's what I would say. I also got a new jacket, a sidewinder, and my jewelry is still a little out on it. I love the jacket and I got contrast stitching on all the quilting. It looks really amazing. But it feels like the jacket's a little big and I'm not entirely sure about that. I'm not entirely sure about it. Some people I've shown they're like wow, that looks great. A couple of people whose eye I really trust are like did you get that custom Because it looks big? I'm like oh my God, that's right. Right the day I got it I called Langlitz I think it was a little big and they're like you know what, wear it. Wear it with a sweatshirt, as in. That's something I'm going to do as a leather man all the time. But they said look, we can always alter it later, so that may end up being altered. Beyond that I have been. What have I been doing? I've been hanging on to hope in my really difficult journey of finding a boyfriend. I'm not going to go into that a whole lot. I really kind of made a decision to not talk a lot about my dating in any of my media, except to say that it remains a goal for me to find a boyfriend locally, someone I can actually spend time with, can wake up with, can build a life with and I talked to some men who are all over the world but logistically that's just it's not going to be possible. It's just not going to be possible as a dating situation and I try to keep mindful of that and then I run away with this fantasy of anyway I'm not going to get too deeply into that, but it comes down to that. I'm hanging on to hope and I've had a couple of encounters that have sort of allowed that hope to kind of glow and it's given, breathed a little bit of vitality into my hope, and then I've had some encounters that have really kind of really darkened the hope. So I share that. Also to say this in my experience dating sucks. It doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter how many muscles you have, it doesn't matter how good you look, it doesn't matter what job you have, it doesn't matter. None of that matters. The whole process of dating is horrible for everyone and I am just sort of affirming that it's horrible for me and I hope it's horrible for you too, because otherwise that means there's something wrong with me. So I'm going to hold on to the fact that my dating experience is horrible and I hope your dating experience is horrible too, and that sounds horrible and I'm going to acknowledge it sounds horrible, and I'm going to stop all the horribleness. Right now I'm going to be going to Palm Springs Leather Pride in October for my birthday. My birthday is actually the Friday of Palm Springs Leather Pride. I've never been to Palm Springs. Therefore, I've also never been to Palm Springs Leather Pride. I'm very excited to see the city and to meet all these people at a leather event, which everyone has told me is just really amazing and fantastic in every way. So if you're going, look for me, I'll be in town, I'll be around. I'm going to be arriving the Wednesday, october 29th and leaving Monday, November 3rd. So those are all the news and notes from my world. I hope all of you are having a really good summer and hey look, we have a second episode of the podcast. That's pretty cool. So have a very blessed leather journey, my friends. And that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Please consider subscribing, or you can send feedback to edge at full cow dot show, as always. May your leather journey be blessed.