Fetters and the Design of Bondage Objects in Britain During the 1970s and 1980s

ABSTRACT

This article examines the development of male bondage in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s through an examination of products designed by Jim Stewart, who founded the company Fetters in 1976. Through research using primary written sources, interviews with early customers, users and business partners, and the objects themselves, this paper situates Fetters designs within the broader infrastructures that were essential for the development of the material culture of male BDSM. The research finds that the primary contacts and inspiration came from outside of the emergent gay leather scene, in particular the cult of Houdini and publications that facilitated collecting of esoteric objects. Furthermore, military culture is shown to have influenced the design and mediation of bondage objects in a way that was fundamental to their design and functioning. This analysis therefore highlights some tensions surrounding cultural aspects of sexual identity that were negotiated through the design and development of objects produced at Fetters.

KEYWORDS:

• Leather
• BDSM
• bondage
• design
• Houdini
• military
• straitjackets

“Rope, strait-jackets, handcuffs, Houdini:

Did I get your attention?

If so, why so? … or am I alone in the world?

Reply to box … ” (Stewart, n.d.)

This small notice, placed in the American hunting magazine Shotgun News in the early 1970s was a decisive step in the creation of the London-based Fetters, a company that became one of the most important sites for the development of objects used in erotic bondage and fetish play. Its author, Jim Stewart (known to friends as Maurice Stewart, 1933–2012) had a background in theater directing and prop making, but started a small hobby business in 1976 that billed itself as ‘dealers in antique and reproduction manacles, locks and “Houdiniana.” By supplying institutional restraint devices such as police handcuffs, but also producing his own product lines that included strait-jackets, sleepsacks, and other restraints, Stewart became an influential designer and retailer within gay leather and bondage scenes in Western Europe and North America. With the help of business partners who distributed and reproduced his inventions internationally—the designs developed at his studio in Clapham, South London have become standardized types in bondage and SM.¹

The objects listed in this advertisement—rope, strait-jackets, handcuffs clearly reference practices of restraint, however the reader is left to imagine their how they might be used. The reference to Houdini (1874–1926)—the great escapologist and illusionist of the early twentieth century introduces notions of theatricality, showmanship, and the combined mental and physical challenges inherent in escape. But what did Houdini mean to readers of a magazine like Shotgun News? Houdini, whose performances and stunts had combined elements of bondage, escape, craft, strength and ingenuity with the spectacle of the eroticized muscular male body (Kasson, 2001) carries multiple and ambiguous meanings underscored by Stewart’s other rhetorical device—the “If so, why so?” While explicitly sexual or erotic advertising was not likely to pass the editorial control of Shotgun News classifieds, Stewart’s nagging question opened the possibility that any (presumably male) reader, regardless of how they perceive their own sexual orientation—could get in contact. What was he seeking by connecting with outward-bound hunting enthusiasts that was not present among urban gay contacts he knew through his work in the theater? He was surprised by the response:

The rush to communicate was slightly disconcerting. Men who didn’t know what the ad meant wrote because the words triggered confused reactions — and it worried them. Others knew exactly where I was at, but had thought that they too were “the only one in the world.” (Stewart, n.d.)

This “flood” of communication, remarks Stewart, extended his instinctive interests in wrapping, strapping, chaining and tying to become more focused, leading him to develop new scenarios and in turn, new object types.

Through focusing on the social origins of objects and the role of the designer in producing, adapting, using, educating, marketing and retailing—this paper locates objects designed by Stewart as a source material for thinking about the processes involved in what Gayle Rubin has called the “sexual social formation” of male bondage and SM (Rubin, 2011). Rubin’s approach, which has broadly examined the ways in which certain sexual attitudes and practices become enshrined in the semiotics of leather and the institutional framework of the broader leather community has been an important cue for this chapter (Rubin, 1997, 1998). Through this empirical investigation, my intention is to examine what factors influenced the design of bondage ware at Fetters, and thus highlight the diverse range of social, cultural and economic exchanges that have been key aspects in the formation of the material culture of SM. This paper focuses on the emergence of two object types: the bondage straitjacket and the “sleepsack,” in order to explore the origins and development of two common pieces of equipment used in man-to-man bondage.

While numerous authors have highlighted the importance of design in the semiotic and visual qualities of objects in the development of leather and fetish culture (Geczy & Karaminas, 2013; Levine & Kimmel, 1998; Rubin, 1997; Steele, 1996), there has been little study of how users engaged in the development of objects through use. In a recent book on BDSM culture in San Francisco, Weiss (2011) has examined objects through the lens of commodity fetishism and anxieties of over-consumption among users of such objects. For Weiss, the prevalence of objects in kink practices highlights a perceived complicity of users with hegemonic structures of neoliberal capitalist inequality and barriers of access within queer and pan-sexual communities. However, such discussions do not take into account the ways in which design processes emerge within broader social settings with unclear boundaries of professionalism and amateurism that necessitate collaboration, discussion, development of skills and the will to execute them (Knott, 2015). Whereas scholarship on straight and queer fetish clothing (Steele, 1996, Karaminas and Geczy 2013) has centered on issues of style and fashion, little emphasis has been placed on how making has been an important socio-economic aspect with within LGBT communities. However, several authors have have highlighted the need to examine economics and businesses within queer communities that indicate a diversity of forms of economic exchange that are an essential part of community formation (Brown, 2009; Gibson-Graham, 1999). An exception is Bryan-Wilson (2017), who has articulated a particular role for craft in sexual subcultures of the 1970s. She writes:

Though the 1970s were awash in an abundance of fabricated commodities, hand making remained a creative and necessary act for some subcultural groups, a key part of forging queer identities and the enabling of queer sexual practices … crafting was a resource to physically bring objects, and new forms of representation and self-expression, into the world …

Through an investigation of design practices, I aim to sketch some links between an early bondage business and preexisting leisure pursuits related to collecting and military reward and punishment games. By examining the cultural context for the development of the Fetters straitjacket and sleepsack, it is possible to identify a means through which aspects of early to mid-twentieth century hetero-masculine cultures (particularly that of the military) were interpreted and embodied in objects that later were sold largely in gay cultural settings.

This raises the question of how sexuality (and in particular sexual orientation) was taken into account alongside the development of such objects. While a number of authors have argued that bondage is a form of sexuality that may be separate from orientation toward a particular sex (Bauer, 2014; Simula, 2012; Simula & Sumereu, 2019), Stewart and his clients were often obliged to define their interests in settings that emphasized homosexual/heterosexual binarism and saw SM, bondage and gay sexuality as closely entwined. Here, I show how the design processes at Fetters were drew on Stewart’s ability to interact with clients who were interested in man-to-man bondage but did not necessarily view themselves as homosexual.

In tracing the development of Fetters objects, I am reliant upon Stewart’s own reflections and the correspondence that he chose to republish in the pamphlet Letters from the Fetters Files (2004), his book So I like to get tied up—so What?!! (1996) and later on his website Houdini Connections, which is maintained by a group of friends known as the Jim Stewart Trust. I was kindly invited by members of the Jim Stewart Trust to attend one of their get-togethers in the UK where I was able to ask many questions informally and undertake two formal interviews with former friends of Stewart. Other insights came through interviews conducted with Stewart’s business associates in the USA: Richard Hunter of Mr. S. Leather, and Skeeter (Cubbin, 2020), who has developed many of the original Fetters Designs. I have also located a small folder of correspondence, and two recorded interviews with Stewart that are available at Chicago’s Leather Archives and Museum. These materials cannot give an accurate picture as to the full range of Fetters clients, whose anonymity Stewart was invested in protecting. Interviews I have undertaken, as well as correspondence chosen by Stewart give strong indications as to what inspired Stewart, and therefore sheds some insight into the ways in which products were developed at Fetters. Through highlighting Stewart’s aim of producing a space for erotic bondage outside of contemporaneous definitions of sexuality indicate the potential for histories of design to help understand the development of sexual identities and practices.

From Houdiniana to a male bondage market

In the early twentieth century, Harry Houdini’s (1874–1926) escapes from handcuffs, padlocked chains and straitjackets became world-famous. At a time when male workforces of industrialized nations were becoming increasingly desk-bound, Houdini was seen as a role-model in the context of a perceived crisis of masculinity (Kasson, 2001). His performances also produced spectacle around elements that would have appeared perverse outside of the context of the magic show including “exhibitionism, bondage, mutilation, entrapment, suffocation, criminality, insanity, flirtations with death.” The mythologized figure of Houdini which could be both perverse but also highlight traditionally masculine forms of heroism that combined cunning, strategy, and physical strength grave him a broad appeal that could awaken a range of sensibilities among his audience.

Stewart was intrigued by the wide variety of reasons his clients gave for their attraction to Houdini and the myths that surrounded him, which played into his own interest in restraint. He remembered how “the physical and psychological skills which allowed Houdini to beat so many challenges were fun for me to explore as a young teenager … while learning these skills and experimenting, I met dozens of people who enthusiastically rose to my challenge.” (Stewart, 1996) As Kasson has shown, a key feature of Houdini’s performance was the gendered dramatization of submission and escape:

(Houdini) placed himself in what might be regarded as an especially provocative feminized position: naked, bound, bent over, inspected, even to a degree penetrated. His victimization was thus not only political (a loss of freedom) but gendered (a loss of masculinity). Then, with an extraordinary bit of magic, he confounded his foes and at once regained his liberty and his masculinity.

The emergence of a business such as Fetters in Britain during the early 1970s took place concurrently with a proliferation of organizations that explored an interest in bondage and SM among kink interested gay men. In the UK, London’s 69 club was the oldest leather-fetish social group that was established in 1965, followed by MSC London in 1973 and MSC Midland Link in 1974 (UK Leather Archive, n.d.). In a thesis on The Development of Sadomasochism as a Cultural Style in the Twentieth-Century United States, (1998) Bienvenu positions 1971 as an important milestone on the institutionalization of homosexual sadomasochism ranging from “clubs and support groups to political action organizations.” As Rubin (2011) has elaborated, one of the founding principles of the gay leather scene in the 1960s and 1970s was the rejection associations of homosexual and femininity and to assert that “a man can be overpowered, restrained, tormented, and penetrated, yet retain his masculinity, desirability and subjectivity.” As the gay leather scene emerged as the major marketplace for male bondage wares at this time, it incorporated aspects of bondage culture that were derived from diverse cultural sources. Houdini, who theatricalized and eroticized physical and intellectual struggle in the context of bondage, became a key cultural reference for Stewart and his associates. The drama of regaining lost masculinity and playing of games that highlight and facilitate the strength of the male body and mind was a key motivation that informed the development of Fetters.

In playing off his knowledge of Houdini, Stewart was using similar strategies to the great escape artist in providing a “legitimate” interest that would focus the reader’s attention on ideas that would otherwise have fallen foul of British obscenity laws. As his interests developed through his time undertaking military service in the 1950s and beyond, he and friends continued to play with restraints. Stewart saw his Houdini expertise as enabling a veneer of social respectability. He explained how “getting a few magazine articles published [on Houdini] excused my continuing active experiments plus a growing collection of handcuffs and stuff. Because my interests also spread to police and prison history this opened up even more socially acceptable avenues.”(Stewart, 1996). Before Fetters became a full-time business in the late 1970s, his work in the theater as a stage manager and prop-maker position him within context where making he was regularly sourcing and producing objects designed to make a psychological impression on the viewer.

The move from an amateur interest in Houdini to starting a business specialized in male bondage was to come though contacts with users that came through an earlier sideline in the sale of Houdiniana to collectors. The sale and distribution of Houdiniana was part of a preexisting market for goods among bondage enthusiasts that helped to develop a coherent market for bondage objects once businesses such as Fetters emerged in the 1970s.

One informant, an owner of one of the earliest Fetters straight-jackets produced specifically for the erotic bondage market, first encountered Stewart as collector of objects related to restraint. His 1976 Fetters straitjacket is made from canvas with the single leather strap at the back that digs into the back rather more sharply than later models. It is in rather good condition considering its 1976 vintage. Like any self-respecting collector, Graham has kept the original sales material: a photocopied sheet with some outline drawings of straitjackets. The standard pattern that cost Graham 25GBP in 1976 (approximately 175GBP in 2019) is described as “suitable for escape artists” while historical patterns “modelled on the Houdini REGULATION straitjacket and one as used on the old Exeter jail are also available.” (Stewart, c. 1976) Alongside this were “pre-19^th century prison irons and shackles,” (Stewart, c.1976) as well as heritage police and leg cuffs by Hiatt who also supplied UK police forces.

The development of a straitjacket specifically for use by bondage enthusiasts signifies the first steps toward the professionalization of production of male bondage equipment in the UK. In analyzing the kinds of objects sold by Fetters during the 1970s, it becomes clear that Stewart was providing networks of bondage enthusiasts with what historian Gelber (1999) has termed “primary” and “secondary” objects. Looking back at the roots of Fetters, it is clear how the company was initially dependent upon the trade of “secondary objects” among collectors: items such as padlocks and handcuffs that were not originally designed to be collected but have been designated collectible objects through the emergence of a group of enthusiasts. The roots of Fetters lay in a bulk purchase of Hiatt handcuffs that were due to be melted down, which he went onto sell to customers through the magazine Exchange and Mart. (R. Hunter, Personal Communication, 2019) “Primary” objects refer to those produced for the aim of being collected, such as the custom “bondage” straitjacket, and reproductions of historical object types. It was such objects that were invented or produced specifically for usage in bondage scenarios that makers like Stewart helped to standardize and popularize through his business, often together with clients who had bought police supplies and other Houdiniania.

This movement between secondary preexisting objects, and designed primary objects was an important moment in the induction of Graham into a world of male bondage:

Around the age of about 18, I had an interest in padlocks as something to collect, they were reasonably cheap to collect, at the time, and then somebody gave me a pair of handcuffs and, from handcuffs, my bondage scenario basically started. So, from handcuffs, it was then Exchange & Mart, a magazine that came out every week and there was a little advert in there about different styles of handcuffs for sale. It was a person up in London called Jim Stewart, so you merely sent off your stamped addressed envelope and you got these hand duplicated leaflets back with various handcuffs and what he had available and in stock … I bought a few pairs and then he sent me a leaflet on straitjackets and it was just, sort of, a natural progression from handcuffs to a straitjacket. (G. Escott, personal communication, 2019)

From collecting, Graham gradually expanded his horizons from connoisseurship of objects to practicing bondage, first on his own and later with contacts he met through an early internet message board in 1984. In this case, the ownership of the straightjacket motivated him to reply to an advert that read “Have straitjacket, need somebody to put me in it.” (Escott, personal communication 2019). This was the beginning of a transition from the social world of collecting to the social world of play.

The development of collecting cultures was essential for the establishment of a marketplace for bondage products, and also for the development of specialized knowledge that enables the processes of categorization, and assessments of quality and authenticity that are central to the activity of collecting (Gelber, 1999). An original Fetters mail out from 1977 reads:

WE BUY AND SELL all manner of reproduction aand modern handcuffs…

WE DEVISE STUNTS for escape artists and other entertainers.

WE OFFER AN ADVISORY SERVICE on historical and technical matters related to confinement, restraint and punishment…

WE MAKE TO ORDER from customers’ own sketches or historical records. (reprinted in Stewart & Hunter, 1993)

Through promoting a wide range of possible users, Stewart was reflecting the structure of the market for collectors of eccentric objects. One other noticeable feature of Graham’s statement about how he became a collector is that he became aware of Fetters through the magazine Exchange and Mart. Founded in 1868, Exchange and Mart was known as “an unequalled journal for the Amateur and Collector”—and included adverts that actively encouraged its readers to buy, sell and collect esoteric items (Egginton, 2017). Exchange and Mart was a common entry point for collectors and users who befriended Stewart and whose correspondence he later chose to republish. Another correspondent of Stewart’s references the publication several times:

I replied to an advert in the Exchange and Mart. It was a private ad and had loads of stuff for sale, Dry suits, gas masks, waterproof suits and more. I plucked up courage and phoned up, and then visited. I met a very friendly, warm couple, who now after fifteen years, are good friends, and who have given me some guidance along my journey. (Anonymous, n.d.)

The role of general hobby and advice publications in the development of BDSM in Britain has been partially documented. In the 1860s and 1870s, male bondage and SM enthusiasts caused controversy in Samuel Beeton’s English Women’s Domestic Magazine, who inadvertently published letters from men who submitted enthusiastic descriptions of the joys of corsetry and tight-lacing, as well as corporal punishment and restraint (Beetham, 1991). In the 1930s, London Life became an important forum for the articulation of queer and fetishistic desire by subjects who, like many Fetters clients expressed an “indeterminate” sense of identity in relation to labels denoting sexual orientation (Sigel, 2012). Classified advertising for international businesses selling fetishistic clothing and businesses enabled correspondence that meant it was the key medium for the development of social networks for kink practices in the 1930s (Bienvienu, 1998). Elsewhere, general readership publications are known to have been used to make contact with others who may share sexual and culture and interests. Meeker (2006) has shown how careful wording of advertisements in US publication Hobby News enabled homosexuals to “slyly self-identify.”

While Exchange and Mart enabled collectors to meet one another in their homes and possibly engage in erotic encounters with fellow enthusiasts, the Fetters workshops in Clapham, London, provided a context for enthusiasts to meet and engage in the development of objects. Stewart’s play-space at 40 Fitzwilliam Road was open to his friends to come and use equipment where Stewart could get an idea of what worked and what didn’t. One remembered how he “had a camera set up so you could watch what was going on and things like that. He was never a real participant in play, he was much more of a voyeur” (J. How, personal communication, 2019). This observation of play completed a feedback-loop that enabled him to identify and test physical and conceptual weaknesses in his equipment by testing the durability of objects while also identifying previously unforeseen uses. The need to struggle in satisfying way, but retain the possibility of escape was a key feature of each straitjacket he developed. His relationship with customers was key to improve objects. As Graham remembered:

Jim was a very good listener. When you went and you asked for something, he would then ask you afterwards, when you purchased an item, how would you make it better or what would you change? And, Jim’s, for a straitjacket, was four straps down the back and one crotch strap and it evolved to two crotch straps and five straps down the back. And, then it came to the straps passed completely around the body, so you were virtually in a harness with the canvas holding the harness together … .Jim evolved his products and it was through other people’s ideas that he could then put into practice and he had a marketable item, at the end of the day. (G. Escott, personal communication, 2019)

Stewart often invited correspondents to test out ideas, so it is likely that the letters he saved belonged to those who used his playroom when visiting London. By providing spaces for play and drawing in contacts from strategically placed adverts, Stewart built up a range of contacts both within and outside of the leather community. This had the effect of positioning “restrictive practices”—as they were euphemistically known—as a kind of hobby that shared its spaces, discourses and forms of knowledge formation with other active pursuits such as those covered in outward-bound magazines like Shotgun News.

The army-surplus store emerged as physical environment that was an important node in the infrastructure for the British bondage hobbyist. Such stores were recognized as containing “a whole world of useful hooks, pullies, buckles and mysterious pieces of efficient-looking hardware” (Morgan, 1984) that couldn’t be obtained elsewhere. Around the time of founding Fetters, Stewart became friendly with a group of ex-soldiers who had established an army surplus store in Islington, London. Whereas Soho sex shops that had been operating since the early 1960s were commonly associated with pornography, Fetters was limited to mail order. Army surplus stores could act as a point of contact for those who had started adapting objects for themselves without the knowledge of a larger bondage “scene.” One friend of Stewart’s from Hertfordshire heard about a store called Quartermasters after buying a moped that he used to drive down to the river and meet with anglers who would spend the day fishing in one-piece PVC suits:

I was told by them to buy an Exchange & Mart … When I got it, I was told to look in the back for miscellaneous and find some where called the Quartermasters and that was the place to buy one of these great one-piece suits. … The address was in Angel Islington, I had never been that far into London on my own but made a point I was going to do it next Saturday. (Steve, personal communication, May 2019)

The fact that army surplus stores were the first stores to retail straitjackets specifically designed for male bondage highlights how the material origins of Fetters objects in material settings associated with hetero-masculinity, and with it the implicit eroticism of power relations between men in such settings. Quartermasters featured in a 1984 issue of the Swedish gay BDSM magazine Mr. SM, which clearly reveled in the hetero-masculine environment of the army surplus store:

It is NOT a Gay run company or Sex Shop – it just happens that a lot of the goods they carry appeal to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. Recently they discovered that reproductions of the British Forces pattern ‘Strait-jacket’ sold like hotcakes when they had a few made by “Fetters.” There is now a complete range of FETTERS metal and leather restraints on view in a specially constructed “Brig.” You only get to see it if you have the balls to ask to see it. If you meet Badger, Big Dave, Micky or Danny … don’t be afraid to admit what you’re into – but don’t expect them to share your interest. They’re all honest, upright, masculine guys and leading figures in the BATTLE RE-ENACTMENT SOCIETY. The fact that this involves them … rolling around in the mud and generally beating the shit out of one another doesn’t mean that there’s anything kinky about them. (Morgan, 1984)

By referencing the implicit codes of sexual contact among straight men for a gay readership, the article eroticizes the ambiguous sexuality in nominally hetero-masculine military settings. How many men with fantasies of restraint would have plucked up the courage to buy in-person at Army Surplus stores is unknown, however the development of production and infrastructures for distribution and retail through shops and mail order through the 1980s suggests that despite its common associations with the gay leather scene, the development of objects for male bondage drew on wider erotic signification. Furthermore, the development of networks through mail order and army surplus stores enabled Stewart to reach men who did not identify with forms of sexuality expressed within leather culture.

The military roots of male erotic bondage equipment

As his business developed, Stewart came into contact with more former members of the armed services who played a crucial role in the development of Fetters. The input from soldiers, and the influence of “military games” reveals the importance of military equipment in influencing the design of bondage gear developed at Fetters. Just as Houdini drew upon the latent eroticism of restraint, the military influence on Stewart raises questions on how erotic experiences of the military were embodied in his designs.

Although Stewart founded Fetters in his forties, he had been attracted to “competent and confident men” since childhood, and particularly to their uniforms and enjoyed his 2 years of national service in the Royal Airforce where he took extra training courses to hang out “with the guys who did masculinity and uniforms particularly well” (Stewart, 2007). It is perhaps of little surprise; therefore, that Stewart’s early forays into design came through adapting military equipment:

The first straitjacket I ever made for myself was a heavy naval wind and waterproof anorak modified. I have fond memories of an army anti-gas suit and gas mask which I nicked from the air force training unit. (Stewart, 1996)

He arrived at this separately from the existing bondage and sex toy scene, which he perceived as feminized and more associated with sadomasochistic play. At the time, the heterosexual scene was organized “more through sex ads, professional dominance and some private social clubs,” (Rubin, 2011) while some sex toys designed for men were available through stores such as The London Leatherman, who later supplied leather to Stewart for leather straightjackets and sleep sacks. Equipment for male bondage was therefore often home-made or comprised of “secondary objects” that had been produced for other purposes. Stewart later recalled “Bondage was stuff that dominatrix used and they were usually pretty token toy things. I wanted a good straitjacket. I wanted good strong straps” (Stewart, 2007). In deriving objects from military equipment, he was not attempting to create new inventions, but to refine and tinker the equipment he wanted for “masculine games.”

One such object in the sleepsack, a well-known invention of Stewart, which originates from Stewart’s own experiences playing with standard issue army sleeping bags by lying in one bag with the other over his head. He enjoyed the feeling of struggle and calm feelings that resulted. This led him to develop a new type of object that he describes in the following way:

A form fitting type of full-length body-shaped bag with or without an attached head-cover. The main design feature is internal arm-sleeves which separate arms from the body and render the wearer helpless inside the bag. Usually soft and malleable, a bag of this configuration can be made from canvas, leather or latex (if sufficiently strong). Once inside, the body covering and attached ‘D’ rings can be used to subject a body to varying intensities of confinement through the use of added lacing or straps. Construction details depend entirely on the likes and dislikes of the users. As such ‘Sleepsacks’ are usually made to order, variations such access points, anchoring points, strap or lace tightening possibilities are all optional. (Stewart, 1980)

Other options were added later, include the addition of tit-flaps for nipple play and accessories for suspension, either in horizontal or vertical positions (Hunter & Stewart, 1993). Stewart also produced a version with internal zips for those who had to play on their own. The materials also gradually evolved: from early canvas models to later editions in leather and thick latex. The sleepsack is now available to bondage enthusiasts across the world, including cheap Chinese-made replicas with polyurethane straps available on Ebay.

Stewart retained and occasionally published correspondence with the consent of various friends and customers. He used correspondence to explore the idea of bondage as a hobby beyond the gay circles that appear to have constituted the majority of his client base. Servicemen and ex-servicemen feature regularly in the correspondence. In one letter, the sleepsack features in a description of a sexual encounter. He wrote:

The guy who is recently ex-army arrives at the house and changes into his cammo gear and goes up to the playspace, he is ordered to hood himself and face the wall. I got dressed up in cammos for the first time. I’d owned a set, acquired from friends when I worked on various Army bases, but never worn them as fetish gear. For the next four hours I tied the guy up in several different positions and ended up suspending him upside down trussed up in a Sleepsack, giving him a generally rough time and finally bringing him to orgasm. Eventually the scene finished and I cautiously let him free, standing over him wearing an Army helmet and armed with my police issue baton. (Anonymous, n.d.)

What is more revealing about the user of the sleepsack is that he also narrated his experiences of sexual arousal during bondage play with military equipment. However, he also feels compelled to address the question of a gay cultural identity from which he feels distance. His confusion came after a “groping session” in rubber outfits and wondering whether he was gay, but resolving, “I had no physical attraction to another man, but only a sexual attraction to the rubber gear he was wearing. The guy was just a clothes horse.” Later he recalls meeting an individual through Exchange and Mart and “giving him a blowjob, while he was dressed as a Policeman,” again explaining ’ the image was the thing that turned me on, but this time I was really worried’ (Anonymous, n.d.).

While the user of the sleepsack seems to have enjoyed the company of gay men and expresses little homophobic sentiment, his “old fashioned” ideas about sex with women and being “worried” about the implications of a gay cultural identity led him to adopt much of the discourse around sex between heterosexual men as masculinity enhancing (Ward, 2015), underscored by the fact that his encounter was with an ex-army officer. Recent scholarship informed by queer theory has brought attention to BDSM practitioners who express their experiences in terms of queer sexuality and fluid gender performativity (Bauer, 2014; Simula, 2012; Simula & Sumerau, 2019). The correspondence held by Stewart indicates that for his clients in the 1970s and 1980s, the heterosexual/homosexual binary was a strong construct that could lead to confusion when it failed to map onto lived experience.

Another letter-writer (who had eventually come to terms with himself as homosexual in private but was worried about what his suburban neighbors might think) adapted his equipment from hardware and army surplus stores and wrote of the sexual games he played using improvised objects, such as

two men of equal strength and physical ability agreeing to a strenuous wrestling bout each with a fat dildo strapped up the ass, plus padded athletic crotch protectors imprisoning heavily taped up cock and balls. First man to achieve a submission gets to do whatever he decides to do for an agreed period or whatever time is available. (Stewart, 2004)

While Fetters, and the networks of contacts through Exchange and Mart facilitated the social sexual formation of male bondage, it is curious that such networks also provided a space for reflection among men who felt culturally at odds with homo/hetero binarism culture. The same author explained “My main point is—is there any established category in either straight or gay culture where such men comfortably fit? Believe me, after seven years of correspondence and game-playing I can tell you there are a lot of us out there.” (in Stewart, 2004)

As Sedgwick (1990) and Halperin (2002) have explored, the idea of homosexuality and its implicit norms of mutual sexual pleasure and romantic love have often obscured historical aspects of homosexual experience. For Halperin, inequalities of power within male friendships, as well as the different roles played within those relationships make it possible to interpret this in “pederastic” or “sodomitical” terms. In reference to the modern male world, he writes, “hierarchy itself is hot … it is indissociably bound up with at least the potential for erotic signification. Hence, disparities of power between male intimates take an immediate and inescapable aura of eroticism.” For some of Stewart’s clients, an interest in such “games” “pursuits” and “physical challenges” seem to have been rooted in the fact that the objects embodied rules that facilitate sexual contact in stereotypically hetero-masculine settings. If, as Ward (2015) puts it, “gay men … are men who have sex with men without an alibi,” (p. 116) then the material culture of the military and its preexisting sexual codes were translated so as to enable sexual contact between men by providing the required alibis. For a group of Stewart’s acquaintances, discourses affirming the need for men to spend time away from feminized domestic space to reaffirming one’s masculinity is another frequent theme in the letters of Stewart’s correspondence:

I do know several other people … including an ex-Royal Marine who bought a World War Two underground army bunker on the edge of a forest in a remote area of England. He and groups of like-minded ex-army-nuts spend wild weekends there away from wives and kids, playing some really tough ‘training, discipline, and punishment games. (Stewart, 1996)

The need to “get away” from wives and kids to enter a space in which masculine prowess could be proven speaks of a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward women who are viewed as too weak to be included in such activities. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to reconstruct the social and commercial responses to the debates around women in BDSM, it seems that several correspondents’ views were derived from a cultural viewpoint that most women would not be interested or physically able to engage in such games. This may produce a pretext for same-sex sexual contact among married men such as the “ex-army nuts” to create physically demanding sexual games that bolster a hetero-masculine identity by expressing contempt for perceived female weakness and inferiority.

As Bauer (2014) and Simula (2012) have noted, there are a significant group who express BDSM as their overriding sexual preference, however in the context of 1970s and 1980s Britain and the USA (Stewart traveled widely and regularly met his business contacts in the US), Stewart clearly felt the need to communicate that his interest in restraints was somewhat separate from his homosexuality. The correspondence published by Stewart reveals how the acquisition and use of objects therefore played an important role in enabling such individuals to meet through common interests, but that the process also created an expectation of homosexual orientation that Stewart’s correspondents felt compelled to address. This disassociation of sexual orientation and bondage led to a disagreement with one of the best-known advocates of male bondage in the US. Stewart recalled, “one of the real times I got angry in America, was with Tony DeBlase who just felt that anybody that was into bondage but not into sex was in it half-assed and unless you were into all of this and other things you were either in denial. And he did not understand people who got more turned on from restraints that they did from sucking or fucking.” Before the advent of magazines such as Bound and Gagged in 1987, which took the idea of male-to-male restraint more seriously, Fetters acted as a platform for Stewart to develop ideas about erotic bondage as an orientation on the fringes of homosexuality.

The significance of military settings is therefore of significance due to the approach to constructing equipment (such as the “good string straps” mentioned about contrasted with dominatrix toys), but also due to homoerotic and homosexual contact in military settings that was frequently justified by authorities using similar language to Stewart. Although bondage, according to Stewart, does not necessarily preclude “hot man sex” (2007), the fact that these objects originate outside of culturally gay settings indicates that care is required in order to unpack how these objects were used and developed by men who did not identify as homosexual.

Bondage and hobbyism

The articulation of bondage as a hobby is key to understanding Stewart’s practice, as he was frequently critical of those who viewed bondage as a primarily sexual activity. For instance, he lamented how “Society is not ready for bondage work-out rooms at the local gym or bowling alley,” going on to explain:

It is male scouting, male bonding and male challenge … .It gets a lot out of the system; less and less places where you can let out that sort of physical steam. I mean one of the best physical workouts you can have is being in a straitjacket and roll around until you are exhausted. (Stewart, 2007)

Stewart’s advocacy for struggling in straightjackets or metal restraints built upon preexisting ideas of appropriate masculine leisure in the twentieth century. Gelber (1999) and Knott (2015) have drawn attention to the historical development of hobbies and hobbycrafts since the late nineteenth century as a morally beneficial activity. Gelber (1999) has traced the emergence of discourses surrounding hobbies as a “good thing to do” in order to explain why such “curious, homebound, solitary, and sometimes wasteful activities became so beloved of those who wished to shield the public from temptations of idleness.” Stewart locates the benefits of bondage in terms of letting it “out of the system” as a pressure valve for male energy and aggressions that is in line with mid-twentieth century views on the benefits of physical excercies. Mid-century psychologists also situated traditional male hobbies as a good way to overcome sexual frustration and aggression. As one wrote in 1942:

In addition to energy from the erotic drive, many hobbies provide an outlet for the aggressive drive to varying degrees. These aggressive elements are more obvious in activities involving physical effort like athletics, hunting, gardening, boxing, wrestling, and they are also given healthy expression in competitive sports and games. (Meninger, p. 124)

Stewart’s proud identity as an advanced amateur was nonetheless a barrier to him fulfilling the commercial potential of his business. While his US business partner Richard Hunter focused structuring a retail business that it would be possible to scale (R. Hunter, personal communication, 2019), Fetters remained “a hobby that made a little bit of money” and a bit of a “self-indulgence.” (Stewart, 2007) While it was run by Stewart, his business occupied the gray zone between amateur and professional design practice, with much time spent on the social side of corresponding and observing play. However, he nonetheless retained a critical attitude toward the objects he produced: patrons were allowed to destroy objects if they were able to, and he produced objects and information that as frequently encouraged patrons to take on DIY projects as to buy from his company. For example, an information sheet on genital bondage explained in the style of a household management book “it is often better left to the ingenuity of the DIY enthusiast to make up equipment … the wide range of ‘toys’ available from shops or by mail order either fit or they don’t.” (Stewart, c.1976)

Fetters therefore promoted its roots as a hobby-business, emphasizing the amateur approach which privileged connoisseurship over commerce, for example, by refusing to be “limited or confined to the demands of the marketplace.” (Beegan & Atkinson, 2008) Amateurism here signifies distance from commercial limitations that would enable space for a more cerebral engagement with the production of objects and the types of transformations that may be then experienced by users. However, as his business partner Richard Hunter recognized, the image of the tinkerer, perfecting the art of objects that enable self-bondage, or the optimum gag that will not slip but will remain comfortable for long periods became central to the marketing at Mr. S who continue to produce objects under the Fetters brand in the USA. It proudly declares:

This catalogue was put together by enthusiasts, so don’t expect clear cold objectivity about the merchandise … our workshops are the playground of creative minds, thus making this catalog a candy store for kinky and imaginative players of creative games. (Hunter & Stewart, 1993)

This attitude brings the hobbyist aspect of male bondage full-circle: from practices of magic and escapology, to the networks of bondage enthusiasts who provided the basis for the emergence of specialized businesses associated with niche sexual interests. This was done by partly positioning the bondage alongside other hobby practices: drawing on the virtuous qualities of Houdini, while simultaneously emphasizing the same moral qualities in bondage as in other hobbies. In Stewart’s case, the de-coupling of male bondage from homosexuality was key to enabling a design process that drew on a range of desires and orientations that fell outside of more codified environments associated with leather culture.

Conclusion

Stewart’s cryptic appeal to the readers of Shotgun News quoted at the introduction to this article highlights the critical care that must be taken when examining the material culture of BDSM. Stewart’s aim of rattling an as-yet unarticulated aspect of desire among the magazine’s readers highlights how innovating new object types required an approach that could harness preexisting desires and, through engagement with users, develop objects that would be satisfying both in terms of their cultural origins, but also in comfort and usability. While existing scholarship has fruitfully explored the development of leather and male BDSM cultures from sociological and visual culture viewpoints, this investigation into Fetters shows how a design historical perspective can provide an important entry point to understanding the preexisting social, cultural and economic structures that made the “social sexual formation” (Rubin, 2011) of the leather scene possible.

This stands in contrast to approaches that see material culture of kink through the lens of complicity with capitalism’s class structures (Levine, 1998; Weiss, 2011). In the example of Fetters, the social context necessary for innovation in bondage objects reveals a historical openness to identity or orientation in the design of bondage equipment that could include chaotic and unarticulated desires, and connection to a range of esoteric interests. Whereas the bondage enthusiast clearly takes on a subcultural identity can become subsumed and tied to class structure, few would make the same argument with regards hobby fishermen, knitters or model train enthusiasts. Through interpreting making practices beyond a questions of style and consumption, we are able to better understand the role of designers such as Stewart in the development of BDSM culture in the late twentieth century in relation to other forms of leisure. Stewart’s remarkable ability to enagage with a wide range of clients, and to experiment with objects in order to produce knowledge on how to improve his products position him as a key figure in the design of objects in bondage and SM.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences under grant P18-0029:1.

Notes

1. The terminology associated with kink is contingent upon temporalities, geographies and identities. In this article I mainly refer to erotic bondage to refer to the practices of restraint, dominance and submission that were of interest to Jim Stewart. Elsewhere I have attempted to use terminology closest to the view of the authors or communities under discussion.