Holly of The Pervocracy is on a bit of a tear, brilliant-insight post-wise this weekend.

Home Depot rope. Jon and I use Home Depot rope. Isn’t that horrible? It’s absolutely true that Twisted Monk rope is better; from what I hear it’s woven from the treasure trails of the gods themselves. But what bothers me is the idea that Monk rope is right and Home Depot is wrong. Not lower quality, not more limited in uses, not requiring more caution, but… incorrect.

Bullshit. I’m not going to write a whole paragraph elaborating on this because my opinion fits in five words: Nothing that works is wrong. You can put Heinz on filet mignon if that’s what tastes best to you.

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By the way, one of the worst manifestations of the “gotta do it right!” attitude I’m thinking about here is the idea that what Jon and I do isn’t even BDSM. Because, honestly? It’s mostly just spanking, rough sex, and overhand knots. There’s no medical-grade electrical boxes or 10-gauge needles or ultra-realistic walrus dildos. And I always feel oddly inferior, almost like a poser, for calling something BDSM that doesn’t even draw blood half the time.

She says it here.

Actually the question of “right” and “wrong” in hobbies with established traditions is kind of interesting. On the one hand it’s absolutely true that “inside the tradition of high French cuisine ketchup on fillet mignon is wrong.” On the other hand it tastes pretty good.

When I was a young, recent refugee from Southern Appalachia, having been raised on live-on-radio-and-tv performances by Flatt & Scruggs, Porter Wagoner, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Tennessee Earnie Ford, and too many other (unavoidable and, post Beatles, unavoidably boring) country/western, folk, and bluegrass musicians, I was always startled to meet young gentlemen from places like Long Island and Cambridge, MA who tartly informed me, when I played bluegrass on street corners and coffee houses that “Bill Monroe didn’t play it that way.” This was all true, of course, but then neither did I chew “Bull O’ The Woods” plug tobacco, Brylcream hair tonic, Foremost buttermilk, Bunny bread, nor any of the other products that sponsored those musicians. Nor did I wear my grandpa’s sock garters which, truth be told, would have been about as likely as me playing anything exactly the way Bill Monroe (my grandfather’s age) would have.

But then who would know the “right” way to play bluegrass, someone raised listening to KNOX and the Cas Walker Show or some musicologist from Brookline? To be honest the jury may still be out since I wasn’t a terribly accomplished musician, but I’ll be danged if I wasn’t authentic as Hell!

So nowadays whenever someone comes along and says something like “you’re doing bluegrass wrong,” or quilting, or, especially these days BDSM wrong I think about the most important movie ever made about technical hobbies — not quite a documentary but nevertheless surprisingly lifelike: Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom. It says everything you need to know.

This is in no way intended as a knock against the “bluegrass police” in their too-often green satin zip-up jackets, or the used-car-dealer or insurance-industry-actuaries without whom there really might be no traditions at all. Same with those who uphold the “faith” in BDSM circles. But! Neither should one approach those who would hold the reins of this tradition or that as ultimate authorities. Nor should one forget (as Mancur Olsen discusses in his academic work The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Second printing with new preface and appendix (Harvard Economic Studies)) that those who are most interested in maintaining traditions often have an awful lot to gain.

Anyway, I happen to agree with Holly and plenty of others that if you really want to restrain someone head-to-foot with both safety and style then yeah, Monk’s beautiful hemp rope is the bee’s knees. If you just want to bind your partner’s hands to the headboard so they can’t stop you from throwing you down and ravishing you till you’re good and ready then yeah, anything at hand will work just great. There is no “right” way to play Fox on the Run (trust me), there’s no “right” way to ballroom dance, there’s no “right” condiment for fillet mignon, and there’s certainly no way to make your partner moan or roar with delight. (Even though there are some very good teachers for all of those things.)