Indeed! Of course, not knowing stuff doesn’t make you a fake Dom, it just makes you ignorant (I use the word in its literal sense, without judgement) and inexperienced; everyone has to start somewhere. But claiming greatness when you’re putting a sub’s life in danger does.
It may be easy for me to say this as a switch, but honestly, if you’re starting out, consider getting someone you can trust to show you the ropes, so to speak, and of course read around online (stuff like this) as much as possible. We’re in 2018 now; anybody can be ignorant, but continued ongoing ignorance is a willful choice.
It might go without saying (but won’t, because I’m going to say it), that if you’re doing anything with all but the very lightest and gentlest of BDSM, you should have respectable first aid skills also.
A few additional things that can easily kill or at least severely injure a sub:
Any kind of tie that tightens itself, and many that don’t. This includes places other than the throat, and definitely includes thigh ties that necessarily cross the femoral artery.
You can still do them! But keep close watch for signs of swelling and/or discolouration, and be ready to quick-release (knives are sexy, but not the best tools for cutting rope in an emergency, you want shears) and gently massage. Aspirin will also help (beyond its analgesic properties, it is a blood thinner and will reduce clotting; don’t mix it with blood play, though, or it’ll look like Quentin Tarantino directed an episode of Dexter in your bedroom).
Anything that leaves somebody suspended upside-down for more than a short while. Time to death varies widely based on individual and circumstantial specifics. Cause of death is generally brain haemorrhaging.
If you’re going to do that sort of thing, go to rigging classes, learn from an expert, and know your partner’s limits well. Start small and work up. As with all bondage, but especially this, do not leave the sub unattended. That works only in porn, not in reality.
If you’re going to do this, you need to know anatomy well. There’s a difference between looking like an Anne Rice scene (trickle of blood over skin) and looking like a Japanese dolphin slaughter (blood everywhere, on everything, and a lot of hot wet red death), and that difference is measured in millimetres.
CBT (Cock and Ball Torture, not Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
On a related note, watch what you’re doing there too. While everyone’s focussed on the nerves available here, do remember there’s some pretty major plumbing here as well, and if everything’s going well, it’s going to be under very high pressure. You can cause a lot of (harmless) pain without causing injury if you respect both anatomy and physics.
Wait, what? This is basically vanilla pseudo-kink fluff, right? Well, it can be, but just watch out for one thing; grabbing a handful of hair and yanking powerfully aside can snap someone’s neck, or at least severely injure it. Unlike in movies, even a broken neck is generally not an instant kill (because the spinal cord is actually quite robust, so if it wasn’t severed by bone cutting through it—as in certain intentional neck-break techniques—then life will go on), but your sub will probably be wearing the wrong sort of collar for a very long time, and/or could be paralysed. So by all means grab, and by all means pull, but don’t yank suddenly.
