Lee Harrington was born on 28 November 1979 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and now lives in Denver, Colorado. He is a trans man and uses he/they pronouns. In rope and leather circles he is known for hands-on Japanese rope, the protocol of American leather community, and a sacred-kink theology. He writes practical field guides for adults entering BDSM scenes. The books refuse pure romantic myth and pure clinic-speak. The point is connection between adults in a scene.
His teaching braids technique with meaning. He talks about why a particular tie can feel intimate, how power exchange can work as ritual, and how a newcomer finds a place in leather community before they are fluent in the protocol. National Leather Association International has recognized the work more than once. Shibari You Can Use: Japanese Rope Bondage and Erotic Macramé (2006) took the Geoff Mains Book Award in 2008. It is a guide to Japanese-inspired rope for readers who care more about connection than about performance geometry. Playing Well With Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities, written with Mollena Williams (2012), won the Geoff Mains non-fiction award in 2013. More Shibari You Can Use: Passionate Rope Bondage & Intimate Connection won that same non-fiction award in 2016.
Besides rope, the writing covers age play, spirituality, transgender rights, paganism, and erotica. Age play in this work means adults role-playing. It does not involve minors. Essays and poems are scattered through magazines, anthologies, and books. NLA-I’s recognition treats SM as a sacred language that is more than technique.
From 1999 to 2006 Harrington worked as an adult film actor, a pornographer, and a sex blogger. In 2005 he placed in the SIGNY Award for Best Bondage Model. He appeared on more than seventy adult websites, including Kink.com, on television such as Playboy’s Sexcetera, and in feature-length adult films. That camera work still shapes how he talks about embodiment, negotiation, and the gap between fantasy images and what people actually do.
Become Your Own Beloved: A Guide to Delighting in Self-Connection came out in 2023. Other books include Traversing Gender: Understanding Transgender Realities (2016), On Starry Thighs: Sacred and Sensual Poetry (2015), Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Path of BDSM and Beyond (2010), and The Toybag Guide to Age Play (2007). He edited Queer Magic: Power Beyond Boundaries (2018), Spirit of Desire: Personal Explorations of Sacred Kink (2011), and Rope, Bondage, and Power (2009). Bondage, gender, and spirituality sit on the same shelf. He does not apologize for that.
