Stem
In a rope harness, a usually vertical line that connects two or more sets of wraps and spreads force between them; box ties are described as stemmed or stemless.
In rope bondage vocabulary a stem is a line of rope, often running vertically, that links two or more sets of wraps in a harness. Shibari Study’s glossary compares it to a spine that distributes force through the tie and notes that it needs at least as much tension as the wraps it connects. The feature is used to classify box ties such as the gote: Studio Ma in London, for example, has taught workshops covering common stemmed and stemless gote, and one on the construction of a stemless two-rope gote.