Gender - D/s - S&M

Ah, gender …

As a youth I thought gender as other than a biological fact would be gone by now. (A lesson in how we self-select out own communities of sensibility.)

Growing older I’ve come to enjoy various sorts of gender performance. Mostly if it is a bit atypical and done with self-awareness. And gender neutrality: no more than physiological configuration. All flesh is pleasing.

But most folks are monosexual and often enjoy sex roles and certainly specific body parts.

And many who enjoy D/s and S&M like very stylized gender performance. Some even believe them necessary expression of sociological and psychological truths.

We have:

The men and women influenced by John Norman’s Gor fantasy novels. Some Goreans - by no means all - expatiate about it as amateur anthropologists and claim it the only honest expression of male and female nature.

Many heterosexual submissive men believe that women are inherently superior to them if only morally. And there’s considerable lore about the need to keep these guys’ sexual desire in check.

And straight dominant women feel that there is a wrongheaded expectation that they’ll automatically don leather and PVC.

Gay women seem to be able to delight in butch / femme roles with innocent delight.

Submission seems to be a very common craving of male transvestites.

Gay Leathermen - both masters and slaves - often seek to embody hypermasculine archetypes like those expressed in Tom of Finland’s illustrations.

Of course some folks are just kinky and don’t sweat any of the above. They just enjoy the biology of their own and their partners’ bodies.

How about you? What role, if any, does gender play in your kink life?