What Is Gender Play?
Gender play is any kind of play that explores gender and gender roles. It refers to a variety of kinks, fetishes, or role plays that play with gender.
It is sometimes defined as transgressing gender roles but not all gender play is transgression. It can be about experimenting, about admiring. Some gender play is simply role play. Other gender play is all about the transformation fetish.
Gender play can be intertwined in BDSM, having lovers assume another gender as an act of submission or for degradation and humiliation purposes.
Read: What Are My Kinks? 13 Ways to Find Your Kink
7 Examples of Gender Play
1. Gender Swap Roleplay
Gender swapping is when you and your partners trade genders for role play. This kind of gender play often means a male and female will trade spots during sex. She will play the male, and traditional male characteristics, although not all male-female couples are necessarily male dominant. The man will play the female.
Gender play where you swap genders is sometimes a specific kink because many women love to play a top role and assume the swagger and dominance of men, and many men get off on playing in pretty lingerie or assuming the passive role.
Read: Opposite Gender Fantasy: Becoming a Woman
2. Crossdressing
Crossdressing is a very common kind of gender play, where someone wears the clothing of another gender. This may involve full dress-up and role play, for example, a woman binding her breasts, wearing a suit and men’s shoes, wearing a masculine hair style, and going to an event. A man may wear a dress and pumps.
Quite often, crossdressing is less elaborate. It is extremely common for men to get off on wearing women’s lingerie. A man may simply love the tactile sensation of lace or silk against his genitalia. He may love the idea that his lover wore the panties and that her intimate juices are in the fabric.
Read: How to Enjoy Your Crossdressing Fetish
3. Crossdressing Exhibitionism
For some people who enjoy cross-dressing gender play, the thrill is in showing off to others. They may dress provocatively to turn heads or shock or surprise others.
Read: Tips for Practicing Consensual Exhibitionism
4. Forced Feminization
Forced feminization is a form of consensual non-consensual (CNC) gender play, where feminine roles, behavior, receptive sex, and clothing are “forced” on him by a femdom or dominant woman, or sometimes, by a dominant male lover. It is a form of submission, humiliation, and degradation, as well as a kind of gender play.
Read: Humiliation Kink: 18 Examples of Erotic Embarrassment
5. Sissy Training
Sissification is a kind of feminization gender play where an adult male is emasculated and made to behave like a girl and dress like one.
Read: Sissy Kink Explained: 10 Types of BDSM Sissies
6. ABDL Sissification
Some forms of sissification gender play are Adult Baby Diaper Lover (ABDL) fetishes, with sissification turning the submissive into a little girl. This gender play may be expressed with stereotypically little girl hairstyles and nightgowns and toys as props.
Read: ABDL 101: Types of Adult Babies and How They Play
7. Pegging
Pegging is the penetration of a male ass by a woman with a strap-on dildo. It is often a form of domination and sometimes of sissification. It can be a kind of gender play, with or without being BDSM. The woman plays the male with a cock and the male plays the penetrated female.
Pegging is very common and enjoyable for many lovers and is not always gender play or BDSM, but simply a variation on kinds of intercourse and sex.
Read: Femdom Pegging: 15 Ways to Supercharge Strap-on Sex
Gender Bending Kinks and Related Fetishes
Transgender Attraction
Transgender admirers or trans-attracted people are in a tricky position. They are men with a strong attraction to transgender women. There are some women attracted to trans men, too, but it is not as commonly viewed as a fetish.
There are many men who are open to dating and relationships with all women, cis or trans, and there are trans-attracted men who also love cis women. Some men find transgender women uniquely attractive and it is a very sexual attraction.
Because of the history of discrimination and abuse that trans women have endured, trans-attracted men are sometimes belittled for fetishizing human beings. On the other hand, most transgender women want to date and be attractive to their lovers.
Fetishistic attraction to a certain kind of human is not limited to transgender women. Some people have a thing for thin women, Black men, Asian women, BBW, and much more.
Trans-attracted men were once and perhaps still are quite closeted because of public shame and this is partly where the negative stereotype has come from—many men were happy to meet trans women for clandestine sex, but not to date them in public or introduce them to their friends.
Read: How to Meet Local Trans Women
Gyandromorphophilia
Men with gyandromorpholia are also trans-attracted, but they are specifically attracted to gyandromorphs—the medical name for men with penises and breasts, or more often, transgender women with penises and breasts.
There is a proliferation of porn featuring women with these characteristics. This kind of gender play porn used to be called “shemale porn,” a term we now reject and see as derogatory.
Read: 20 Types of BDSM Porn You Didn’t Know Existed
Futanari Kink
The futanari fetish is pure gender play fantasy, in the form of hentai manga and anima. The futa are a kind of transgender or blended gender or hermaphrodite animated character. They usually have enormous breasts, penises, and a “yaoi” hole.
Read: Futanari Fetish: How to Indulge Your Futa Kink
Autogynephilia
Some straight men are sexually aroused by the idea of themselves as a woman. They are turned on being surrounded by the characteristics and the body of a woman, quite literally, and by the idea of transforming.
Extremes of this kind of attraction have shown up in grisly serial killer stories, with skin suits and body parts, but most get off on mild gender play like wearing women’s panties. Some choose to surgically transform their bodies and present as female, but the motivation is not gender dysphoria but sexual arousal.
Read: Most Extreme Kinks and Dangerous Fetishes
Transformation Fetish
Changing genders or role play or fantasizing about changing into a character who is another gender is one way to explore transformation fetishes.
The idea of transforming is very arousing to people with a transformation kink. This can be very specific, like turning into a superhero or transforming from thin to obese, or into an animal. Gender play transformation is a big part of this fetish for many.
Read: 17 Transformation Fetishes and Kinks
Do you have a gender kink or fetish? How do you play?
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