Racial fetishes and raceplay are so taboo today that some of us may not even be aware of their existence.
But like any other human traits, whether physical or psychological, such as size, age, and gender, race factors into sexual attraction, arousal, and fetishes, including BDSM power exchange kinks.
Raceplay and Racial Fetishism
Where interracial dating and sex was once upon a time taboo, or illegal, it was afterwards for a while fairly common and acceptable to “have a thing” for a particular race of partner. White men would loudly declare they were heading to Japan to look for a beautiful Asian wife. White women would confidently proclaim their preference for Black men. Black men who were especially attracted to Latina women weren’t shy about saying so.
While mixed race dating and relationships are common today, almost no one will admit to having a specific preference for one race or culture over another. It has to be incidental, or else it feels like objectifying someone or fetishizing their race.
Read: 27 Sexual Taboos That Are No One Else’s Business
Sexual attraction to people of a particular race or ethnicity over others is often regarded as racial fetishism, and racist. While reasons for our sexual attractions are complex and are often celebratory or otherwise positive, the political atmosphere around race is fraught with tension, pain, and deep historical wounds.
Racial preferences can be racial fetishism, or others can view them that way. But raceplay is even more taboo. We explore sexual power exchanges in BDSM all the time, including fetishes that explore racial power exchanges. Raceplay has many practitioners and many manifestations, but it’s something people often keep to themselves.
Read: BDSM and Total Power Exchange Relationships
What Is Raceplay?
Raceplay is a form of BDSM sexual roleplay that focuses on racially charged roles, fantasies, and power exchanges.
As with all BDSM and related fetish exploration, sexual arousal, pleasure, and gratification are achieved through giving or receiving degradation, humiliation, ownership/possession, punishment, or pain.
Read: BDSM and Bondage Roleplay Ideas and Scenarios
Why Is Raceplay Controversial?
Raceplay is controversial because perpetuation stereotypes, prejudices, and harmful power exchanges for one’s sexual gratification are frowned upon, to put it mildly. Some people consider raceplay racist, even if they don’t consider other controversial kinks such as rape fantasies sexist.
Race play can be very dark. On one end of the spectrum it may be about exploring kinky sex with someone you find attractive, from another race. On the other end, it can be erotic roleplay and re-enacting harrowing scenes of torture or a master-slave relationship.
While we all harbor dark fantasies from time to time, few feel healthy about getting off to the idea of Nazi guards torturing them sexually, for example.
Whether judgment and disgust or accusations of racism are helpful or accurate is also controversial. After all, sex is play, and kinky sex and BDSM including raceplay can be a kind of ritual exploration of various themes in our psyches.
Read: How to Talk about Your Kinks without Turning Her Off
As with other power imbalances and traumas, psychologists recognize that sex is a way to process, work through, and explore disturbing aspects of ourselves or our world, in a safe, consensual way. Just as cinema and literature must confront these major themes, so does sex.
Furthermore, controversy over raceplay extends to the rights of racialized people. Perhaps some view it as racist if a white man wants to “own” a Black woman in the BDSM context. But what if a marginalized person wants to reverse the roles and take up the whip? And what if a racialized person gets sexual satisfaction from humiliation? Is their autonomy, consent, and desire something to deny because we feel uncomfortable?
Every person will have to make their own boundaries and decisions when it comes to raceplay and negotiate their limits.
Read: BDSM Limits and Boundaries to Discuss
6 Types of Raceplay
1. Master and Slave Roleplay
Master and slave roleplay is not just raceplay—it’s a veritable staple of BDSM power exchange. We’re so uncomfortable with the terminology that we have in recent years more or less abandoned the master and slave terminology to use “dominant and submissive.”
Master and slave is also one of the big themes in raceplay.
Read: BDSM Roles: 33 Dominant and Submissive Roles
2. Submissive Asian Raceplay
Submissive Asian raceplay usually experiments with the stereotypes of Asian women as submissive and insatiable.
It gets complicated if the expectation is that this kink is driven by white males. It can be—but it’s also a popular fantasy of Asian women into BDSM.
Submissive Asian raceplay can be playful and more mild themed, but it can get quite extreme, and it isn’t just about Asian versus white. There are complex political and historical situations between different Asian populations, such as China and Japan.
Read: 20 Japanese Fetishes, Kinks, and BDSM Practices
3. Racial Degradation
Some people get off power tripping and using language that is normally forbidden to degrade them. They may enjoy depersonalization styles of bondage such as blindfolds, hoods, and masks. Often, the person who desires this kind of power exchange is submissive. You can see why the subject gets so complicated!
4. Nazi BDSM
There’s a whole kink aesthetic around this from the 1974 film The Night Porter. Taboo though it is, Nazi role play is a very common raceplay. Just as frequently, the subjugated roles are reversed, and the fantasy is about the Jewish (or gay, or Roma) prisoner taking back power and revenge.
5. Big Black Cock
For some women, some gay men, and some hotwifing or cuckolding relationships, the idea of BBC servicing the horny is hot. Of course, this is a kind of raceplay in the sense that it focuses on a stereotype and fetishizes a body part because of this racial stereotype.
Rape fantasies are common generally speaking, and racial rape fantasies are a kind of raceplay if roleplaying them.
Read: All about the Big Black Cock Fetish
6. Racial Femdom
Some dudes love to atone for the sins of their kind through ultimate submission to the dominant female powers. When the dude is white and the desired Mistress or Domme is Black, this is a kind of raceplay or racial female domination.
Do you engage in some kind of raceplay? What are your thoughts on raceplay? Please share.
Tell us what you think