gender is Kinky af
When thinking about kinks as existential knots, gender is an easy example to begin unraveling.
Gender is used here to mean a facet of identity relating to one's body and perception of its role. This relationship of gender is both personal and collective.
Our circumstances of inhabiting a body are unique and intimate, and also...
There are aeons of both human acculturation and animal conditioning that contribute to the ways we
experience our bodies,
understand them to be experienced by others, and
choose to interpret what all that means for us in moving through the world.
The symbolism of a D/s power hierarchy is nearly ubiquitous in kink/BDSM, and tends to correlate neatly along gendered lines. The standard roles play out:
Men are dominant (whether as daddies or alphas or sadists...).
Women are submissive (whether as girls or brats or masochists).
Even "exceptions" to these dynamics serve to reify the potency of the original cultural archetype:
femdoms reduce female power to the presentation of an eroticized doll, roleplaying the same masculine ideal of power as punishing, invulnerable authority
male submission reinforces tropes of vulnerability and receptivity as feminine and thus submissive/ powerless,
and the existence of fetishized "nurturing" roles ("daddy/mommy doms") shed light on the impact and normalcy of childhood dynamics which involved a parent's punishing and/or erotic interest in the child.
The majority of kink culture is about playing out the roles of the dominant culture.
And in kink, rather than pressure to be empowered or equal about our relations with other people, these dynamics are encouraged, taught, and reinforced.
In the binary of M/f as D/s, there is no room for power in softness and vulnerability.
No honoring of the mutual courage in laying down roles and rules, nor the seductive game to be shared in co-creating newer, more expansive ones.
There's much to be said about this.
But here, I'm interested in drawing attention for a moment to another facet in this kink of gender.
Beyond the binary of male and female,
there is also the binary of gender and nongender.
Gender has become a rather hot-button issue, and idea of "getting it wrong" is a real fear, pleasure, and topic of debate.
Perhaps even more taboo than transgressing binary gender roles is the taboo of transgressing what is deemed "correct" in how we talk about and claim gender.
Because for those out there who reject the binary...
but haven't deeply addressed the latent tangle,wound, and kink for what gender means to them...
The gender kink still shows up.
Truly untangling the gender kink is about embracing the paradox of gender:
as both personal and political, as real and fantasy, as important and beautiful and utterly worthless and damaging.
When we embrace the futility in believing gender holds any sort of objective significance, gender stops being compelling. The kink leaves. It does not occupy our mind or energy, our spirit is free to move freely, without pretense or performance.
And more importantly, we let go of the desire to re-enact the gender kink onto others, which is at is core, about hierarchy and control.
All the limitations of a M/f binary is, and all its damaging beliefs about masculinity as dominance and femininity as submission, can be found in heated arguments about gender/nongender. The desire to control reality, the entitlement and anger at being unable to, and the deep fear-based submission to arbitrary rules and structures...it's all there. Just as kinky, just as repressively consuming.
In so many attempts to transcend the pain of the M/f binary, those attempting to exist outside of it reinforce the same pains, trying to fit into a new box, and trying to make the world something it isn't: genderless.
The way to unkink gender is to embrace the paradox: we will never escape the experience of being perceived in a body, nor the legacies of what those perceptions may mean. And: we need not let this reality make us frantic and fearful, running to deny a basic truth about incarnation and being human.
When we make conscious all the stories we have internalized related to gender, there is opportunity for expansion and new perspective:
Who am I, really? Beyond not just male and female, but beyond gender and nongender, what makes me alive?
Some additional questions for exploring:
What have I been taught to believe about the way I inhabit my body? How does my belief in gender affect how I move through the world? How does my gender influence the assumptions I make of other people?
Do my gender stories bring me joy and connection, do they excite me? Does gender offer curiosity and expansion, or let me feel fear and restriction? How does it feel in my body to question this?
As a reminder, the whole idea of a kink is that it's a normal and natural part of being human that lets us experience pain, limitation, and separation. Unkinking gender is accepting that no matter who we are, we've definitely inherited some gender kinks, both personal and collective and that's ok.
What matters is how much we can we let those realities exist in our body, and how we learn to hold the realities we've been given while honoring ones we'd like to create. If you're anything like me: it's a world that can embrace paradox, diversity, and humor about our mortal forms while practicing letting go of the fear and need to control that those mortal forms crave so much.
Just as kink practices in sexuality often involve making pleasure out of difficult or painful circumstances, thinking of gender a kink lets us create a playful awareness (aha!) around places we may have previously been unconsciously blocked or limited (kinked!)
In this unkinking process, we free ourselves to live more fully, reclaiming agency around the ways we can choose to participate in reality, even when that reality may be frustrating or disturbing.
If you are intrigued by the kink of gender, or perhaps a tantalized voyeur for others who are, I've laid out 10 gender kinks to give you some more food for thought on this topic.
Cheers to the art of trans-cending.
10 Gender Kinks:
1. I adore how my experience of gender helps me feel special and separate
2. I love feeling painfully identified with how my gender is perceived
3. I love the feeling of control I get in trying to make others perceive my gender
4. I am thrilled by the sensations of powerlessness when I am gendered
5. I am deeply excited by the power I get from my gender
6. I get off on the security and restriction I get to experience through gender roles
7. I really love the judgement I feel when other people are "wrong" about gender
8. I'm voyeuristically enchanted by seeing gendered power dynamics play out
9. It delights me to play along with the fantasy of gender as real
10. I am tantalized by the bondage of my gender identity
