People often post online about how they find forced feminization offensive. I’ve already covered my thoughts on force in another post, so I won’t go into that aspect of it here. This is about feminization as a kink.
Femininity is a quality I’m very much attracted to in a partner. It’s why I tend to not be attracted to men, androgynous people, or those who identify as butch. It’s simply a matter of personal taste, and not something I apologize for. I have no problem with it if others aren’t attracted to white people, men, bald guys, etc. I don’t take it personally. It’s just how we’re wired. You can’t un-gay someone or make them attracted to someone they’re not.
So how is it that femininity can be both humiliating and attractive? For some men, yes, there are genuinely misogynistic feelings at play that you only discover after talking to them. They find femininity in itself to be degrading and often imply (or outright state) that their gender makes them better than women. And that’s not okay.
But it’s also not okay to assume that everyone who finds forced fem humiliating falls into that camp. It’s actually rather insulting to say all sorts of nasty things about practitioners of this kink, assuming they’re all the same. It’s a problem similar to that faced by lots of different groups in the community. People think they know you just because they know a little bit about one thing you do. They don’t dig into the why and how, but instead choose to make incorrect assumptions. It’s similar to how those who do race play are automatically racist, people into the ageplay are pedophilies, etc.
From elementary school onward, we have to follow the Man Manual™. Men face a ton of pressure to fit a certain mold. It carries on from childhood to adolescence, and even to adulthood. Some people take this mindset to the grave. If that stereotype is not who we are, then there are repercussions. Anything from simple mocking all the way up to violence. While I present as masculine, I don’t fall into the traditional dudebro category. I look very clearly masculine, but my behavior is all over the spectrum. I’ve dealt with fallout from this for decades. (Obviously it’s not nearly as bad as that faced by people who are gay, trans, etc., but that doesn’t make it any less real.) As a result of the fact that I don’t toe the line, I’ve dealt with a lot of crap and grown thicker skin in the process. This type of play is a way of playing through that pain and making a toy of it, taking something lousy and putting a positive spin on it.
It’s also a way of playing with some of the double standards our society carries. Nearly everyone has privilege of some type. One form of female privilege is that women can wear men’s clothes while being completely accepted for who they are. It’s even considered sexy. (The most common example being a woman in a man’s button-down shirt.) But the opposite is not true at all; men don’t have the same freedom. A man in women’s clothes is usually looked down on and ridiculed. This type of play is a way of taking those fucked-up double standards and making fun of them. It’s a way of thumbing our noses at what society tells us we have to do.
Femininity is also not who I am. I don’t dress in women’s clothes on my own, so there’s a certain hotness in being pushed outside of where I’d normally go. This also applies to a lot of other forms of play I really get into, not just this one. Being pushed past my comfort zone can be really hot. When I don’t want something but am forced/persuaded/threatened/etc. into it, it adds a certain edge to the play. This is not unique to feminization.
Likewise, I’ve also seen feminization used among lesbian couples. When the sub is more butch-identified, this type of play has the same effect as it does on submissive men. Yet there is no big outcry or accusations of misogyny. People understand that the sub doesn’t identify as feminine, so they find this humiliating. Pretty simple. Why is the exact same thing so hard to fathom when it comes to submissive men?
Even with hetero couples, I’ve occasionally seen dominant men masculinize their normally feminine subs as a form of humiliation. There were no complaints of misandry because people understood that it was just play. They interacted with these women on a regular basis and knew they weren’t sexist. They understood that the subs found it humiliating because that’s not how they normally identified. They didn’t instantly react with blanket assumptions. Instead, they got to know the people behind the play and based their judgments on who the people are and how they act, not on one scene.
Much of the complaining against people who do this type of play is really nothing more than one more form of stereotyping within the community, just like how submissive men are all supposedly self-centered with no social skills, foot fetishists are creepy, rope people are snobs, and dominant men are only in this to get their dicks sucked. The stereotypes do hold true for some, but why not dig a little deeper with each individual before making a judgment call?
