I can’t stand ‘forced’ feminization. Here are the big three reasons why:
1) It assumes that wearing panties is inherently humiliating. Being a woman, I generally wear panties – they’re a convenient way of keeping the seam of my pants from abrading my junk, and they don’t give me the unbelievable wedgies that boyshorts do (seriously, how do guys deal with wearing boxers?). It should surprise no-one that I’m just the slightest bit offended by the idea that the clothes I wear every day are humiliating. People have tried to argue that it’s not that the panties themselves are humiliating, but the fact that men aren’t supposed to do girly things like wear panties. Is the idea that *being* a woman is so awful that merely playacting it for the space of a scene is humiliating for a man seriously supposed to be *less* offensive? Seriously? Just fuck off.
2) It assumes that submission and femininity are the same thing. No they are not. Equating submission with femininity is what stupid people do because they can’t deal with the idea of a big strong man submitting to a wimpy little woman. Because the natural order of the universe is that men dominate and women submit, remember? Even in a subculture defined by its flouting of cultural norms (hitting people is bad, power differentials are bad, calling people names is bad, etc, etc), it’s vitally important that we continue to act out the exact same gender dynamics we see in the vanilla world. Why? Shut up, it just is. What, you don’t see the point of escaping one box just to climb into another one and lock it behind you?
3) It’s not forced. There’s a reason I insist on putting quotes around the forced part of ‘forced’ feminization. If your partner is actually forcing you to do things you don’t enjoy on any level that’s not kink, that’s abuse. I think it gets called ‘forced’ feminization because male cross-dressers have an understandably hard time coming to terms with their desire to cross-dress. I sympathize, but I am in no way interested in taking the blame. Same with ‘forced’ bi – if you want to suck some cock, great! I’m still not going to be the awful nasty woman who made you do that horrible dirty thing that you totally didn’t want to do and absolutely have not fantasized about for years.
Also, communication is kind of a big thing for me. Honesty is kind of a big part of communication. If you can’t be honest about what you want (no Mistress, I’d hate to wear your panties, it would be humiliating and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all, but it would make me feel really submissive), we just can’t communicate well enough to play together. It may be hot to be ‘forced’ to do things, but it’s absolutely not hot to accidentally harm someone because you couldn’t communicate clearly about what you both actually wanted.
To be clear, I’m not ranting about men who just enjoy cross-dressing, and work it into their scenes because it’s fun. I’m also not talking about men who enjoy playing with gender, and who might happen to use a scene as a safe space to do so. Because of my attraction to masculinity, those things don’t necessarily do it for me, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them or that there are no women are turned on by gender-play. Acting like wearing women’s clothing or acting like a woman is inherently humiliating, on the other hand, is hugely offensive.
I hate the idea of “forced” fem, too, for all the reasons you mentioned here! I much prefer to come home to a Minx who’s ALREADY all girled up and telling me, “I wanted to look pretty for you.” That’s a tribute to me; that makes me feel dominant, proud, and loved.
“Forced” fem just sounds like a whole lot of effort and shoutiness that I can’t be bothered with (even aside from the misogynist implication that femininity is inherently humiliating).
Thanks for referencing my blog btw. 😀
Awwwww 🙂 It may not be my thing, but that’s just adorable.
I like very much that you are raising these things, but I am wary of the ranting about kink wrongness because ‘forced feminisation’ is a valid kink, whether you like it or not.
I actually can’t, and wouldn’t argue with your reasons for not liking it, but it is difficult to make the argument you are making without lumping all of those who enjoy it into the ‘wrong’ bucket. And it’s nuanced… which you point out with this (and I am sooo glad you did!):
In the wider BDSM world this is *called* ‘forced feminisation’ and frankly, most people (and not just the men that enjoy it) cannot understand or articulate this.
Replace ‘forced feminisation’ with ‘forced bi’ and you will have the same argument from the majority (“if you *want* to suck cock, just say so already, own it!” etc) because people cannot seem to get the hotness in making someone do something that they do, genuinely, dislike/hate/loathe for the benefit of the feeling that they get when they do it.
I’d add that our kinks are also not always politically correct and towing the PC line for kink is fraught with ‘you shouldn’t feel that way’-isms. That way lies the ugly, because fuck it, I DO feel that way and making me feel bad for doing so doesn’t help me deal with what are already 1000 different voices from everyone telling me how wrong I am for it.
‘Force’ is a kink of mine. I love it. What I ‘force’ him to do is kind of irrelevant, whatever makes him feel small and vulnerable will do it for me. I’m kind of sick of having the argument with people about how it’s not really force, he doesn’t really hate it, he *wanted* to do it all along and he should just be brave enough to say so. Ugh.
You get it, I know that, but the majority, well they just don’t, so rants about it that even carefully pull out and examine relevant points, just as you did, make me feel bad for Joe Submissive over there who loves forced fem and is made to feel bad for it over and over.
On a more constructive note… that bit in quotes, what do we call that if we can’t use the term ‘forced fem’? Do we need a new term for that also (the ‘also’ is in reference to suggestions that we need a new term for femdom)?
Ferns
I agree that a lot of the assumptions around gender need to be challenged, but I don’t think people’s sex lives is the way to do it – after all, our desires are formed in the world we live in, bad cultural stereotypes and all. I’m also not sure that it is sound to assume that because a person finds dressing in women’s underwear humiliating that they must consider femininity to be inherently humiliating. Could this not just be humiliating because it is so at odds with their perception of their own gender identity? If a butch woman was made to dress in ‘girly’ clothes, might she not also feel humiliated because it was at odds with her identity? I don’t think that’s a negative slur on femininity.
I think that if you unpick a lot of kink it is easy find things to be offended by. And I think the argument that ‘if you like it you should just be brave enough to admit it’ actually sucks the fun out of it. Obviously it’s not really forced, just like rape play is not really rape, but if it gets some people hot to think of it like that, I’m not sure where the problem is.
Thanks for the post. It was both thoughtful and provoking.
J.
I absolutely love so much of what you’ve written here. I love that people are starting to pick apart the sexist attitudes that have kept femdom/malesub locked into such rigid modes of expression.
Forced fem bothers me too, but in a wider way. I can’t say “This kink is bad and misogynistic/racist/whatever-ist.” That’s just wrong. I have kinks that are driven by views and attitudes that are reprehensible, but those kinks were part of my sexual fantasizing since my dimmest intimations of such things, and I don’t feel inclined to argue with them since in my day to day life I work constantly to eradicate those prejudices and negative constructs.
Sometimes the kink becomes less appealing after I’ve unpacked some shit, so clearly there’s a connection, but sometimes it doesn’t go away. My rape fantasies have been there since I was old enough to grasp the concept. Working on my attitudes toward women hasn’t changed that.
The important thing is that I unpacked that shit because I cared about the stuff that happens between me and the outside world, not because I had a principled objection to the implications of my own kink, which affects nobody but me and my partners. I wasn’t thinking about my kink at all when I was working on becoming less of a sexist, racist jerk. I was thinking about the people my attitudes were hurting. My kink never hurt anyone. I am sure that acting on my privilege, or acting to support others’, did hurt people, often. It’s the latter I am ashamed of.
I absolutely think it means something about our culture that “forced” fem is so common, based as it so often is in a “female is shameful” point of view, but an individual’s fantasy is just that . . . a fantasy. It doesn’t make them sexist or make them a bad person. Unless they are actually treating people like crap or hold sexist or racist beliefs in their not-sex-life, it can’t be declared as a problem for anyone else. Certainly it CAN be symptomatic of negative attitudes. I have seen that often. Too often. But I’ve seen a lot of people who were just REALLY into that, because that’s what got them down at the most basic level.
What IS the problem for me is the incredibly narrow version of femdom/malesub that is most widely shown, of which forced fem is an offshoot, which does indeed contain many disgusting sexist tropes in its execution and which, because it does not satisfy many, many men and women whose model of male submission/female dominance does not match what they are being served, has an overall silencing effect. Its prevalence eclipses other forms of expression, to negative effect.
I don’t care if some guy wants his forced fem (I have my rape fantasies, most of us have something unacceptable that turns us on), I just want to see MORE than that represented, in both porn and in kink culture.
And I wanted to say, I love this blog so far, and I really, really, *deeply* appreciate what you are doing. Debate and disagreement or no. It is so good to keep finding new voices speaking up in favor of those of us who, kink-wise, have been so long ignored (or simply told that we didn’t exist).
@Ferns
That’s a really good point. Force is hot. So very very hot. I happen to kink on helplessness, so that whole idea absolutely does it for me. For my own comfort I need to be able to step out of role now and then and make sure what I’m doing doesn’t cross the line into ‘seriously not fun anymore’ territory.
This is the part where I have to admit I am in fact being an asshole to Joe Submissive over there who loves forced fem because I just can’t get past the inherent misogyny of using *my clothing* as a tool to humiliate someone.
I have no idea, but it’s an interesting question. I’m really not sure if there’s any way to package that whole concept that wouldn’t make me cranky.
@J
Only if a feminine woman would feel humiliated by being dressed in ‘manly’ clothes.
That’s a fair point. What really bothers me is the idea of being used an excuse to do this awful dirty thing a guy actually craves but doesn’t want to admit that he likes, and then being blamed for making him do said awful dirty thing.
Also, I kinda kink on making people admit they like things that they think they shouldn’t, I’m probably conflating both of those concepts (taking the blame and humiliation by admission of enjoyment).
And lastly, yay new commenters 🙂 We may disagree, but you make good points.
@Naahmah
I don’t think rape fantasies are as inherently misogynistic as forced fem, though. Hell, I fantasize about raping men – it’s about helplessness and the power trip of getting to take whatever I want, not about the gender of anyone involved.
I’m starting to feel like a bit of a broken record, but I just don’t understand where the erotically humiliating ‘charge’ of forced fem comes from if not from believing on some level that being female is in fact shameful. I’ll stop harping on that point now, I’m starting to bore myself, let alone the rest of you.
On this we completely agree. The incredibly narrow range of femdom archetypes (icy bitch, mocking bitch, etc) available in porn of any sort is why it took me so long to figure out I was dominant – and since I keep mentioning that, I should really write that post already.
Again, yay new commenters! I hope you’ll be back.
Stabbity, I am loving that you have prompted discussion! The sign of a great post!
And herein lies my problem with this. You (and most people who dislike ‘forced fem’ it seems) make a huge assumption here that this is how it works, and that’s what it means. And that’s just not true.
I *love* Naamah’s points, complex and nuanced, which reflects the real world. It’s so rarely black and white, and I thank you for your explanation.
The fact that a man finds wearing women’s panties humiliating doesn’t mean that he thinks ‘being a woman’ is humiliating or weak or some such. That correlation *may* be there for some, but assuming it’s there for most is as bad a generalisation as any other.
I find getting up and singing in public humiliating, I do it badly, I am ridiculous when I do it, I should never never sing in public, but that doesn’t at all mean that I find singers ridiculous. Does that analogy hold up?
Ferns
That actually does make sense – I can see how a guy wearing ill-fitting lingerie in an unflattering colour would feel utterly ridiculous, completely separate from any judgement of femininity. It doesn’t turn me on, but the idea of silly costume humiliation doesn’t offend me.
“I find getting up and singing in public humiliating, I do it badly, I am ridiculous when I do it, I should never never sing in public, but that doesn’t at all mean that I find singers ridiculous. Does that analogy hold up?”
Is being made to sing in public a fetish that everyone in the BDSM scene has heard of? What about making a guy wear boy-clothes that are ill-fitting and not at all his style – does that practice have a name?
I’m sure there are some guys for whom wearing panties is embarrassing because it makes them feel silly or ugly all on its own…but the concept of ‘forced’ fem is so widely known, and interest in it so common, that it’s a genre of play unto itself – and that’s significant to me.
These guys aren’t craving “humiliation” in general, nor are they wanting a domme to dress them up however she likes so they can feel submissive and owned (whether that entails lingerie or a fursuit); their specific interest is being humiliated for looking like WOMEN. So I maintain that for most men into ‘forced’ fem, there IS underlying misogyny.
I’m not saying that guys into ‘forced’ fem shouldn’t be; I have some internalized misogyny myself that strongly influences the things I’m into. We’re all a product of our upbringing and our culture…as long as we treat people as equals (outside of pre-negotiated scenes), I don’t see a huge problem. But it seems silly to deny that a guy who feels denigrated by occupying a “female” role is a guy who doesn’t think highly of women.
I pretty much agree with where Ferns is coming from on this one.
I’ve seen the “It’s not really forced” argument in a lot of different forums, and I really don’t agree with the logic. In fact let me be lazy and copy/paste one of my previous responses from when it came up in the context of a forced-bi discussion. Note this was on max fisch’s forum, which is related to pro-domme, hence the references to payment.
—-
If someone was to write a scene description and say ‘The mistress forced me to lick her shoes’, nobody would be bothered at all. Everyone would understand it was in the context of the scene itself, and it’s a useful qualification to distinguish from a more foot worship style of scene.
99.9% of all scenes are essentially fantasy play. Should we have to say things like “The mistress pretended to make me lick up my mess, and I acted like I didn’t like it, even though I was paying for the scene so obviously deep down did secretly enjoy it on some level’.
The word forced is always contextual:
– The bank robber forced me to hand over the cash.
– My boss forced me to work late.
– My buddies forced me to stay and watch the game with them.
Only one is a forced in the ‘I had no option’ sense, but all are perfectly fine uses of the word.
In the forced-bi case I think it’s a handy short-hand for a particular type of scene.
Well, shoot – I really wish I had read this post and its comments before I wrote my last post. I think it would have informed some of what I was trying to say.
While I don’t think it’s at all helpful to “kink shame” I do think it’s important to examine (and yes, sometimes even critique) those practices that reflect and support misogynistic attitudes in the wider culture. I also think it’s possible to do that without shaming being involved (though it can be a fine line). So I disagree with J, onesubsmission on this:
Sex is a social behavior (and a pretty foundational one), so I don’t think it should be off the table when there is a need to challenge harmful assumptions about gender that are present in social groups and the larger society. In fact, I’d say it’s kind of the front lines of social change – what individuals do matters. We don’t have to just accept the bad stereotypes that we may have incorporated into our desires without comment or challenge.
That being said, I do believe that people can participate in behaviors that – on their face – may reflect really shitty societal things like misogyny, but the way the individuals involved play it it doesn’t. So Fern’s point…
…is well taken. There could be a lot of other things going on that people on the outside looking in don’t know about. However, while things like public singing may be humiliating for some (definitely would be for me!) I don’t see an equivalence there. In an egalitarian society there would be. But we live in what is still a deeply sexist society, in which we are soaking in messages that women ain’t shit, femininity is devalued, and men tend to define themselves in opposition to women. A man being “forced” to wear frilly panties just does not have the same cultural meaning as a man being forced to sing in public, or wear a big red nose and clown shoes – all are potentially humiliating but one is steeped in a long history of misogyny and the others are not.
So I’d say that it’s a pretty safe assumption that the humiliation aspect of forced feminization is being underpinned by sexism and misogyny. Maybe not in all cases, but in most cases, yes. When the worst thing you can call a man stops being a derogatory word for a woman or part of the female anatomy, then I’ll concede that it isn’t.
Interesting post. I’ve long felt similar opinions as you.
In terms of humiliation around clothing, I prefer the fantasy of being completely naked before a well-dressed woman. I find that to be a far more effective “humiliation” fantasy.
Looks like I’m late to the party, I hope you all saved some cake.
“What IS the problem for me is the incredibly narrow version of femdom/malesub that is most widely shown, of which forced fem is an offshoot, …does not satisfy many, many men and women whose model of male submission/female dominance does not match what they are being served”
This here is what kind of what I was getting at over here I wouldn’t really care that “Forced Fem” is a kink if they weren’t getting it all over my kinks. Just like I don’t mind if you like ketchup as long as you don’t spill it all over my fries.
Being part of a minority (said the middle class white American male…) would be hard enough even if there were not a whole heck of a lot of people making spectacle that doesn’t represent me and claiming that it is indicative of what I want when I say I want to be submissive.
Stabbity you hit it on the nose once again! As someone, who has had scenes and play of such a theme I don’t like the term forced fem. it implies a nonconsent and limit abrasian that isn’t really there. I’ve referred to it as humiliation play with a theme of genderplay or crossdressing, but the “forced” just doesnt make sense.
This is an interesting point. I have to confess it’s never once occurred to me that a woman putting a man into panties to humiliate him is misogynistic. It’s certainly playing on cultural expectations that men are supposed to wear clothes for men and women are supposed to wear clothes for women, which is a narrow view, but I don’t know, that seems like an extra step to say women are being demeaned in the end. Since I’m not a woman and you are, I’m going to spend some time considering your point.
Okay, I had another thought. So misogyny certainly exists in society but a lot of other groups have been discriminated against and “forcing” men to act like any of those aren’t popular fetishes (I don’t know if they’re out there). Could it be that women look beautiful in panties but men look rather silly in them (or at least they feel like they look silly), or is that the kind of male viewpoint you’re against? I don’t know. I’m much more of a CFNM fan.
I will stop berating “forced” feminization when I start seeing “forced” masculinization become a trope that women-identified submissives claim to find humiliating. Until then, I refuse to be dismissed by virtue of not cutting people slack on the Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is Ok rope. Fuck that rope; it’s been too often used to hang me and I will no longer recognize that it has any valid authority to do so.
Same goes with “forced” (male-)bi, and same goes with Clothed Female Naked Male. These are privilege reversal fetishes and the “kink” people are getting off on is male-male homophobia and female sexual objectification, respectively. Whether or not one’s penis is erected by the thought is not the point; whether or not one acknowledges what is erecting one’s penis very much is the point, however.
If discomfort with reality is getting in the way of your orgasms and you choose to deal with this by denying reality, you do not deserve the honor of being called an ethical person. Period.
@maymay, that is a really strong opinion. Do you really believe that? Isn’t it possible that a male being naked in front of a clothed female makes him feel vulnerable and submissive, and is just fun, irrespective of female sexual objectification? I understand where you’re going. For me, the word ‘slave’ has a connotation I’m not comfortable with, I used ‘servant’ instead in some of my writing.
But this is the leap I’m talking about and it’s into a slippery slope. What fetishes are safe? Corporal punishment is out because real people have been nonconsensually whipped as slaves. Orgasm denial is out because real women have been sexually repressed without their consent, and so have real men, in graphically disturbing ways throughout history.
I just don’t buy that these fetishes are all manifestations of social inequalities and biases, and your logic that people who feel like they aren’t are in denial of reality is a pretty harsh judgment.
The example that started this of ‘forced feminization’ Both sexes are “guilty” of having the expectation that women wear pants or skirts/dresses and men only wear pants. So being ‘forced’ to go against that became a common fetish. I think that’s fairly innocent.
But why do we think men look silly in panties? Is it really just the (generally) poor fit on a male-assigned body? In that case, does this guy look silly? What about this one?
No, we think men in panties look silly because panties are feminine. But we don’t think women look silly in traditionally male clothing, so it can’t just be the mismatch between a person’s body and the clothes society expects them to wear. If we insist men look silly even in panties that fit them, it must be because there’s something bad about panties themselves. And what’s that? Oh right, it’s our good friend misogyny.
No, corporal punishment isn’t out. It doesn’t depend on misogyny for its erotic charge. Orgasm denial isn’t out either. It actually values the orgasms the submissive person isn’t having – no one bothers to control something they don’t care about. Both of those things can work on submissives of any (or no) gender. It’s only the devaluation of femininity that makes panties on a man anything more than an unusual clothing choice.
The “forced” label on both forced feminization and forced bi also strikes me as protesting too much. Why don’t we go on about “forced” foot worship, or “forced” pussy eating like we do about “forced” bi? Because only forced feminization and forced bi are such threats to a man’s masculinity that we need to make it absolutely clear at all times to everyone within in earshot that a man engaged in those activities is not doing so of his own free will, he was forced to do it and therefore can’t be blamed for doing something so unspeakably awful as putting on a pair of panties.
@stabbity, a lot of it comes down to personal perspective. You say corporal punishment doesn’t depend on misogyny for its erotic charge, but a beaten woman might have trouble seeing it that way. “Orgasm denial values the orgasms a submissive person isn’t having” in a healthy relationship, but a woman stolen of her sexual organs through mutilation would likely feel the same way about “forced” orgasm denial as others feel about “forced” feminization.
I hope I’m seeming open; I tend to have strong opinions. I’m enjoying this discussion. I don’t know the answer. I know toddlers wear dresses for fun without a thought. By preschool, the boys have learned not to wear dresses. They don’t have any animosity towards women; they just know what they’re supposed to wear. I think of it more like that.
Thank you for helping me make the last step of logic from “because I’m not used to seeing it” to “misogyny.”
I’ve also realized, that some of my reaction, is due to insecurity of my own, but just realizing that has helped a lot. A guy who I’d consider not just more attractive, but also prettier, than me (such as the one in the teal panties and garter belt that stabbity just linked to) isn’t going to appreciate my own prettiness any less than a guy who wears archetypical “male” clothing.
So thank you so much for this–in addition to the topic at hand, you’ve unintentionally affected parts of my life that have nothing to do with sexuality or gender.
(and thank you to Maymay for linking to this)
Read my comment again, Gregory Allen. You missed the point I made. See also: I, too, kink on BDSM stereotypes.
“Orgasm denial values the orgasms a submissive person isn’t having” in a healthy relationship, but a woman stolen of her sexual organs through mutilation would likely feel the same way about “forced” orgasm denial as others feel about “forced” feminization.”
The difference, as I see it, is that if misogyny didn’t exist, I imagine men being dressed in “female” clothing would mostly be about the dominant choosing what clothing the submissive wore. Whereas orgasm denial would still be orgasm denial even if female genital mutilation didn’t exist at all. I could certainly see why it might appeal to some people if they’ve been affected by FGM, but orgasm denial and FGM aren’t inherently tied together.
@Natalie and @Stabbity, thank you for the comments directed my way. I’m still not seeing this as misogyny, but I do appreciate reading your perspectives and I’ll keep them in mind.
@Natalie – awesome, I’m happy something I wrote helped you 🙂
Exactly!
I’m not talking about how uninformed people see kinks they don’t understand, I’m talking about what actually makes forced feminization humiliating. Also, show me where the misogyny is when two gay men do some impact play together.
And how do they learn not to wear dresses? That’s a serious question, by what mechanism do you think little boys are taught that they shouldn’t wear dresses?
This may be the way some men see it, but I happen to enjoy the idea of someone having control over my gender. That is powerful, and I am very submissive. In addition to this, I like the idea of being a girl, and think it is positive to want to be feminine. I’m also submissive, so the two meet, within me anyways, over the mere fact that I am both submissive, and a sissy, and the idea of giving that much power to my mistress. As far as the forced thing goes, everyone knows its not forced, it’s just hotter that way for some of us. Generally this stuff is worked out in advance, and you’re being unsafe if you don’t do so, but it’s hotter for some of us if we proceed with it like a scene.
Thank you for writing this!
I absolutely HATE forced fem. For me it pretty much encapsulates everything that is wrong with femdom. Misogyny is a hard limit of mine. I really hate that forced fem/sissification is so pervasive. It is almost impossible to escape if you interact with sub men as a group, online or off.
I actually kink quite hard on androgyny, and this is one of the reasons why I hate forced fem so much. I think back to the olden days in western history (up to the 18th century) when men could be pretty in their silk stockings, lace, ribbons etc, and yet they were still considered totally virile and masculine. Which is just fucking hot.
Forced fem puts the men back into the lace and ribbons, but makes the whole thing ugly, humiliating and just kind of pathetic.
It’s very telling that most other female tops I have spoken with don’t like it either. And the ones who do engage with the practice mostly seem to be forced fem apologists – you know, they defend it cause their sub likes it, and they get enjoyment out of it because their sub does. But it’s not actually a component of their own kinky sexuality.
This comment is stupidly late but I just had to add a “Hear,hear” longing for the days when men could wear pretty clothes without social backlash. When I’m in charge around here (two-switch relationship) you bet I dandy my partner up. Velvet, lace, satin, ruffles, cravat. If I thought it’d suit him I’d powder and wig him as well, but the lucky git has nicer hair than me and doesn’t need it… Then again, the two of us do in-costume roleplaying – SCA-style, as opposed to sexual roleplay – which means that a) we have the stuff and b) both of us are used to people of all sexes wearing it and other unusual clothes. It’s definitely an “I want you to look good for me, so you are going to wear the fancy, effort-requiring outfit and I’m going to watch” type of thing.
When I was growing up the ultimate insult that boys could use against other boys was that they were sissies or cocksuckers. And, of course, when I discovered that wearing panties was exciting and later that I was a cocksucker and loved it there was a lot of confusion in my teenage head. The whole idea of being excited by and orgasming to things that were supposed to be so wrong is hard to understand. I was too young, too shy, too afraid to ever have a girl at that age even though my perception was that everyone else did. The panties were a substitute. I don’t know quite how I went from that to being terribly excited by the idea of a woman somehow forcing me to dress up and even perform homosexual sex acts on me for her pleasure nut I did. It’s not hard to make crazy things happen inside your head.
I never ever associated anything negative about women’s clothing. I envied women for being allowed to wear them especially since they were theoretically made to fit women properly. So it was not that their was anything wrong with panties.It was the idea of those panties being worn by a man that was so incredibly exciting.
Personally, and I mean this sincerely, I have always considered women the superior sex. The way women seem to be able to function together to produce something useful: babies, households, relationships, art, peace, love, etc. is so far ahead of men who seem to be really good at one thing: killing one another.
Finally, in no way can it be possible (for me) to consider that the wearing of women’s clothing could ever be inherently humiliating. Women look fantastic in women’s clothing (and even men’s clothing.) I believe the entire humiliation thing is tied into men being trained in an earlier age not be be or act feminine which includes modes of dress.
I agree with the original idea. It took a long time for me to admit that I was the one who wanted to cross-dress or anything else. At a certain point, you have to own that and move on. A scene where I know I’m going to be cross-dressing, but have someone else dictating exactly what and how is something else.
I found your blog post about forced feminization to be thought provoking. I can understand how you might view forced feminization as sexist. With all due respect though, as a submissive man who enjoys forced feminization, I think your understanding of this fetish is a bit superficial.
Forced feminization is not about being forced to act feminine just for the sake of acting feminine. Acting feminine is clearly not humiliating or degrading in and of itself. Rather, forced feminization is about being forced to accept a change of identity. Gender identity is the most basic component of personal identity and, obviously, carries sexual connotations that other components of personal identity (nationalism, race, etc) do not. Losing control of this most basic component of one’s identity, allowing someone dominant to change one’s gender identity at will, is an ultimate and powerful act of submission.
Forced feminization generally focuses on women’s clothing not only because the clothes serve as a visible and all-encompassing symbol of the imposed female identity. When a man wears women’s clothes, he generally finds them physically uncomfortable. The clothes clearly feel strange and unfamiliar, like they were designed for someone with a different body, which of course they were. For me it almost feels like stepping into a different skin. This adds to the heady feeling of being forced to adopt a different identity, of being fundamentally transformed at the whim of another, on the most basic level.
Of course one may now ask, if forced feminization is really just about changing identities, how come women don’t get the same feelings of humiliation and discomfort from being made to act like men? The fact is many do. Not necessarily from wearing men’s clothing, since women wearing pants is acceptable in modern society. Yet if a feminine woman (feminine as currently defined by society at large) is forced to, say, get a crew-cut or grow large amounts of body hair, she would feel just as uncomfortable and humiliated as a man in a dress. And incidentally, for the record, I have one female friend who is into forced masculinization. She has often told me how men’s clothing feels too loose and awkward to her.
Just to belabor the point with a final example. There are some women who grow a small amount of facial hair due to hormonal imbalances. Most women with this condition feel embarrassed by said facial hair. Their general reaction is to get rid of it through bleaching, electrolysis or some other process. Why do they do this? Because they think facial hair is masculine and being a man is degrading? Should I as a man be insulted that these women are humiliated by the same facial hair that I walk around with every day? Of course not. These women feel that having facial hair is associated with men and thus undermines their female identity, so they want to get rid of it. It has nothing to do with viewing masculinity as inherently inferior or degrading.
Similarly, panties are associated with femininity. Thus wearing panties is an assault on my masculine identity which, as a submissive, is something I get off on. That doesn’t mean I view femininity as degrading, anymore than a woman who gets rid of unwanted facial hair views masculinity as degrading.
My lover and submissive is a man who loves wearing women’s clothing, and he loves me telling him what to wear when it’s feminine and beautiful and sometimes revealing enough that he feels frightened wearing it. I’m not sure whether this kind of play counts as forced fem or not, since we only occasionally emphasise the ‘forced’ bit. I also get how humiliation by things feminine is misogynistic, how the taint of femininity is in real life something many men will literally kill to avoid.
And yet the scenes with my lover don’t feel misogynistic to me at all. What I see in him is joy in the softness and the prettiness and perhaps the awkwardness of the clothes he loves. If it’s an overtly submissive scene I also see his joy in submission. His eyes grow big and soft and he smiles as he looks up at me, perhaps in response to my obvious joy as I smile at him. He is especially happy when I like some dress or chemise in particular and tell him how pretty I find it. He moves differently and speaks more softly, taking on a different identity.
The charge of it may well have been wired into him by the misogyny that we all swim in. But even if that’s true it has been transformed in his fantasy and kink life into something that is beautiful and joyful and deeply erotic. My fantasy and kink life similarly likely comes from the ugliness of dominance and rape, but in practice when it fuels our joy and connection with each other it’s beautiful.
I see that as very similar to a male dom pushing his female sub a little bit to wear something especially revealing that he really enjoys seeing her in, and I have no problem with a kink that works the same way for both men and women.
That sounds really sweet 🙂 I think it’s adorable when submissive men want to look pretty for their dominant partners.
Your relationship sounds like a great example of how feminization doesn’t have to be misogynistic bullshit. If your partner enjoys feeling pretty and enjoys feeling submissive, it makes perfect sense to mix those things together. It just makes me really angry when people want me to believe it’s not misogynistic when men feel humiliated by wearing the clothes I wear every day.
I searched for this topic to find out what others thought and this has been a great discussion. I knew there was a disconnect if I was supposed to be feeling humiliated by wearing clothes my Wife/Mistress wears, that just didn’t sound right. Yeah, I like wearing panties and a bra under my normal clothes. It is mostly for the fun of doing something I’m not supposed to be doing. I’m wearing women’s clothes and you don’t know (unless I’m wearing my thickly padded bra in which case the danger is greater). They are called “women’s clothes” for a reason and I’m being naughty by breaking the rules. Of course I have to be forced to do it because if I wanted to just wear them anyway, then it would just be a different kind of normal, where’s the fun in that? Owning my shit takes all the fun out of it for me, the danger of discovery makes it exciting. The not being able to wear what I ought to wear reinforces the submission. To be completely honest, deep down inside there is a speck of the idea women’s clothes diminish the man, but then logic takes over and it has to be considered an honor to be allowed to wear the type of items Mistress wears.
I know this is an older post but thank yuo, thank you, thank you! 100% agree and have said as much to several male submissives who do not get why I I find it so goddamned insulting. “It’s not there’s anything shameful in being a woman, it’s that it’s shameful for a man to dress as a woman!” BULLSHIT!
Also loving maymay’s comment “I will stop berating “forced” feminization when I start seeing “forced” masculinization become a trope that women-identified submissives claim to find humiliating.”
I’m bookmarking this and sending the link to male subs who ask about forced fem from now on. Thank you!
Thanks 🙂
Bullshit indeed! I can’t believe people can say/write shit like that and not immediately see how incredibly stupid they sound.
What I hear happening is “Your kink is not my kink, and I am offended.” I am not into forced feminization, but I would defend somebody else’s right to that form of sexual expression, to the death.
In other words, regardless of why a person might like broccoli (texture, politics, capitalism, land explotation) should we ban broccoli? Obviously not.
So, is the point here that people acknowledge the reasons someone may be offended, and have an intelligent conversation about the cultural inheritance of misogyny?
Would a satisfactory answer be to quit ones sexual expression? It seems rather oppressive to adopt an attitude where only behaviors that are unoffensive to every single persons’ sensibilities are ethical.
I imagine the problem to be that it isn’t the kink itself, so much as the lack of acknowledgement that some people may be offended. And so the answer is “I understand all the reasons that my kink may offend you. Thank you so much. I am going to continue to offend you.” Far more often than it would be “I had no idea I was offending you. I will immediately discontinue this aspect of my sexual expression.”
I actually wrote a whole post about how people can engage in problematic kinks like forced-feminization without being total douchebags about it.
YES! All I want is for people to acknowledge that when a man feels humiliated by wearing the clothing I wear every day, that leads me to wonder how much he really respects women. I actually do feel for people who have problematic kinks, particularly any sort of feminization, which generally seems to be tough to sell women on. It can’t be easy going through life believing that if you tell your partner what you really want in bed, she’ll be disgusted. But at the same time, I wish these guys would stop insisting that somehow it’s empowering for their female partners to humiliate them with their own clothes.
I actually wrote a post about that, too. People do have the right to do stuff bystanders aren’t super thrilled about, and trying to outlaw kinks will a) not work, and b) only harm the people who never wanted to have a “weird” or “offensive” kink in the first place. But at the same time, I have the right to point it out when people are being complete fucking douchebags about their kinks.
An older post yet. Not sure if anyone mentioned…at least as I have read it around (like in this article: http://www.theoriginalinstitute.com/petticoat_discipline.htm)..
Generally Petticoat discipline is what I understand Stabbity doesn’t fancy very much – a very old, Victorian cemented type of non corporal discipline. I guess that is what is nowadays ‘Forced Feminization.’
Now, I personally know many male subs who dislike any type of ‘feminization’ because they say ‘I respect women too much to try to imitate them.’ Then others feminize because they love and respect women…
Personally I associate ‘Forced Feminization’ with theatricality and burlesque and such so I do not see anything humiliating whatsoever!
Well I learned something today 🙂 I didn’t know petticoat discipline was a thing, and wow, that’s an extremely misogynistic thing.
I think what consenting adults do IN PRIVATE needs to be respected with less judgement. Acting like this in private isn’t offensive. Doing it in public may be offensive. Actually believing it certainly is. Mrs. Weltsova refers to theatricality which is what I feel is most often at the core of this kink. In a scene, we strive to leave our inhibitions at the door. The dark soul of carnivale rules. Maybe, it’s a primal thing.
I think a line needs to be drawn here between our everyday lives and beliefs and what we do behind closed doors while enacting fantasies. In a scene, we try to create a free negotiated space where our shadows are allowed open expression.
People who are outside of that space may be allowed to peer in but ought to be more than a little judicious with their personal judgements. The idea is to be less hindered and concerned with what other people think. I certainly don’t want Mommy and Daddy telling me what they think is right or how they think I ought to behave or who they think I ought to be.
I have a more nuanced explanation of my views on forced feminization in my post Kink and Ethics.
It’s not the acting out of any particular scene in private that I have trouble with, it’s that so many people refuse to admit that using the clothing I wear every day to humiliate someone is misogynistic. I fully understand that people can’t control what they’re turned on by (if they could, no one would ever be into scat. I really feel for people with a fetish that hard to explain to their partners). All I want is for people to admit that feeling humiliated by wearing women’s clothing usually has its roots in the cultural misogyny we’re all steeped in (I’m a recovering misogynist myself, I’m not saying that having not worked through absolutely all of the cultural bullshit we’re all programmed with makes anyone a bad person), and that I have a right to worry about just how misogynistic the guy who feels humiliated by wearing panties actually is.
First, I’m not entirely sure what that means. Does ‘respect with less judgement’ mean that such practices can’t or shouldn’t be examined or criticized?
Second, the idea that these things happen completely in ‘private’ is false. If those practices were entirely ‘in private,’ then the rest of us (those who don’t engage in them) wouldn’t know they existed. But we do…
They aren’t private for two reasons:
1. The practices are based on cultural assumptions about masculinity and femininity. We got those ideas from culture — they didn’t happen in a vacuum devoid of others input or cultural influence.
2. People speak about, write, and photograph such activities, so the concept itself isn’t private, and thus, isn’t off limits for critique. I guess you could argue that your individual practice should be off limits, but certainly the cultural concept is out there… and so it’s fair game for examination and criticism.
But that line CAN’T be drawn — our private lives affect our public lives and our public lives affect our private lives. For that reason, I wholeheartedly disagree. Our fantasies are comprised of/in response to cultural beliefs and our enactment of those fantasies often serve to reinscribe those beliefs.
Sure… perhaps that’s true for you (but I’m suspect, otherwise you wouldn’t have responded to this post). My primary goal (in life? I guess), is less about individual inhibitions and more about demolishing dangerous cultural assumptions about women that cause me difficulties on a near daily basis. Since such fantasies play into cultural understandings and simultaneously reinforce them, I care… a lot.
“Does ‘respect with less judgement’ mean that such practices can’t or shouldn’t be examined or criticized?”
I didn’t suggest that. But, in my opinion, accusing some poor guy in panties of being a woman-hater goes too far. I disagree with stabbity and I have a right to. It’s as simple as that. I don’t think that everything a consenting couple does behind closed doors need be put under the microscope and politicized by third parties with their own agendas.
“The idea is to be less hindered and concerned with what other people think.”
Sure… perhaps that’s true for you (but I’m suspect, otherwise you wouldn’t have responded to this post).
So because I responded to the post with a different opinion my sincerity and honesty is somehow called into question? I didn’t realize that all we’re supposed to do is agree with everything stabbity or you have to say.
I stand corrected.
No, your honesty is in question because you responded to this post, wrote your own about what a poopyhead I am, and concern trolled me in email. That’s an awful lot of effort from someone who says we should all care less what other people think.
I’m absolutely game for listening…
What are you suggesting, then? What, exactly, do you mean by “respected with less judgement”?
Come on… be fair here. You wrote:
…as if this were some sort of universally shared principle of kink, as if it were something that the community (of those who engage in non-traditional/subversive sexual and/or relationship practices) agrees on. (We don’t)
Because you presented it as a universal, I took issue with it’s presentation as a universal… because it’s not an idea I share. My response was directly to your phrasing: “the idea.”
Though it wasn’t at all the point of my response…. Yes, the notion that “the idea” — or perhaps, more correctly, your idea — is to be “less hindered and concerned with what other people think” is undermined by the fact you responded to this post at all. If you don’t care (or your goal is to not care) about what other people think, then why are you writing a response that outlines how and why you care?
Yes. Absolutely, you have a right to disagree with stabbity. No, absolutely not… it’s NOT as simple as that. Your failure to address salient points doesn’t mean they don’t exist or that your opinion (the content of or the possession of) means ‘case closed’ on the larger cultural issue…. an issue you didn’t address in your response.
I’m glad to listen and hear you out, but I hope you respond to the points I made (which were a direct response to the points you made) rather than reducing the issue to ‘my opinion is valid; don’t critique it…’
Not being concerned about what other people think is in relation to the consenting participants. If they are happy and not harming each other, they shouldn’t have to worry about what others think. They are free to reconsider their opinions and adjust their behavior if they so choose as a result of such criticism. Or they can ignore it. It’s akin to a right-to-lifer trying to abrogate a woman’s choice to have an abortion. One can philosophize and criticize all they want. Just don’t interfere.
I agree that the existence of forced feminization as a common kink is a symptom of social misogyny. I do think it’s partly about strict gender roles, and not entirely about femininity being less valued than masculinity, because…
Hi! Feminine women here who would feel somewhat humiliated if forced to go out in public wearing men’s clothes or forced to wear boxers for sex. It’s not embarrassing if it’s not “forced,” but it (drag in public, a strap-on during sex, as the examples I’ve experienced) does make me uncomfortable, potentially intensely so. And that’s true despite some ingrained sexism that means that I value masculinity more highly than femininity in a general sense. (Note: it would almost certainly be less intense humiliation than in forced fem.)