21 March 2024
In this culture, it is important to punish anyone designated “male” when they deviate from the abusive script they are given; a script which forbids most emotional expression beyond dominance, bravado, and unregulated anger. Those who deviate from this script are called “girly” or “sissy” in order to shame them into compliance. This is the origin of the association between feminization and humiliation: femininity is positioned as shameful, and then weaponized as a tool of control. It is spectacularly abusive.
It should be mentioned that children, including young children, are not spared from this abuse. They often experience the worst of it.
I find it very interesting that some men are into humiliation; even more interesting that some choose feminization as their preferred method. So far I haven’t talked at length to anyone with this kink, but my guess is that choosing to re-experience something that was painful in the past on your own terms, with the power to set conditions and limits, can be a healing process.
Though I sometimes feel uncomfortable that men use feminization as a shame kink, I do support and affirm it. My hope is that as a BDSM practice, it may help bring awareness to the untold harm our culture causes by demonizing femininity and weaponizing it as an instrument of shame.
Now, transgender women (and transfeminine people more broadly) are in an unusual position here. For us, the principle is inverted; feminization is our real-life empowerment, and masculinization is experienced as a curse.
Yes, we like to be feminized, but the similarity ends there. Truthfully, what we want is to be recognised. An insecure man looking at a trans woman sees only a feminized man, and he feels an intense discomfort, which is really second-hand shame. The woman, misinterpreted as a man with a shame kink, feels invisible and unrecognized, because trans women are not feminized men. When she feminizes herself, she is engaging in a sacred process of self-recognition — very different from the feminizing roleplay of a submissive man.
Of course, feminized men are not inherently shameful either. And maybe there is more self-recognition in male feminization than there first appears. Actors can come to a deeper self-understanding through playing characters who bear little resemblance to them, so perhaps these men do the same by engaging in fantasy feminization.
I’m not a man, so I can only speculate.
(There is so much more to talk about here: transmasc femboys, femininity and the non-binary experience, drag, sexual orientation, objectification, and so on; but those concepts are beyond the scope of this essay.)
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