On Being a Trans Woman in Kink
Let's talk about fairy tales.
As we know, fairy tales are useful warnings.
“Don't stray off the path!” - there are dangers in unknown territory
“Be afraid of wolves!” - wild animals can hurt you
“Be wary of magic!” - there are forces in the world bigger than you, and sometimes there are may be disastrous prices to pay
And of course the two most pernicious of all:
“This woman is a witch!” - this woman is feared, because people need her, but they resent that fact. She is a convenient scapegoat.
“This woman is a princess!” - This woman is loved by people because she is genuine and kind. She may be easily manipulated because, in the pursuit of being selfless, that's what 'good' people allow for themselves.
There is also the peasant girl, but let's be honest. Nothing interesting ever happens to her - unless she turns out to secretly be a princess or a witch. She's usually just filler to move the story along and act as a moralistic symbol for the wonders of avoiding destiny by staying ordinary... or something.
So, with these symbols established (minus the working class woman, sorry peasant girl), let's examine the media.
No, not Medea the Ancient Greek witch - although she is a good example of how a powerful woman makes others flee the hell out of her way - the media. In some ways, the media creates modern fairy stories. It tells us what we can be if we succeed... and also who we will be if we fail. The media very much demonstrates the symbols of the witch and the princess, and as ever the peasant girl, who only gets to be interesting once she becomes a witch or a princess. Before then, she's just Sharon who works in accounts, and apparently that's far too ordinary a role to be worthwhile.
The modern princess is the influencer, the YouTube star, the model, the celebrity and so on. The witch, as she has always been, is any woman not considered 'enough' of one to have earned that label. But before these women were cast as witches, they were girls.
Witch girls are an interesting kind of person; I was one. I grew up wanting to be a princess. I saw the images of good, real little girls in the media and thought that could be me. I wanted the long hair and the dresses and - regardless of those things - just to be seen as real.
Yet for the witch girls who want to be princesses, life is perpetually confusing:
Why does everyone insist that it’s too 'unnatural' to want to be a princess?
Why do these girls get laughed at?
Why do people keep trying to insist that they can’t be princesses because they are little boys?
What does that even mean?
Strangest of all, when these girls assert that they can be princesses if they want to be, why are they told that they are too much a shape-changing witch to be a 'real' princess?
By becoming real to themselves, these children are branded as unnatural.
I want to take a moment to step outside of symbolism and present you with what might seem like an absurd situation:
Imagine a little girl. She knows she is a little girl, other people may even recognise her as such. Yet her parents cut her hair short, and force her to keep it short with threats of violence. They gaslight her constantly and tell her that she isn't a little girl; she's a little boy, everyone knows that, everyone can see it. They force her to dress in clothing that makes her miserable, again with threats of violence.
When you thought about this little girl, you likely imagined her as a girl who the doctors had always said was such. If in response to that imagining, you felt a sense of horror and bewilderment at my story, good. That's the point.
If it’s horrifying that this child is suffering because common sense identifies the child as a girl, why is a child who identifies as a girl allowed to suffer because perception declares them a boy?
I told you this story because I want you to understand that all of this extends beyond kink.
I came into myself as a teenager, at a time when people are given love, support, appropriate boundaries and everything that helps build a person. I was given next to none of it. I had to see, over and over, young women like me - who just wanted the chance to be princesses. Young women that just wanted to wear cute clothes, and make up, and go on dates, brutally murdered because the people attracted to them were too weak to own that attraction.
Young women who were meant to be beacons of light and hope, who met their deaths in cold blood - and people will shrug and say they were 'asking for it'. Women like me, portrayed as manipulative and deceitful by default. Women like me, begging to be recognised. Begging for their lives. Every time, my heart broke a little more and the light guttered more harshly.
All the while, the world continued to grind me under its boot. It demanded I give up and die. On the ground, in the dirt, terrified with no escape because my life was already traumatic, and when I realised who I was the world decided it hated me even more.
I wanted to give up; it would have been so easy just to carry on pretending, that what is my real life is the pretense. Except that's simply not true. The years I spent being gaslit into living a particular way... that was the pretense.
I didn't give up.
Something inside me refused to die. It told me to get up. I did, and I carried on going, and now I can't stop. So here I am. I know I'll never be a princess, and even if society became more accepting, I suspect I could never at my core stop being 'other', because that experience has shaped me far too harshly.
The problem is, a woman like me turns up in a kink setting and I'm just a walking fetish someone can decline interest in. They are of course welcome to decline interest, I don't really care. But most fail to realise that I actually exist as a woman outside of this space. I eat, sleep, live, and breathe as a woman.
Some might say, 'Oh I know you're a woman now, but you weren't always were you?'. This is a comfortable, agreeable way of saying that I don't matter as much as the women deemed ‘real’. Kink is make believe, right? So I must only exist as a fantasy. But my realness started long before my kink.
It started when they made me cut my hair, and keep it short, no matter how much I looked at the flowing locks of ‘real’ girls and wanted that for myself. It started every time I was told I was disgusting for wanting to play with dolls. It started every time I was beaten or harassed for being 'too feminine' and on and on. It started every time someone touched me up, sneering that I wasn’t a ‘real’ girl, but maybe I needed to be shown what it was like to be one.
Some people think I'm just a fantasy, that I only exist when you want to project your wants and desires onto me, so that's fine, let's use that language. It doesn't matter, because I'm writing this for the women who have always wanted to be princesses. To do good and be kind and be light in the world. Who haven't given up on the idea that they can be worthy of all of that. To them I say: You are vitally important, you deserve exactly what you want. I'm here to help you make that happen, because I learnt a long time ago that the best way for me to survive was to live in the dark of the woods. I'm ok with that.
I'm writing this to defend the princesses. The princesses in my community who deserve to be allowed to be that, because princesses and witches are two sides of the same coin. One is to be defended, one is to be defended against, both are controlled in different ways. Maybe when they become friends, something positive can happen.
This isn’t directed at any one gender. It goes for all, because while many women go on about how awful men are, I’ve been to kink events; I’ve seen that men are seldom interested, and women treat me like a man, only to touch me up like I’m some kind of walking fetish. The question is, in this land of kinky make-believe someone believes they are creator and ruler of, why should I call them “Sir”, “Master”, “Mistress,” etc. when my very existence is a joke to them?
That's my experience of kink. I am real, it is real. Kink is as real to me as living a day to day life, because in a lot of ways it is day to day living. Everything that happened prior to entering a dungeon is what has created who I am.
I do not exist for somebody’s entertainment.
If people are ready to accept that, then great, but if not, I'm going to carry on existing anyway.
About The Author: LadyRavynHeart is a Sadistic Domme non binary trans woman. She takes an interest in the psychology of kink, as well as the study of folklore, other metaphysical work and languages.
