I have a confession: last semester, I spent much of my time getting punched in the stomach by a woman in tactical gear, a puppygirl, and my lesbian boyfriend, and I LIKED it. For the ≈99% of the U.S. population that identifies as cisgender (KFF; The Washington Post 2023), questions abound: “What the hell is a puppygirl? Lesbian boyfriend? You can do that? That’s three other people. Who likes getting punched in the stomach? Sasha, are you crazy?”
Yes, but that’s beside the point. You’ll get your answers, but I’m much more interested in going a little deeper. Why is a puppygirl? How did I get with three people? Why do I like getting punched in the stomach? Why am I crazy? Am I crazy?
What sparked this investigation is the fact that I’m not alone in being a Certified FreakTM in the sheets. As a chronically online woman on trans Twitter, I’ve seen dozens of other tgirls, tboys, enbies, and other miscellaneous queer people partake in similar sexual deviancy. Kink is big in trans communities, as is polyamory and other romantic and sexual behaviors that defy social norms. It struck me as odd that there was such a high concentration of kink in online trans spaces, and I had a hard time believing this was a coincidence. Over several months of contemplation and insane, freaky sex with other mentally ill trans people, I’ve concluded the following: as a minority defined by actively giving up power and status in society, sex is a means for trans people to reshape and reclaim the power they are forced to lose by being themselves in American culture.
I’d like to acknowledge that I do NOT speak for all or even a majority of trans people. There’s no evidence to suggest that a larger proportion of trans people partake in non-vanilla sexual practices than the general population does, I simply find that those who do are more vocal about it. That said, trans people have a unique relationship to the practice and culture, and this warrants a platform.
On that note, a foundation of my contention is that we as trans people must give up power to be ourselves. A common myth about the LGBTQ+ community is that we are queer by choice. Yet I see no reason why so many trans people would opt into a world where we are paid less — the overall LGBTQ+ community makes 90 cents to the general population’s average dollar, with trans men and nonbinary people making 70 cents and trans women making 60 cents (The 19th 2022) — and subjected to four times as much violence (UCLA 2021) as our straight, cisgender counterparts. Bigotry and disinformation are a part of our daily lives, and one in five of us is likely to experience homelessness, compared to just over one in 20 of the general population (UCLA 2020), often caused by gender-based alienation and abuse from family members before the age of 18. Further, trans people don’t transition for the reasons anti-trans conservatives allege; when Ben Shapiro tried to develop a documentary on “men pretending to be women” infiltrating and dominating women’s basketball, production stopped because he couldn’t find enough assholes willing to change their biochemistry and senses of self for a year just to prove a point or gain acclaim (The Mary Sue 2023). Which is really pathetic and humiliating for him, and we should all point and laugh every time we see his remarkably punchable face. Point being, transition is not a choice, and the truth is that trans people transition because pretending to be cis is psychological torture. We have to enter a world riddled with challenges and give up the privileges of cis life to live authentically as ourselves. We have to cede power, to subject ourselves to ridicule and violence and dehumanization, or we end up dead or empty inside for however long we live. Shoutout to “I Saw the TV Glow” (2024).
BDSM is all about power. No surprises there — there’s some pretty obvious conclusions to be drawn from terms like “dominant” and “submissive,” or from the physical and emotional exchanges of power that stem from tying people up, smacking a partner’s ass with a paddle, or belittling a girl for her tiny, useless dick. BDSM doesn’t even necessarily involve sex, but forms of kink that fall under or next to that umbrella like cuckolding, overstimulation, and edging/orgasm denial all deal in control within those same power dynamics. Any experienced kinkster, however, will tell you the key to BDSM and kink is consent — and anyone who tells you otherwise is not welcome in kinky spaces/communities. Even in controversial kinks like consensual non-consent, or CNC, safe-words to stop the scene (current BDSM/sex act) at any point without question are sacrosanct in the community, and aftercare — the act of providing comfort after a scene, often due to the intensity of play — is just as fundamental. Whether you meet a scene partner night-of or you’re trying something out with a longtime lover or friend (because, really, what’s a little flagellation between friends?), the whole point is that whatever you do, you understand that beneath all the physical, emotional, and psychological intensity, you are safe and respected by the people you beat/get beat by.
BDSM isn’t just about power, or one person dominating another — the sub has to feel enthusiastic and safe enough to put themselves in that position and give the dom that power. Conversely, the dom has to trust that the sub will communicate if things go too far. Nobody wants to hurt anyone, or at least not anymore than the sub enjoys. BDSM is an exchange, a trade of power from one person to the other, and its reliance on mutual trust means both parties stand on equal ground. While not all trans people are subs, tgirls especially tend to be rather vocal about wanting someone to dom the fuck out of them. I personally had a period of time where I was really interested in exploring that side of myself. This is not a widespread interest in perpetuating patriarchal gender stereotypes — it’s a means to negotiate the requirement that we cede power to be ourselves, alongside the empowerment in getting to be ourselves. When an older woman holds a knife to my throat while she slowly pushes her dick against my prostate, I do so knowing that she’s taking care to ensure nothing bad will happen to me so that I can act on those desires and experience that thrill safely. I’m ceding power, but unlike the violence implicit in being trans in an actively hostile culture, where I don’t get a say in what people attempt to do to me, it’s instead in an environment where I can cede that power and feel safer for it. Any harm inflicted on me is controlled, is something I can familiarize myself with and take control over. And most importantly, BDSM establishes that there is a place for someone like me to feel safe. It reaffirms that there are people with whom I don’t need to worry about being targeted for being trans. That’s a part of why polyamory frequently appeals to trans people, too. A polycule is a space where everyone is supposed to feel loved by a tight community of other people that make each other feel safe. Having a space like that is special.
We’ve covered the basics. Now for the advanced course.
What the FUCK is a puppygirl?
A puppygirl is not the same as a furry. Some people are both, but they’re their own distinct things. What defines puppygirls is the dynamic; furries’ identities stand on their own (and are not always tied to sex), whereas puppygirls enjoy the act of giving power over to their partners or friends. Like a puppy, they want to take some time to rely on others and let people care for them, to take a break from self-sufficiency, to turn their brain off and stop stressing about everything going on around them. Additionally, it engages with the dehumanization trans people experience. Many puppygirls even use it/its pronouns, often in combination with others (she/it, it/they, etc.) and reclaim rhetoric used against trans people — if transphobes insist upon definitions of human that are constrictive and dependent on hate, then maybe some trans people don’t want to try and fit into that box of “human.” It’s a rejection of bigots’ labels, and it takes power back by refusing to wear dehumanization as a badge of shame. Additionally, people have fun with shedding the unspoken social contract of how “people” should act — getting leashed, eating out of dog bowls, barking on command, wearing nothing but dog ears and a collar around the house… even things like watersports and clicker-training for those who really want to get into it.
Puppygirls are the most notorious, but puppyboys and fox, rabbit, deer, etc. variants also exist, with varying degrees of commitment to the identity. I’m a little bit catgirl with it, myself. Other nonbinary/agender people use it/its pronouns, too, but don’t necessarily associate with the puppy part; some people just want to exist outside of the cisnormative sphere of influence. And others still, like my lesbian boyfriend, have their own ways to define and engage with their experiences — he knows what it’s like to be discriminated against for who he is and who he’s dating, and his identity as a lesbian is a way to communicate his understanding of his identity and his relation to queerness.
Even within the LGBTQ+ community, a lot of the less normative, more openly queer people are demonized as degenerates, labeled “the reason society can’t accept us.” The reality is that there are people in this country all the way up to the highest government office and at the helms of the most powerful corporations who hate trans people for the sake of hating trans people, who will find any reason they can to strip us of our freedoms and dignity, and spit venom even at the trans people who attempt to side with them and prove they’re “one of the good ones.”
Barring straight-up revolution, the most powerful thing we can do in a world that hates us is be unapologetically ourselves. A little bit of freakiness between enthusiastically consenting adults in a private space, however odd the general populace thinks certain practices are, never hurt anyone. And again, a lot of trans people aren’t even interested in non-vanilla sex. One of the gifts of the trans experience is that when you start questioning one social norm, like attitudes around sexuality or gender, you start analyzing and dismantling other social norms, trying to figure out why some things are more ostracized than others and whether they even should be. In a world that wants you to be miserable, the most radical way to build a world where others are safer and more comfortable being themselves is by letting yourself be the version of you you’re proudest and happiest to be — provided you’re not infringing on others’ autonomy or hurting people…nonconsensually.
