One of the things that I have noticed in personals ads over the years is that there is some variation in what people mean by ‘role playing’. So I just thought I’d make a brief post about this issue.
I’ve often seen the term using in personals ads in a list of kinks, such as “bondage, cbt, water sports, role playing, domestic service…” Used this way, the person usually means “pretending to be someone else”. So they might be imagining a scene built around cop and criminal, teacher and student, abusive boss and desperate employee, father and son faux incest, or whatever. Basically;ly, they want to play out a porn scenario of some sort. This sort of role playing is often recommended for couples trying to spice up their sex life, but plenty of serious kinksters enjoy doing it as well. After all, if you like dressing up in a cop uniform, it’s pretty easy to do some sort of let’s pretend scene with your partner. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I thoroughly enjoy this sort of play with someone who really commits to the scene. This use of the term pretty much exclusively refers to sexual play.
But on other occasions, I’ve noticed guys using it is a very different sense, to refer to taking on dom/sub roles. What they mean is that they enjoy taking on a clearly defined role with a partner, where one is clearly dominant and the other is clearly submissive. Used this way, they are not automatically referring to sexual play, because while they often mean they want a clearly defined role in a relationship; they want to be dominant or submissive outside the bedroom as well as inside it. Used this way, it typically seems to refer to power exchange that extends beyond the bedroom, and it might be a synonym for 24/7 power exchange (though not automatically). They’re saying they don’t want an egalitarian relationship.
The reason I point this out is that I’ve learned that one of the big mistakes kinksters make is assuming that the person they are talking to is giving the same meanings to words that they are. When someone tells me they want to be a slave, I always ask “what does being a slave look like for you?”, because they might mean they just want to be a sub for a scene, or they might mean that they want to do domestic chores with no sexual reciprocation. Similarly, if someone tells me they really enjoy doing role play, I always ask them what that means for them so that I can understand what they’re really looking for. It would suck to go into something thinking your partner wants a non-egalitarian relationship and discover that what they really want is for you to pretend you’re a teaching who needs to discipline a naughty schoolboy.
Leather-Bound Press 