Exclusive Excerpt from:
Kink Magic Sex Magic Beyond Vanilla
by Lupa and Taylor Ellwood
Available November 2007 from Immanion Press

From Chapter 5: Who's Who (and What's What) in Kink Magic?
"Ladies and Gentleman (and Transgendered and Intersexed and Genderqueers and Monogamists and Polyamorists and …)!"

     Kink knows no boundaries as far as who may play with whom, and how. Some earlier writings on BDSM, for example, tended to be male-dominant and female-submissive, but newer writings may allow for heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, transgenderism, and so forth. It’s not surprising, given that kinky people tend to be more open-minded as a general rule (That and the modern BDSM community has a lot to thank gay Leathermen of the Old Guard for!).
     There is much confusion over the precise uses of “sex” and “gender”. Our sex-phobic society is so scared of the very word that the less-scary gender has replaced it in common parlay. Yet sex, in its strictest sense, refers to what’s between your legs, while gender comes from what’s between your ears. In other words, sex is the actual physical genitals you possess, while gender is your mental concept of your sexuality. Firefox points out the following:

Gender is a culture-specific, collective, subconscious set of agreements about how people of each sex are required to present themselves in order to be accepted. Gender is different than biological sex, or sexual orientation…Gender is a fluid concept, one that can change dramatically in a very short amount of time, on both the personal and cultural levels. (2005, p. 33).

Gender is much more malleable than people realize, and isn’t limited to the set of genitals a person has between hir legs.
      One cultural concept that’s done a lot of harm is polarity. The idea of polarity in both sex and gender may seem to limit sex magic only to heterosexual intercourse, as men are assumed to always be the masculine/active principle, while women must be the feminine/passive ones. Yet there are plenty of masculine/active women and feminine/passive men, and as we have discussed, biology does not limit the roles one can take in sex magic in general. In fact, masculine and feminine are poor synonyms for active and passive simply because of the confusion with physical sexes.
     If active and passive energies transcend the physical body and are dependent on who’s inside the body, then by all means it’s perfectly acceptable for non-heterosexual couplings to produce effective sex magic of any type. The exact mechanics of the manner in which the physical ritual is consummated may be different, but there’s absolutely no reason why gays and lesbians can’t work the same rituals as heterosexuals. However, this doesn’t mean that one has to be “the man” and one has to be “the woman”! A butch lesbian is not a “man”, and a feminine gay man is not a “woman”. People of all sexes run the gamut of active and passive energies, as well as the continuum between masculine and feminine.
     The same goes for bisexuals and pansexuals. The fluidity that allows for attraction to more than one sex can be translated into one’s energy patterns. While not all bisexuals and pansexuals behave differently depending on who their partner is, others do. In the event that a bisexual/pansexual person does act differently towards different sexes, it’s often a reflection of the individual personality, not a strict “When I am with a woman I am like a man, and when I am with a man I am like a woman” sort of situation. Lupa, for example, tends to react according to how her partner at the time is presenting hirself; if she happens to be with a very feminine person, she has a tendency to slide more towards the masculine end of her personality, and vice versa.
     Transgendered people are another good example of breaking through traditional sex roles. A male-to-female transgendered person is not “a man in a dress”. She is a woman, albeit one whose genetic structure does not match who she as a person is. Anyone who has known a transgendered person both before and after hir transition will notice that hir energy matches however s/he identifies, regardless of what the genitals are. Similarly, while some intersexed people (those born with genital features of both the male and female sexes) are content with whatever sex was assigned to them at birth, others experience gender dysphoria. This is particularly exacerbated by the common practice of doctors “fixing” the genitals of an intersexed baby right after birth, usually by removing any male organs (which still doesn’t account for non-female genetic material and hormones which may play a key role in later development).
     The recognition of spiritual androgyny is comparatively new within the arena of sex and gender identities. An androgyne is a person of any sex (not necessarily intersexed) who feels that s/he is a combination of male and female, or a completely different sex combining qualities of male and female. Both of us identify as androgyne despite our bodies. Lupa adds “genderfluid” to her qualifiers, given that she sometimes feels male, sometimes female, but generally somewhere inbetween, while Taylor tends to be more settled in the middle, identifying with neither gender, but instead incorporating aspects of both into his identity. We do use the pronouns that match our bodies to help alleviate confusion, though we’ve been known to answer to the “wrong” words. Androgyny means that we embody both active and passive principles, as well as masculinity and femininity, and utilize whatever we need at any given time.
     In the same way, traditional polarity can be completely shattered by polyamorous groups of three or more. While not everybody in a polyamorous situation may be having relationships with each other (i.e., Person A is involved with Person B and Person C, but Person B and Person C want nothing to do with each other), polyamorous triads/etc. can still work effective kink magic. It might take a little bit of time to figure out the details of who’s going to be doing what and when and with whom, but no more so than in a BDSM scene or non-sexual magical ritual.
     What this all really boils down to is that anyone can perform kink magic whether you’re a straight heterosexual monogamous couple, a butch/femme polyamorous lesbian pair seeking a third (and perhaps a fourth), or a pansexual transgendered triad. You can be hardcore dominant, submissive-only, or switch roles at the drop of a cane. There’s a place for everyone here. (We’ll wax even more eloquently on the issue of polarity once we start talking about sex magic itself.)


To learn more about Kink magic Visit: http://www.kinkmagic.com/



Sources:
Fire fox, LaSara. (2005). Sexy Witch. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications.