In ‘Leatherdyke Boys and their Daddies: How to have Sex without Women or Men’ published in 1997 the author C. Jacob Hale clarifies sexual identities beyond homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality and explores transsexual identities and their role in defining pansexual/pomosexual identities.
Gender Identity has always been perceived and defined in an unhindered and limited manner. Essentially, gender is in a way an admittance for society to categorise individuals into already existing gender identity and sexualities. When one is born you are either biologically female or male. Naturally and inevitably society would expect one to follow and perform their specific gender roles and abide by them. In many cases some will differ from the …show more content…
However in ‘Leatherdyke Boys and their Daddies: How to have Sex without Women or Men’, this is not the case. Hale speaks about his own personal experiences along with Spencer Bergstedt who like Hale went through a similar process in transitioning from a female to male. In today’s society transsexuals are different from the crowd, “transsexuals often don 't fit into any other category offered by the binaries set up by society” (Elizabeth, 2013). To an extent the article challenges gender identity norms this is evident with the woman who identified as a 14 year old boy (Hale, 1997). The text mentions that Leatherdykes boys are adult lesbian females who practice a certain type of masculinities their daddies can be butch leatherdykes or gay leather men. The enquiry of whether a Leatherdyke boy is either female or male is fluid, “these questions I think are badly misguided they presuppose over simplistic understandings of how gender categories work and in doing so the rein scribe the hegemonic stranglehold of the dominant sex/gender/sexuality system” (Hale, 1997). This is deemed unorthodox because the leatherdyke and their daddies’ community live in a different society, their universe does not associate with the rules of the everyday society. This is shown by Bergstedt who once identified as …show more content…
To some such as Bergstedt, SM sex was ‘little to do with sexual pleasure for him” (Hale, 1997, pg. 425) and was more “a resource or a means of learning more about myself and growing more spiritually (Bergstedt, 1997. pg. 425). Also he was able to explore masculinity along with dominance and in effect applied this to other aspects of his life (Hale, 1997). Masculinity portrayed through SM sex is observed by Hale in three ways that leatherdyke boy and daddy play can develop one for hat it is to be a male. The first is mentioned by Hale is “through a conception of submission, especially to pain, as the most masculine SM position, especially when the person to whom one submits is also masculine”, the second one is through exploring ones masculine dominance and the third is “exploration of masculine boyhoods or periods of adolescence that were missing from our lives as we developed pubescent female bodies-bodies that were supposed to end our lives as tomboys and signal the beginnings of womanhood” (Hale, 1997, pg. 424). “SM as gender technology allowed me to experiment with masculinities as part of a process of self-construction in which I became more masculine, in embodiment, in self-presentation, and in
Gender Identity has always been perceived and defined in an unhindered and limited manner. Essentially, gender is in a way an admittance for society to categorise individuals into already existing gender identity and sexualities. When one is born you are either biologically female or male. Naturally and inevitably society would expect one to follow and perform their specific gender roles and abide by them. In many cases some will differ from the …show more content…
However in ‘Leatherdyke Boys and their Daddies: How to have Sex without Women or Men’, this is not the case. Hale speaks about his own personal experiences along with Spencer Bergstedt who like Hale went through a similar process in transitioning from a female to male. In today’s society transsexuals are different from the crowd, “transsexuals often don 't fit into any other category offered by the binaries set up by society” (Elizabeth, 2013). To an extent the article challenges gender identity norms this is evident with the woman who identified as a 14 year old boy (Hale, 1997). The text mentions that Leatherdykes boys are adult lesbian females who practice a certain type of masculinities their daddies can be butch leatherdykes or gay leather men. The enquiry of whether a Leatherdyke boy is either female or male is fluid, “these questions I think are badly misguided they presuppose over simplistic understandings of how gender categories work and in doing so the rein scribe the hegemonic stranglehold of the dominant sex/gender/sexuality system” (Hale, 1997). This is deemed unorthodox because the leatherdyke and their daddies’ community live in a different society, their universe does not associate with the rules of the everyday society. This is shown by Bergstedt who once identified as …show more content…
To some such as Bergstedt, SM sex was ‘little to do with sexual pleasure for him” (Hale, 1997, pg. 425) and was more “a resource or a means of learning more about myself and growing more spiritually (Bergstedt, 1997. pg. 425). Also he was able to explore masculinity along with dominance and in effect applied this to other aspects of his life (Hale, 1997). Masculinity portrayed through SM sex is observed by Hale in three ways that leatherdyke boy and daddy play can develop one for hat it is to be a male. The first is mentioned by Hale is “through a conception of submission, especially to pain, as the most masculine SM position, especially when the person to whom one submits is also masculine”, the second one is through exploring ones masculine dominance and the third is “exploration of masculine boyhoods or periods of adolescence that were missing from our lives as we developed pubescent female bodies-bodies that were supposed to end our lives as tomboys and signal the beginnings of womanhood” (Hale, 1997, pg. 424). “SM as gender technology allowed me to experiment with masculinities as part of a process of self-construction in which I became more masculine, in embodiment, in self-presentation, and in