A bondage scenario using period costumes.

Sexual roleplay is an erotic form of roleplay: it is a sexual behavior where two or more people act out roles in a sexual fantasy. How seriously this is taken depends on the people involved, and the scenario may be anywhere from simple and makeshift to detailed and elaborate, complete with costumes and a script. Nearly any role could become the base material for an erotic experience, and there is no limit to what objects an individual could consider sexual.

The popularity of the internet has also allowed for online sexual encounters, known as cybersex, which may involve roleplay.

[edit] BDSM

Many of the most common sexual roleplays involve a power differential and form part of the dominance and submission aspect of BDSM. Roles can be general designations of power positions, or very specific, detailed fantasies. Some people, such as those living the Gorean lifestyle make use of an entire imaginary world. The controlling player is often called the top or dominant while the controlled individual is called the bottom or submissive.

There are a number of scenarios which may be played out, including:

• Age-play - where one player takes the role of an adult and the other a child.
• Animal-play - where the bottom is treated as a non-human animal such as a dog or pony.
• Master-slave - where the submissive is treated as the property of the master/mistress.
• Torturer/Captive prisoner - where the top is a captor who abuses the bottom.
• Kidnapped fantasy - The submissive player is bound (rope, duct tape, bondage tape, handcuffes, etc.) and gagged (duct tape gag, bondage tape gag, cleave gag, ball gag, etc.) and teased before the sexual act.
• Authority figure/Misbehaving Adult - where an authority figure threatens the bottom with exposure of a secret.
• Gender-play - where one or more players take on roles of the opposite sex.
• Goddess worship - where a woman is seen as a pagan deity.
• Hospital fantasies - involving doctors, nurses and patients.
• Uniform fetish - one participant dresses in uniform (for instance as a student, cheerleader, French maid, etc.), while the dominant participant plays an authority figure (a parent, teacher, coach, police officer, etc.).
• Rape fantasy or a ravishment where one player feigns being coerced into an unwelcome sex act.
• Owner/Inanimate object - such as the bottom being human furniture.
• Prison fetish - Situational play set in a prison environment. While it can include authority play, it does not limit itself to the Master/slave paradigm; but expands the opportunities to include non-authority play between equals (such as cell mate love affairs). Prison role playing is able to combine equality and authority play depending upon the situation and the specific roles of individual players. A prison fetish play session includes all sexual orientations and limits itself only by the environment / situations agreed to by the participates. Given real life prisons are same-sex communities, this fetish does lend itself to male on male or female on female activities and settings. Opposite gender play is also possible between inmates and guards or when the setting includes a co-ed facility / institution. Prison play is also an expansion of the uniform fetish by use of inmate, guard, and staff uniforms.

Sexologist Gloria Brame lists a number of these scenarios.^[1]

[edit] References