What is it about?
Puppy play is a social and/or sexual activity in which one or more people take on the role, mannerisms and persona of a dog (often a puppy). The puppy play community has, in recent years, seen a rapid increase in numbers as more and more people have become aware of and then joined the scene. We surveyed and interviewed people involved in puppy play and use this information to piece together the historical origins of the community in BDSM/ kink subcultures, and describe the community's rise and structure.
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Why is it important?
Queer and/or sexual minority subcultures are still treated with suspicion in Western cultures, owing to significant lines of prejudice against LGBTQ+ people, and others for whom sex is primarily a pleasureable, rather than reproductive, activity. Our work seeks to explore and explain a particular non-normative subculture in order to challenge dominant ideas about what sex and society "should" be like, and places this particular scene within a historical frame.
Perspectives
I very much enjoyed writing this article and it is a great pleasure to see it in print. As a queer academic, I always enjoy seeing queer topics covered in a non-sensationalist, unprejudiced way, and it is a great source of pride to add this particular article to that body of literature. I hope the puppy play community enjoy the paper, and enjoy seeing their history laid out in the way we explored it.
Jamie Lawson
University of Bristol
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: History, culture and practice of puppy play, Sexualities, March 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1363460719839914.
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