# When your kink and your sexuality do not match > Lesbian women who want a male top, gay men who want a woman, anyone whose kink points where their sexuality does not. Why it happens and how to arrange it. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/kink-and-orientation/ - Section: Why we want this - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. People assume kink follows sexuality, in the way they assume everything about this follows something. It frequently does not, and the mismatch causes a great deal of private worry that it does not deserve. This is what is actually going on, and the one part of it that needs handling carefully. --- ## In short - Kink and sexual orientation are separate axes. They line up for plenty of people and not for plenty of others. - Once a spanking is not a sexual act, the other person's gender stops being about attraction and starts doing a different job. - It changes nothing about your orientation, and nobody is entitled to audit that on the basis of a fantasy. - The real difficulty is practical: finding somebody who takes "this is not sexual" at face value the first time. Four adults, all over 18. A woman who has been with women for twenty years and has never wanted a man in her life, who nonetheless wants to be put over a man's knee. A gay man who wants a woman to do it and has no interest in her otherwise. A straight woman who cannot imagine this with a man at all. A straight man who only wants it from another man and has spent years assuming that means something it does not. None of those is a puzzle. They are four ordinary configurations, and they cause so much private anxiety only because everybody arrives assuming kink runs along the same track as sexuality, and nobody says out loud that it often does not. ## Why the two come apart The foundation is on [does spanking have to be sexual](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/is-it-sexual/), and it is the thing to understand first: for a great many people this is not a sexual activity. Two clothed adults, a sofa, a hairbrush, twenty minutes and a cup of tea. That is the event itself, not a coy description of something else. Once that is true, the question of who is holding the hairbrush stops being a question about attraction. It becomes a question about what the person needs that other body in the room to supply, and there are three answers I hear repeatedly. Borrowed authority, first and largest. The institutional imagery this country runs on is overwhelmingly male, because the institutions it came from were: the magistrate, the sergeant, the man behind the desk. If what you want is the register of being formally dealt with, the fantasy will usually have arrived pre-cast, by a culture that did the casting without asking you. More on that at [older men and authority](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/older-men-and-authority/). Size, second, and it is more physical than people expect. Being contained, being smaller than the person holding you, being unable to get up if you decided to. That is a fact about bodies rather than about desire, and it is why some women who want nothing else from men still want this from one. And familiarity, third. For some people a figure of correction simply has a default shape, the way a nurse or a bank manager does, and the mind reaches for it without consulting anybody. The mechanisms underneath all of this are set out at [what it is actually for](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/what-it-is-for/). ## It does not reassign anything Said plainly, because I have watched women lose years to this question: wanting to be spanked by a man does not make a lesbian woman anything other than a lesbian woman. A non-sexual spanking is not sex. It is closer to being called in to see the manager than to going to bed with somebody, and nobody concludes anything about their orientation from who they would accept a telling-off from. The site makes the same argument elsewhere: wanting to be told off does not mean you want to be diminished in your life, and the content of what runs in your head is not a plan. See [am I normal](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/am-i-normal/). Now the honest complication, because leaving it out would make this page dishonest. For some people it is not entirely clean. The situation is charged, there is something erotic in the air, and the person is still not attracted to the man in any ordinary sense and would not want him under any other circumstances. Both of those can be true at once. You are allowed to leave that unresolved, and a great many people do, permanently. The pressure to work out exactly what a feeling is before you are permitted to have it comes from outside rather than from the experience itself. More on that at [shame and arousal](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/shame-and-arousal/). ## If you are asexual There is an asexual version of the same worry, pointed the other way. The [Asexual Visibility and Education Network](https://www.asexuality.org/) (AVEN) describes an asexual person as someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Wanting to be spanked can look as though it contradicts that, and people conclude either that the want must secretly be sexual or that the label must be wrong. Neither follows. Everything on [does spanking have to be sexual](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/is-it-sexual/) applies here with more force. For a great many people the appeal is the sensation, the structure, the release afterwards, or being held to account by somebody whose opinion matters, and none of that needs a sexual component. An asexual person who wants a spanking and nothing else wants exactly what a fully non-sexual arrangement already is, with nothing to reinterpret. Two things are worth saying out loud in the negotiation. First, that the arrangement is fully non-sexual rather than the charged but hands-off middle position, because a partner who assumes the middle will read the whole atmosphere differently. Second, that a body can react during a scene without that meaning anything about attraction, and a reaction is never a signal or a consent to anything else. The practical difficulty is the one the rest of this page describes: finding somebody who takes "not sexual" at face value the first time. AVEN hosts a large online community, which is one place to talk it through with other asexual people before you have to explain it to a partner. ## The part that actually needs work Everything above is reassurance, and reassurance is cheap. Here is the hard part: finding a man who takes "this is not sexual" at face value the first time he hears it. Most will. Some will not, and the failure mode has a shape worth recognising. He hears it as an opening position rather than a statement. Or as shyness, to be gently worked past once she relaxes. Or as a thing that will change on its own once she has experienced how good he is at this. None of that is usually announced. It shows up as small pressure, applied slowly, in a direction that only ever goes one way. The tells are specific. Returning to it after it has been stated clearly once. Describing it as a phase, or asking whether she has really given men a fair go. Remarks about what she has not tried. Treating the arrangement as a step towards something rather than as the thing itself. Any suggestion that her orientation is a matter he is entitled to have a view on. > **One push is enough information.** You do not need a pattern and you do not owe anybody a second data point. If you have said clearly that this is not sexual, and the subject comes back round in any form, that is your answer and you can stop there. It is not rudeness and it does not require a row: the conversation simply ends. The full list of behaviours worth walking away from is on [red flags](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/red-flags/), and how to check somebody out beforehand is on [vetting a partner](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/vetting-a-partner/). ## How to say it so it cannot be misread In writing, before you meet, in the flattest words available. Not because a stranger deserves a legal document, but because a thing said in a message cannot later be described as a misunderstanding. Describe conduct rather than feelings, since feelings are arguable and conduct is not. Something like: this is not sexual for me, I am not attracted to men, nothing sexual will happen, I will be dressed apart from what we have agreed, and there is no version of the evening where that changes. Then a sentence about what you do want, so it does not read as a list of refusals. Then watch what comes back. A man who says "understood, that is how I run things anyway" and moves on to the practical questions is showing you exactly what you need to see. The general approach is at [negotiation](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/negotiation/), and the first meeting protocol at [meeting safely](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/meeting-safely/). ## If you are the man reading this Believe her. That is the entire instruction and it is not complicated. She is not being coy, she is not testing you, and she has not failed to consider whether she might feel differently about it later. Say your own position first and unprompted so she does not have to ask a stranger about his intentions, run the session exactly as carefully as you would run any other, and do not treat being chosen for this as either a compliment about your technique or a challenge about anything else. And if you cannot do it without hoping, decline the session. Not as a moral failing, simply as a fact about what you are able to offer that evening. Somebody who accepts while hoping is somebody who will apply pressure later, usually without ever deciding to, and she will be the one who pays for it. ## Two complications worth naming If you are in a relationship with a woman and want this from a man, you are running two conversations at once: a kink conversation and an opening-up conversation. They are separate and both need doing properly. The second one is not made easier by the first being non-sexual, because what a partner minds is rarely the thing you expect. See [more than one partner](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/more-than-one-partner/) and [women who play with women](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/women-with-women/). And there is the friction of explaining any of this in queer spaces, where the response is sometimes that you are repressed, or not quite what you say you are. It is insulting and it is useless, since it explains nothing and predicts nothing. You are not obliged to hand anybody a theory of yourself in exchange for being believed. Some women find a formal frame or a professional arrangement easier for exactly this reason, because the boundary is structural rather than something defended in conversation, and I take no position on paying beyond noting that people do it. ## The useful question underneath all of it Work out what the gender is actually supplying, because that tells you whether it can be met another way. If it is the institutional register, a woman can sit behind the desk perfectly well, and several are better at it than the men. If it is size and containment, that is a fact about bodies and there are large women. If it is simply the shape of the thing and it has to be a man, then it has to be a man, and that is a complete answer that requires no defence and no apology. Knowing which changes who you should be looking for, and saves you a year of trying to talk yourself into an arrangement that was never going to do the job. ## Read next - [Does spanking have to be sexual?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/is-it-sexual/) - [What it is actually for](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/what-it-is-for/) - [Women who play with women](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/women-with-women/) - [Older men and authority](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/older-men-and-authority/) - [Men who play with men](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/men-with-men/) ## Common questions ### Can a lesbian want to be spanked by a man? Yes, and it is common enough that most people who have been around this for a while know several. For a great many people a spanking is not a sexual act at all, so the gender of the person delivering it is doing a different job: authority, size, or simply the shape the fantasy happens to take. None of that is a statement about who she wants to go to bed with. ### Does wanting this from a man mean I am not really a lesbian? No. The content of a fantasy has never been a reliable guide to anybody's orientation, and a non-sexual spanking is not sex. Wanting to be told off by a man says about as much about who you are attracted to as wanting to be told off by a traffic warden would. Your orientation is yours to state and nobody gets to audit it. ### How do I make sure a man understands it is not sexual? Say it once, in writing, before you meet, in the flattest words you can manage, and describe what will and will not happen rather than only what you feel. Then watch what he does with it. Somebody who accepts it and moves on is fine. Somebody who returns to it, reframes it as shyness, or treats it as a starting position has told you enough.