Royal male: A brief look at queening fetishes

While researching a previous blog on squashing fetishes I came across an online account from a dominatrix talking about ‘queening’ fetishes. According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, queening is a BDSM practice in where one sexual partner sits on or over another person’s face “typically to allow oral-genital or oral anal contact, or to practice ass worship or body worship”. In the book’s glossary of sexual terms, Dr. Aggrawal simply defines queening as “sitting on the side of a person’s face as a form of bondage”. A 2005 book chapter by Dr Brenda Love (in Russ Kick’s Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong) examined some of the strangest sexual behaviours from around the world and included a short section on queening. She wrote:

“The term queening refers to the European practice of a dominant female using a man’s head as her throne. The woman sits in one of several positions, either on the side of the man’s head or so that his nose is near her anus with his eyes covered by her genitals. The object of queening is bondage or breath control, not cunnilingus. The man may wear supplemental restraints on the wrists and ankles. A slightly comparable American sex scene is where a stripper completely disrobes and stands over a sitting male with his head titled back so that her genitals are only a couple of inches above his face. She stays in this position, moving her pelvis to the music for about five minutes. The male is not permitted to touch her in any manner during this exhibition”.

According to the Wikipedia entry on ‘facesitting’, within a sadomasochistic and dominance/submission context, the practice can be an “especially intense form of erotic humiliation”. The article also claims the practice is commonplace among sadomasochists. Although this would appear to have good face validity, I have yet to come across an empirical piece of research that either confirms or disconfirms this. The article differentiates facesitting from ‘smothering’ (i.e., the complete obstruction of the airways for sexual purposes) because the person being sat is not totally deprived of oxygen. The article also claims:

“The full-weight body-pressure, moisture, sex odors and darkness can be perceived as powerful sexual attractions or compulsions. The person sat upon may be in bondage, sexually submissive, or simply held down by the body-weight of the other person. Sometimes special furniture is used, such as a ‘queening stool’ or ‘smotherbox’. A queening stool is a low seat which fits over the submissive’s face and contains an opening to allow oral-genital and/or oral-anal stimulation of the domme while seated. In modern BDSM vernacular, the queening stool allows open access to the crotch while seated…The queening stool is also related to a ‘smotherbox’ which also allows the person under the seat to be locked in place, restrained by the neck as in a set of stocks”

This description also suggests there may be overlaps between queening and other sexual paraphilias and fetishes such as squashing fetishes, amaurophilia (where individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal by a partner who is blind or unable to see due to artificial means such as being blindfolded or having sex in total darkness), and osmophilia (where individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal caused by bodily odours such as sweat and urine).

An online article about queening on the Toilet Duck website (that ‘celebrates and questions watersports and toilet games’) begins by asserting that defining the act of queening is “difficult to say the least without leaving readers wondering why”.  Unlike the Wikipedia article, it does not differentiate between facesitting and smothering:

“[Queening is a] very erotic act in which a woman sits on a man’s face and is satisfied sexually while dominating her man and the man is incredibly turned on by the act as well…Also referred to as face sitting or smothering, queening is most often accomplished by a dominant woman sitting on her submissive man’s or slave’s face and deriving sexual pleasure by riding his face or forcing him to lick, suck, bite, or orally massage his domme’s vaginal and anal area until she climaxes. During a queening session a submissive experiences the sensation of his mistress’s weight on his face as she squats on top of his face. The smell of her, the moistness, and the slow erotic motion as she moves around on his face to gain pleasure from her submissive mixed with the urgency to breathe is what turns the sub on…Sometimes queening is accompanied by the infliction of pain, verbal humiliation, or water sports (the act of urinating on a sexual partner) depending on the couple and how deep into the BDSM scene they are into. Nipple twisting or flogging are also great additions to smothering as is a little cock and ball torture. However, Queening is most often used as a form of reward for submissives that have been very good”.

Although most of the claims made here are unsubstantiated empirically, the Toilet Duck article is at least written by proponents who actually engage in the practices they write about. This extract also suggests there are yet more overlaps with other sexual paraphilias including urophilia, masochism, and hypoxyphilia.

In my research for this blog I came across the Informed Consent website (“The UK’s BDSM website”) which highlighted queening as its ‘fetish of the week’ back in September 2010. As a consequence, it featured people writing about their queening experiences. I have collated a few extracts here to provide a flavour of what people enjoy about queening from a personal standpoint:

• Extract 1: “I practice [queening] and regard it more in [an orally erotic] way than as a means of breath play. Although I know for some the oral element doesn’t feature at all. For me, the breath play aspect is a fairly insignificant part of it”
• Extract 2: “I love all aspects of it. The sheer enjoyment of someone dominating me by pushing their body down on my face; the oral sex; the worshipping of an anus; the smells and tastes; the inability to control my breathing; being pushed right to the edge, gasping for the slightest bit of air. I love it when Mistress losses herself ‘in the moment’ so much that she forgets about me, and I literally have to protect my own breathing/life”
• Extract 3: “It’s one of my favourites, yet very rarely practiced…it encompasses so much…from total control to total intimacy”
• Extract 4: “Personally, I love [queening] and just can’t get enough of it. I seem to never get bored of it. The ultimate for me is for Mistress to sit on my face and conduct some nipple torture or candle wax on my chest. I think this is proper pain and pleasure mixed up perfectly”

The only other article of any length I have come across on queening is one on the Kinky Britain website. Their main take on queening is that it is a form of body worship but also sees the behaviour has having other sexual attractions including the darkness, the weight pressure, the smells, and the wetness (echoing some of the aspects outlined above). The article claims that it is not only engaged in by dominant women and submissive men, but also by “vanilla couples who use this highly-enjoyable position for woman-superior cunnilingus”. Like the Wikipedia article, smothering and queening are viewed as two different forms of sexual activity. The anonymous author notes:

“Smothering is NOT like regular cunnilingus. In fact, at times the guys can’t even lick because they’re just trying to inhale a breath of fresh air. Sure, that overpowering smell of [the vagina] is great, but oxygen is what they really want at times. Facesitting is very erotic in essence and may be practiced by non-BDSM (vanilla) couples for sexual pleasure. However, when applied in the context of female domination it symbolizes the Mistress superiority over the sub. There is a slight difference between facesitting to smothering or queening, which is associated with the deprivation of air, yet in the BDSM world these terms are often regarded as one”.

The other aspect to this article that is not mentioned in any others I have read concerns the type of submissive man (i.e., ‘the slave’) that engages in queening. The article claims it is the woman who chooses who the submissive male is, and it appears there is no commonality amongst the type of man who participate. The article claims (and I have no empirical evidence to counter them) that:

“She may wish to have a wimpish male twit under her. She may find more delight in subduing a macho strong male. She may have a cuckolded husband to humiliate, taunt and sit on. Some women like to have a mouth-dildo attached to their slave’s head, sticking up from his open mouth as a rideable accessory. This provides pleasant, full, vaginal passage orgasms, but prevents sucking and licking by the male victim. Other women blindfold their prone slaves, thus deleting any possible visual pleasure they might obtain. A few cruel ladies inevitably urinate on to his face after having orgasmed. Others enjoy demanding mouth service right after enjoying satisfactory adultery with a lover, thus making the victim more humiliated. Most queening ladies humiliate, taunt, torment, degrade and tease their victims before and after this enforced cunnilingus”.

The bottom line (no pun intended) about queening fetishes is that almost all the information we have appears to have been written by those who actually engage in the practice and that there is nothing written academically except passing references in academic books on unusual sexual practices. There is also the question of whether those who engage in the behaviour view it as fetishistic, and whether academics such as myself would class the behaviour as a fetish. Based on what I have read, queening appears to be an adjunct to other types of sexually paraphilic behaviour such as sexual masochism rather than a stand alone fetish although for some people, it may well be a genuine fetishistic sexual activity.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Charland, V. (2010). Fetish furniture in art (queening chairs, bondage, facestting, etc.). Cuckold Journal, November 27. Located at: http://cuckold-journal-wet-options.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/fetish-furniture-in-art-queening-chairs.html

Kinky Britain (2010). Questions and answers about facestiing/queening. August 25. Located at: http://kinkybritain.co.uk/kinky/2010questions-answers-about-facesitting-queening

Love, B. (2005). Cat-fighting, eye-licking, head-sitting and statue-screwing. In R. Kick (Ed.), Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong (pp.122-129).  New York: The Disinformation Company.

Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.

McGuire, C. (1989). Perfect Victim. New York: Dell.

Murray, T. (1989). The Language of Sadomasochism. Westport: Greenwood Press.

The Toilet Duck (2011). Queening – Can this be enjoyable for both parties? August 7. Located at: http://thetoiletduck.com/20/queening-can-this-be-enjoyable-for-both-parties/

Wikipedia (2012). Facesitting. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facesitting