The sissy subculture is a complex overlap of several interests, including cosplay, ageplay, gender play, and kink. Some people in the sissy community seek social, medical, and/or legal gender transition options.
Background
The term “sissy” is a slur used to describe feminine minors who were assigned male at birth (sissy is originally a diminutive of the word sister). Sexologist Richard Green published a controversial book called The “Sissy Boy Syndrome” that described these feminine minors as having a “disorder” and advocated conversion therapy for gender diverse youth to prevent them from becoming gay or trans. Green’s ideas and practices have been largely discredited and widely outlawed.
As a sexual subculture
In modern usage, the term sissy has also come to describe a kind of gender diverse sexuality involving erotic or autoerotic interest in feminization, usually in relation to sex with a dominant (cisgender) person or involving eroticized shame. It often involves some sort of submission, like hypnosis, chastity, training, and tasks, or nonconsensual acts like “forced feminization,” or sex that involves shame, humiliation, or degradation. Some of the erotic material produced in this subculture violates taboos about sex, sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, ideology, consent, and age of consent. In some cases those violations include use of slurs and other socially unacceptable content.
While “forced feminization” has been a cultural theme throughout recorded history, the 21st-century porn genre coalesced on sites like Fictionmania and Tumblr, which hosted curated pornography where fans constructed the genre’s visual language and themes. Samantha Riedel wrote:
In the context of millennial pornography, “sissy” as an erotic identity takes on a more defined set of characteristics. By this definition, a sissy is someone with a penis who is fascinated by “traditional” Western feminine ideals, obsesses over lingerie and makeup, fetishizes oral and anal sex with “superior” cisgender men, and often expresses themself hypersexually.
Authors Andrea Long Chu and Torrey Peters have made reference to sissy porn in their writing. Chu’s work is academic and analytic; Peters’ 2021 novel Detransition Baby includes a character who consumes sissy porn. A gender critical group protesting Peters’ Detransition Baby after it was longlisted for The Women’s Prize wrote:
Had a female author submitted a culturally regressive, sadomasochistic, misogynistic “surrendered wife” narrative to the Women’s Prize, it would rightly have been ignored by the judges. And yet, you’ve chosen to include a work of sissy porn suffused with hatred of women.
Trans artist Río Sofia debuted a 2017 exhibit called Forced Womanhood! The photographs in the exhibit examine the visual language of the sissy subculture.
Sissy task lists
Part of the community enjoys being given tasks to complete. One such list on reddit has 256 tasks that give a good sense of the focus of sissy subculture. Almost all of the tasks are about social transition issues like clothing and sex, with some overlap of medical transition options and no legal tasks.
- Social: categories are Panties, Bras, Hosiery, Lingerie, Shoes, Body Accessories, Cosmetics, Lifestyle, Outfits, Mental, Cyber, Public, Social, Toys, Masturbation, Sex
- Medical: only category is Permanent and includes permanent cosmetics and fillers, hormones, breast and butt augmentation, and genital modifications
reddit sissy subcultures
Since the 2019 Tumblr porn purge and the decline of websites, blogs, and standalone forums, reddit has become an important place for sissy subcultures. The relational map below shows the general shape of the community on reddit and the different approximate clusters of interest in the community.
General
Training and tasks
- r/SissificationAcademy
- r/SissyInspiration
- r/Sissy_Tasks [banned]
Chastity and submission
Consent
Eroticizing black men
- r/BlackOwnedSissies
- r/BBCsissies (BBC=”big black cock”) [banned]
Eroticizing gender diverse femininity
- r/FemBoys
- r/femboy
- r/traps
- r/transarentgay [banned]
- r/Tgirls
- r/OnlyIfShesPackin
References
Sofia, Río (2017) Forced Womanhood! https://www.riosofia.com/forced-womanhood
Chu, Andrea Long (2018). “Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans?” Queer Disruptions 2, Columbia University, New York, NY, March 1–2, 2018. [pdf]
Chu, Andrea Long (2018). “Pornographic Spectatorship, or, Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans?” 2018 annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association. UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, March 29–April 1, 2018.
Peters, Torrey (2021). Detransition, Baby. One World, ISBN 978-0593133378
Wild Woman Writing Club (). Open Letter to The Women’s Prize. https://wildwomanwritingclub.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/open-letter-to-the-womens-prize
Riedel, Samantha (December 14, 2018). RIP My Sissy Porn Tumblr, and the Self-Discovery That Came With It. them. https://www.them.us/story/tumblr-adult-content
Perry, Louise (January 2020) Sissy porn and trans dirty laundry [review of Andrea Long Chu’s book Females: A Concern]. The Critic https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/january-2020/sissy-porn-and-trans-dirty-laundry/
Resources
note: links are not endorsements and may contain adult content.
Amazon (amazon.com)
Sissy Factory (sissyfactory.blogspot.com)
Club Sissy (clubsissy.com)
Warp My Mind (warpmymind.com)
Hypnotube (hypnotube.com)
Sissy University (sissy-university.com)
Fictionmania (fictionmania.tv)
Ultimate Sissy (ultimatesissy.com)
The Sissy Store (thesissystore.com)
Sissy Lover (sissylover.com)
Sissy Social (sissy.social)
Novagirl (novagirl.net)
Sissy Kiss (sissykiss.com)
Sissy24 (sissy24.com)
iamsissy.com (iamsissy.com)
Sissy Things (sissythings.com)
Miss Vera’s School (missvera.com)
Colores Academy (coloresacademy.com)
Historic resources
The Goddess Summer (summerschoolforsissies.wordpress.com) [archive]
Pink Kizzes (pinkkizzes.com) [archive]
Sissy Training Videos (sissytrainingvideos.com) [archive]
Feminization Station (feminizationstation.blogspot.co.uk) [archive]