What It Means, According to Sex Experts

If you’ve ever explored niche kinks on a journey down the porn rabbit hole, you might have come across a seemingly contradictory brand of BDSM play known as “forced bi”—i.e. forced bisexuality.

The porno may go a little something like this: A dominatrix dressed in all black is commanding a man (their submissive) to go down on another guy. The guy giving the blowjob may act like he doesn’t want to do it, or may even seem disgusted by the fact that he has to engage in “gay” sexual behaviors, but in actuality, he’s getting off on it.

In many forced bi scenarios, “a woman demands and dominates a straight man to engage in sexual activities with another man,” explains Joe Kort, Ph.D., certified sex therapist and co-director of Modern Sex Therapy Institutes. “In many instances, the ‘mistress,’ also called the ‘domme,’ orders him to give oral sex or receive anal sex.” Even though the man is engaging in same-sex behavior, the domme is usually involved in some capacity; the submissive may be kissing her while he is receiving anal sex, or she may be guiding his head while he is giving oral sex. Though doms and subs of different genders can also partake in forced bi scenes, they typically involve a male submissive and a female domme—for reasons we’ll get into later.

The kink may be called forced bi, but if you’re doing it correctly, no one is being forced to do anything. Forced bi is a form of consensual non-consensual play, often referred to as con non-con or CNC among kinksters. In a forced bi scene, the submissive partner consents to the dominant partner “forcing” them to perform various sex acts, with a mutual understanding that play can stop at any time with use of a safe word. (The safe word should be something random and non-sexual, since the submissive saying “no” may be part of his “protest” against partaking in same-sex activities.) As with any time you’re playing out a BDSM scene, you have to discuss boundaries and expectations ahead of time and provide aftercare once the scene is complete.

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Why are guys into the forced bi kink?

There are many reasons why a man might be into watching or engaging in forced bi play. Sometimes, it’s way for bicurious men to explore their same-sex attractions without labeling themselves. It can also be a way for deeply-closeted men to engage in sex with other guys. “Sometimes the guys are gay or bi, and the ‘forced’ sexual activity gives them the opening to come out with less guilt and shame,” Kort says.

But according to Kort, the male submissive is often not attracted to the man-on-man action, but is getting off on the fact that he’s being humiliated—both by the forced bi activity, and the mere fact that he’s being sexually dominated. “It is considered humiliating because it is male-with-male sexual activity, which still is stigmatized and considered taboo in our culture,” Kort says. Because our patriarchal society stigmatizes queer sex between men more than queer sex between women, men are more likely to be turned on by the taboo nature of a forced bi scene.

“Interestingly, the parallel, a female forced into bisexuality, is much less common,” explains clinical psychologist and sex therapist David Ley, Ph.D. “I think this supports the theory that the fuel in this fantasy is [often] the taboo against male same-sex behavior, as female bisexuality is generally much less shamed or judged.”

While there aren’t any data on the prevalence of people engaging in forced bi scenes over time, there may fewer people into forced bi play as the LGBTQ+ rights movement has progressed, and it’s no longer deemed as shameful to engage in gay sex as it once was in many parts of the world. “It’s reasonable to predict that its power to arouse will decline as fewer people are raised in a culture that demonizes gay sex,” says Adam D. Blum, MFT, founder of the Gay Therapy Center.

This wouldn’t be the first time a cultural change has shifted the prevalence of a kink. “A professional Dom told me that requests for spanking have declined as fewer children are now spanked,” Blum says.

But we haven’t reached this future just yet. “Sadly, there are still many communities where male homosexuality is still shamed and stigmatized,” Ley says. “As much as the world is changing, those issues still persist in conservative communities and highly ‘macho’ environments or cultures. It’s in men from those groups that we often see this fantasy.”

Wait, so are the guys into this kink straight, gay, or bisexual?

It’s reasonable to think that the men who are into forced bi scenes are simply in denial about being gay or bisexual, and that a forced bi scene is simply a loophole where a closeted queer man can be sexual with another man. While that sometimes is the case, it isn’t necessarily true.

Guys into forced bi scenes can be any sexual orientation. These are straight-identifying guys who never fantasize about men, but who do fantasize about a Domme commanding them to kiss another man. “Ultimately, I think these fantasies and behaviors show the limitations of these labels,” Ley says. In recent years, we’ve learned that the in-between between straight and gay is a huge; there’s a constantly growing spectrum of behaviors and identities that don’t fit neatly into boxes or labels. So, “these men might be bisexual and needing to be forced over the internal prohibitions holding them back, or they might be straight and interested in exploring naughty taboos, or engaging in behaviors they’re actually not into.”

But at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter what these men identify as, as long as everyone involved is having consensual fun.

“I think it’s important for people, and men, to realize that being aroused by this doesn’t actually have to MEAN anything,” Ley says. “It can just be something that they recognize turns them on, and they can leave it there. It doesn’t have to be a cause for deep analysis and navel-gazing.”

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