Gender of spanking story characters, how important?

As a spanking story reader (that's all of you out there!) how important do you feel the genders of the characters in a spanking story are? Do you exclusively prefer stories with a particular lineup (i.e. M/F, F/M), or would you read a spanking story about any gender combination?

And how, for writers and readers alike, would you handle a spanking story featuring one or more characters who are gender non-binary? Most spanking story sites, this one included, don't even have a non-binary gender designation.

I find, as a writer, that sometimes a character I'm working with doesn't seem to fit the male or female mold. So, I have a few stories in the works with non-binary characters in them. Wondering if it's possible to get an accurate gender designation for those characters, short of starting my own story website, which I don't have the means to do at this time. Also wondering if the existence of primary characters whose gender doesn't leap out as M or F would turn off spanking story readers.

I try to ring the changes - it's easiest perhaps, and will garner the most readers, for M/f combinations but a school story is more likely F/f to mirror real life as it was, and I've a fair few F/m stories although often they morph that way with the characters! The genre I struggle with is writing M/m, I've tried it but not convincingly. I've also tried to fox the site's gender designations by including spanking machines or robots occasionally!

I would love to read some non-binary stories though, I envisage them being quite hard to write since English pronouns are gendered.

Definitely not "any gender." Definitely prefer M/F (or M/f), followed by F/F (or F/f), and in very few instances can enjoy F/m. No interest at all in M/M (or M/m).

I really havent given much though to non-binary characters. Since there is a sexual component to my interest in stories, even if it's below the surface, I'm probably not going to connect with a non-binary character as a primary character. In a story/role where there in no sexual component (which, as I've said, includes spanking), I'd have no issues with a non-binary character.

How the Library management might deal with the matter (e.g., how it categorizes the stories) I have no idea.

You're right that this site doesn't have an explicit "non-binary" designation (as far as I know) but the gender of spanker or spankee can be "unknown" (grey square symbol) so your stories could be classified in that way. I realise that "unknown" is not precisely the same as "non-binary" because one is from the reader's viewpoint and one is from the character's viewpoint, but it's fairly close.

We have no plans to introduce any further 'genders' in respect of our story classification icons. To all intents and purposes the icons represent biological sex, of which there are only two.

>I would love to read some non-binary stories though, I envisage them being quite hard to write since English pronouns are gendered.

My solution is to use singular they/them for my non-binary characters. Those are the pronouns the non-binary people I know irl tend to go by, so it works. A bit clunky, perhaps, but functional. Either that or make it a first person story narrated by the non-binary character, so there's no need to refer to them with third person pronouns.

>I really havent given much though to non-binary characters. Since there is a sexual component to my interest in stories, even if it's below the surface, I'm probably not going to connect with a non-binary character as a primary character. In a story/role where there in no sexual component (which, as I've said, includes spanking), I'd have no issues with a non-binary character.

I would probably have said the same thing if I'd been asked this question before I started writing non-binary characters. Since I have, I find that those stories turn me on just as much as stories about cisgender characters. That said, I have not so far put a non-binary character in a sex (by the vanilla definition) scene. Spanking, yes, including a story with a spankee narrator who I think is probably non-binary (I'm not entirely sure, though) and it works because while the character definitely gets aroused, there's nothing in it that requires any description of anyone's genitalia. There usually isn't in spanking stories.

And people who identify as non-binary are biologically male or female (maybe intersex in a few cases, but most intersex people identify as cisgender). How they'd have sex, if they do, wouldn't be any different from anyone else, in that light.

No there aren't. There's also intersex. Which is about as common in the general population as left handedness, and even more common than red hair.

And what if a character's biological sex isn't known? How would you classify them?

I've absolutely no wish to enter into some great debate about trans issues. I've explained our position in regards to story classification and have nothing further to add.

I wouldn't worry about it, Bramblewine - just write the story as skilfully as you can and how it's categorised in the library is then up to the reviewer.

With most prolific authors you get to know their specialities - romantic stories, mystical ones, school scenarios, young age groups, lesbian/gay etc so people who like the stories you write will keep a lookout for new ones.

I would be intrigued, especially from a first-person perspective (which puts less focus on their being non-binary, so it's not as distracting for readers who are less familiar with non-binary characters). I can identify with spankees of all genders if the story otherwise presses the right buttons.

Among the larger spanking community I feel there's a kind of divide between the gay community (exclusively interested in M/m) and the others (interested in everything but M/m). There's some overlap, but not much. And stories with female spankees tend to get more likes on average. So gender does matter when it comes to popularity. But I encourage trying something outside the mainstream.