Continuing on my weird little brain dump on sexuality and gender and how they impact my world.
Part 2 – Gender
When I talk about gender I very rarely mean assigned sex at birth. For the most part, gender is a social construct I don’t want to engage in, but fully respect other peoples’ desire to. I feel like this is an important point to make when writing a succubus main character.
Kyra, and others like her, feed off of sexual energy of the male variety. It doesn’t actually matter what’s between the legs of her meal so much as what’s in his heart (soul? mind? I don’t know, wherever gender is housed). As long as he’s got masculine energy, she can eat him. And really, because Kyra’s exclusively attracted to women, she has less than no interest in what’s in his pants, only that she can get the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible. Kyra is not the kind of person to linger over a meal, she has coffee for that.
“But Bronwen” I hear you say, “what about people who fall outside of the gender binary?” I’m glad you asked voice in my head that I attribute to anyone reading my ramblings! While the first book (yes first, this mess is going to be a trilogy) doesn’t have any obvious non-binary characters, you can bet one will be popping up in book two and they’re going to be a treat. The fun thing about anyone who falls outside of the gender binary (so non-binary, genderqueer, agender, etc.) is that they’re harder to feed from and to manipulate.
The powers of a succubus or incubus are intrinsically linked to the gender of their victim. A succubus can’t feed from a woman and an incubus can’t charm or impregnate a man. When either are faced with humans that don’t fall clearly into the gender binary, it hurts their heads, literally. This makes the sexual energy of the non-binary variety very hard to come by, very rare and, like most scarce resources, highly valued in certain circles. Some demons won’t ask you to sell your soul, but will eye your inner energy off if gender isn’t your jam.
To be fair, under the right circumstances a succubus could feed from someone who doesn’t identify as a man (and by right circumstances, I mean for the right price), but they could never feed from someone who identifies as a woman, regardless of their assigned gender at birth. I’d say something snarky about even demons respecting trans rights, but if you’ve gotten this far and don’t respect trans people you’re clearly lost and confused.
“What about incubi?” You may be wondering. Well, the logic carries across. In theory an incubus can impregnate anyone who identifies as a woman, again regardless of assigned gender at birth. In reality, they limit themselves to cis women most of the time because there are simply too many awkward questions otherwise. Have non-cis women been impregnated in the past because their magical affinity was too good to pass up? Sure! But while we all know trans women are goddesses and beings of pure power, not all of them are worth the energy and effort required to explain away or hide an otherwise impossible pregnancy. (Though now I want to write a spin off book about an incubus who makes it his life’s work to give babies to every trans woman who ever dreamed of carrying one.)
In conclusion: gender is not what’s in your pants and my demons respect that because they eat energy not dick. Being non-binary may keep you safe from having your sexual energy eaten, but you also may become a greater target of other demons who covet the power you hold within you. The only reason there aren’t more pregnant trans women in my books is because it would present a logistical nightmare (and because I find pregnancy and babies in general very off putting, sorry guys).
Coming up in Part 3: Sexuality and why it doesn’t really matter, except for when it does.
Bronwen Write 