Role play

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Animal play is common particularly, as in this case, kitten play

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Schoolboy/girl role play provides a good lead-in to discipline and pain play

Role play is where a person engaged in a BDSM scene (and sometimes their partner as well) adopts a role or identity other then their own usual identity to enhance the experience in some way.

There a number of ways that role play can contribute to the BDSM experience:

1. It can create contexts and situations which normally wouldn't occur in the person's usual life, such as in a prisoner interrogation scene, or in a French-maid role playing. These situations can provide new or different activities to explore.
2. It can allow the person to display or utilise behaviour with which they might normally be uncomfortable, such as during humiliation, torture, age play, etc., scenes. Thus, role play can create a well-defined and limited context in which they can do things to and with their partner (such as inflict pain) which would go against their normal beliefs and values. Role play then serves as a type of identity protection.

Role play is more likely to appear in some BDSM activities than others, for example:

• Age play
• Animal play
• Service
• Humiliation
• Interrogation
• Discipline