The “free use” fetish is sweeping the gay community. Is it ruthless, or a relief?

You’ve had a long day. First, you made breakfast and dealt with the dog in the morning (or kid, if you’ve got a gayby at home). Then, you sped to the office in rush-hour traffic for a day of meetings, difficult decisions, and office politics. After work, you barely had time to squeeze in a training session at the gym, before coming home to make dinner and squeeze in an episode of Heartstopper. Exhausting, right?

Perhaps the last thing you want to think about at that point is negotiating if, when, and how to have sex with your boyfriend or husband. Wouldn’t it be easier if all of those decisions were made for you, and you could just surrender to whatever happens to you sexually, without being responsible for anything? If “yes”, you may be into the “free use” fetish, sweeping the gay community as we speak.

A “free use” fetish is the desire to be sexually “used” by a partner anytime, anywhere. Say, whaaat?

Before you let out the gay gasp, note that “free use” is an arrangement between two consenting adults. There’s nothing illegal happening here. So, how exactly does it work?

In “free use”, one partner holds the freedom to initiate intimacy without prior consent or engaging in foreplay, regardless of the other partner’s engagement, circumstances, or even whether or not they are asleep or awake at a given time. Essentially, this extends the power dynamics seen in various other BDSM-related interests. In a sense, it involves surrendering one’s personal agency to their partner, relieving them from the responsibility of decision-making.

@spicetrademutt1

Sometimes a human sized stress toy is required:3 #k1nk #kinktok #qink #qinktok #qinkcommunity #sub #dom #switch #brat #alt #alttiktok #alternative #fyp #foryou #foeyoupage #alt #alttiktok #alternative

? original sound – 5th_raikage

Like most other kinks, the exact details of this arrangement can be negotiated by the couple beforehand. For example, for many gay couples, this arrangement only extends within the confines of the home. After all, it could be misconstrued if someone were to witness you suddenly being, ahem, taken in a public space.

Some partners may also decide that certain situations in the house are off limits, like if one is cooking, lighting a candle or fire, or doing any other potentially dangerous acts. Others even say that while they are working from home, “free use” is off-limits. After all, you don’t necessarily want to give the entire Zoom meeting a show.

On the other hand, cleaning, reading, and texting are all green lights for “free use.”

Like most things, this trend is not without controversy. One the one hand, proponents of the kink say that this idea of agreeing to almost never say no—of being transformed into an object to be used however someone pleases—is what completely turns them on. There’s a freedom in powerlessness that they almost never get to exhibit in their regular day-to-day life, normally chock-full of consequential decision making and stressful pressures. That, they say, is a huge turn-on.

@sillylordsweets

Reply to @megandismuke You know me I can’t help a nerdy lore full pun. But esgerness to serve is mandatory for lords #cnc #kinktok #consent #freeuse

? original sound – Lord Sweets ?

On the other hand, others view it as ruthless and uncaring.

According to UrbanDictionary.com, “free use” means that a couple must engage in sex whenever one of the members of the couple wants to have sex, even if the other member is not horny. As long as one member is horny, the couple is required to have some kind of sexy time.”

This, to some, might feel like not respectfully taking into account the needs and desires of your partner, even though most “free use” participants would deny that there was any element of rape to it at all, or that even the fantasy of it comes into play.

Whether you agree with it or not in your own relationship, “free use” is spreading like wildfire, with categories of gay adult videos devoted to the trend popping up all over the internet.

There’s even a GayFreeUse subReddit, with over 80,000 devoted followers. The community description reads, “Men free for other men to take advantage of no matter the time, place, or relationship. In a free use world, men are to some extent always available to other men for sexual use — any man can walk up to another man and do whatever he likes to him while he ignores, enjoys, or accepts how he’s used. The key element of Free Use-themed content is access to be used and freedom to use others.”

Wild stuff…but yet most of us have had some version of that awkward conversation around sex with our partner after a long day.

“Are you in the mood?”

“I don’t know, are you?”

If you walk on the wild side, maybe you’d rather remove all ambiguity, mixed signals, and communication breakdowns with a “free use” arrangement in the home. If you do, just make sure to be very clear that this is a mutual agreement, and talk through the parameters in an open and honest way.

We hope it goes without saying that forcing yourself upon anyone without their consent is absolutely not okay, and also illegal. Now excuse us, while we attempt to get our husband to agree to “free use” of his massage-giving skills.

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