This article explores the experiences and practices of self-identifying
female sexual age-players. Based on interviews and observation of the
age players’ blogged content, the article suggests that, rather than
being fixed in one single position, our study participants move between a
range of roles varying across their different scenes. In examining
accounts of sexual play, we argue that the notion of play characterizes
not only their specific routines of sexual “scening” but also sexual
routines, experimentations, and experiences more expansively. Further,
we argue that a focus on play as exploration of corporeal possibilities
allows for conceptualizing sexual preferences and practices, such as
age-play, as irreducible to distinct categories of sexual identity. The
notion of play makes it possible to consider sexuality in terms of
transformations in affective intensities and attachments, without
pigeonholing various preferences, or acts, within a taxonomy of sexual
identities. In doing so, it offers an alternative to the still prevalent
categorical conceptualizations of sexuality that stigmatize people’s
lived experiences and diminish the explanatory power of scholarly and
therapeutic narratives about human sexuality.