flexibeast.space - quotes
Martin's “Fisting Subjectivity: Narratives of Sexual Subjectivity Among Gay Fist-Fuckers” (2024)
“Fisting Subjectivity: Narratives of Sexual Subjectivity Among Gay Fist-Fuckers”
Kinksters, fetishists, and BDSM practitioners within the gay community have also not been immune from similar forms of stigma (Slagstad, 2023). Members of these sexual subcultures have often been ostracized within mainstream gay communities as an effect of a politics of respectability that stresses assimilation and de-sexualization, especially in public representations of the gay community (Wignall, 2022). One community of gay kinksters which has faced varying forms of pejorative misrepresentation both in and outside of the broader gay community since its organized inception are fistfuckers (Rofes, 1991; Rubin, 1994).
Fisting aficionados have detailed that sessions of fist-play are characterized by psycho-physiological and quasi-spiritual experiences of intense pleasure, fulfillment, as well as partner connectedness (Brough, 2005; Herrman, 1991; Niederwieser, 2013; Shockey, 2009).
[W]ith the arrival of AIDS as well as the homo-and ano-phobic moral panic that surrounded it, gay bathhouses and clubs known for fisting became a target of public health officials who blamed it for the spread of HIV (Barcelos, 2023). Medical reviews and case studies on anal fisting have highlighted the potential for serious internal injury as well as the heightened risk of STI transmission (Agnew, 2000; Cappelletti et al., 2016; Sylla et al., 2020). It is, however, the unique configuration of bodily parts and practices entailed in fist-fucking that not only disrupts what we conventionally understand the sexual capacities and capabilities of our bodies to be (Martin, 2023a) but, perhaps more potently, provides an evocative instance of erotic body horror in which bodily boundaries are transgressed (Martin, 2023b).
Fisters have themselves attested to the stigma and kinkshaming they often face within communities of vanilla gay men (Bigbuttgeek & Jazzmatazz, 2023).
[I]n my previous work with fisters, intimacy has emerged as a significant aspect of their subcultural beliefs and erotic practices (Martin, 2020, 2022, 2023a, 2023b). Here, intimacy appears to function as a counter-narrative that fisters employ in the context of pejorative discourses that invalidate their fantasies, desires, and practices.
The participating fist-fuckers sought to distance (if not uncouple) themselves and fisting from the hetero/homonormative lenses typically employed to understand sexual and erotic desire, pleasure, and practice. Not only would fisting be described as a form of sexual play, as opposed to sexual intercourse, but this would often be accompanied by further rhetorical qualifiers, including references to fist-play being “weird” or “freaky” in an effort to emphasize its differentness from the normative conventions of gay sex
[F]isting was considered similar to other kinks in the way that kinks, broadly, and fisting, specifically, were sexually subversive and disruptive in character. Most notably this included a focal shift away from the genitals and, specifically, the penis, as a means of erotic pleasure-making. In addition to this, participants called attention to how the decentering of the penis necessitated other non-normative shifts in how sexual roles and relational power dynamics were conceived and practiced
[F]ist-play was often considered as a multidimensional erotic activity that entailed the exploration of corporeal, psychological, and spiritual aspects of sexual pleasure and partnership.
Intertwined within the narrative of the fist-fucker were themes of endurance, perseverance, and dedication. Together, these narratives worked to reinforce the trope of the sexual athlete and curated an interpretation of fist-play as an advanced type of kink that required ongoing and sustained (bodily and psychological) preparation or “training” in order to participate meaningfully and safely
The narrative of the fist-fucker as expert was one in which the frank and forthright acknowledgment of the risks and injury possible in fist-play were evident. In this regard, the narrative of expertise also came to function defensively in rebuttal of the impression that fisting was inherently dangerous
[T]he narrative of the fist-fucker as lover emphasized the premium placed on intimacy and pleasure in fist-play. In this narrative, love not only formed a crucial subcultural value amongst fisters but, furthermore, a psychological motive force to play
The narrative of the fist-fucker as lover was underpinned by emphases placed on intimacy, connection, and mutuality as important personal and interpersonal dimensions of fisting. Trust was a prominent reference point in this narrative
The understanding that fist-play takes a fist-fucker to the edge of their erotic boundaries but does not exceed them is strategically important for the way it narratively reproduces the fist-fucker as a responsible and disciplined sexual subject.
It is the highly technical nature of many kinks that have led some scholars to conceptualize kink as a form of “serious leisure” (Newmahr, 2010), that is to say, a culture and practice that should not be reduced to just “kinky sex” but one that is defined by a committed lifestyle to mastering kink-specific knowledge and skills in order to participate in particular roles and achieve the desired pleasures.
For fist-fuckers to narratively construct their fist-play as an emotionally enhancing practice of care points to an interpretation of their erotic practices as a kind of “wild self-care” (Clay, 2022) which unsettles and revises the connotations of riskiness attached to fisting into those of meaningful personal self-care.
Although within the community member narrative there were instances of (unanticipated) social inclusion as well as exclusion, a common theme was that fist-fuckers of color experience their racial(ised) identity as indivisible from their sexual subjectivity – something which stood in contrast to the White participants of this study who did not reference their race in relation to what it meant for them to be a fist-fucker.
Extant literature on kink remains dominated by scholarship from the Global North and West, with comparatively little known about kink and kinksters in the Global South (Weinberg, 2023). This continues to be an important focus for future work as it draws attention to the ways in which Southern sexualities and sexual subjectivities take shape and find expression in consonance with or divergence from trajectories of kink in the North and West. Furthermore, work within the Global South that specifically highlights Black and Brown practitioners and participants of kink gives needed insight into how racialized forms of subjectivity and embodiment are navigated in kink communities and through kink practices. This is important given the lingering legacies of colonial violence, White supremacy, and racism that continue to frame Black and Brown bodies, sexualities, and pleasures (Tamale, 2011).
McCormack et al. (2022) have cautioned that studies which principally use participants who are already embedded in kink communities gives rise to a “bias in research toward understanding kink practice as it occurs within communities” (p. 1761). A consequence of this is that there is less of an understanding about how the “non-community participant” (Wignall, 2022, p. 199) i.e., those who participate in kink but are not immersed in a subcultural community, construct and practice their kink experience. In terms of meaning making, Wignall (2022) has found that non-community participants in kink tend to place greater emphasis on the sexual dimensions of their kink practice than the subcultural, social, and affiliative dimensions.
Lastly, the narratives found and explored here should not necessarily be considered an exhaustive account of all possible stories that fist-fuckers may employ in making meaning of their sexual subjectivity. This may specifically be the case for kinksters who might engage in fist-play but not regard themselves as a fister or for those who may center other subcultural identifiers as being more significant to their sexual subjectivity, such as, with so-called “pigs.”
☙