Fisting Subjectivity: Narratives of Sexual Subjectivity Among Gay Fist-Fuckers

J Sex Res. 2024 Apr 17:1-13. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2024.2339521. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Studies of sexuality have long been interested in understanding the construction of sexual subjectivity, especially amongst people whose participation in more nonnormative and kinkier forms of sex/uality have been discursively framed in terms of sexual and health "risk." Here sexual subjectivity refers to a person's sense of themself "as a sexual being who feels entitled to sexual pleasure and sexual safety, who makes active sexual choices, and who has an identity as a sexual being" (p. 6). This study explored what meanings fist-fuckers narratively draw on in understanding and interpreting their sexual subjectivity. Unstructured individual interviews were conducted with 32 gay South African men who fist-fuck. Guided by narrative theory and a thematic narrative analysis, six narratives were identified through which this sample of fist-fuckers constructed their sexual subjectivity as: kinkster, explorer, athlete, expert, lover, and community member. The results highlight that fist-fuckers construct and understand their sexual subjectivity through multiple and overlapping narratives of erotic desire and practice. These narratives not only work to affirmatively constitute the pursuit of fist-fucking as a personally meaningful, sexually fulfilling, and erotically legitimate form of satisfaction and play but, furthermore, facilitate identification with and membership of a distinct community of kink.