Fisting intimacy: The sexual scripting of intimacy in gay men’s anal fisting

ABSTRACT

Anal fisting has often been caricatured as an aggressive, if not violent, mode of sexual and erotic practice between gay men, circumscribed by discourses of risk, danger, and even death. In this study, I explore how a sample of 28 South African gay men who regularly incorporate anal fisting into their preferred sexual practices construct and understand the experience of intimacy in the practices and relations of their fist-fucking. Through sexual scripting theory and a Thematic Analysis of unstructured individual interviews conducted with participants, the results highlight a scripting of intimacy with/in anal fisting that is grounded on three recurrent and interrelated themes: trust and vulnerability; connection and communication; as well as pleasure and skill. The results of this study draw attention to the ways in which anal fisting is not only experienced as a deeply intimate form of pleasure and lovemaking for its participants, but, moreover, how the construction and understanding of intimacy in fist-fucking is framed as a queer/er mode of anal sex/uality and erotics that defines and constitutes itself in contradistinction to both hetero- and homo-normative scripts.

KEYWORDS:

• Anal fisting
• fisting
• intimacy
• gay
• sexual scripts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘Poppers’ are a type of recreational substance which are inhaled through the nose before or during (anal) sexual activity. Their active ingredient most commonly includes amyl nitrate which relaxes smooth muscles such as the anal sphincter.

2. ‘Chems’, a colloquial shorthand for ‘chemicals’, refers to psychoactive and non-psychoactive stimulants which are used during sexual play and intercourse with the aim of facilitating or enhancing the sexual or erotic experience. This is often referred to as ‘chemsex’. An example of one such stimulant includes methamphetamine, also known as crystal methamphetamine or crystal meth.

3. ‘Sounding’, also known as urethral sounding or ‘cock-stuffing’, is a form of medical and fetish play. It involves inserting a long, slender rod (known as a sound) typically made of surgical steel into the opening of the urethra and down towards the bladder to heighten and intensify sexual stimulation.

4. In different countries legal and regulatory frameworks have evolved to classify the representation of fisting as a ‘fetish’ (Australia) or ‘obscenity’ (United Kingdom) which, if depicted in pornography, become liable for prohibition and prosecution. Prior to the growth of internet-based ‘tube’ sites in the latter 2000s, fisting was also included in the infamous ‘Cambria List’ co-opted by the George W. Bush administration in the United States of America to discourage porn producers from filming certain sex acts, such as, facials, water sports, and wax play, amongst others.

5. An example of which are the growing number of ‘mainstream’ health and lifestyle magazines which have begun publishing affirmative, pleasure-centred, and non-pathologizing ‘how to’ articles on fisting such as Men’s Health (Zane, 2021) and Cosmopolitan (Moore, 2021), amongst others.

6. The continued use of apartheid-era racial terminology remains highly contested in South Africa. However, many researchers continue to employ these racial(ised) categories of ethnicity in large part because many South Africans continue to use them as meaningful (although not unproblematic) reference points for subjectivity, community, and the material experience of life (and inequality) in South Africa. It is, in this vein, that I have used these racial(ised) identifiers here.

7. Fist-fuckers use the term ‘scene’ as an expansive reference to the setting, activity, and atmosphere which come together to make up a fisting session.

8. I am however not suggesting that an orgasm, be it genital, anal, or otherwise, does not occur in fisting or is not sought after by some. As Alexander Cheves (2018) has accurately described, a fisting orgasm is simultaneously ‘intense and agonizing in the loveliest way possible.’ (para. 25).