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.
