Content Warning: This article contains references to sexual assault.
Sex is shocking. Stories about sex make people blush and squeal, and one time, in Emory University’s beloved Dobbs Common Table, a particularly graphic sexual anecdote made a group of girls throw me and my friends dirty looks before getting up and moving away. Unfortunately for those girls, brunch happens to be the most ideal meal for sexual discourse, but more on that in a later piece.
Sex is a central tenet of my academic interests: I carry erotic stories from my readings and classes like party favors, aware that at any time and with anyone, I can, at the very least, elicit shock. I have invoked a story about fisting in encounters with close friends and strangers alike because, seeing as shock evolves into discomfort, these interactions tend to boil down to vulnerable discourse. Possessing these shocking stories feels like possessing a superpower, and I use my fisting story to challenge initial reactions to non-normative sexual experiences.
Fisting is an act of sexual intercourse referring to the insertion of a full hand into an anal or vaginal canal. Historians have found that the practice has been around for thousands of years, with the majority of data reporting that anal fisting gained traction among American gay male communities in the ’70s and ’80s. The act catapulted to popularity with the emergence of San Francisco’s Catacombs, the world’s first fisting club.
One of the most transformative classes I have taken at Emory and recommend to everyone is “Introduction to Sexualities” with Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Kadji Amin, perhaps because there is so much power in taking a class related to one’s identity. The course changed the way I move through the world because it taught me how to think about paradigms, structures and people simultaneously beyond and interconnected to my sense of self.
During a lecture on consent, Amin brought up a book chapter by a man who frequently enjoyed fisting and had a long-term goal to be double-fisted. The author, Alexander Cheves, explains that fisting had always been such a pleasurable experience because one is able to “step away from the mind’s natural defenses, the body’s resistance and tension, and literally open oneself up to whatever comes.” Cheves always informed his partners of whether or not he wanted to try further penetration. However, in one instance where Cheves was preparing to take two fists, he wrote that he “actually asked him to stop and said that I needed a break.” However, Cheves’ partner made a decision, based on his perception of the man’s anus alongside a foundation of sexual trust, to insert a second fist. Despite the initial “no,” Cheves finally achieved his long-term fantasy of being double-fisted. It was “a cloud of euphoria.” Yet, he acknowledges in the chapter that it was nonconsensual. I do not condone the promotion of non-consensual intercourse but believe anecdotes like this are critical vessels for productive discourse.
At this point in my storytelling, my audience is, at best, gobsmacked, and, at worst, looking faint. One time, a straight man grimaced as he physically held his rear end because the experience of second-hand pain was that visceral. I hope that my readers have held up to this point, but you can always pause to take a sip of water, because this is when it gets good.
I can feel the power of this fisting story course through me as I tell it. The double-fisting component has never been as shocking to me as the confounding variables of consent, trust and queer identity. Despite Cheves being the recipient of the fists, his partner was in more control of his body. And, in weighing Cheves’ ultimate pleasure, his partner took a risk that the author reported feeling “grateful for,” a sense of completeness and release built on years of physical and mental pining. “Losing control is erotic (and, as we’re aware, dangerous),” Cheves reflects.
However, when I verbally tell this story, it never brings this point of nuanced intimacy home. The fisting story teaches themes of queer sex education and consent, but rhetoric in Western and colonial histories has erased these elements through face-value shock factor. I learned of this anecdote in an academic setting, and with every story and reading we discussed, any initial discomfort and expression of surprise was unlearnt. In bridging my love for academic sexual discourse and conversations with people whose bookshelves do not revolve around the erotic, I have learned to reclaim this so-called shock factor as a vessel for conversation rather than the focal point.
Much of the discourse around queer sex is received as pornographic and uncomfortable, specifically in the context of experiences that are less central to heterosexual intimacy, an idea that can be traced back to British colonization of South Asia. The colonized interpretation of the “Kama Sutra,” a book made notorious for its eroticism, is built on an excised section of a much more expansive Sanskrit text. While this excerpt was disseminated as filthy and immoral, in actuality, the text in its full form promotes eroticism in terms of pleasure through lifestyle, not just sexual positions.
Despite ancient Sanskrit scriptures and Hindu iconography displaying fluid depictions of intimacy, both in terms of gender identity and sexuality, the legacy of British colonial law prevailed. Pervasively, Western notions of queerness and eroticism have fostered ignorance and harm that goes far beyond sexual discourse piquing curiosity. To me, embracing the erotic means actively challenging what is taught about pleasure and desire from oppressive institutions and structures.
I, unknowingly, have relied on the shock factor. This fisting story makes people uncomfortable — and I like it. Making people feel uncomfortable reveals both indoctrinated colonial perceptions and a piqued sense of intrigue. My stories of shocking sex tales allow me to challenge said perceptions by providing context, language and nuance to perspectives most do not even know have been indoctrinated.
Stories about sex are almost always more than just stories about sex. We are able to talk about sex in an academic setting or the dining hall during brunch, comfortable enough with ourselves and our sexualities and the fact that everyone is, in some form, getting it on. And, because we are not children in third-grade sex education, fisting can be invoked as a vessel for understanding the nuances and universality in sexual discourse.
All it takes is an understanding that when everything is erotic, the shock factor melts away. Stories, classes and moving through the world suddenly feel so much wider, and as some may say, double the fist, double the fun.
If you or someone you know experienced sexual assault, you can access Emory’s Title IX resources at 404-727-0541 or https://equityandcompliance.emory.edu/title-ix/index.html and the Office of Respect at https://respect.emory.edu/ or their hotline 24/7 at (404) 727-1514. You can reach the RAINN National Sexual Assault hotline 24/7 at (800) 656-4673 or https://hotline.rainn.org/online. You can reach the Atlanta Grady Rape Crisis Center crisis hotline 24/7 at (404) 616-4861 or gradyrapecrisiscenter@gmh.edu and the Decatur Day League Sexual Assault Care and Prevention crisis hotline 24/7 at (404) 377-1428.
