No Cock Needed

Exploring the Hapto-Erotic Assemblage of Fist-Play in Gay Men's Anal Fisting

Bibliographic Data

ID3609596
AuthorsJulia H Martins (0000-0001-7406-147X, University of Pretoria, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume71
Issue13
Pages2974-2996
Publication date2024-11-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Homosexuality (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0091-8369 • E-ISSN: 1540-3602
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00918369.2023.2275299
PMID37921700
OpenAlexW4388288827
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited48

In this study, I explored how haptic modes of sense, contact, and practice affectively shape, become shaped with/in, the erotic experiences of gay fist-fuckers' fist-play. Unstructured individual interviews were conducted with 9 gay fist-fuckers from South Africa. Theoretically framed by DeleuzoGuattarian-inspired work on sexuality-as-assemblage and Mark Paterson's concept of feeling-with, a thematic analysis was employed to identify instances where participants' haptic sites and senses were co-articulated with the erotic experiences of their fist-play. What emerged were four themes of hapto-erotic sense-making in fist-play: feeling-with trust, feeling-with desire, feeling-with care, and feeling-with pleasure. Together, the findings highlight that erotic experiences of fist-play become (trans)formed with/in fluctuating assemblages of desire, communal ethics, repertoires of technique, sense perception, inter-corporeal contact, as well as nonhuman objects and substances that affectively charge and channel haptic sites and senses. The findings point to a queerer and relational sensing and making sense of intimacy, pleasure, and play that is not reliant on phallocentric logics or tropes of gay sex

Aesthetics · Feeling · Fist · Human sexuality · Pleasure · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research · Psychology · Social Psychology