Some of you will know by now that I’ve been dividing my blog up a bit differently since launching patreon.com/mlfb, exploring bigger themes in more depth. My first big theme within this new format was prolapses, and if you go to my homepage you’ll get practically slapped across the face by one. And now, for my next theme! Community.
It’s one we do seem to struggle with indeed, myself included. Exploring the idea of community has involved a lot of discussion with ffriends, some new reading of bits of books and drawing on some of my prior knowledge, and a lot of mulling over, to come to some conclusions that I hope you find helpful for your understanding of the fisting community and your place in it.
I want you remember that this is based on my own experience, meaning I haven’t had to face discrimination in the community based on my skin colour, size, age (yet) or gender. To people for whom this is a struggle, you will find my explanation here eye-rollingly naive I suspect. Some People of Colour have recommended I amend this with an acknowledgement of the struggles of minorities within the fisting community, and that’s what this is. I am also in discussion with a supporter who is a POC about an article he might write in future discussing the issue.
I’ve distilled this community article into three observations. See if these sound familiar to you:
1. The community is so loose.
2. You’re standing at the window, looking in.
3. Micro-communities are the real essence of community.
Let’s unpack.
1. The community is sooooo loose.
Lol. Yes, it is! Most of the fisters in the world are people you will never even speak to, let alone have sex with. The fisters you know are the ones in your area, and beyond that the ones who have slid into your DMs or are generally very vocal online, and the people you meet during your or others’ travels. Everyone else doesn’t mean anything to you and you don’t mean anything to them.
On the Such FFun podcast we’ve said before that being a fister puts you in a special club – and it does! – but don’t go mistaking that club for any reason to feel like it has a center, or that it is in any way supportive or necessarily has your best interests at heart. Being part of the fist club simply means a mutual understanding. It means you’ve got a big hole, so do I, therefore I don’t judge you for having a big hole and I want you to experience all the pleasure you want with that big hole of yours, ya big old holey hole. What the fist club doesn’t offer is intimacy or familiarity. When people say they don’t feel part of the fisting community, these are the things they are unfulfilled about. Though like in any worldwide community, this is unrealistic to expect. Just as any Christian might have some shared values with another Christian, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will get along, or find intimacy or familiarity. We are loose, as that is our nature. Let’s not go pretending that we should be any tighter; the Christians aren’t.
Here’s an exception: of course it is lovely and holesome when you gather some fisters together socially and have a great time. That is no longer the fisting community as a whole, but rather already a micro-community. More on that in a moment. The first and most important point is to not be disappointed that the worldwide fisting community isn’t closer or somehow more welcoming. It can’t possibly be. Indeed, it’s only in recent decades that we’ve come together through the internet, and made fisting wildly more visible and accepted, and therefore popular. Celebrate that, but be realistic with the knowledge that that is not what makes a supportive community. We simply share a lot more of our porn with each other, commend each other on the size of our holes, and maybe that’s as far as the connection usually goes.
Of course if you travel, the wider FF community is helpful as you can meet people easily from where you are visiting. Make use of this network gratefully, but don’t expect it full-time. I know a lot of fisters around the world, and mostly we get in contact if we are travelling and have the option to meet; if not, the contact will drop off. We all have busy lives to lead, partners to feed, ladders to climb, and of course a handful of local fisters to meet to fulfill our immediate needs. Don’t confuse this for people not wanting you, even when it comes to locals. You are wanted, you are enough. And sometimes when you bump into fellow fisters by chance, you’re reminded of how you do have friends in all sorts of places, some of whom will come to your aid when you might need, be it for a good fisting, recommendations for new playmates, or even a referral to a good lawyer who can help you in your pending twitter porn case (see my twitter).
2. You’re standing at the window, looking in.
Do you get that feeling? Maybe you’re new to fisting, and find it difficult to penetrate the community. Or maybe you’ve been fisting for years but you tend to notice people hooking up without you and don’t understand why you’re being left out. Your fisting friends seem to know more fisters than you do, or you can’t remember how long it’s been since you last fisted, and it seems like everyone else is having more fun than you, ignoring you, not wanting you, because you’re different, other, an outsider. I think you know what I’m gonna say: we all feel it. This is each of us, and one potential source for it I’ve been considering is a childhood of gay shame.
Gay kids are pushed away, often before they even know what gay is. It starts as an interest in different things to other boys (or girls if you want me to be PC, though for ease I’m gonna stick to boys); we get bullied at school for preferring to sing or read over playing sports or punching each other (hah!),, and when the first crushes happen it’s simultaneously the best and the worst thing. We feel like weirdos, like we have a horrible secret, and are in many situations treated nastily by our idiot child peers. At some point we have to acknowledge that what the kids have been teasing us about is true, and we can’t wish it away no matter how hard we might try. Then the time comes when we need to come out, because we feel we are about to explode, and alone the prospect of it is immensely stressful, and makes our feeling of being other and rejected go through the roof even before we utter the words. Now, every human being is met with with some kind of trauma and shame in childhood that leads to their need to stand out, or be good, or be nice, or be aggressive or whatever way they develop into adulthood. But for us gays it’s more sinister, because our gay shame was born of an existential threat: of our parents kicking us out, or of us being bashed to death, or even the dread of dying of AIDS. Regardless of how our parents and friends react to the actual coming out, it’s the dread, the catastrophising, that has already consumed our imaginations and played a film in our heads a thousand times of the ostracising and the bullying at school, the family breakdown at home, and the ultimate loneliness we are surely destined to feel, if we indeed do survive the ordeal. And while we look back now and don’t believe it still haunts us (after all, we have friends, we have community, we love and are loved, we are safe and the coming out is for most of us so far in the past now), the trauma happened. It exists, because it happened in our minds, no matter how easily the coming out turned out to be. It plays itself out in our lives in various ways. One of the ways is here, in the fisting community, where we all feel like we might be missing out: that there is a center to the fisting community and we are definitely not it.
You might not think that gay trauma applies to you; I didn’t. I’ve read about it a number of times, and forgotten about it as many times, but just this week I’ve been reading a book about it again with the specific intention of understanding more about the idea of the fisting community within the broader gay community. I am realising now that my gay trauma is real. As I said, the results of gay trauma seem to play out differently: my husband has aggression when things don’t work out perfectly (which is always); I push people away as a way to protect myself before they have the opportunity to reject me. For me it can be traced all the way back to one of my earliest memories, when my parents read me a children’s book where a penguin had no friends at the playground.. By the end of the book I was bawling my eyes out. My parents asked why I was crying, and I said because the penguin didn’t have any friends. Despite them explaining that the penguin found a friend in the end, I fixated on not having any friends, and had worked out that that penguin was me. I must have been three years old. I didn’t know anything, but I had it in my head that I was different and nobody would want me. Thinking about it still makes me cry. And still now as a reflex I push people away and don’t maintain contact with my friends, so I can reject them before they have the chance to reject me. (Of course, all I really want is to love and be loved, and for us all to be happy, which is why I do things like write this blog, and talk on Such FFun, and make music for a living.)
And so you stand at the window of the fisting mansion, looking in at all the guys having a blast, living their best fisting life, posting it all over the internet. Theirs surely is 100% magical-orgasmical, and their intimacy is better than yours; they’re laughing their way through life, are taking much more in their butts than you ever will, and there is no sign of gay trauma or struggle of any kind. They’re more muscular and lean than you, have a full head of hair, have the right skin colour, are young and beautiful and attract all the guys, are not at all shy, are friends with everyone and fist a few times a week. They’re the most popular girls in school, and you’re not.
Except there’s nobody in that house. We are all weirdos with gay shame. We are all standing at the window, looking into an empty room. And we are terrified of anyone finding out. And there is only one solution I’ve found to stop this pattern: find your people. Create your own community, no matter how small.
3. Micro-communities are the real essence of the fisting community.
(I say this while currently having not many local fisting friends in Berlin, because I put some explosives under my intimate relationships last year that were well overdue, and am building back better, slowly but surely.) I remember when I was fisting a hell of a lot about 2 years ago, a frequent fisting friend of mine would talk about his feeling of missing out: why weren’t we invited to so-and-so’s party, what about all the fun they were having without us? And I said to him fuck it! Look at us and the fun we’re having. While I’m fisting, nobody else out there beyond these walls exists. In here is where my fisting community is, and nowhere else. It doesn’t matter if you are two people or twenty: your fisting community is the people with whom you are playing right now, or at your next session. You are accepted, you are loved, you are enough, no matter how much you take in your butt, or how much hair you have on your head, no matter the colour of your skin or how old you are, how you express yourself or how often you fist. Your community is the fisters who like to fist with you, or even just like to hang out with you over coffee. And that too can be fleeting. Community is most often a moment in time. But the moments are golden, and they belong to you. The memories of them stay with you, and they get to mean more to you than your gay trauma.
Building a lasting community is tricky. I hear of its success in places like Chicago and Melbourne, and have had the pleasure of experiencing the former, with the latter on my list for the end of this year. These places foster action, with organisation and effort from multiple people to have bigger events, social as well as sexual. And they are made up of smaller micro-communities that meet more often. And the reputation that these groups have attract more people to the city, and the community grows, almost organically. But then they are cared for, by people who want to give themselves for the cause. That needs you as well, so consider helping to organise an event in future in your area. After all, you are the community, it exists within your walls.
It doesn’t matter where you are or who you are. Build yourself a community of between 2 and x number of people, and don’t focus on what is happening out there without you, for that is giving in to the picture of the ffisty mansion where you are standing at the window looking in, and that is just a fairy tale of gay shame.
A further recommendation: delete twitter periodically
Social media is the thing that causes us to compare our lives with others the most. I delete twitter as well as hookup apps periodically and find I enjoy myself much more unplugged. I’ve found doing this very helpful in stabilising myself and becoming comfortable with my fisting how I like to do it, which could lately be best described as infrequent, cathartic, and more on the private side. I guess my porno criminal charge came at a good time 😀
If you appreciate this and want to support me and my writing please join me at patreon.com/mlfb.
Reading list:
Matthew Todd: Straight Jacket. Overcoming Society’s Legacy of Gay Shame. Penguin Books, 2018.
Alan Downs: The Velvet Rage. Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World. Hachette Books, 2012.
